Google AdWords for small business

[Helen27]

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I gave google Adwords a brief go when my website launched almost a month ago (http://www.thepartypackage.com.au). But honestly, it was hideously expensive, $2.80 or so per single click on my add, which meant a budget of $40 a day would give 14 clicks a day, which leads to absolutely no sales as i need much more traffic than that to convert to a sale….
Would you consider Adwords a necessity for a small business? Are there more effective economical ways for a small business with a limited budget to market online? (so far using facebook, signed up pinterest but honestly struggling to sort that one out as I have never used it before). Instagram – same thing, I have opened an account but am still figuring it out…..

[Melanie183]

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Hi Helen!
You’re right about that one.. Adwords is ridiculously expensive. First of all, if you haven’t already, I would keep my eye out for display ads offering $75 worth of advertising once you spend $25 on Google. They usually appear once you sign up. Not an alternative I know but every little but helps

Also, I have found Bing advertising to be a lot cheaper. You can just import your Adwords campaign with one click and they also give out $150 coupon codes. Traffic might be a bit slower because not as many people use bing but might as well have an ad there for when people do search.

I definitely wouldn’t consider these types of advertising a necessity. There are many other things you could do. A low cost option I am currently working on is building my email marketing list. If you get a decent list size then it can be one of the most effective forms of marketing. The problem is it will take a lot of time and effort to build the list up. I started with asking family and friends to join, getting them to refer others, posting out on social media and doing giveaways.

Once you have a list, you can market to them basically for free with software such as Mail Chimp, which allows you to send out emails for free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers.

It’s definitely not a quick win but an investment for the long term.

[arrowwise]

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For competitive keywords it can be very pricey and easy sink lots of cash. To maximise your ROI you may need to engage the help off an Adwords expert to optimise your campaign, and continually measure / adjust over time. With the right help and best tweaks, only then will you know whether it is fitting for your business or not.

[goodsportz]

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Hi Helen
I do SEO and Google Adwords for a living had a quick look at your site.
You have no on site SEO strategy in place. This will make it extremely difficult for you to acquire the kind of exposure your business needs in Google over time, to get the benefit of free leads and traffic. I’d start by researching some keywords you’d like to compete for in key categories, and then put together some packages that fit the keywords. Good luck

[JohnW]

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Hi Helen,
Profitable online selling has become extremely complex in recent years.

IMHO, your initial problem has nothing to do with Adwords. It starts with you not providing answers to the info potential customers want.

I tiny bit of Google research shows that some people want information about party products sorted by location. Other people want information based on party themes or type of party.

Where people search for party themes or party types, all the info you give them in search results is (eg):

“16th Birthday
16th Birthday. 16th Birthday. Display: List View … 16th foil balloon. 45 cm foil balloon, perfect for … Glitz pink 16th table scatter confetti. 16th birthday table scatter”

“BaBee shower
BaBee shower. BaBee shower. Display: List View. List. Grid View. Show: 15, 25, 50 … Product Compare (0) · BaBee shower banner. 1 giant foil banner”

You don’t even tell people you sell products for these search terms, let alone where you sell them. (Who is going to search for “babee shower”? You certainly won’t be found by “baby shower” searchers.)

I suggest few sites will get real visits if all the searcher sees is meaningless info like this.

When buying Google ads site owners need to address:

• The types of search terms bought
• The cost of different search terms
• The need to provide different landing pages for different search terms
• The need to exclude certain search terms
• And more…

It is not unusual to find that the cost per click of Google Adwords programs can be reduced by 50% and potential customers be better targeted by addressing these elements.

We don’t know enough to simply blame search engine advertising in this situation.

The same is true for any social media marketing.

First you need to have your basic site and information right before you can expect any positive results from social media.

With respect, it looks to me like you need to spend a lot more time on online marketing education.
Good luck and regs,
JohnW

[bb1]

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Helen27, post: 226409, member: 28729 wrote:

would give 14 clicks a day, which leads to absolutely no sales as i need much more traffic than that to convert to a sale….
…..

Interesting comment, so how many clicks per day do you think you need to make a sale. Shouldn’t you be thinking that every click will lead to a sale, or at least a potential sale. So do you need 127 clicks or 128 clicks a day to make a sale.

If you are thinking you need heaps of clicks, than maybe you need to look at your offering, your sales techniques on page, it’s not as if when you hit 152.7 clicks you will make a sale.

You don’t want traffic, you want quality traffic.

