Two noteworthy pieces of mail today, both of which rocked my self-image:

1. My AARP card (for gosh sake, I’m not even 44 yet - where do these people get their mailing list?)

It would have to be a pretty big discount for me to whip that thing out at Whole Foods or Costco or Priscilla’s! Talk to me in 7 years, AARP!

2. Three copies of AdWords Für Dummies - the long-awaited German translation of AdWords For Dummies. I heard a rumor that in Bad Godesberg, the line at the DBH bookstore stretched all the way from the checkout counter to the little rack of Godiva chocolates and greeting cards right next to the checkout counter.

It’s a weird feeling, looking at this book I supposedly wrote, not being able to understand a word. I haven’t felt this way since I found my PhD dissertation while cleaning the house looking for my squash racquet. 

The other thing is, the Google gift card on this book is 25 Euro, which is like $7000 post Lehman and AIG. That makes AdWords Für Dummies an attractive investment instrument. Plus a great baby shower item, graduation present, and Bar Mitzvah and communion gift.

Me, I’m opening a Swiss bank account and filling it with AdWords Für Dummies and Godiva chocolate. When that AARP card kicks in, I’ll be sitting pretty.

Last night I was showing my almost 9-year-old son the bass guitar intro to "Brown Eyed Girl" (you know, "da da da da-da, da da da da-da, da da da da-da da, da da-da").

In my mind, I’m racing ahead to the family band performing at some large outdoor arena (I probably watched a few too many Partridge Family episodes in my youth), and I assume that E gets that the last "da  da-da" is the bridge, the part that allows the whole thing to repeat. But he doesn’t. After we finish playing the riff once (and I’m trying my best not to burst out in a traumatizing "Yooouuuu…." in the middle), I go into it again.

But E wants to know what to do next. 

"Just start over," I explain impatiently, eager to get to the "sha la la la la la la la" part.

"From where?" he wonders.

Sometimes the simplest things aren’t obvious. And my lyrical spasms aren’t helping; they’re just confusing and distracting him. ("Do you remember when…")

So to teach him the concept of the repeating chord structure, we have to set Van aside and pick up a nice, simple, two-chord tune, "Hush, Little Baby." Not quite as  cool as Van the Man, but much more useful to an aspiring rocker in that moment.

So in honor of aspiring AdWords rockers everywhere, today’s HowTo blog post is dedicated to a reader who asks a very fundamental question: "How do I edit my ad?"

How to Edit an Ad

1. Log in to your AdWords account.

2. Navigate via the top tab to "Campaign Management >> Campaign Summary".

3. Click the name of the campaign that contains the ad you want to edit.

4. Click the name of the ad group that contains the ad you want to edit.

5. Near the top left, you’ll see one of your ads. Below that ad, click the tiny link that says, "View all." 

You’ll now be in the Ad Variations tab:

6. Click the "Edit" link to the right of the ad you want to edit. You’ll then open the ad for editing:

7. Change anything you like in the headline, description lines, display or destination URLs, and click "Save Ad".

That’s it! Now you never have to sing about AdWords, "So hard to find my way / Now that I’m all on my own."

And here’s a short video that shows the same thing:

 
How to Edit and Create New AdWords Ads
Uploaded by askhowie

Here’s an excellent question from a reader:

I purchased AdWords for Dummies and have dutifully read the first 116 pages. I have paused to ask one overarching question I hope you can answer. It appears to me that the primary audience for your book is someone working on a national AdWords campaign – someone who would like to find a niche, design a product around it, and exploit the power of AdWords to dominate that market. What about those of us who have an existing local business and want to peddle our wares? So far it seems like most of the analytics you describe depend on more data than, for example, a [type of professional] in a city of 200,000 people is likely to accrue (before the next ice age).

There are always useful web analytics you can look at. I agree that some types of testing cannot be done in a small market, but others can, and the harder it is and the longer it takes, the more likely that your competitors will not avail themselves of this data.

For example: landing page bounce rate and time on page. Improve those two metrics, and you will almost certainly increase sales and ROI. And you can get those numbers from a very small sample size.

Split test for how far down the page your visitors read, or for how long they stay on the page. You may not have enough traffic to split test for sales, but look for meaningful proxy measures - steps on the way to sales. What page will a hot prospect almost always look at? Split test ads for page views. Eliminate keywords that don’t lead to those page views.

