And I'd say this is the leading cause of people losing money on AdWords – especially for beginners.

What I'm thinking is "overly" broad keywords.

I was recently talking to someone who has helps people with overcoming anxiety. So I'll use that niche as an example …

So, it's one thing to have the keyword like 'anxiety attack help' and have it as a broad match (which is the default match type).

It's another thing to have 'anxiety' and think that is a great keyword for your audience.

There are 2 tendencies that cause this problem:

1) You want to get broader to get bigger traffic

2) You usually don't realize how broad a keyword actually is.

That 2nd part is what is really insidious. You tend to think of a keyword from your perspective.

So you're thinking 'anxiety' and you're thinking "oh, everyone with anxiety in their search is looking for my solution". 

But for a broad keyword, especially one word, you have to realize that can be a lot of people – coming from a lot of different perspectives.

I just did a search for 'anxiety' and saw a top link referencing a celebrity getting treatment for anxiety. Do you want to pay for a bunch of clicks for such curiosity seekers?

What if a big book or movie comes out called "Anxiety", or with "anxiety" in the title? Then you get a huge spike in clicks – again from non-qualified people who happen to click your ad.

Wow, just thinking about that gives me anxiety!

Anyway, when first starting with a niche, try to find that sweet spot of "generality". Where you're getting broad for your target audience … not so broad you'll get a bunch of "random" people.

You'll get a feel for it. And of course tracking will help a lot – to see what keywords are working (you need to do that anyway).

But when going with broadness that doesn't speak to what you're selling, be very careful … or at least take your daily budget low, to reduce your risk.

Now that's what I call a good treatment for "AdWords Anxiety"!

I’m going through Ryan Deiss’ Facebook Ad Power training.

It’s great stuff so far

It further solidifies what I was already thinking:
Anyone who has done Adwords will be like a kid in a candy store!

So many people to target (400 million Facebook users!).

So many interests and groups you can target.

As Ryan was going through this, and the ways to target, I was wide-eyed.

Three important things in combination:

Basically I’m saying if you have skills in Adwords at all (and you should if you’ve been reading this blog) then Facebook is a wide-open opportunity!

Though one major difference to keep in mind:

But since Facebook is all about people talking about themselves, making connections, and joining groups, you can Laser Target where your ads show.

Personal information is just one part of someone's profile. People tend to put ALL their favorites and interests in their profile

For example, for demographic information:

About the training itself:
Ryan does a great job of presenting the information in a video format. It’s like a power-point presentation, with his voice-over and highlighting (with a virtual red pen) the slides. Showing great examples and key tips along the way.

It’s like he’s right there with you walking it through it all. Great!

Oh, and at least check out Ryan’s video. He slams Google more than I like. But he’s got great information about Facebook advertising, just in his free presentation.

These notes are my insights and ideas, as I go through the training.

That will put you ahead of everyone else who’s getting this information!

He’s outrageously strong against Google (a bit too much) but I agree with his overall point:

That Facebook is a largely untapped market, for PPC advertising.

It’s like Adwords was a few years ago, before Google restricted things … and before competition really drove clicks costs up.

Find out why Facebook is the only competitor that Google truly fears.

Because

1. Facebook has a ton of traffic. Over 39 billion page views a month. With 400 Million members!

2. You can target ads to the exact audience you want.

3. Facebook is simple to use and fast. You’ll get great traffic right away

4. Facebook clicks tend to be less than half the cost of Adwords clicks

5. Facebook loves affiliates and all the other advertisers (Google keeps restricting affiliate ads)

Ryan jumped into Facebook ads last year, and found what works … and the traps to watch out for.

Start getting some of the Facebook ad secrets he found

Oh course I’m not saying to abandon Adwords, like he did!
As I’ve been saying in this blog, there are certainly ways to do well with Adwords.

But you can’t ignore Facebook, either.

Since my goal is to help you get better traffic and better profits, overall … I need to also let you
know about the different options out there.