[Helen27]

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goodsportz, post: 226432, member: 65208 wrote:

Hi Helen
I do SEO and Google Adwords for a living had a quick look at your site.
You have no on site SEO strategy in place. This will make it extremely difficult for you to acquire the kind of exposure your business needs in Google over time, to get the benefit of free leads and traffic. I’d start by researching some keywords you’d like to compete for in key categories, and then put together some packages that fit the keywords. Good luck

I have started what I can myself, SEO on the product and category pages at least, but this doesn’t seem to help much? Honestly I am a little lost…. Not sure how to even access my homepage SEO stuff as the developers seem to have control of that and I can’t find it in my dashboard…

[Helen27]

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JohnW, post: 226446, member: 6375 wrote:

Hi Helen,
Profitable online selling has become extremely complex in recent years.

IMHO, your initial problem has nothing to do with Adwords. It starts with you not providing answers to the info potential customers want.

I tiny bit of Google research shows that some people want information about party products sorted by location. Other people want information based on party themes or type of party.

Where people search for party themes or party types, all the info you give them in search results is (eg):

“16th Birthday
16th Birthday. 16th Birthday. Display: List View … 16th foil balloon. 45 cm foil balloon, perfect for … Glitz pink 16th table scatter confetti. 16th birthday table scatter”

“BaBee shower
BaBee shower. BaBee shower. Display: List View. List. Grid View. Show: 15, 25, 50 … Product Compare (0) · BaBee shower banner. 1 giant foil banner”

You don’t even tell people you sell products for these search terms, let alone where you sell them. (Who is going to search for “babee shower”? You certainly won’t be found by “baby shower” searchers.)

I suggest few sites will get real visits if all the searcher sees is meaningless info like this.

When buying Google ads site owners need to address:

• The types of search terms bought
• The cost of different search terms
• The need to provide different landing pages for different search terms
• The need to exclude certain search terms
• And more…

It is not unusual to find that the cost per click of Google Adwords programs can be reduced by 50% and potential customers be better targeted by addressing these elements.

We don’t know enough to simply blame search engine advertising in this situation.

The same is true for any social media marketing.

First you need to have your basic site and information right before you can expect any positive results from social media.

With respect, it looks to me like you need to spend a lot more time on online marketing education.
Good luck and regs,
JohnW

Your right, I do need to learn a whole lot about online marketing. And I am, every day. The learning curve is very steep right now.
I think I will need to outsource, as I am just not equal to the task atm it seems, I just don’t know enough. I know my ranking is moving up when i simply google “the Party Package”, but of course noones going to google that, its more like things like Party Supplies, or Avengers Party Supplies. I am working my way through the site enabling the SEO on every product and category page, and entering unique, not copy and pasted descriptions and filling in the Meta descriptions H1 and all that…. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.
From the two examples you provided, like Babee shower, that seems like a completely random category google seems to have picked. Its not one that SEO has been done for yet so I am not sure why thats popped up. Same goes for 16th birthday…

[Helen27]

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bb1, post: 226486, member: 53375 wrote:

Interesting comment, so how many clicks per day do you think you need to make a sale. Shouldn’t you be thinking that every click will lead to a sale, or at least a potential sale. So do you need 127 clicks or 128 clicks a day to make a sale.

If you are thinking you need heaps of clicks, than maybe you need to look at your offering, your sales techniques on page, it’s not as if when you hit 152.7 clicks you will make a sale.

You don’t want traffic, you want quality traffic.

I don’t think there’s a magic number, but I understand people like to browse online just like they do offline, window shop so to speak. If only 14 people even wander by for the day, the chance of 10 of them buying is very low, if 100 people wander by, the chance of 10 buying would be higher…. right?
I know when I look at products online I tend to look for awhile before buying, I suppose I assume others do the same?

[tom@egroup]

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Hi Helen,

+ 1 to what JohnW said. I would add is that I think you should focus less on how many websites hits you get for your investment and focus more on how many hits or ad clicks you need to make a sale. As BB1 said, you need to make sure you are getting quality leads which will make sales rather than visitors having a look around.

The best thing to try if you want to keep on with paid search marketing is narrow down your ad and keywords. Don’t create one ad with a multitude of different keywords, have a multitude of ads with a small (under 5-10) amount of keywords. Script your ad to address exactly the search term or keyword your visitors are using and you will get better qualified, more targeted leads. Hopefully, if your site is optimised, you will be able to capture those leads and ultimately you will convert more and be much happier for it.

All the best.

[Byron Trzeciak]

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One thing you might want to consider is using remarketing through Facebook. Basically what happens if you put some code on your website and start creating an “custom audience”. With this audience you can then create targeted ads on Facebook to try and convert them.

Often with ecommerce it’s not the first click but some continued brand awareness and trust. Maybe they found your website but they weren’t ready to purchase just yet. If they see you again on Facebook it might remind them that they still had to purchase those party items. It’s very cheap compared to Adwords and you’ll probably find your budget goes much further. Again if you’re not getting much traffic you likely won’t target many people and sales will still be slow.

