The highest ROI AdWords campaign in the world: $1 in, $13 out
Here’s the brutal truth about AdWords:
There are WAY too many businesses who think AdWords “costs too much” to advertise.
They say, “It’s not like it used to be back in 2006, when I could get dirt cheap clicks for 5 cents”.
“AdWords isn’t cost effective anymore”.
That’s bulls**t.
There are companies spending $1M+ on AdWords every month.
Do you think they would spend that much, if AdWords “doesn’t work anymore”?
If you’re serious about generating high quality leads and sales from AdWords…
You need to be very systematic with how you create your campaigns.
Otherwise you’re taking the “cooked spaghetti approach”: throwing a bunch of stuff against a wall and hoping something sticks.
Today I’m going to show you a formula that almost guarantees that you get high quality leads and sales from every AdWords campaign you create.
Keep reading to learn how…
The Cookie Monster Formula: A Formula To Build A High ROI AdWords Campaign
When it comes to AdWords… 2% of advertisers get 50% of the clicks.
Over 7 years I learnt this formula using my own ad money to turn all my campaigns into top 2%’ers.
I used it to grow my own Australian based eCommerce and local service business to be the #1 fun food hire business in Australia.
This culminated in me being awarded Australia 30under30 Winner in 2015 for this business.
You can see all the big Australian corporate companies I attracted using AdWords here (even McDonalds booked my service).
Here are the results for just 1 of my campaigns last financial year:
I spent $343.38 to get 155 leads.
Those 155 leads converted into 15 sales and $6,750 sales for my business.
$4,500 profit after paying for cost of goods sold and employee wages.
$1 in. $13 out.
Before I came up with this strategy my AdWords ad money was being wasted.
I was struggling to find people “ready to buy” my products and services.
I was scared to add more keywords to my AdWords account and increase my ad budget.
Because I didn’t have a proven campaign structure that I knew worked.
And that could be scaled across the other products and services in my business.
I now use this strategy in my agency everyday.
I use it to help my clients sell millions of dollars worth of products.
It works for attracting big corporate B2B clients.
As well as small individual B2C customers.
I have tested the strategy with:
- local service businesses
- digital products
- SaaS companies AND
- eCommerce stores
And it works for all of them.
It can work for your business too.
The only prerequisite for this strategy to work is that people are searching for your products and services on Google.
If they are, follow this strategy to grow your business with AdWords…
The 3-Steps to Using “The Cookie Monster Formula” To Get Quality Leads and Sales
There are 3 steps to The Cookie Monster Formula.
Step 1: Research 1–5 keywords that are highly relevant to one product/service/feature you sell
Step 2: Write 2 ads that are highly relevant to those 5 keywords
Step 3: Build 1 landing page this is highly relevant to those 2 ads
Here’s why this formula works so well (and what it has to do with the Cookie Monster):
Have you ever watched Sesame Street as a kid?
On the show there is a famous character called Cookie Monster.
You can feed him just about anything and he will eat it, including: ice cream, hot dogs, cake, pizza, doughnuts, lettuce, apples, bananas, watermelon, as well as inedible objects.
But his favourite food is chocolate chip cookies.
Let’s say you are in the muppet food business.
If the Cookie Monster is searching on Google for “buy chocolate chip cookies”…
Which ad do you think he will click on:
- Buy Chocolate Chip Cookies OR
- Buy Muppet Food
He will click on whatever ad you show him (ordinary humans will as well).
But the difference is, the Cookie Monster might click on Ad #2, then leave your website…
Because he can’t find the chocolate chip cookies he is looking for.
He will click on your ad, leave your website, and eat up your ad budget.
And you will have nothing to show for it.
But an ad that says “Chocolate Chip Cookies” with a landing page headline that says “Chocolate Chip Cookies for Muppets” is going to show Cookie Monster exactly what he wants.
All of a sudden YOU are advertising the exact product that Cookie Monster wants to find.
And BUY.
Your conversion rates will skyrocket through the roof!
Before you implement The Cookie Monster Formula however, you need to know 3 things:
- How much you are willing to spend to acquire 1 customer
- How to structure your AdWords campaign
- How to break your business into product/service/feature “themes”
Keep reading to see how to do these 3 things, and how to implement “The Cookie Monster Formula” in your business…
If You Don’t Know This Number, Your AdWords Campaign Is Already Dead In The Water
Before you even start your AdWords campaign you need to know your CPA.
And no, I don’t mean your Certified Public Accountant.
Your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is the absolute maximum you are willing to pay to acquire 1 lead, 1 sale, 1 quote, etc.
Determine how much 1 average customer is worth to your business (over their lifetime with your business).
Then work backwards to figure out how much marketing dollars you are willing to spend to acquire them.
For example, in my eCommerce business we sell snow cone syrup packages for $130.
The profit on that product for my business is $90.
The most I’m willing to pay to acquire 1 $90 customer is $100.
I’m willing to pay $10 more than the profit I make from the customer.
Because I have a quality product and I know on average most of my customers will repeat purchase at least once.
My lifetime customer value is $260 ($180 profit).
However, I’m always optimising to get my CPA well below $100.
So my business makes more profit.
You need to know this number so you can determine if your campaign is profitable or not.
You will be using AdWords conversion tracking to see your cost per lead/cost per sale for every ad group, keyword and ad in your AdWords account.