At the very least give Facebook a try. Such as with a small budget and a very targeted audience.
You may just find a nice “oil well” there that brings you a nice stream of new customers and profits.

Ryan will be taking this away within a few days. See it before it goes away.

If you do affiliate marketing, you especially need to hear what he has to say.
It’s like going back a few years ago when you could make great money with “direct linking”
(aka the Google Cash method).

When you create a new adgroup, the Quality Score for your keywords will show as “5″.
(assuming you’re showing Quality Score as a column – which you really should be doing)

If you make any changes to the bids it will then calculate Quality Score. So then your 5 becomes a 7 … or whatever.

I’ve gotten used to it. But figured a number of people may not have realized. They may think the quality scores are really 5!

The Secret - by Rhonda Byrne

This is an alternative to “The Secret” – the book and video about the Law of Attraction.

I liked “The Secret” to some degree.

But as an analytical person I could get behind it a lot more if one word was added: “Correlation“

Or more accurately: “Positive Correlation”

As in: “There’s a Positive Correlation between Positive Thinking and Getting the Results You Want”

To me, that’s the real world version of “The Secret”. And not taking away from the idea or the message … just making it so it fits with reality.

But with most success guidance (The Secret and other) people don’t like to talk in that way. It has to be simple, sound-bite-able, and absolute. It’s as if there’s uncertainty then it’s no good!

Oh well, I guess I’m just too “Left Brain”

So, if you’re a fellow “Left Brainer” and want to do better with AdWords, then read on …

In AdWords (and any other marketing) you should expect that there aren’t nice tidy rules to apply. And that there is a lot of uncertainty. When you’re starting a new campaign there is really a lot of uncertainty. As you get more information, the start to resolve the uncertainty.

You can’t put an ad out there, and truly predict how it will do.

But the good thing is:

You can just accept that there’s a lot of uncertainty in the “AdWords Sandbox” and just play in the sand, with different things.

You can keep trying new things, analyzing your results, and keep improving over time.

You get a good adgroup humming along. Let’s say it’s averaging $50 a day profit.

Then you create a new ad that does better. Or you tweak the landing page to do better. Or whatever. It could be a very simple change you try.

Then after making the winning change you’re making say $70 profit a day.

Even lack of results can be pivoted to give you improvement.

Say you have a broad match keyword, and you find specific keywords (triggered by the broad match) that don’t do well.

After seeing that, you exclude them (negative keywords) and that gives you a boost.

So maybe the AdWords Secret is something like:

Positive Experimentation, Analysis and Improvement, will Give You Increasingly Positive Results … Over Time

okay, I need to make that into a better “sound bite”, but hopefully you get the idea

Pass this Secret on only to people who will use if for Good … not Evil!

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Something that helps a lot, with using the Content Network, is to use the Google Ad Planner tool.

The idea is that you use it to find Good sites to target. Not poorly-targeted sites that just drain your money (been there, done that).

Now depending on your market/niche, the sites you find may not be as high-volume as the ones Google might normall suggest.

But avoid the temptation to go for those poor targets.

There are a lot of options, shown as drop-down boxes.

I’ll start with the “Demographics” option.

You can choose: age, gender, education, household income.

In some niches, the income choice can be particularly important. If you’re selling Jet fractional ownership (or even full ownership!) you probably want to go higher with the income level.

Gender can be especially important for some niches. Even for something you think “should” apply to everyone – some things tend to strongly get one gender or the other.

Remember: it’s not just who benefits from what you’re selling – it’s the one making the buying decision!

For example, I’ve worked on two different niches today.
One where gender is irrelevant. And another where 95% of my customers are men. Not sure why … that’s just the way it is.

The same idea with age and education.

You may already know your audience tends to be some “boxes” rather than others. Or it’s up to testing to see which work best.

But you should really think of who your audience is. Is it really for “everyone”?

Start playing with Ad Planner. It’s like a knowledgeable Tour Guide, helping you find your way through the wild forrest of the Content Network.

