New to AdWords Part 1: What is an Ad Group?

This is a beginning of a series that will shed some light on Adwords marketing concepts and misconceptions.

The Campaign, the Ad Group and the Keywords

Before we get to the Ad Group, let’s discuss the Campaign. A campaign is a collection of
of Ad Groups that are generally grouped together because of a common theme. For example, I choose to group my Campaigns by type. In my case, I have things like Physical Products, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Action, Info Products, etc.

I find it easy to manage my ads this way. I know where to look for products by category of product.

Now, the often misunderstood Ad Group. The most common mistake Adwords newbies make is to take a keyword phrase list and stick it in an Ad Group.

Bad idea.

If you do it this way, it will be very difficult to determine which keyword phrases are converting and which ones are not. I cannot stress how important this is because it can save you thousands of dollars on spending money on Adgroups that don’t convert.

What you want to do is put each keyword phrase and very similar keyword phrases in the same Ad Group. This way when an AdGroup converts for you, you can expand it — the ones that don’t make sales you can adjust or just outright delete them.

For instance, let’s say our niche is organic gardening and you’ve selected a few keyword phrases you want to use:

organic gardening
organic gardening products
organic gardening guide
organic gardenics tools

Although you may be tempted to put all of these into the same Ad Group, what I’m suggesting here is that you put each on in its own Ad Group. In this example, although it is possible that someone searching for “organic gardening products” it is unlikely that the visitor is searching for a Organic Gardening Guide.

Doing this allows you to:

1. Track which markets are working for you and track which keywords work. (Look for a future post on tracking)

2. Write a different ad for each keyword phrase. Very powerful concept here. The closer the add resembles the keyword phrase searched, the more likely the searcher is going to click your ad as opposed to another no matter what position.

3. To prune your keyword phrases that are not selling and wasting your profits. Using this method it’s easy. You just delete the offending Ad Group.

Applying this method will save you money in non-converting clicks and makes it easy to manage your campaign.

Check out my other blog entry on using mis-spellings here.

Till next time,

Frank Mamone

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