Remember Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? He had a very small sample (one - Andie McDowell’s character), but he had patience and nothing but time on his hands. And so his slow split testing (”… no white chocolate”) eventually paid off.

I spoke this morning with Imal Wagner, my publicist, about ways to get online and offline PR for any size business.

I have to admit, when I hired Imal to sell loads of books for me, I just did what she said, showed up for interviews, and didn’t pay much attention to what she was doing and how she did it.

So this 25 minute call was my attempt to get up to speed. AdWords is great, but when the keywords are too competitive or expensive, or when you’re just starting out on a small budget, it’s nice to have ways to get traffic that just require focus, empathy and creativity, without the credit card.

In this interview, Imal shares her expertise about becoming an "A-list" blogger in your industry, pitching the media on your stories and interviews, and getting booked on radio shows.

Pay special attention to the story about the kid who was living in his parents’ basement and was trying to figure out how to pay for his education. If Imal’s methods worked for him, they can work for the rest of us as well.

Imal’s been working with high-profile clients for a long time, and today she’s opening up her practice to folks who want to learn how to do their own PR, rather than hire it out. Rather than send you to a long sales letter about her 12-week group coaching program, I invite you to email Imal (say that 5 times fast!) to set up a conversation to determine if her program is right for you.

You can reach her at imalwagner AT gmail DOT com.

Oh, and here are the links Imal mentioned about where to find radio stations:

wsradio.com - compendium of Internet Radio Shows

radio-locator.com - searchable list of every radio station in the US and Canada

A reader wonders:

Hi Howie,

I read your book and I found it very helpful. However I have a question regarding Account History and Quality Scores. I understand that account history affects quality scores. Being new to Google Adwords, I inevitably made some mistakes that affected my ad performance.

I bought your book due to my difficulties with Adwords, however, the mistakes that I have already made have obviously affected my account history.

I have about three weeks worth of running ads and semi poor performance. I understand that it is sometimes reccommended that someone scraps their old account and starts fresh.

My question is, what is the length of poor account history that would typically warrant someone to start a new account? Is two or three weeks too short? Too long?

Thank you very much for your help and writing such an insightful book!

My response:

Thanks for your kind words - that’s exactly the sort of thing I love reading in an amazon review (hint hint :) What was your question again?

Oh, yeah, the quality of the entire account.

The short answer is, I don’t know how Google calculates quality score for the entire account. They’re not telling. But if I were them, I wouldn’t penalize new advertisers for their beginner mistakes.

Google has the market capitalization of a small solar system, and almost all that revenue comes from AdWords. They want their new advertisers to succeed, and to be happy and feel good.

So I wouldn’t advise you to scrap your existing account just because of quality issues. If it’s a complete mess, and you’d rather set fire to it than clean it up, by all means use the $25 gift card at the back of the book and start afresh. But it’s probably not necessary from a quality perspective.

Sudden Thought:

It depends what sorts of mistakes you’ve been making. Hopefully they’re not the "Oops, I’ve been advertising online porn sites that harvest credit card numbers and sell them to identity thieves" variety. If Google thinks you’re being a bad boy on purpose, they’re much less forgiving than if they just see you as clueless.

Hope this helps!

I’ve been noticing the use of the color red lately. As a single splash of boldness on a web design, designed to draw the eye toward a desired action or important testimonial.

And since reading the excellent Save the Pixel, by web designer Ben Hunt, and studying website attraction principles with the very clever Sean D’Souza, I’m starting to actually pay attention to what I like in the way of design, and why I like it.

Here are a couple of examples of the use of red on the web: Read the rest of this entry »

A reader wonders:

Hi Howie, I have tweaked my campaigns to improve conversions but it’s resulted in a fall in sales, is there a way to revert to the campaign settings at a certain date?

My response:

The quick answer is no. There’s no magic “system restore” in AdWords.

You can go to the My Change History tool and see all the changes you’ve made, and then change them back one by one.

It might be a little late to say it now (for this reader, anyway), but a best practice is to make one change at a time and observe the results. If you made 10 tweaks and sales dropped, how do you know which change (or interaction of changes) caused the drop? Or what if the drop had nothing to do with your changes? (If you sell firecrackers, for example, I would expect a slow period following July 4.)

