Four Things AdWords Can Reveal About Most Markets
Google AdWords is both the best and worst thing that happened to Internet marketing. On the one hand, with only $5 and 5 minutes, you can start buying traffic for your website. On the other hand, with only $5 and 5 minutes, you can start buying traffic for your website. I’ve heard enough stories of someone naively setting up an AdWords account, letting it run, and discovering at the end of the month thousands of dollars charged to his credit card.
But if you exercise some common sense and caution, AdWords can be a goldmine of inexpensive and near-instantaneous marketing information. Here are just some of the things AdWords can reveal to you about most markets.
- What are they looking for? Your AdWords ads are triggered from search phrases that users enter into the search engine. They type into the search engine what they’re looking for, in their own words. By examining what words triggered, you know what people are looking for and how they describe it. Examine your web access logs to find out even more specifically what phrases users are using to get to your website. Combine these with conversion tracking to see what members of your mailing list originally had typed into a search engine in order to find your web site.
- What words and phrases resonate with them? AdWords ads are tiny, only 4 lines long. Every word counts. That’s a blessing, not a curse. Because it means you can try different wordings, have AdWords split-test them for you, and see which one gets more clicks. Are you wondering what you should name your new company? Or what the title of your new book should be? With a few dollars’ investment, you can quickly do a real market test to answer these questions. You can direct the clicks at some third-party website, so you don’t even have to provide a landing page. Better yet, you can set up an opt-in page on your website and offer to send interested people an email when you have more information on the project.
- How many are they, and how interested are they in what you have to sell? You direct your AdWords ad to a sales letter, then try to sell them an entry-level affiliate product. Or you create a free report or guide. And you see how many people you can convince to buy the affiliate product or opt in to receive the free paper. This gives you an idea of how hot the market is for the product or service, and how much you have to pay to get their attention.
- Where are they physically located? To get this information, you look at visitors’ IP addresses. Most web analyzers can tell you what countries visitors are from. Given raw access logs, a clever webmaster can probably give you even more detailed stats. Combine this with an opt-in form, and find out where your mailing list comes from. In fact, autoresponders like AWeber can report subscribers by geographical location. If you haven’t run that report on your opt-in list, you should. You may be surprised at the results.
Some of these things Perry Marshall teaches in his free 5-day AdWords email course and his Definitive Guide to Google AdWords, which I myself have purchased and fully recommend. At the least, if you haven’t used AdWords yet, you’ll want to go through Perry’s free 5-day email course to get the basics. Then set up a narrow, targeted campaign with a limited budget, and check it every day, at least at first. That probably won’t be a problem, as (if you’re anything like me) you’ll probably be so excited to see how it’s doing, you’ll have to avoid the AdWords just to get other work done.
-TimK
