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One of the most frequent questions asked by clients considering using AdWords is what is a sensible campaign going to cost? You’ll not be surprised there is no definitive answer to this question – “how long is a piece of string” is often the phrase that comes to mind.

What about ballpark figures though? Generally, if you’re a small business you can expect to spend hundreds per month at a minimum. For a medium-sized business, expect to pay thousands at a minimum and even more for a large business.

They are very general numbers, however, as they don’t take into account your industry, what you sell, your competition, and many other things.

Let’s try, therefore, to work out a sensible AdWords budget for your business. There are lots of ways you can do this, but the following is an approach that will apply to a wide range of businesses.

Before you can work out a sensible budget, however, you need data. So, we’ve broken the following into two steps – before you have data and after. If you have sufficient data from previous AdWords campaigns, you can skip the next section. If you don’t, read on.

You Don’t Have Data

You need data from previous AdWords campaigns to calculate what advertising on the platform should cost you in the future. If you don’t have this data, you will need to get it as you need to start somewhere.

Specifically, you need about 150 clicks per month for a minimum period of three months. In addition, you must spend time optimising and improving your ads during those three months to get the best results you can. This will give you the data you need to work out your AdWords budget.

The cost of this will depend on the average CPC (Cost Per Click) of the keywords in your campaign. If the average CPC is $2, for example, this starting point will cost you about $300 per month.

You Do Have Data

Once you have data, you can work out a sensible budget for your future AdWords campaigns. You need three things:

• Average CPC of your keywords
• Average number of clicks per month
• Conversion rate
• Maximum conversions you can either achieve or handle per month

On the last point above, you will first need to look at Google’s predicted search volumes. You might want to get as many of those people as possible. Alternatively, your business might only be able to cope with a set number of sales per month, particularly if yours is a service business or the products you sell have limited availability.

So, let’s put some numbers on this by way of illustration.

• Average CPC of your keywords – $3
• Average number of clicks – 150
• Conversion rate – 20%
• Maximum conversions you can either achieve or handle – 120

So, the total cost of the above AdWords campaign is $3 x 150 clicks = $450.

This generates 30 sales (20% of 150).

Before you go further, you must make sure the campaign is profitable, i.e. are you making enough money on those 30 sales to cover the $450 cost of advertising on AdWords.

If you are, you can move to the next stage which is looking at maximum conversions – in this example, you want 120. This means you need four times the number of clicks which equates to four times the monthly AdWords cost, i.e. a sensible AdWords campaign in this scenario is going to cost $1,800 per month.

So, it’s time to get your calculator out – or get someone who can work these sums out for you.

Is using AdWords a business no-brainer or a waste of money? As we are AdWords specialists, you might expect us to say it is a business no-brainer. The fact is, however, that we have seen many examples of AdWords campaigns that are a complete waste of money.

Rather than thinking about whether AdWords is a waste of money or an essential business tool, you should, instead, consider the differences between a successful AdWords campaign and one that isn’t.

The Fact is, AdWords Works

In 2017, Google’s revenues were 111 billion US dollars. The vast bulk of that – 94 billion US dollars – came from advertising, i.e. AdWords. So, when we say AdWords works, it certainly works for Google. That said, most of the companies and other organisations around the world who spent 94 billion US dollars on AdWords campaigns did so because it works for them too.

You’re probably reading this, though, because you have seen and heard horror stories about AdWords campaigns that don’t work. It is true – some people do waste money on AdWords. The trick is to avoid the mistakes these people make.

When you do this, your AdWords campaigns will be successful. In other words, you will generate new leads and sales as a direct result of ads running on Google’s network.

Of course, if you’re generating new leads and sales in a profitable way, AdWords is the very definition of a business no-brainer.

Avoiding the AdWords Money Wasting Pitfalls

Below are the top pitfalls to avoid so you can ensure your AdWords campaigns are successful:

Running Campaigns When You Don’t Know How AdWords Works

When you run an AdWords campaign, your ads are in competition with other ads targeting the same keywords. Unless you know how this auction works, you are likely to get beaten by those that do.

What does this mean? Firstly, you will pay more per click plus you will get fewer clicks than the competition.

