About the client:

Millenium Institute of Sport and Health is Auckland’s leading sports centre, and provides:

• Gym facilities
• Swimming facilities and clubs
• Accommodation
• Nutrition and weight loss services
  and much more

The task:

Webstrategies was hired to provide seo and website marketing consultancy services to the Marketing Manager.

Work undertaken:

Webstrategies undertook weekly meetings with key staff with the objective of understanding the website optimisation and performance environment of the website www.mish.org.nz, and to also tune their Google Adwords campaign. 

Services utilised:

- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Google Adwords Management
- Analysis and testing

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The Google Adwords system generates the “Sponsored Links” ads that you see on the right hand side or top of the results page when you do a search on Google.  They have the following benefits:

• Can be managed in real time, i.e. changes are put live immediately.
• Your website appears in the first page of Google, if your budget is suitable.
• The ads can be targeted to specific geographic areas, and times during the day and week.
• Monthly spend can be capped.
• Full reporting is available, allowing you to manage the campaign properly and fine-tune as required.
• The results of the campaign can provide excellent keyword success data, which can be fed back into your overall search engine marketing efforts.

For established websites, and the more savvy amongst you, Adwords also provides the opportunity for exposure on Google for keywords and phrases that your website doesn’t naturally perform well for on the Google organic results.  So you can complement your success in the Google organic listings by targeting a Google Adwords campaign at the phrases your website doesn’t naturally do well with.

How does it work?

The basic model is reasonably simple.  You create a campaign in the Adwords system, and are able to create variations of the campaign (called Adgroups). So if you are selling website development services (the overall campaign) you might have an Adgroup within that campaign for brochure websites and another Adgroup for shopping websites.  Furthermore you can create Ad Variations within an Adgroup as well.  These are what actually display on Google (ie the “Ads”) and allow you to try different variations of your ad so that you can see which ones are more successful (i.e. attract more clicks to your website).

Finally you set a pool of keywords to be associated with your Adgroups. These are essentially the phrases for which your ads will appear on Google when someone does a search.  So people search with phrases, if the phrase matches one of your phrases then your ad will appear.  If your ad attracts eyeballs, then the searcher may click on your ad and be taken to your website, thus driving leads to your website.  You pay Google when someone clicks on your ad. (OK you experts out there, I know it’s a bit more complicated than that…)

Costs for Google Adwords:

The costs for your Google Adwords campaign depend on what keyphrases you lodge against your Ads.  More generic ones are more expensive (because there is more competition for them), so you can try more targeted or niche phrases which can keep the cost lower and drive more targeted traffic to your website.  Luckily Google allows you to run “predictions” about how much various phrases might cost you, before you set things live on Google, so that you can plan your budgeting.  The good news is that you can cap your monthly spend to a set amount, and tell Google whether to spread your budget out over the month (and so your ad exposure is spread over the month), or to burn it up all at once.

Finally:

 Many people tell me that Google Adwords campaigns just don’t work.  They do!  But you’ve got to manage Google Adword campaigns them properly, dig in and think about how your campaign is performing on an ongoing basis. Look regularly at the impressive amount of data that is presented to you and make informed adjustments to your campaign regularly. Do your keyword research: Google provides a free tool right there in your Adwords account for you to do that.  Do this and you will see your Adwords campaign flourish, generating good quality leads with great Return On Investment.

BTW:

By the way, use that data will you?  If your Adwords campaign demonstrates some really popular and relevant keywords used in searches, then feed those keywords back into your website so that it can start to perform well for those phrases in the organic listings.

Author: Ashley Bryan
Webstrategies
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• November 26, 2009 -- CASE STUDY: Millenium Institute of Sport and Health (0)
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 A Google Adwords campaign is an excellent way to get quick and effective exposure for your website on Google, especially in the early months after a launch when your presence on the “natural” listings of Google is poor.

The Google Adwords campaign is the “Sponsored Links” ads that you see on the right or top of the page when you do a search on Google, and has the following benefits:

• Can be managed in real time, ie changes are put live immediately.
• Your website can appear on the first page of Google.
• The ads can be targeted to specific geographic areas.
• Monthly spend can be capped.
• Full reporting is available, allowing you to manage the campaign properly and fine-tune as required.
• The results of the campaign can provide excellent keyword success data, which can be fed back into the overall search engine marketing efforts.

To be truly effective Google Adwords campaigns must be set up and managed properly, but if that is done then you can expect quick results on Google with a good Return On Investment (ROI).

- Read more about the Google offer here. There is a nice video demo there, and note the wee catch: you must be a NEW advertiser.

- Ask us for assistance

Author: Ashley Bryan
Webstrategies
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Receive Webstrategies blog posts by Email
www.webstrategies.co.nz

Related Blog Posts

• November 26, 2009 -- CASE STUDY: Millenium Institute of Sport and Health (0)
• August 12, 2009 -- FAQ: How do I submit my website to the Google Directory? (0)
• July 8, 2009 -- Google Adwords campaigns: the basics (1)
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