Mesh Marketer

Google AdWords Overview in Three Stages

January 9, 2010 by mm

Whether you are new to Google AdWords or you have got a cam­paign run­ning, there are essen­tially three stages to hav­ing a suc­cess­ful Google AdWords adver­tis­ing campaign.

By suc­cess­ful, I mean that you have achieved three over­all goals:

MeshMarketer’s Three Over­all Goals of a Suc­cess­ful Google AdWords Campaign:

1. Your Click-Through-Rate is over 1% for all of your keywords.
2. Your Qual­ity Score is 7 and above on all keywords.
3. All of your ads together in each Ad Groups have over 1% CTR.

The First Stage is set­ting up or tran­si­tion­ing your Google AdWords cam­paign and lasts about a week. This is the time that it takes to stop any money-losing ads or key­words from con­tin­u­ing to lose money and to orga­nize or reor­ga­nize your cam­paign. This takes any­where from four hours to eight hours depending.

The Sec­ond Stage is a stability-building phase and is between two and three weeks. This is the time it takes to eval­u­ate or re-evaluate key­words and ads, intro­duce and test new key­words and ads as well as improve your key­word Google Qual­ity Score (which can make or break your campaign).

The Third Stage starts from the time you have got­ten out of Sec­ond Stage and ends when you close your AdWords account or if it goes unman­aged. If it goes unman­aged, then it is only a mat­ter of time before Google notices and drops things like your Qual­ity Score which will increase your cost per key­word and not show your ads quite as much which means your results will drop sig­nif­i­cantly and you’ll be wast­ing money (as well as reduc­ing what­ever leads or new clients or pur­chases you have been receiving).

It only takes a few min­utes each day to mon­i­tor your Google AdWords to make sure it is work­ing prop­erly, but you should expect to spend about four hours a week dur­ing each of these stages. If you want to move through these stages in the short­est pos­si­ble period of time then you should spend more time than four hours a week. If you spend less time, then it will take longer for the first two stages to complete.

All stages of Google AdWords require that you do mon­i­tor­ing through­out the day (if only for a minute or two at times) with the intent to accom­plish goals such as stay­ing under bud­get or test­ing an idea you have for the account. You should fre­quently mon­i­tor any adjust­ments in case they throw your entire cam­paign out of whack and you have to undo what you did quickly. Chang­ing all of your bids to a lower amount can effec­tively shut down your entire account for a good part of a day, so it’s best to not find out how low is too low at the end of the day because your entire day could then be shot.

Part I: Demys­ti­fy­ing Google AdWords
Part II: AdWords First Stage
Part III: AdWords Sec­ond Stage
Part IV: AdWords Third Stage

If you have any ques­tions or com­ments, please leave them here and I will be happy to respond.

By suc­cess­ful, I mean that you have achieved three over­all goals:

The Three Over­all Goals of a Suc­cess­ful Google AdWords Campaign:

1. Your Click-Through-Rate is over 1% for all of your keywords.
2. Your Qual­ity Score is 7 and above on all keywords.
3. All of your ads together in each Ad Groups have over 1% CTR.