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How A Special Forces Sniper Would Start Every Adwords Campaign

in Pay Per Click Marketing

How do you think a Special Forces Sharp Shooter would approach an Adwords campaign? In this article, we’re going to learn the answer to all that and more – so get ready for war (or Adwords Strategy, either one)…

Internet Marketing SharpShooter? Many online marketers starting a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign are just asking for trouble. Why you say? Because being a student of PPC, – Adwords specifically – seeing my own campaigns crash and burn, seeing others’ campaigns knocked from their high horse… and seeing this all happening, again and again over the course of 5 years in the game…

I’ve come to a conclusion as to why this happens. Why is it that nearly any Adwords campaign has an intense risk of failure from the start?

I don’t have the exact figures – I would like to know. How many, out of the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of Adwords campaigns that have been started – how many of those turn out to be profitable?

Is it 10%? Probably not even close to that. I guess I could suppose, but no one really knows. Besides…who cares – because the only thing that matters is YOUR own campaign success rate, right?

Want to Know How to Increase That?

Good. Stick around.

What I’m about to reveal here is not shocking, or earth-shattering, or any of the above. In fact it’s pure common sense. There’s a saying about common sense:

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.

Common sense tells us that there’s a common way to approach any situation. And that, that approach should work out. The biggest problem with common sense though, is that it’s not cutting-edge enough for us marketers.

We like the raw and dirty stuff, the kind of stuff that “no one knows”, right? Well, what I’m about to tell you, you already know. You may not have thought of it, or practiced it before… but, you most definitely already know it.

Before you ever turn on the traffic in Adwords…

Here’s how to start every Adwords campaign you ever run – and ensure a higher rate of success every time.

Ready? Good.

So you’ve got a niche, you think it’s going to open the online cash vaults for you. Tons of money to be made, competition can be dominated – and you’re ready to roll, right?

This article is not about keyword research, but what I am going to do is suggest to you a strategy to choose productive keywords from the start, based on a common-sense principle.

The Way I Approach Every Adwords Campaign

My most profitable campaigns online have always started as a building block. It’s like building a house – you lay the foundation before even thinking about putting up walls and pitching the roof. It’s just how good things grow.

That’s how you should approach every Adwords or PPC campaign you ever run from this point forward.

And here’s how to do it…

Snipers Are An Interesting Bunch…

They kill for a living. Sometimes whole military campaigns rely on the “dead eye” of one sniper. The success or failure of the mission depends on possibly a span of 30 seconds. From lining up the sights, to taking that final breath – and the slow pull of the trigger.

Am I really going to compare how you should start a PPC campaign to a sniper’s bullet? Absolutely.

IF you think about it, snipers have a customer. They need to deliver something to that customer, in a devastating fashion, with devastating effects.

But where do they aim for -the arm, the chest, their pinkie toe? Of course, not. They aim straight between the eyes. A 100% chance of success, I would think. Unless of course they’re off the mark, in which case they could accidentally hit another vital organ and achieve success – or hit nothing at all.

Drive Your Campaign through the Head of Your Market

Okay, before we continue, here’s a disclaimer:

All the crazies out there just settle down. We’re not shooting anyone here. Put it down and step away. I won’t be responsible for your actions.

Good, now we got the legal mumbo jumbo outta the way, here are the exact steps you should take before every Adwords campaign you start from this point forward.

Step 1: Find the Dead Center of Your Market

Every market has a variety of different kind of customer. Sometimes there are 10 different kind of customers in one single niche market.

The idea here is that, before you do anything, dig and nail down what your BEST, most profitable prospect is looking for. If you can describe your ideal customer in one or two sentences, you’ll be closer to starting a potentially profitable Adwords campaign than you ever have before.

Here’s an example:

Let’s take an example campaign I want to start. I’ve done my research and see that maybe the “online game rental” niche would bare some fruit. A total rabid buyer market, a nice paying CPA free trial offer, and just an overall healthy, steady market.

So I say to myself, who is my best customer. Who is the person going to buy from me more than any other person looking for online game rental.

Here’s my initial response:

“My best customer is someone who wants to inexpensively play an unlimited amount of video games for however long they want, with whatever gaming system they may have. They want to achieve that by renting games through a trusted online service, and have the money to pay for one…”

You should realllllly take a lot of time to think about this. If you can’t clearly define who you think your best customer will be, then you’re setting yourself up to be one of the statistics I talked about at the beginning of this article.

Step 2: Pick Out Your “Base Set” Keywords

Whoa there, trigger. Don’t head off to your favorite keyword research tool just quite yet. You can gain a lot out of just re-reading and picking base keywords out of your ideal customer statement.

Here are mine:

- Inexpensive (cost)

- Unlimited (benefit)

- Long (convenience)

- Gaming System (modifier)

- Renting Online (pre-known solution)

- Money (qualifier)

Step 3: Do Your Keyword Research

Whoo, I know you’ve been dying to rev that keyword machine up. Great, now’s your chance. If you don’t have a preferred Keyword Research tool, here’s some I recommend:

Free solutions: Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker Free KW’s

Paid: Keyword Elite 2.0 by Brad Callen

Now this is article is not meant to teach you how to do keyword research for PPC campaigns. So this is very watered down version of the steps you should take:

Figure out the most general keyword term in your niche market. For this example, it would be “online game rental” or “rent games online”. It’s right to the center of the market, and enter that into your keyword tool.
Harvest as many possible keywords from your overall list that meet at least 50% of the criteria of your best, ideal customer.
Rate each keyword based on a scale of 1-3. 1, being the least exact match and 3 being a perfect match.
Take your target keywords, starting with your 3’s and moving down through your 1’s and re-enter each of them into the keyword tool to create a list of sub-keywords for each.

Here’s the idea:

The more 2’s and 3 you get, the better chance there is that you’ve

a) Identified the dead center of the market is where your idea customer is

b) This is a healthy market that you can target

The more 1’s you get means perhaps

a) You’re ideal customer may not be fully represented in your market

b) Your ideal customer is not the same customer driving the market’s profits

And finally, if you can’t even seem to find very many 1’s, let alone 3’s – then stop immediately. Don’t proceed. Start the process over again, until you can. And remember, simply broadening your take on your ideal customer probably isn’t the best solution either.

If it’s just not working out. You’ve tried and tried, but you just can’t target your ideal customer in relation to your keywords – then I recommend you don’t even TRY to put up an Adwords campaign, unless you want to fail.

Carry on, move to another niche, go for a jog and come back to it – but whatever you do, DO NOT throw up an Adwords campaign. Clear?

Step 4: Form 5-10 Tight Ad Groups

Now you’re getting closer. You’re forming your ideal customer’s ad groups for him, where he’s going to find his ideal solution to his problem. Make sense?

So take your customer’s 1-3’s and the sub-keywords you mined for each, and start forming targeted, tightly grouped Ad groups. If you don’t know how to do that, then you will want to read this article on the strategy I use to structure ad groups for every one of my campaigns.

Step 5: Write 2 Targeted Ads for Each Ad Group

Now, I’m not going to get into the science or rather, art of writing ad copy for Adwords. But I will say this…

Each ad should be specifically targeted to the ad group you are writing for. You can go two routes:

Write completely and totally different styles of ads for each
Write similar ads each, changing only something minor in the second one

I like the first approach, because you instantly see how your market responds to each, and once you have that base then you can use that ad that gets the most response as the control ad from there.

Do This Before Every Adwords Campaign You Ever Start!

I promise you – if you take the time to do this simple exercise I’ve laid out in this article before every campaign you start, your chances of being profitable nearly right out the gate will sky rocket. You will wonder, why the hell you never did this before.

And remember to use this strategy when putting up your Adwords campaign for max CTR and quality score.

And finally – instead of just guessing and blowing your Adwords budget in one day, why not put up an Adwords campaign that you KNOW has a solid foundation for growth.

More on this “growth” thing to come soon, so stay tuned.

I want to hear your comments on this one. Did this help you? Is there something you didn’t understand? Got something to add? Go ahead, I love feedback – the more, the better!

- Bryan