Not Understanding Keywords and Negative Keywords

When you run an AdWords campaign, you shouldn’t simply select keywords that are related to your industry. Instead, you must identify keywords that will generate results for your business. This is normally keywords that have a buying intent.

In addition, you should use negative keywords to prevent clicks that won’t result in sales. Remember, your focus should be on ROI, not volume of clicks.

Failing to Research Your Competition

It is important you look at what the competition is doing too. Focus primarily on the four ads that appear at the top of search results pages for your chosen keywords. Can you identify anything with those campaigns that helps them win the top positions? How can you do better?

Not Having an Objective for the Campaign

You should also understand why you are running an AdWords campaign. For many people, this is to generate sales or leads, but these are not the only objectives you can have. Clearly defining your objective is important.

Being Unable to Measure Return on Investment

It is also important you have a way of measuring success. This means more than looking at how many clicks you got and how much those clicks cost you. You must also know the amount of revenue and profit those clicks generate so you can calculate ROI and properly determine the success of the campaign.

Failing to Optimise Every Element of an AdWords Campaign

Your AdWords campaign can cost you more than it should for several reasons. This includes poor keyword selection, poor negative keyword selection, incorrect bidding strategy, a badly written ad, an ineffective landing page, and more. To be successful, you need to optimise all these elements.

Not Getting Professional Help

As you can see, running a successful campaign is complicated. You can get results, though, when you have professional help. In fact, even when you add in the fees of a professional AdWords campaign manager, you will still get a better return on investment.

So, AdWords can be a no-brainer for your business, so long as you approach it correctly.

Should you view AdWords as a business investment or cost? This is an important question as the way you approach AdWords will vary greatly depending on the answer.

When you compare AdWords with traditional forms of advertising such as billboards, direct mail, or printed media, it is a cost. After all, you probably view these other forms of advertising as a cost to your business. Why should AdWords be any different?

The fact is, you should view it differently.

The AdWords Difference

The difference with AdWords is the way you are charged. In particular, you only pay for AdWords when your campaign delivers a result. In most cases, that result is a user clicking on one of your ads to visit your website.

That in itself does not constitute an investment. It may be better than a magazine, for example, predicting how many people will view your ad. What you really need, however, is a direct connection between the ad and a resulting sale.

This is possible not as a direct result of using AdWords, but in how you set up the overall campaign. It is known as conversion tracking.

Conversion Tracking

The standard metrics you get from an AdWords campaign are:

• CPC – Cost Per Click
• CTR – Click Through Rate
• Number of clicks
• Total cost of campaign

In other words, you can see:

• How many people potentially see your ad
• How many people click on it
• The average cost of those clicks
• The total amount you spend

With conversion tracking, however, you will also know the number of sales you achieve as a direct result of a click on one of your AdWords ads. You can even get this information if the person doesn’t make the purchase immediately after the click.

Here’s an example to illustrate:

• User does a search using a keyword you’ve targeted and sees your ad
• The user clicks through to your website and views your landing page
• The user is not ready to buy immediately so clicks away
• Three days later the user returns to your website to complete the purchase

This scenario will count as a conversion for your AdWords campaign.

Focus on Returns

As a result of the above, you can focus all of your efforts when running AdWords campaigns on maximising returns. CPC, CTR, and number of clicks are all important, of course, but they are not as important as the returns you achieve.

Specifically, you will know the return achieved related to the amount you spent, i.e. Return on Investment (ROI).

So, when approached the right way, AdWords is clearly a business investment rather than a cost.

To make sure this applies in your business, here’s a recap on what you need to do:

• Set up conversion tracking
• Measure conversion rate
• Analyse ROI

Benefits of this Approach

When AdWords becomes a business investment rather than a cost, you can start making changes so your campaigns reach their full potential. For example, you may be able to increase your budget to bring in more sales and profits, or you might be able to optimise your campaigns to maximise returns.

Generally, the best way to ensure AdWords is successful for your business is to ensure you view it as an investment. Get started today.

You have probably heard that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is something your business needs to do. What exactly is SEO, why is it important to your business, and what should you do about it? Here are the essentials that every business owner needs to know about SEO.

What Is SEO?

SEO involves taking steps to optimise your website to improve your ranking in Google.

In other words, you want your website to appear high up on search results pages whenever potential customers do searches for products or services you sell. SEO involves actions and strategies to help you achieve this.

