MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Most Frequently Asked AdWords Questions

A while back, I promised to answer any AdWords question that our users would send me. I am still going to go and do that, but it is going to take a little while since I got hundreds of questions via the blog and our newsletter.

In any case, one of the questions that I kept hearing again and again is:

“How many keywords should I ad per Ad Group?”

I see just about anyone that is new with AdWords struggling with this and just the other day, I was listening to a StomperNet video by Frank Kern and I was shocked that in the video even the advice that Frank Kern was giving was not what I would have recommended.

So, here is the rules that I follow each and every time I create a set of new Ad Group.

For example, here is what I did while I was building a keyword list for our new keyword tool www.WordButler.com. While I won’t go over the entire keyword list that I build, I will dive into a specific example to answer “how many keywords per Ad Group?”

So, lets pick the keyword phrase “keyword tool” as an example.

Step 1: Check the traffic. The phrase “keyword tool” is a very popular keyword phrase. According to Google’s keyword tool it gets over 90,500 searches per month.

So what do I do?

I create 1 Ad Group where I put only 1 keyword phrase into the Ad Group using exact match.

In other words, if the keyword phrase gets a lot of searches and is very important to you, then I would recommend to use exact match and create 1 Ad Group with only that 1 keyword.

Step 2: Now I use our keyword tool WordButler to build a comprehensive keyword list of all the searches that are done online that contain the keyword phrase “keyword tool” and I put all of these into Another Ad Group. In this case I found over 150 keyword phrases that contain the word “keyword tool” and I added all of them into a separate Ad Group.

Lets repeat - How many keywords per Ad Group?

• Step 1: I create an Ad Group with 1 keyword only using exact match
• Step 2: I create an Ad Group with all of the keywords that contain the root (in this case “keyword tool)

Lastly, I will then go deeper. If you go to Google’s keyword suggestions and look at the traffic estimates, you will see that there is lots of keywords that get over 10,000 searches per month.

keyword tool - 90,500

overture keyword tool - 9,900

keyword research tool - 8,100

keyword search tool - 8,100

keyword selector tool - 8,100

adwords keyword tool - 6,600

free keyword tool - 6,600

Since the above keyword phrases all get over 5,000 searches per month, I will repeat the same steps and create 2 Ad Groups for each of the above keyword phrase. The first will have only 1 keyword with exact match and the other will have all of the keywords search queries that I can find. I will start with broad match and then add phrase match down the line.

Here is another tip. Whatever you do…. NEVER ever add different keyword phrases into the same Ad Group. For example, I would never put “keyword tool” and “keyword software” into the same Ad Group. If you do that, then there is no way you can compete with the top guys out there because your Ads will never be very targeted.

I hope that helps and if you like to check out our new keyword tool you can do so here at www.WordButler.com

Blog communities and commenters play a role in defining the blogs they socialize in. What’s your community of blog commenters like? If you had a chance to build your blog all over again, what would you do differently?

There’s a prevalent notion which says that if you comment in relevant blogs and forums, eventually people will click over to your blog. Over time, more people arrive and gradually you see comments being left in your posts. From there, the community starts to take shape. That’s fine, but let’s enhance it a few steps further. Let’s go beyond the importance of great content which adequately satisfies the principles of supply and demand. Let’s get to the “packaging” of this content so to speak.

So, How’s Your Blog Community Like?

Blogs are great tools for knowledge sharing, and in essence the blogosphere is one gigantic self-organized online network of individuals sharing their raw and unedited thoughts openly. It’s a vibrant and ongoing conversation, and the saying “there’s strength in diversity” holds in this case.

Let me elaborate.

Picture this:

1. blog posts with many comments from trolls.
2. blog posts with many comments saying something along the lines of “I agree” or “great post.”
3. blog posts filled with many smart comments and vibrant conversations containing diverse views.

The first case is bad and hurts your brand. You might as well have a few comments and a tiny community rather than many trolls infesting your blog and adding no value to the conversations in it. The second scenario creates good social proof which is obviously lovely. The last scenario is the best. You have social proof, a smart community and hence a great learning environment for your readers.

