AdWords Marketing Guide For Detailers

[AutowerxDetailing]

The following guide is being written in response to several questions that have been brought up regarding Google AdWords and how to attract customers using the internet.

What is AdWords?

AdWords is the marketing arm of Google. When you search for something online you will often see "sponsored links" that seem to be relevant to what you are searching for. Many of these links include enticing offers for exactly the products you are searching for. It's a win/win because business owners get their website in front of potential customers quickly and consumers find what they are looking for.

What is AdWords for a business owner?

Say you detail cars in Seattle, WA and you want people to find your website when they search for: auto detailing seattle wa. Small problem, your website is nowhere to be found when people search for: auto detailing seattle wa. How do you put your website in front of local customers that are ALREADY looking for your service? You pay Google to put you there!

With AdWords you create an add that links to your website and choose the keywords that you think people will use to try to search for your services. You then pay Google a small fee for every time someone clicks on your add and goes to your website. (You can also pay per impression but I do not recommend that for our type of business scenario).

How to setup an AdWords campaign:

1. Create an AdWords account.
http://bit.ly/KwTJSo

2. Create a landing page for your advertisement. Here is an example of a landing page I use for my campaign. The key is to make offers that create a sense of urgency and offer a good value. You don't REALLY need to create a landing page (most people just link to their homepage); however, I believe that for the most successful campaign you need a landing page with targeted, high-value offers.
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3. Think of keywords that people will use to search for the services you offer. Try thinking like a typical consumer. People looking for detailing services are not likely to search for "paint correction service" or "hologram removal." Instead, use localized, consumer-centric verbiage like "auto detailing your city name." This strategy is perfect for detailers looking to offer their services locally. I currently run about 10 keywords that saturate all the cities I prefer to offer my services too.

4. Create a campaign and ad groups. You can actually create several add groups under one campaign. I recommend creating at least 2 add groups. This will let you test out different ads to see which one gets a higher click-through-rate (CTR). Google will automatically optimize your campaign to display ads with a higher CTR on the fly so you won't have to monitor it constantly.

5. Create your ads. Make sure your advertisement explains the service you offer, any special "deal" you are offering and is relevant to the keyword that was used to display the ad. Pro Tip: If your ad text contains words that match the keyword that triggers your add it will show as bold text and stand out more to potential customers. Here is an example of one of my ads that gets a decent CTR:
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6. Establish how much you want to "bid" for your ad's placement. AdWords is sort of like an auction. Google sells first page placement to the highest bidder. In markets with higher competition it might be kind of expensive to get to the top of the first page. In smaller cities with less competition it will be much cheaper. I try to keep my bids so I end up mostly in the top 3 results but I cap my bids at $2.00 per click. It really depends on your market for how much you should set your bid at.

7. Create a budget. To limit your risk you can set a daily budget for your campaign. I have mine set at $10 per day and that nets me about 8 clicks on average. A lower budget is fine too. Just remember that when your budget runs out your ad will no longer show up in the sponsored results.

8. Track your success. There is no point in doing any of this if you can't tell how successful your are with your marketing efforts. I use coupon codes to track specific marketing outlets. You might have a better way of doing it and that's great. I just can't stress enough that you have got to keep track of conversion rates to make sure the money spent on advertising is worth it.

That's essentially all there is to it. Oh and one more thing. Please, please, please DON'T ever pay someone a flat fee per month to give you "first page placement on Google." It is ALWAYS a scam. I used to work for a company that did this and would charge $400 a month for a crappy exact match term that gets low traffic and only generates a few clicks per month. So it costed the company about $50-60 per month and they charged the customer $400 or more for "first page placement." It was ridiculous and I quit for moral reasons; however, I learned quite a bit along the way!

I hope you all will find this guide helpful.

[A-train]

Thanks for posting, this is very informative !

[ShineTimeDetail]

Thxnk you sir!!

[DetailedByPrecision]

ty for your marketing knowledge.

[Danube]

Been using AdWords for more then 5 years now for both my businesses.

It contributes for 20% off all our sales, an excellent tool indeed.

[RMM]

Very interesting!
I don't detail for a living but this can help on my businesses!

[wgilles]

Thanks, very helpful

[jwellsii]

Thank you Nicholas, very informative.

[AutowerxDetailing]

I'm glad some of you have found this helpful. I thought I would post a little update on how my campaign is doing...

Metrics for the last 30 days:
Clicks : 83
Impressions: 2469
CTR: 3.36%
Avg. CPC: $1.57
Cost: $129.92

Almost $1000 worth of business generated through this campaign alone through tracking with the coupon code. This is also with having the campaign paused a few days that we were already fully booked. Since I only do this part-time my schedule fills up pretty quickly...

I would love to hear your success stories about how your campaigns are doing!

[jwellsii]

I'm glad some of you have found this helpful. I thought I would post a little update on how my campaign is doing...

Metrics for the last 30 days:
Clicks : 83
Impressions: 2469
CTR: 3.36%
Avg. CPC: $1.57
Cost: $129.92

Almost $1000 worth of business generated through this campaign alone through tracking with the coupon code. This is also with having the campaign paused a few days that we were already fully booked. Since I only do this part-time my schedule fills up pretty quickly...

I would love to hear your success stories about how your campaigns are doing!

Good job!!! 7.7:1 return not bad