Author Archive

We recently had the pleasure to catch up with one of our long-time advertisers, Ray Allen, founder of American Meadows, who kindly agreed to be the subject of a customer story a couple of years ago.

Before the wildflower seed business, Ray worked in traditional advertising for quite some time. With his combination of copywriting skills and start-up know how, he has some pretty sage insight to share: “If you look at it from the small business point of view, there are three main benefits of keyword targeted advertising: (1) reach – I can find anyone and everyone searching for the product or service I offer, (2) pay as you go -- there’s no real commitment as with more traditional media, and 3) real time messaging. If I offer a free shipping week, I can dynamically change the messaging of my ads to reflect this.”

This past year, Ray really put his own advice to the test. After running a successful seed business for more than 20 years, he was ready to expand American Meadow’s product line to include flower bulbs. In the fall of 2004, Ray started carrying popular bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. When this initial test went well, Ray extended his company’s bulb selection and created a discount plan whereby customers could advance purchase fall bulbs to save 35% or even 50% depending on how early they placed their orders. He optimized his bulbs campaign and used his ad text to inform customers about his promotional rates.

As Ray explains, “we’re to the point where we planned a whole new launch of a new group of products based on what I can do with AdWords.” When his site offered bulbs at 50% off, his ad text did too. As fall approached and the discounts fell, Ray used the Find and Edit Ad Text tool to change the discount percentage promoted in all of his ads. While that first fall was deemed a success, an optimized AdWords campaign helped boost American Meadow’s bulb sales by 350% the following year. “The medium is so great for this stuff, and people tend to underestimate the importance of ad text,” Ray says. “2005 was a really good year for us, and AdWords was a major part of it!”



To hear more about Ray and how he’s used AdWords to grow his business, check out his newly updated success story here.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

As the season of pumpkin pie and egg nog comes to a close, many of us find ourselves running out to purchase that new gym membership to get back in shape. Here at AdWords, this serves as a friendly reminder that your AdWords account could also use a bit of a workout -- you can slim down your keyword list to get rid of poor performers and then add strong variations for a little extra muscle.

Where should you start? Based on the metrics that are important to your business, use our Find and Edit Keywords tool to cut out keywords that aren't working for you. Simply select keywords based on their performance history (such as clickthrough rate) or by match type and status (such as inactive for search) and then select 'Delete these keywords.' We won't delete your keywords immediately, instead, you'll be taken to a page where you can review the list of keywords that you've specified and then choose which ones you'd like to delete. For example, you may want to get rid of all keywords that have a CTR below 0.5%.

Once your campaigns are feeling lighter, strengthen your keyword list by adding variations of high performing keywords to your account. Simply enter these keywords into the Keyword Tool and add relevant results with one click of your mouse.

So, take a minute to sit down, stretch and ensure that your account gets the workout that it deserves.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Just in case you were planning to work on your campaigns this weekend, please note that on Friday, January 27th, the AdWords system will be temporarily unavailable from approximately 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. PST due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to log in during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as normal.

As always, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

One great thing about having a large audience of AdWords advertisers is that it makes this blog an ideal place to clear up things which might be called common AdWords misconceptions. Take, for example, the misconception exemplified by the question below -- paraphrased from a post in the AdWords Help forum:

I advertise a niche product, and I'm the only advertiser on many of my keywords. I thought I could bid the minimum CPC of $0.01 on those keywords, and have my ad show. Yet, my minimum bid is much higher. What's up with that?

Good question. Let's start by first defining what minimum bid really means:

The minimum bid, also known as the minimum CPC, is the least that one can pay to have an ad appear for a particular keyword in a particular account. It is very important to know, however, that one's minimum bid is entirely unrelated to how many other advertisers are using the same keyword. Instead, since August of 2005, the minimum bid has been quality based. To put it simply, the higher the Quality Score of a keyword, the lower one's minimum bid will be for that keyword.

So, very low minimum bids are earned by creating highly relevant ad text and keywords that get outstanding Quality Scores. And only the most relevant keyword and ad text combinations will earn a minimum bid of $0.01 (or its equivalent in other currencies).

It's worth noting that every keyword has a minimum bid that is unique to how successfully that word has been used in an advertiser's particular account. So the minimum bid for the keyword 'Kansas City BBQ sauce' will be different in your account than in your next door neighbor's account, who happens to be using the same keyword.

How can you lower your minimum bid? The short answer is to improve your Quality Score by optimizing your ads.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew