Making a Raffle Ad in Google Adwords

Now that you’ve got the basic idea on what PPC advertising is it’s time to get you started on your own ad. The thing about Adwords is that it works. In my experience people will click on the ads and it will get them to your website. It’s up to you to get the most out of every penny you spend. Here’s a few tips…

Few set up items:

1) I’ll be talking about Google’s PPC service, called Adwords, as Google is the biggest player in online search and, in using Adwords, you’ll have the potential to reach a ton of people.

2) We’ll use a made up charity name…say “Bills Charity” and we’ll say the website is “billscharity.orgg”. And lets say that Bills Charity is raffling off a 1970 AMC Gremlin (little joke there…the Gremlin was named one of the Worst Cars of All Time by Time Magazine.)

3) I’ve read a good bit on Adwords however I am by no means an expert on the subject and there is far more that can be learned than I will be covering here. I highly recommend reading Adwords for Dummies and/or Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords. Both are less than twenty bucks and are easy and fun reads. Even on a small Adwords campaign these books can literally pay for themselves very quickly, not only in money saved but time and frustration as well.

Ready? Let’s go…

1) Head over to the Adwords site at google.com/adwords and sign up for an account. (That link should open in a new window so you can kind of read along if you’d like as you’ve got the real thing open.) Take a minute to get your bearings, read a bit, check it out. Google has a very good built in Help system. Next to or below most areas on the Adwords site are these things ( ) that you can hover your mouse over for more info, or “Example.” Be sure to check them out. When you’re ready you can click on “New Online Campaign.” You’ll have the option of “Start with Keywords” and “Start with Placement.” Choose “Start with Keywords.”

2) The first thing you’ll see is a spot for your “Campaign Name” and I’ll call it “Gremlin Raffle.” A campaign consists of one or more ad groups. More on that later. The Ad Group I’m going to call “General Raffle.”

Next spot is language. You know what to do here.

Last spot on this page is “Target Customers by Location.” It’s just what it sounds like. You can have it cover all the US, or narrow it down to a state level or even a town or regional area. Pretty sweet! Click continue when you’re all set.

3) Now we get to make the actual ad. Your looking at the “Create an Ad” page and it’s pretty self explanatory. There are some limitations on exclamation, capitalization and so on as well as character limits per field. The ad I’m going to make for our pretend raffle will look something like this:

Please make note of the “Display URL” vs the “Destination URL.” I want my ad to look neat and clean so I am just putting our pretend website address in the display. However it is very important that when someone clicks on my ad the next thing they see is a picture of that 1970 Gremlin or at least information about it. In my pretend website all my raffle information is on a page called “raffle.html” so I am directing the ad to send the person directly to that page. I can’t stress enough how important it is to give the person exactly what they are looking for when they click that ad. Do not just send them to the front page of your site and make them look around for your raffle. Remember - Don’t Make ‘em Dig for It!

When you’re happy with your ad click on Continue. This will bring you to the page where you choose the the words to associate with your ad. But! Hold your horses! There is one critical step many people miss. Read the next part of this series right here.