Without seeing your campaign and the specific changes you made, it’s impossible for me to offer specific advice. But I’d look for clues in the “nodes” - impressions, clicks, opt-ins, sales. Did your impressions fall off, while everything else remained steady? Did impressions hold while your CTR plummeted? Or did the same number of visitors arrive at your site, but fewer of them are converting?

Which campaigns have changed? All of them, or only some?

And here’s a case where you might find the account snapshot page handy. You can compare date ranges by lots of important metrics, both in table form and visually.

By doing some detective work, you may be able to spare yourself the task of redoing everything in the hopes of getting back to where you were.

Best of luck!

A reader wonders:

I recently bought ‘Adwords for Dummies‘ and I really enjoy it. Now my problem is trying to figure out a product to sell. Any hints on how to find products to sell?

My response: First, thanks for your kind words about the book. You should feel free to write a nice amazon review for it :) Now, let me gently criticize the thought process that produced the question:

That’s backwards thinking.

The world is so full of products and services, unless you live naked in the woods (or at the beach, which I don’t recommend), you’re tripping over things to sell all day long. Right here, in my home office (OK, my wife’s home office, but she’s sleeping and I like her artwork better than mine, and I have to step over the dog to get to my office), I see binders, jewelry, postcards, battery chargers, matches, keys, picture frames, organic rice milk, window blinds, etc. etc. etc. Somebody is making money selling every one of those things - else they wouldn’t exist.

Instead of looking for products to sell, look for markets to serve. Focus on needs and desires and pains and longings. People will buy things that they think will improve their lives.

Every purchase I’ve ever made has been an act of hope in a better future. Every purchase, from the bananas at Trader Joes to the Prius at the Toyota dealership to the 2 by 12 planks at Home Depot that I turned into raised garden beds. Toothpaste. Shaving cream. Bass guitar lessons for my son.

Every purchase is motivated by a desire to increase pleasure and decrease pain. When you focus on a particular market - a group of people who share some meaningful characteristics - and get to know what they deeply want to have and what they want to get rid of and what they want to avoid, then you’ll know what to sell to them.

And you won’t have to wonder.

Now, if you want to use AdWords, certain realities come into play, which you can get from the book. Like, who’s looking for it, and how much can you make from selling it compared to the cost of an AdWords click. Some products are not well suited for AdWords.

But don’t start with products. Don’t even start with media. Start with people, and figure out how to serve them.

Khalil Gibran wrote, "Work is love made manifest." If your business is an expression of love of a group of people, and a sincere desire to improve their lives, then you are on the easy path to success.

I recently found a great example of an opt-in form, from Remember the Milk (an online to-do list service). Here’s a short video showing what I love about it:

What other web pages have great opt-in forms? Post your favorites to comments.

I was thumbing through Website magazine the other day when I saw an article that had me floored. Someone had asked a bunch of search marketing professionals what they’d do if they were forced to choose between search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC).

Even more incredibly, they had actually gotten a bunch of people to answer the question (77% opted for SEO). Poor 23% PPC (sniff).

The question makes about as much sense as asking what’s more important about a car, the steering wheel or the accelerator.

Even though I wrote the book about AdWords, I recognize that both have their place in a successful online marketing strategy. (To be fair, the Website magazine article offered interested stats and did end up with a nuanced view of the topic - I’m just picking on them to make a point.)

Let’s compare:

Organic (SEO) traffic is free and can be plentiful. AdWords traffic costs money and can be hard to come by. Score one for SEO.

Organic traffic is more credible than paid ads (at least, judging by searchers’ behavior). Score two for SEO.

Organic traffic can last a lot longer than AdWords traffic, where any idiot with a big checkbook and no understanding of ROI can outbid you and kick you off the first page. Score three for SEO.

PPC traffic used to be more predictable - your organic listings might disappear overnight like dinghies in the Bermuda Triangle when Google tweaked their algorithm, but AdWords was steady and consistent. Until summer 2006, when they started playing with Quality Score and threw the PPC world into an SEO-like tizzy. So no advantage there.

So why is AdWords so great then? Why do I view it as important as SEO? For three reasons: Read the rest of this entry »