Here are Tools and Tips That Will Cut Waste and Fatten Your Profit Margins on Google AdWords - By Perry Marshall:
Let's cut to the chase and talk about two of the most important factors in winning the Google AdWords game against other bidders.
These recommendations alone will easily double your profitability.
I am NOT exaggerating.
Two of the biggest mistakes people make:
1) Most people, including your competitors, are bidding on too few keywords, and missing the right ones
2) Most people never know which ads and keywords convert to visitors to sales and which ones don't.
If you start with enough keywords then get rid of the ones that don't generate sales, you will minimize waste, cut your bid prices, and earn the most money with Pay Per Click marketing.
Secret #1: The whole entire thing revolves around bidding on the right keywords!
Most new people will brainstorm a list of 10 or 20 or 30 keywords and bid on them. That's not nearly enough! If that's all you do, you'll only bid on the most expensive, obvious ones. And most of the time they'll be the WRONG keywords.
So for example if you sell hiking boots, you *might* want to bid on "hiking boots" but... maybe not. A better strategy is to focus more narrowly and / or bid on all kinds of other variations people are searching on:
discount hiking boots
hiking boot review
men's hiking boots
merrell hiking boots
salomon hiking boots
vasque hiking boots
woman's hiking boot
womens hiking boots
You'll get more targeted visitors and cheaper clicks. There are hundreds of possible phrases. If you want 5 and 10 cent clicks, Google's own suggestion tool won't cut the mustard.
One of my favorite keyword tools is WordTracker. For most any term, they'll give you 200-300 related words and phrases that real people have recently typed into search engines. WordTracker will give you stuff you'd have never thought of. Take their service for a test drive for a day or a week and I think you'll find it very useful.
Secret #2: Track Your Sales Conversion
The other key to your success is tracking visitors from the click to the opt-in to the sale. When you do this you'll find that most of the words you're bidding on do NOT convert to sales. This is what separates the men from the boys in Google AdWords!
Figure out what doesn't convert, delete it, and you'll instantly cut your ad spend by 50 or more, but your sales will stay the same. Your competition will be buying tire kickers, while you focus on the buyers. This is crucial!
How do you track? It’s not too difficult, and there are a number of good services out there you can use. Here’s a short list.
First of all, Google has a built-in "conversion tracking" tool that's linked to AdWords. You put their code in the "success" page on your site (i.e. the thank you page that comes after an order or other form is submitted) and along with your CTR statistics, Google will report the of visitors who opt in or buy.
These tools are accessible within your account manager, and they're pretty easy to use.
Now the only problem with Google's tools is that they only work with AdWords-related traffic. They don't work with traffic that comes from anywhere else. So if you have other sources of traffic, consider the following 3rd party tools.
To summarize: 1) most of your competitors are bidding on too few keywords, and missing the right ones; 2) they don't know which ones convert to sales and which ones don't. If you start with enough keywords (by using a good keyword research tool) and eliminate the wrong ones (by tracking), you'll be miles ahead of everyone else!