Give your adwords a boost

With the new year under way (now there’s a scary thought!) you might want to consider giving your AdWords campaign a once-over. Even if you do this on a semi-regular basis, it’s still a good idea to make sure you’re maximizing your campaign and not wasting any money or time. PPC Summit has a post on the three questions every Google AdWords marketer should answer which covers a number of  best practices needed to manage an AdWords campaign. The post points out that if you can answer the three questions put forth, you’re probably doing better than the majority of your competition. The first question is:

Will my prospect use this keyword to find my product?

About 10 seconds after you decide to research how to run a successful Google AdWords campaign, you probably read that keywords are the foundation to your success.

And while terms like “keyword research”, “cost per click” and “return on investment” may be running through your head, what it all boils down to is this: “Would the person searching for my type of product/service use this keyword/keyword phrase as a search term?” If you think the answer is yes, then try it.

Remember, keyword research – and indeed, pay per click marketing itself – is not an exact science.

Read the rest of the post for the other two questions that are integral to a good campaign.

Over on MarketingVox, another interesting post encouraging companies, sites and individuals not to put all their ad efforts in one basket: online advertising. A study from MIT indicates that it’s still good to diversify, yet people are still opting to only use online advertising as it’s cheaper and more targeted. The study praises the positives of online advertising yet still pointing out it’s a good idea to utilize multiple types of ads:

MIT Sloan Assistant Professor Alessandro Bonatti, says that marketers who think they can get better results at a lower cost by advertising on the internet instead of through more traditional media should consider all of the avenues available to them before making a decision. The same search and other technology that enabled advertisers to target particular audiences is also creating greater online competition for the same audience, thus reducing the profitability of advertising on any targeted website, he said.

As online advertising continues to unfold in the coming year, it’ll be interesting to see what, if any, components of this study change!