You can use AdPlanner to help you find your way … or you can get eaten by [tippy title="Rabid Mountain Lions" header="on"][/tippy] while wondering around … your choice

Does Google reward you, with better Adwords performance,  for using Google Chrome?

I’d say yes!

Though I’m also having fun here, giving some of those “Google Conspiracy Theorists” something to think about.
You know, the same people that think if you spend money on Adwords you get higher listings on organic search!

Anyway, a few minutes ago I was bogged down in Firefox, juggling between the “Campaign Manager” (aka Adwords interface) and other tabs I was working with. Everything was way too slow.

(personal responsibility: okay I have the tendency to have way too many tabs open at the same time)

After playing with using Google Chrome on some sites the last couple weeks, I finally broke down and used it for Adwords (along with the other pages I was working with).

Big boost in performance!

So if time and productivity are money (and I’d say they are), I’m getting better ROI from Adwords now that I’m using Chrome!

That freed up some time to do some things on my To-Do list, such as creating a new campaign targeting the Content Network.

thanks Google Chrome!

The specific trap I’m thinking of is when one ad has a significantly higher CTR, and there are a “decent” number of clicks.

(you certainly should not declare a winner when each ad has only a handful of clicks)

But the trap is when there are more clicks … but not statistically enough.

Here’s an example, from an adgroup I was looking at today:

Each ad has gotten a few clicks. One ad has 9.91% CTR, the other has 7.79% CTR.

Looks like ad 1 is the winner, right?

Well, the key is the difference in the number of clicks

Ad 1 has 21 clicks. Ad 2 has 18 clicks.

Still a good “gap” in the number of clicks, right?

Well, after doing the analysis (you can use splittester.com to do this) it actually comes in as NOT a significant difference.

The thing is that it’s really not that big of a difference in the number of clicks. It’s still within the realm of “being a fluke” that ad 1 is doing better.

You may not need to do that kind of quick analysis that often. But it comes in handy.

Especially when dealing with higher cost clicks.

If an adgroup is humming along and getting a higher volume of low cost clicks, you can probably stick to the “eyeballing” method.
If you see ad 1 has 60 clicks 8% CTR, and ad 2 has 30 clicks 4% CTR – I think we can safely say ad 1 is the winner!

If you’re paying $1 or more per click, and you’re not “made of money”, you’d be better off checking more often and doing a Statistical Significance test (and easy to do, using splittester.com) to make sure you don’t run your split test too long, or cut if off too soon.

Mr. R:

There was a quick overview of how Mr. R is “living the internet dream”. Having a couple great houses, and travelling around the world with his laptop!

All because he figured how to make Facebook advertising work for his niche. He was struggling on Google (doing okay, but not huge) and then really starting doing well with Facebook in 2008, after struggling at first. Now he’s the “go to” guy for Facebook ads.

With “in the trenches” knowledge of making it work.

Facebook vs AdWords:

The Facebook interface and way of doing things is very “clunky” compared to AdWords.
[lab note: But still a lot better than the 3rd tier PPC options out there. I was actually happily surprised that it was a bit like Adwords, compared to other PPC options out there]

In Mr. R’s niche he does what’s called “Turn the Corner” selling.

This is where you’re really pivoting from what the person is looking for and selling from that.

Verses offering what they’re explicitly looking for. Ex: someone is searching for “handheld vacuums” and that’s what you’re showing them. As opposed an option to their need, that they weren’t thinking of (that’s the “turn the corner”)

So he found that actually worked better on Facebook than on Google.

When he started with facebook, he was hardly making any sales from it. Then after 8 weeks his sales from facebook ads were 4 times that of Adwords!

[note: like in the Content Targeting post I did prior, I want you to think of that math. For every 5 sales, 4 are coming from facebook ... only 1 from Google. If he wouldn't have learned what works he'd only have 1/5 the sales at that point. And a lot less profit!]

Facebook Audience and Mindset:

Similar to Content, you need to think a bit differently (or as Apple would say “Think Different”) verses search.

