Identify Your Target Audience –most importantly, get the language and the country right. It does you absolutely no good to market upscale espresso machines (i.e. American market) to the Congo.

1. Refine Your Keywords as if you were Panning for Gold – because you ARE, in a sense, panning for gold. Test different levels of targeted keywords. There are three levels of targeting for your Google keywords: Broad match,
Phrase match and Exact match.
• Broad match – Let’s say one of your “dog training” keyword phrases is dog house training. Anytime someone searches for either dog house or training your Google ad will appear. So if someone is searching for fitness training or training my pet fish, your ad will appear. People searching for fitness training are probably not going to purchase your dog training product - therefore you have just wasted 1 Google impression.

• Phrase match – To Phrase match a keyword, place quotation marks “......” around your keywords. For example: “dog toilet training at home”. Every time someone searches for any of these keywords, your ad will appear. For instance, if I search for home toilet training for my dog, the “dog toilet training” ad would appear.

• Exact match – To exact match your keywords, place brackets [……] around your keyword phrase. This will ensure that your ad will only appear when someone searches for your exact keywords, in the exact order you have specified. For example: If you set the keyword [dog toilet training at home], your ad will only appear when someone searches for any part of your keyword phrase in the exact order. And if someone searches for dog training home, your ad will appear, as all their search terms are contained in your [] keyword phrase. If someone searches for toilet training dog, your ad will NOT appear as their search term is not in the same order as your keyword phrase.

Testing keyword matching options is very advantageous, as the more refined your targeting, the more likely your ad is to be clicked on and your product bought. Targeting traffic specifically means a higher CTR and a lower Cost per Conversion. For more information on keyword matching, visit: www.adwords.google.com
Include targeted keywords - in the headline and in the description of the ad. Google will highlight searched keywords in bold in the ad.

Test this out for yourself by doing a search on “dog toilet training”. When people scan search results, the very first thing they do is to look for the keywords they entered. Searched keywords highlighted in bold grab their attention. Because of this, ads with searched keywords usually do better than ones without.

Write emotional ads that really grab people – admittedly, this gets tricky. This is what the big boys get the big bucks for. But you can do it. First, start your headline with an attention-grabbing word. Then use loaded words or phrases that make people want to get up and take action. Make them laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em mad…but make ‘em feel something.

But don’t get carried away—if your ad isn’t specific to the site you’re promoting, Google may reject that ad. (That is, don’t scream, “XXX!” if you’re selling shoes, OK?) Google has strict guidelines about unacceptable language and punctuation, so some attention-grabbing ideas you have may be outside Google guidelines and therefore disallowed.

2. Set whatever you sell apart – this is called a ‘differentiator’. What’s special about what you sell? Does it do something unique? Come in an unusual color? Is it rare? Or are you offering a discount? You need something to set it apart.

3. Make sure to link to relevant landing pages – if your ad is for a specific product or service, take time to create a unique landing page for the ad. Include relevant and useful information to really sell the item or service. Garner the user’s e-mail for further marketing. A good landing page will almost always convert more visitors than if you simply sent them over to the home page. Remember: There’s no point having a great “selling” Google ad leading to a mundane, uninspiring landing page. And vice versa, there’s no point having a riveting, energetic landing page that will never be viewed because of a non-inspiring search engine ad.

4. Qualify visitors – you don’t want a bunch of freebie hunters clicking on your ad in the hopes of getting something for nothing. You can deter freebie seekers by including the price of the product or service at the end of the ad. Doing this beefs up your overall conversion ratio and lowers your average customer acquisition cost. Sure, you reduce your CTR, but they weren’t going to buy anything anyway! Another valuable technique is using negative keywords. If I add “-free” to my “dog training” keyword list, and someone searches for “free dog training guide” my ad will never appear.

5. Carry out simultaneous split testing - always test 2 (or more) ads at the same time. This is called “split testing”. Determine which one has the best CTR then redo the other ad with new copy. After a week or so, see which ad has been most profitable, or generates the most clicks. Delete the inferior ad and create a new ad to test against the successful ad.

6. Track ROI Constantly – “it ain’t worth a thing if it don’t make the cash register sing.” Google offers a conversion tracking option to see which keywords are making you money and which bid prices are most valuable. To set up conversion tracking, go to the “conversion tracking” tool in your Adwords account. Adwords will generate a unique tracking code. Contact the vendor you are affiliating to and request that they insert your tracking code on their “after purchase” page. Whenever a sale is made through your Adwords affiliate link, conversion stats will show up in your Adwords account.