Adwords accounts can quickly become overly complicated, and whilst there are hundreds of metrics we can use to drill down to find out what is working and what is not, it is true that all this information can get confusing and in the way of sensible marketing tactics.
Once one’s Adwords account has been running for an amount of time we now have invaluable information on how things have been running. If the account is not giving us a large amount of profit, it can be tempting to throw it out and start again, but resist this as you will be able to leverage the knowledge on niches which don’t suit our online business.
When we start out, we tend to have an idea of where our business will fit in online, and therefore which niches will suit our business. This initial idea more often than not tends to be incorrect, as we have emulated the competition rather than accurately profiled our potential customers and worked out where we can stand out from them and get their business. The Adwords where we are failing at can give us ideas of where our competition is strong, or perceived to be strong, or even where they are throwing all their money at.
One must analyze this carefully and decide whether those expensive click-throughs are really going to be the best for our business too. If click-throughs are expensive it does not necessarily suggest that these are the best terms to target for any business, even our competition who are throwing money at them. Simply see how you are doing with all of the terms you are targeting, and focus on what really is working rather than what the market says you should be doing.
Streamline your Adwords so that it is easy for you to understand exactly what you are expecting to achieve. This means having a strategy that you have written down beforehand, and a plan for how you will change the campaign as it evolves. This can be reducing money put into some channels or increasing others. It can be adding niches to complement those that are performing well and turning a healthy profit. It can be taking out Adwords that are simply not performing well enough in the face of the competition. Managing a good Adwords account is having a good plan about where you will change things in light of the results, as they are unlikely to be exactly as you originally perceived.