How Search Engines Work

The first thing you should remember is that Google does not have to show your website on a search results page. You should also remember that Google’s priority is not your business.

Instead, Google only cares about the person doing the search. Therefore, its objective is to answer that person’s search query as quickly and as accurately as possible.

This is the most important concept to understand when it comes to SEO. There are lots of other factors to consider, of course, including keywords, page structures, content, etc. Understanding what is important to Google, however, is where you should start.

When you do, SEO starts to become much simpler, i.e. Google wants to answer a user’s search query as quickly and accurately as possible, so you should make sure your website does this.

Do You Really Need SEO?

If you want to keep and/or improve the traffic to your website that you get from Google, the simple answer is yes, you need SEO. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Google uses an algorithm to decide where your website appears on a search results page – in other words, everything about Google search is done by a computer programme. It is therefore important that Google’s search algorithm fully understands what your website is about and what you offer.
• You have competition – if you want to appear in a higher position than your competitors in Google, you will need SEO.
• Google has several specific standards – one of the things SEO should do is ensure your website meets Google’s standards. For example, lots of people now use Google search on mobile devices so it wants the mobile version of your website to be fully optimised. Page load speed is also important to Google as are things like unique content and user experience.

Of course, Google search is not the only way to get traffic to your website. You could, for example, use AdWords (paid search advertising) or social media. If you want Google search traffic, however, you will need to SEO your website.

Essential SEO Steps

• Understand the keywords that are important to your website and optimise your website for them. Keywords are the phrases, queries, and terms that people type into Google when doing a search. Much of SEO involves keywords.
• Your website needs a proper structure. This includes meta descriptions for every page, properly written page titles that include keywords, the use of header tags, and more.
• Your website should be easy to use, and it should load fast.
• Your website should work just as well on mobile as it does on a desktop computer.
• Adding regular, fresh, and unique content to your website is important for SEO.

SEO requires a proper strategy and effective implementation to get right. When you do so, however, you will get more traffic from Google. Crucially, the benefits of SEO are long-lasting.

One of the crucial parts of setting up an AdWords campaign is selecting keywords to target. In fact, keywords are the most important targeting option you have, alongside geographical targeting, of course.

Too many people are tempted by short keywords, however, including single-word keywords. The temptation exists because of the search volumes that short keywords generate.

In reality, though, using longtail keywords in your AdWords Campaign is often the secret to success.

What Are Longtail Keywords?

In simple terms, longtail keywords are phrases of four or more words. For some campaigns, three-word keywords might also qualify as being a longtail keyword.

This means longtail keywords represent the detailed and highly specific searches that people do on Google. Take a look at these keyword examples:

• “hotels”
• “hotels in Auckland”
• “family hotels in Auckland north shore”

The first option will have the highest search volume, but if you are a hotel on Auckland’s North Shore catering to families, you will get better results from an AdWords campaign that targets the final keyword in the list above – the longtail keyword.

This is because the person searching is close to a buying decision, i.e. they know exactly what they want and are now looking for options to book. It is also easier for you to tailor your AdWords ad and landing page to this keyword.

Benefits of Using Longtail Keywords in Your AdWords Campaign

• Better CTR (click through rate) – even though the search volumes of longtail keywords are lower than shorter search phrases, the CTR is usually better. The main reason for this is the keyword is better targeted to the user, so your ad is likely to be more relevant to them. Remember as well that a high CTR will help with your campaign too, including, potentially, reducing the Cost Per Click (CPC).
• Targets people closer to making a buying decision – with longtail keywords, you can target people who are searching in Google with buying intent, rather than spending your money on clicks from people who are simply researching or who are in the very early stages of the buying cycle.
• More optimised landing pages – with longtail keywords, you can tailor your landing pages to make them more relevant to the people clicking through. As you know, landing pages are a crucial element to creating a successful AdWords campaign. You need to optimise them as much as possible which is much easier to do with longtail keywords.
• Better conversion rate – as the audience you will reach with longtail keywords is more targeted, it is more likely you will convert a higher percentage of them.
• Less competition – most longtail keywords also have lower rates of competition which means the CPC is lower than other keywords.
• Better CPA (cost per acquisition) – following on from the previous two points, CPA will improve with longtail keywords. After all, shorter phrases will cost you more per click, and you will convert fewer of those clicks into sales. With longtail keywords, you will convert more plus the money you must pay for the click in the first place is lower.

So, when creating a new AdWords campaign, don’t focus on high search volumes. Instead, think about things like CTR, CPC, and CPA. When you do, longtail keywords become much more attractive.

After all, which of the following would you prefer: targeting your ads at the right people and converting a high percentage, or displaying your ad to loads of people who are not really interested or not ready to buy?

The first option is much better, which means using longtail keywords.

When you do a search on Google for a product, brand, or service, you will see ads on the search results page. Why are they there? Companies run those ads because Google’s advertising platform, AdWords, works. It works for their business, and it can work for yours too.

To understand this further, here are the main reasons why Google AdWords will work for your business.

Generates New Leads and Customers

AdWords is an active advertising tool that is about getting conversions. In other words, it will get you leads and customers. Of course, you need to set up your campaigns properly, but you’ll get tangible results when you do.

You Control the Amount You Spend

AdWords gives you a lot of settings to use when creating a campaign. One of the most important is the amount you wish to spend over a set period of time. This gives you complete control.

Cost-Effective

Regardless of how much you spend, AdWords is a cost-effective advertising tool. That doesn’t mean it is the cheapest, as you will probably already know of methods of advertising that are cheaper. When you combine the results and the amount you spend, however, AdWords is a very cost-effective platform.

You Can Start Small

The minimum spend on AdWords is very low which means you can get started with AdWords ads at minimal cost. This makes it possible to test what works and what doesn’t, learn more about the market, and more.

Fast Results

One of the main benefits of AdWords is the immediacy of the results it delivers. In fact, your ads can start running within hours of you launching a campaign, with results coming in right away.

Highly Targeted

Unlike other forms of advertising, AdWords gives you extremely powerful targeting tools. These tools go much further than targeting people based on geographical area or interest. Instead, you also target people based on the keywords they search for on Google. In other words, you can target people who are ready to make a purchase simply by selecting the right keywords.

You Only Pay When People Click Through to Your Website

Another advantage of AdWords is you don’t pay to display your ads on a Google search results page. Instead, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Of course, a click doesn’t mean the person will go on to become a customer. That said, there is a much closer correlation between the money you pay and the results you get with AdWords than most other forms of advertising.

Easy to Measure Return on Investment

You can quickly setup tracking on your AdWords campaigns enabling you to directly link sales and leads in your business to clicks and spend on AdWords. This makes it possible to measure the ROI of your AdWords’ campaigns.

You Can Test, Refine, and Improve

It is also possible to test all elements of your campaign, so you can make improvements. This includes split testing where you can test different keywords, negative keywords, ad headlines, ad text, landing pages, and more.

Gets Your Brand and Products in Front of People at the Right Time

Understanding user intent is important to making AdWords campaigns work. When you do, you can select keywords that have buying intent to include in your campaigns. This ensures you target people at the right time, i.e. when they are ready or almost ready to buy.

Learn More About Your Customers

The knowledge you get from running AdWords campaigns, including the results you achieve, will give you new information about your customers. You can then use that information to improve your other marketing initiatives and your business overall.

AdWords is a platform that can get you sales. If you don’t use it yet, you should consider doing so now.

To grow your business and find new customers, you must advertise. Many businesses must also advertise to keep their existing customers, particularly when in highly competitive markets. Not all advertising is the same, however, so how can you be sure you are getting the best bang for your advertising buck?

To answer this question, you need to make sure the following applies to your advertising spend:

• You target your ads at the right audience
• Your ads reach the customer at the right time
• You have a way of accurately measuring the return on investment of each campaign
• There are steps you can take to optimise that return on investment

The above is not rocket science. After all, you don’t want to spend money advertising to people who have no interest in what you sell or who have already made a purchase. Also, you need to make sure the money you spend on advertising is delivering a return that is high enough to justify that investment.

The problem is there are not many advertising options available to you that deliver on the above list. If you advertise on TV or radio, for example, none of the four points above apply.