Now, there’s nothing groundbreaking with such observations of course. The challenge is in how you nurture a great community around your blog, and for me to briefly explain that, I’ll have to get into the concept of “polarity.” There’s no mystery here, the word explains itself.

Infusing Social Polarity Into Your Blog

Step One

Before the community arrives, the blog comes first. The first thing you would want to do is figure out your topic and then set out to create an enemy for your storyline and future quality content. Create an enemy and don’t be neutral. Remember, what we want is polarity, not neutrality. Neutral is boring, and boring is unattractive. It’s as simple as that. In fact, I remember Frank Kern talking about creating an enemy too in his excellent Mass Control course.

Some worry that going down this road will cause them to lose “balance” and “fairness” but this isn’t necessarily true. It depends on how you justify portraying the enemy the way you do. Pick your enemy, and explain why it’s so with research and solid facts. The key is to be genuine and passionate. Plus, no matter how “fair” or “balanced” you try to be, in the eyes of some you’ll always come across as biased.

Step Two

The second step is marketing your blog at the right places. This involves the usual steps which I’m guessing you’re already familiar with, but I’m also guessing these steps don’t incorporate the concept of social polarity.

Most - but not all - of your marketing efforts should be directed at crowds sharing your polarity (and your “enemy”). The rest of your marketing - a minor portion - should then be directed towards those who like and support the “enemy.” Disagreement to a certain extent is good, but you don’t want the destructive kind. This is why you should take it nice and easy. You don’t want to have excessively polarizing discussions, but creative disagreements.

Let me give you a simple example off the top of my head. You like internet marketing and think it’s a much better option for financial freedom than multi-level marketing which you’ve tried previously but found highly lacking. Your subject can then become internet marketing, and your evil “enemy,” multi-level marketing.

You get the idea.

And That’s Pretty Much It

Again, keep in mind that the smarter, more mature and more intellectual the crowd you’re trying to attract to your blog is, the better the quality of debates and conversations will become, which inevitably impacts your brand’s positioning. Moreover, once things get going, you can steer the direction of the discussions by participating in them appropriately, and you can also manage the quality of these conversations by moderating comments when necessary.

If you liked this post, we’d heartily appreciate some StumbleUpon and Sphinn love. Thanks!

I’d like to introduce you to Amir Ahmad, the latest addition to our MindValley Labs blog.

Having been invited for conferences co-organized by Harvard University and attended international ones, Amir is a blogaholic and a passionate observer of the blogosphere. He has also built and grown a number of successful blogs.

Amir will be blogging about blogging itself, SEO and social media trends. Look out for his posts.

The Tale of a Fortified City

Paris, a Trojan Prince, kidnapped Helen of Troy who was reputed to be the most beautiful woman who ever lived. When her husband discovered that she was missing, all of Greece took part in the ensuing war. They sieged the huge city of Troy for years, but they couldn’t figure out how to get inside the gates.

We all know necessity is the mother of all invention. After 10 fruitless years, they came up with the Trojan Horse. It was a big wooden horse on wheels, big enough for a bunch of Greek soldiers to hide inside. They pretended to retreat and sail home, acting like they had given up and left.

When the people of Troy opened their city gates and the found the horse, they didn’t know what it was. The Greeks planted a spy to trick them into believing it was a gift, so they brought it in. It was so big that it couldn’t go through the gate so they tore down a piece of the city wall to get it in.

During the night after everyone had fallen asleep, the Greek soldiers came out of the Trojan horse, killed the guards on the walls, and signaled to the other Greeks to come attack Troy. The Greeks could get in now because the walls were torn down. Troy was conquered and the war was won.

How does the Trojan horse apply to marketing?

When the Trojans saw the a huge wooden horse, they brought it in. Why? Because they perceived it as a gift of some value. They took it inside. The Greeks used the Trojan horse to win over the Trojans. I’m not advocating violence, but I am pointing out the genius behind the idea of using the ‘gift’ as a way to get to your prospect’s wallet.

An  Introduction to Trojan Horse Marketing

Let me introduce you to a marketing principle called Trojan Horse Marketing. The reality is, when people see a marketing message or a promotion, their walls go up further.