Facebook is geared toward what people are about and who they know, rather than what they’re searching for.

And you should bear in mind that users can Rate your ad. So if it’s a mis-match or is boring or too much hype, you’ll get “thumbs downs”. And your ad may  not show.

[lab comment: even though that raises another variable that can keep your ad from showing, I still love it. That keeps ads away that are poorly targeted or junky.

Mini rant: I know on Google I'd be giving the thumbs down on those ads from eBay and shopping sites that show the same basic ad for everything you're looking for!  ]

You’re going for hyperactive FB users who are rabid about … whatever.

You’re not going for broad demographics, you’re going for well targeted markets. That’s how you make it work

[lab note (without a rant this time): I'd think this could work well for local advertising, targeting local interest groups]

Bidding Strategy:

Mr. R then went into a quick but powerful formula and process he uses, to get great placement, without overpaying for clicks.

But you need to get the “Bionic Ad Tips” to get that specific detail …

Bionic Ad Tips:

I put together a short writeup of the top “takeaways” from the Bionic Ads call: “Bionic Ad Tips“.  Beyond these bits on the blog.

That wouldn’t be fair to Perry Marshall, if I gave away all the teleseminar goods on the blog – the core tips are meant for those who signed up on his list. So I’m only giving the those nitty gritty tips to those who signup on his list (free, and you get great info from him). Details are on the Bionic Ad Tips page

Get more info from Perry Marshall:

Get more information about Perry Marshall’s Maui Elite Adwords Summit “Stay at Home” streaming version.

If you opt-in he’ll give some free information. Even if you don’t sign up for the seminar, he’ll still be giving free updates along the way.

Content Network ROI:

Shelley Ellis gave a great “insider’s” view of the content network. She’s been helping clients really maximize their results with this.

Anyone who’s done Content Targeting knows it can be quite tricky to get a good return on it. You’re often throwing money away, until you get it right … and sometimes you don’t get it right ever, for an adgroup!

[warning from the Mad Scientist lab: Content can be especially scary, because you can get huge jumps in traffic. Like all of a sudden the floodgates open! So if you don't follow Shelley's advice, then at least make sure you keep tight control of your daily budget, until your spend gets more stable]

Shelley Ellis’ Insights:

(to get her full knowledge, you need to get access to the upcoming seminar – the “Stay at Home” version of the Maui seminar)

There are now a lot more opportunities on the Content Network, than before.

Reasons:

• Google is expanding the content network
• Google is giving more tools – to really help advertisers
• Great new tools from 3rd parties now available (most are new within the last 12 months)

Here is a client example:

Client started with content and got 1/4 of his sales from content network (vs search).

After taking 3 months to optimize the campaign, not he’s getting 8 times the sales from content that he’s getting from search! And getting great profits along the way

[lab note:  just think about that. If he'd given up on content, as unprofitable, like most of us have done ... then he'd only be getting 1/9 the sales he's currently getting! For every 9 sales, 8 are from content. But those wouldn't be happening if he hadn't found a way to make it work]

She also mentioned how to use Google’s Ad Planner tool. And the one thing you must do to (finally) target good sites – leaving out the bad ones that will waste your money.

On the call it was said “this turns content targeting from useless, to powerful!”

Get the “Bionic Ad Tips” to get that detail …

Bionic Ad Tips:

I put together a short writeup of the top “takeaways” from the Bionic Ads call: “Bionic Ad Tips“.  Beyond these bits on the blog.

That wouldn’t be fair to Perry Marshall, if I gave away all the goods on the blog. So I’m only giving the those nitty gritty tips to those who signup on his list (free, and you get great info from him). Details are on the Bionic Ad Tips page

Get more info from Perry Marshall:

Get more information about Perry Marshall’s Maui Elite Adwords Summit “Stay at Home” streaming version.

If you opt-in he’ll give some free information. Even if you don’t sign up for the seminar, he’ll still be giving free updates along the way.