There are solutions, though, with the best being AdWords. With AdWords you can:

• Target a specific audience
• Target that audience when they are in a purchasing frame of mind
• Precisely measure return on investment
• Optimise future campaigns to get better returns

Are You Getting the Best Bang for Your AdWords Buck?

If you do run campaigns on AdWords, the next question to consider is are you getting the best possible results for the amount you spend? Could you spend less and get the same results? Could you spend the same amount while getting better results?

These things are important to think about as, on the surface, AdWords is an advertising tool that anyone can use. You simply need to set up an account and then work your way through the guided process to launch an ad.

If you have any experience with AdWords, you will know the reality of running AdWords campaigns is not as simple as described above. In fact, it is easy to completely waste money on AdWords, and many businesses have.

Optimising AdWords Campaigns

The only way to ensure you are getting the best possible results from your AdWords campaigns is to optimise them. This is an ongoing process of testing, refining, and tweaking every element of an AdWords campaign including:

• Keywords
• Negative keywords
• Bid amounts
• Bid strategies
• Geographic targeting
• Ad headline
• Ad text
• Ad display URL
• Landing page targeting
• Landing page design
• Landing page headlines
• Landing page content
• Landing page call-to-action

All these things and more can impact the performance of your AdWords campaign. The objectives you should have include:

• Reducing the cost-per-click to as low a rate as possible
• Ensuring clicks come from the right audience so you waste as little as possible on clicks that won’t convert
• Maximising conversions

Conclusion

To ensure you get the best bang for your advertising buck, you should start by considering AdWords as an advertising strategy. If you already use AdWords, you should take steps to ensure your campaigns are as optimised as possible. This will keep more money in your pocket while still generating new customers and sales for your business.

WordPress has become more synonyms to web development environment than ever before, many business owners like to have a professional website for their brand and companies build in WordPress. The reason for this is not one but many, the most important being that it’s the most popular content management system that exists to date.

Adapted by millions of users around the world for developing search engine friendly blogs, websites and complex applications, WordPress has become the most famous web development framework that allows easy modification, updates, and customization on the fly.

WordPress is a most common framework amount many a Web Designing Service providers in Auckland. For the sack of writing this article, we will be discussing 5 most essential feature of wordpress that makes it the No.1 CMS today.

5 Good Reasons to Choose WordPress -Whether you are a web design company or a business owner.

Unlimited Themes

The beauty of wordpress development is that you have thousands of themes to choose from, whether you in a hospitality industry, automobile, education or perhaps a web designing service you will never run out of designs and themes.

Thanks to tens of thousands of designers and developers who are publishing wordpress themes every day. These themes are built on standard coding standards and are tested for any bugs or design issues. So when you are using a theme you can be sure of its quality and speed. There are many marketplaces on the web which sells wordpress themes of all types for very minimal cost and also provides support.

Unlimited Plugins

Another hot selling feature of wordpress websites is it’s extendible functionality addons called plugins. These plugins are build by professional coders to provide an extra functionality to the website that can otherwise cost hugely if build by a dedicated coder. The plugins are extremely helpful especially when you need customized functionality such as room booking, service booking etc.

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A good Web Design Company will however, use plugins just when its most needed, otherwise they will have to add functionality using php code, this is done to save load time. As using many plugins on a single website can adversely affect its load time. The last thing you will want is your website loading time being more than usual.

Easy to updated content

Since WordPress is popular for being the best content management system what it really means is that you don’t need a web design company to update content for you when you need it. Once its up and running, wordpress website allows different user roles to write, publish and approve content when it’s needed. All you have to do is to edit the content and publish it just like you would have an article published on LinkedIn.

Search Engine Loves It

WordPress was first introduced for bloggers so they can have there blogs published in no time and in the easiest way. Since blogs are the most favorite hangout spots for search engines, for the obvious reason that most useful information resides here. Using wordpress has a huge advantage for the reason that search engines especially Google, holds a soft spot for it due to its SEO friendly structure and good user experience.

A Budding Community

A good web designing service always recommends WordPress websites to its customers. Not only it has a huge end-user base but the wordpress development community itself is huge. The wordpress community exists to create, collaborate and help resolve issues in a collaborative environment. So when a web design company tells you “Don’t take my word for it” they mean to say there are thousands of wordpress gurus who are actively adding new things to wordpress, to make it more robust and secure content management system.