Trojan Horse Marketing is defined as getting your promo message across, past the prospects’ barriers which have been erected to block out those promotional messages to begin with.

Trojan horse marketing works in the real world. Why? Because even if your prospect has strong walls and fortresses, when they see your Trojan horse, they see it as a gift from heaven, and they bring that gift inside the barriers. That’s what Trojan Horse Marketing is about.

It’s about how to position your marketing as a Trojan horse; as a gift; as a welcome distraction from life; as an answer from heaven.

Ask yourself, “Am I a Trojan horse in my marketing?” Down the line, I’ll talk more about how to express Trojan Horse Marketing - in email, in blogs, in different forms of promotions.

This customer delight formula is based on inspiration I got on my trip to Singapore; namely from my trip to Aston’s Grill, which is a budget western food place.

It also happens to be the only budget food place I know with a queue that goes down the length of the entire street – people queue up from end to end to eat steak – and it took us about an hour to get in!

Here’s the question: why do they have such a long queue for a budget food place? The obvious answer is, “yes, the food is great”, but beyond the generous portions and pleasant atmosphere, the first thing people talk about isn’t the steak, nor is it the service.

It’s the SIDE DISHES. The potato chips. The French fries. The baked potatoes. My friends have stories of people ordering 15 side dishes to go with a chicken chop, because the side dishes are just that great.

People are raving about the side dishes! Why? Because the French fries had paprika salt sprinkled on top of them, and people queue up for an hour down the length of the street to enter Aston’s grill. No doubt the portions are good, and so is the food, but when people think ‘Aston’s Grill’, they think paprika fries. Why?

I think this is the answer. First, take your entire customer service process –no matter the field or genre you’re in- and break it down into its components. So, for example, in a steak house, you have the waiters, the menu with French fries and other side dishes.

Next, take the seemingly most insignificant thing, and add a dash of effort to it. When you add a dash of paprika to your fries, it creates a pleasant disruption to your customer’s expectations because they haven’t seen anything like it before. When people eat the paprika fries, the place is elevated in their minds because of the tiny, extra touch. I call this the Paprika Effect.

The main problem is that it takes a bit of effort and a considerable amount of time to add customer delight to your main product items– your big offerings, which are your main course. But, when it come to the small things, the smaller battles, the ‘low-hanging fruit’ as it were, if you tweak the little things first, you will create a domino effect so that by the time you reach the ‘main course’, you already have a line of fanatical customers.

In the same manner, in the US, everyone goes to Gordon Biersch because of the ‘Gordon Biersch Garlic Fries’. It’s a very similar concept, but it’s funnier because Gordon Biersch is a micro brewery and people go there because of what they’ve done with their fries!

Let’s put it this way. When people go to a grill house, they expect good steak and decent side dishes, simply because they’re mostly paying for good steak. They get satisfied, but they don’t get delighted. Just adding paprika to the chips turns customers into fanatics who want to come back, and knock at your door again.

Joe Girard, the world’s #1 retail person, said something very simple: his strategy was to send out postcards that said, “I like you.” For example, every now and again you could send your customers a postcard that says ‘I like you’, and with it comes with a small extra bonus. It can something as simple as an audio, but is has to be totally unexpected. I emphasize on ‘customers’ because we know that if you start by giving things free, people don’t normally value it at all.

You can start immediately after they buy - you can turn people into fans right from the beginning and get rid of all the doubts they may have had. It also gets them to consume more of your products, and that in turn makes it more likely that they’ll come back to buy more. When you add that element of customer delight, your business even has the potential to go viral, a formula that Centerpointe has used quite successfully.

You can do it, too. First, you need to create and put in place a proper customer relations system. For example, make sure you have a separate buyers list. Once you have the basics in place, you can start figuring out how to add paprika because if you don’t have proper customer relationships or a proper back end, doing this might not be as effective.

Then, you can think about the various components of your customer relationship. Where can you add paprika? Think about a small thing that other people ignore that you can make great. What tweaks can you make? Instead of a .pdf file, can you send a video file instead? When you do those little things, you create something for your customers to form a long queue about.