A Guide to the First 6 Weeks of an AdWords Campaign
“Why isn’t my AdWords working yet?” This is a question we hear on a frequent basis from new auto repair shop clients who have just come on board with our Google AdWords Internet marketing program. You’re excited and eager to get your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing moving and your phones ringing, and we completely understand.
While it makes sense that turning on a Google AdWords campaign should provide immediate results, it’s just not quite that simple. Google actually has a fair amount of work to do once we activate an AdWords campaign, and it often takes several weeks to get it running on all cylinders. As always, we make sure your automotive website is well-optimized for Google, but that doesn’t make you exempt from the normal process that follows a brand new Google AdWords campaign.
Google grades your AdWords campaign to rank it.
Based on years of experience with AdWords, we’ve come to discover that Google is very careful with new AdWords campaigns. Click-through-rate (CTR) is what Google considers the most important metric in an AdWords campaign, and they use this metric to “grade” each campaign that exists. If your campaign has a good click-through-rate, Google will show your ads more frequently, and with higher placement, than campaigns with a low click-through-rate.
New AdWords campaigns don’t yet have click-through-rates for grading.
Over time, your campaign’s click-through-rate is what helps Google determine the overall quality of your campaign and thus, decides how often your ads will show, and where your ads will be placed on the search results page. But because a brand new campaign has no previous history, Google can’t use their favorite metric to grade campaigns when they’re first launched. Without having established a click-through-rate to go off of, Google will move on to secondary factors to grade the quality of your new campaign.
Secondary factors Google uses to grade your campaign can include:
- Daily budget
- Keyword relevancy
- Ad relevancy
- Website load time
- Depth of keyword list
- …etc.
Why does Google need to grade your campaign to rank it better?
Since Google can’t yet fully grade your campaign, they can’t show your ads equally with ads by other advertisers who have more established campaigns. It’s risky for Google to give your ad top placement and the opportunity to accrue a lot of impressions without grading it; after all, if no one clicks on your ad, Google loses money!
Google AdWords is an extremely valuable tool for independent auto repair shops to utilize when advertising on the Internet, so don’t let the potential lag time in the first couple of weeks deter you! The AdWords program is extremely unique in that it provides you pre-qualified, locally-targeted leads, at an extremely low cost-per-lead. Google is the most powerful and widely-used search engine in the world, and the AdWords product can be your best investment in reaching the most people, in the most effective way.
Have more AdWords questions? Whether you’re a current Autoshop Solutions‘ customer or not, if you have any questions about our Google AdWords Program, or any of our Internet marketing services, don’t hesitate to contact us today. We are always happy to help in every way we can!
——————————————–
You Should Also Read:
4 Major Benefits of Social Media
Marketing for Auto Repair Shops
Autoshop Solutions