ANAHEIM, Calif.–By a show of hands here, a majority of credit unions indicated they have used or are using Google AdWords as part of their business development efforts.
But a similar show of hands found only a few saying they had had success with it.
Ben Polk offered some advice on rectifying that.
Polk, senior account executive with Top Tier Band Development at Google, told the CUNA Marketing and Business Development Conference here that Google wants credit unions to succeed using Google AdWords, as it only enhances the company’s position—and revenues. To that end, he shared an overview of best practices in AdWords, including an overarching piece of advice: have a mobile optimized website.
“The number one reason reason to set up Google AdWords is to reach new customers and grow your business,” said Polk. “It allows you to control the message. If you want people to find you, you have to be present in the AdWords space. It’s completely free. There is no upcharge. There is no minimum spend. Whatever you are comfortable with from a budget perspective is what you can do.”
For more information, not surprisingly, Polk urged credit unions to visit adwords.google.com.
To begin, said Polk, “You want to take a step back and focus on the strategy. Choose a list of keywords, and be specific and customer oriented. Set your bids on the auction. You can pay different amounts for different keywords. But you want to think about what your main business goal is. And be catchy in your ads.”
The second step, said Polk, is setting up billing. Automatic payments are to be used when only paying for the activity received. . .Manual payments are to be used when a credit union wishes to spend up to X number of dollars. That amount can be set each day.
How To Build a Strategy
“Focus before you launch and spend. Think like a consumer,” urged Polk. “Choose a strategy that aligns with your main business goal. Automate your bidding on the most accurate conversion data available. Why? Better conversion data means smarter automated bids. Understand that the true value of automation is saved time. And organize like-performing keywords into bidding portfolios.”
Use the Right Keywords & Targeting
How a credit union goes after consumers is where keywords come into play, said Polk, who recommended:
- Keywords connect your ads with users and their searches.
- Identify terms your consumers use.
- Think like a customer; be relevant and do your research. Ask people.
- Create a list of keywords.
Targeting: Reach the Right Consumers to Grow Business.
“This is your chance to control the audience here,” said Polk.
He noted there are four types of keyword formatting match types.
- Broad (or modified broad). Default for most multi-word keyword phrases.
- Phrase: Denoted by apostrophes. This is used if word order is significant or to eliminate expanded matches.
- Exact. Denoted by brackets. “This is best for a branded campaign. You know they are looking for you.”
- Negative. Denoted by a minus sign. “Here is where you put a negative sign in front of your keyword. It takes away something you don’t want anything to do with. If you put a + sign in front of something, it will denote that one word or phrase.
Account Structure
On Google AdWords, accounts are structured using the following hierarchy:
- My Client Center
- AdWords Account
- Campaign/Campaign, and then subgroups beneath each
“You want to break each one out, because each one has a different business objective,” said Polk. “Business goals should be broken out by campaign under the AdWords accounts. From there you can set up budgets, network options (Search or Display), start and end dates, and under all that the ad groups where you can set different bids. Bid higher on more specific terms.”
Polk said it can take two weeks to a month for data to compile to allow decision making.
Location, Location, Location
“Location is one of the most important things,” said Polk, offering four strategies to be followed:
1. “Think holistically about the different ways that consumers could reach you? Why? For most advertisers, AdWords accounts are powered by keywords.”
2. “Align keywords with your business goals. Why? Think about your local market sweet spots, then think large.”
3. “Make sure you’re available on mobile devices. I can’t stress this enough. Why? Consumers are always on the go, so stay with them by targeting their devices.”
4. “Don’t change things too frequently—stick to your goals. Why? If you change things too much your data will be scattered and your performance may suffer. But don’t be afraid to test it when it feels right.”
Protect Your Brand & Quality Score
“Don’t be evil by bidding on your competitor all day long. That will affect your quality score, which is how you’re ranked against competition,” advised Polk.
Protect Your Brand
“Focus on your business goals; I can’t stress that enough,” said Polk.
He then outlined the following points regarding protecting a brand on AdWords:
- Bidding on your brand as a keyword helps you control your message.
- Constantly bidding on your competition can hurt your Quality Score and affect your AdRank.
- User experience means everything to your brand (and to Google)
- If someone is looking for you, make sure you’re first.
“Paid media lets you control your message; it also lets you control your landing page,” said Polk. “When you are protecting your brand, that is what you are seeking to do. Make sure people can find you easily. The best thing you can do is give people the information they want. It also takes up more real estate. Also, if you don’t have a Google Plus page, I recommend building it.”
Polk noted that a lot of companies say they are working on SEO. “SEO is fantastic, but at the same time paid search will only help drive the organic aspect,” he said. “Make sure you are doing paid search as much as you are trying to help organic.”
Other Google AdWords-related issues touched upon by Polk:
Quality Score. “This tells how healthy your ads and keywords are. It is a measure of how relevant your ad is to users based on click-through rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. If you are doing all those well, you will perform really well.”
Quality Matters. “High-quality ads are good for the entire ecosystem and give your members what they want: relevant products/services, and opportunity to connect with qualified customers. Quality plays such as important role in our auction.”
GooglePlus Pages. Should a credit union have one Google Plus page or one for each branch? Polk recommended one for each branch.
Assessing Quality of an Ad. “How do we assess the quality of an ad? We estimate how relevant your ads, keywords and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. We do this every time a user performs a search that your keyword is eligible to match by looking at predicted CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.”