With any form of paid advertising if you do it in the wrong way it may as well be gambling. For an ecommerce store the first thing you should set up in Google analytics is ecommerce tracking and setup goals to track sales, contact via telephone or email, newsletter signups etc. After that you’ll get an understanding of the % of traffic that converts into business. With that it will become a bit easier to make predictions about your paid advertising campaigns.

Like others have said above for Ecommerce your SEO is critical. It’s the foundation of your website. People use Google because they have an intent to find or purchase something. This is why it converts so well.

[JohnW]

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Helen27, post: 226506, member: 28729 wrote:

Your right, I do need to learn a whole lot about online marketing. And I am, every day. The learning curve is very steep right now.

…From the two examples you provided, like Babee shower, that seems like a completely random category google seems to have picked. Its not one that SEO has been done for yet so I am not sure why thats popped up. Same goes for 16th birthday…
Hi Helen,
It’s a big topic but let’s start by discussing a small number of important Internet marketing items that should make a difference to you.

1. Two important SE elements that should be manageable with a shopping cart system
2. Some ways to define search words of interest to potential customers
3. Measuring results – you have no Google Analytics installed

I’m only going to address the first item now.

1. Two important SE elements

The technical name for these are:

a. the title tag
b. the meta description

Every page on your site should have a unique title and description that you define with your shopping cart system.

Here is how the the example above displays them in Google search results:

“BaBee shower (title tag)
BaBee shower. BaBee shower. Display: List View. List. Grid View. Show: 15, 25, 50 … Product Compare (0) · BaBee shower banner. 1 giant foil banner” (meta description)

I suggest you ask your developers how you can manage these two functions with your cart system. I suggest only inferior or out-dated systems will prevent management of these functions these days.

A possible Cart System installation problem
At present it seems that the meta description tag has been omitted from very large numbers of important pages.

This may be a system installation omission and I strongly suggest you ask your developers why it seems to be missing from all of your product category pages. Eg:

• thepartypackage.com.au/shop-by-occasion/16th-birthday
• thepartypackage.com.au/shop-by-occasion/babee-shower
• thepartypackage.com.au/shop-by-product/balloons
• thepartypackage.com.au/shop-by-product/table-decorations
• Etc…

These page types should be critical to your Internet marketing and be your biggest generators of SE referrals, both from generic search results and for paid SE ads.

Using these SE Elements In Generic Search Results
In G search results, the viewer is only shown up to around 35 characters in the page title and around 160 characters in the page description.

This is all the info space you get to target potential clients and convince them to click through to your site. You can see why they are so important…

The best generic search advice I can offer is, IGNORE ANY ADVICE ABOUT TARGETING “FREQUENTLY USED KEYWORDS”. (Frequently used keywords are a planning tool for Adword campaigns, they have very limited value in generic search referral planning.)

Your best generic results should come by providing the information needs of the tightest potential customer focus.

That is likely to include the capital city where you reside. Google predictive search will tell you that. Type “party supplies” into the G search box and it will show you that most people then go on to add a location word to their search terms.

When searching for a party type they will likely go on to define the sex of the celebrant and you can bet that location is still important to the searcher.

This means you need a lot of different web pages to satisfy the huge range of different types of customer’s needs. This is why your different product categories and celebration event type pages are so crucial to your success.

Why is your “Babee Shower” page description meaningless?
When there is no meta description tag for Google to read, it defaults to show the first words of visible text on the web page.

That is why the description of the “Babee Shower” example is gibberish.

These words,

“Display: List View. List. Grid View. Show: 15, 25, 50 … Product Compare (0)”

are being extracted from the page’s visible “sort by” drop box functions text. This is useless to you and the people who may see the page listed in the results. You will find that large numbers of your 49 pages indexed by Google are missing this important description.

Your cart system MUST enable you to control the SE information displayed for all these types of pages.

For Adwords
Adwords starts with you defining the search terms you want to “buy”.

I’ve done no research but it is likely that Google ads cost less per click for search terms like, “16th birthday party decorations” than “party supplies”.

If you are buying Adwords like the former, you want the ad to link to your 16th birthday product category page, not your Home page.

G makes an assessment of “page quality” when you buy Adwords. The title and description elements should complement the Adwords you are buying.

These code functions are of secondary importance in Adwords.

How about you come back to us with what your developer’s answers are to the above questions before we explore the next items?

PS. If you want to see how Google displays your pages in its results, type this into its search box: site:thepartypackage.com.au

This will give you a list of every page’s title and description (or default description) on your site.

