Since we’re two months away from saying au revoir to 2014, I thought I’d take a few moments to update what we’ve been up to here at Oomph Media.

Since we’re a small shop, we’ve been able to spend plenty of dedicated time for each of our clients. Cody is in the process of overhauling one client’s site to improve usability. An added perk for this client (included in their monthly maintenance fee) is that we will be able to set up their landing pages to be more relevant for their AdWords campaign. In so doing, we will be able to increase keyword quality score, saving the client money.

For our other CPC clients, we check into their AdWords accounts every day to make sure there are no unexpected surprises. We also analyze their data and tweak keywords where needed. To determine what’s working and what can use improvement, we run experimental keywords along side existing keywords–maybe changing the match type–to see which keyword performs better and pausing the words that under-perform.

I (Jennifer) have been studying Google Analytics, hoping to become certified in the near future (hopefully before 2015!). Earning this certification will be another feather in our cap, showing that Oomph is constantly striving to improve our skills for our current clients as well as future ones.

Going forward, we’d like to get more blogging done. Not only here, but also on our other blog site, greathomesolutions.com. Click the Contact button on our site to get in touch and let us grow your business.

I know it’s not quite Thanksgiving yet, but I want to wish all a very happy holiday season!

The first thing I think about when beginning a new AdWords campaign is, What is this campaign supposed to accomplish? Besides the obvious to drive sales, there’s also lead gathering and brand awareness.

So why does it matter? Answering the question about your objective will help you to determine what network your ad should appear on. The Display Network acts like a billboard in raising brand awareness. Meanwhile, the Search Network is more like a responsive, well-placed yellow pages ad that elicits a direct response from a consumer.

Your objective also determines how you will be paying for your ads. If you’re looking for brand awareness–for example, you are sponsoring a local play and want to drive people to the play instead of a website–you would most likely want to pay based on how many people actually see your ad. To drive people to your website–where you sell goods or services–you may want to pay every time someone clicks through your ad to your site. The cost-per-acquisition option is what you would use if you wanted to pay each time someone completes an action on your site, such as filling out a petition, or an online form.

AdWords can sometimes be overwhelming. However, asking a few well-thought out questions can make it a lot less daunting.

At Oomph Media, we’re starting a series called “AdWords TOD”, so stay tuned, and be sure add comments below with anything you’d like us to cover in the series. Better yet, hire us to run your ad campaign!