PPS. Why not invite your developer to participate in this discussion?
Regs,
JohnW

[JohnW]

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Helen27, post: 226506, member: 28729 wrote:

From the two examples you provided, like Babee shower, that seems like a completely random category google seems to have picked. Its not one that SEO has been done for yet so I am not sure why thats popped up. Same goes for 16th birthday…
Hi Helen,
Google seems to think the example page I used is your most important page for the search word “shower”. How I found this is shown below , but first you need to know this special search command.

Go to Google and enter in the search box the command:

site:thepartypackage.com.au

(No capitals, no spaces. Just the word “site:” immediately followed by your or any other domain name.)

The “site:” command asks Google to list every document it has in its index from your domain.

That command enables you to see:

• How many web page it has indexed from your site (See “49 results” at top of the Google results page)
• Each page’s title
• The description G will display for each page.

Now modify the search by adding a space and the word “shower”. I.e. Search term:

site:thepartypackage.com.au shower

This asks G to list all the pages from your site that contain the word “shower” in them. Now you have 26 pages.

You can see the page I used in the example above at the top of the list. That it lists top of your 26 “shower” pages is an indication that G thinks it is your most valuable page if people used “shower” as a search term.

You may find that G has a very different idea of what it sees as the site’s most important pages for certain search words than your version of the most “important” ones.

Now repeat the site search command but replace “shower” with a capital city. Eg:

site:thepartypackage.com.au Brisbane

The search results will say:

“Your search – site:thepartypackage.com.au Brisbane – did not match any documents.”

I.e. You have no page that qualifies for any search phrase that contains the word “Brisbane”, so you won’t get any generic search traffic for any search query that includes that word.

I also checked Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. None of them are used on any page so it looks like you are excluding your site from a very large group of potential customers, assuming you don’t target any substantial location word.

Hope this gives you some useful tips for identifying problems and opportunities in the SEs.
Regs,
JohnW

[goodsportz]

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First of all, incredible credos to John W for the detailed responses he has given here. This is generosity beyond the limits of what I could ever consider. I don’t have the time to elaborate the way that John has, but I am prepared to make some bold assertions based on my professional experience that you are free to heed or ignore.

1. I doubt Adwords will ever be good for you because the price of your products is too low. Unless you can create total packages that have good margins I can’t see Adwords ever being feasible for you.
2. What John says about location is spot on, so you need to put locations in the descriptions of your products.
3. What John says about information around categories is also spot on. You need good descriptive pages that put a lot of keyword descriptions into well written copy around categories of products.

Here’s an example of what I mean, this is one of my clients (http://ductsystems.com.au/), they deal in ducting supplies and they have a broad product range, but their homepage ranks for a lot of terms because of the way i have written it. (PS this took extensive research and a long time to craft/produce).It also means I don’t use meta descriptions, I let Google find the right snippets of copy. If you analyze this page and think about getting total solutions you can sell, so the average sale value increases, you may be able to afford some online marketing. In any case, I think you need an approach like this so you can eventually, over time, get some traffic from Google, around phrases that will yield significant enough to be commercially viable packages, and for a business like yours (and the example I have shown) the homepage is the easiest page to do this on.
Cheers and Good Luck

[Helen27]

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Byron Trzeciak, post: 226524, member: 56118 wrote:

One thing you might want to consider is using remarketing through Facebook. Basically what happens if you put some code on your website and start creating an “custom audience”. With this audience you can then create targeted ads on Facebook to try and convert them.

Often with ecommerce it’s not the first click but some continued brand awareness and trust. Maybe they found your website but they weren’t ready to purchase just yet. If they see you again on Facebook it might remind them that they still had to purchase those party items. It’s very cheap compared to Adwords and you’ll probably find your budget goes much further. Again if you’re not getting much traffic you likely won’t target many people and sales will still be slow.

With any form of paid advertising if you do it in the wrong way it may as well be gambling. For an ecommerce store the first thing you should set up in Google analytics is ecommerce tracking and setup goals to track sales, contact via telephone or email, newsletter signups etc. After that you’ll get an understanding of the % of traffic that converts into business. With that it will become a bit easier to make predictions about your paid advertising campaigns.

Like others have said above for Ecommerce your SEO is critical. It’s the foundation of your website. People use Google because they have an intent to find or purchase something. This is why it converts so well.

Thanks,

I do use Facebook advertising, have from the start. Yes it is much cheaper, but still costly to a degree. I started getting more results after the page was running for a few weeks and I could see who was mainly liking and following my page and posts. Women 25 – 40 seems to be the huge majority, so I switched to targeting them with my adds and started getting a faster rate of page likes etc.
I have google analytics, but it is newly installed as it took me awhile to figure out how to get it installed and running properly.

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