With conversion tracking installed and your CPA figured out…
You will be able to identify any unprofitable ad groups, keywords or ads.
If they go over your CPA, you can remove them OR optimise your ads and sales funnel.
This way, all parts of your AdWords campaign will be profitable.
Can Your AdWords Campaigns ROI At 13.11X? Not Without Using This Proven AdWords Campaign Structure They Can’t
Before I get into tactics, you need to understand the campaign structure needed to get results with AdWords.
You can’t just create 1 campaign, throw all the keywords relevant to your business in it, and send people to your home page.
That is what most people do, because they don’t understand AdWords.
It doesn’t work.
Conceptually, this is the Google AdWords Campaign Structure I use.
I use this exact same diagram in my agency pitch deck to show potential clients my agencies process.
Let’s break it down…
The “AdWords Golden Rule” That Will Make You Ridiculous Profits For Every Product And Service You Sell
AdWords Golden Rule: Every Ad Group should have 1 very specific theme.
If my local lawn care business has 4 different services…
Lawn mowing, weeding, landscape design and landscape maintenance.
Each service should have it’s own ad group.
If my software product has 4 different features…
Estimating, invoicing, asset maintenance and stock control.
Each feature should have it’s own ad group.
If my eCommerce store has 4 different types of products…
Mens socks, womens socks, childrens socks and baby socks.
Each product type should have it’s own ad group.
You get the idea, right?
You need to think about the specific products and services you offer.
Then group them into their own Ad Group in your AdWords account.
Pro Tip: If your business services multiple locations AND people use location-specific keywords to search for your products and services…
Create separate geographic-specific AdWords campaigns for each major location you service.
And use the same ad groups in each campaign.
This way you will be able to use location specific ad copy to get more clicks on all your ads.
Think about it.
If you were searching for “brisbane snow cone machine hire”.
Would you be more likely to click on the ad headline that says:
“Brisbane Snow Cone Hire” OR “Snow Cone Hire”?
I tested it, and more people click on the location-specific headline.
Once you have a list of all your ad groups, you can now implement the 3-step “The Cookie Monster Formula”.
Step 1: AdWords Keyword Research Is Boring. Telling Your Boss Sales Are Up 1,211% Is Not.
Now that you have identified all the ad groups for your business, you need to identify the specific keywords people are searching for to add to those ad groups.
To do that, you should use the Google Keyword Planner.
The keywords you choose will make or break your AdWords campaign.
If they are too broad, you will get unqualified clicks to your website.
And waste your ad money.
You should only include keywords that are directly related to the product or service you sell.
A successful AdWords campaign is not about getting millions of clicks to your website.
It is about capturing as much of the Google search volume as possible for specific, high ‘buy intent’ keywords that are highly relevant to your business in your service area.
This will guarantee you only pay for clicks that have the opportunity to convert into sales for your business.
For best results, I only put 1–5 highly relevant keywords for my business into each ad group.
It is almost impossible to make 1 small Google text ad with limited characters relevant to more than 5 of your keywords.
Ideally 1 keyword would be in 1 ad group with 2 unique ads that lead to 1 unique landing page.
But imagine doing that for a 1,000 keyword account.
You would need 1,000 landing pages.
It’s just not practical in most situations, so I group 1–5 highly relevant keywords together.
Here is an example of 2 keywords in 1 of my ad groups:
- +snow +cone +machine +hire +brisbane
- +snow +cone +hire +brisbane
Note: I have used broad match modifiers on my keywords.
ie: the “+” sign you see at the front of the words.
This is because I want Google to display my ads to people who search for my keywords AND close variations of my keywords (eg: “snow cone machine rental brisbane”).
Also, using broad match modifiers means my ads will still appear if someone searches for my keywords in a different order (eg: “hire brisbane snow cone machine”).
This approach allows me to capture a greater impression-pool for my core keywords which have a low search volume (<100 searches per month), whilst maintaining a high-relevancy.
If the search volume on your keywords is high, exact match may be best for your business.
Make sure you understand the difference between broad match, modified broad match, phrase match and exact match keywords.
If you just use the default broad match keywords with no keyword formatting…
Google may broad match your keywords to completely irrelevant keywords.
This will waste your ad budget.
If I used broad match keywords…
My “snow cone hire brisbane” keyword could get broad matched to “trailer hire brisbane”.
Which I don’t want.
You can see… both my keywords are highly relevant to one another.
So when it comes time to write my ad, the ad can be written to be highly relevant to the person who sees it.
There are other keyword variations like “shaved ice machine hire brisbane” that are relevant to my business as well.
They are tempting to shove in this ad group.
However small keyword variations like this should be put in their own “Shaved Ice Hire” ad group.
This way the person searching for “shaved ice machine hire brisbane” will see my ad about Brisbane Shaved Ice Machine Hire.
And the person searching “snow cone machine hire brisbane” will see my ad about Brisbane Snow Cone Machine Hire.
This increases the keyword/ad relevancy.
As well as increasing the likelihood of the person clicking on my ad.
Pro Tip: If you want to go after broader keywords with higher search volume…
Know your CPA.
Depending on how high your CPA is, you may be able to make it work.
However be aware that broad keywords not directly related to your product or service often convert at a much lower rate.
This is because the searcher does not find your ad and website as relevant to their Google search.
This means leads and sales cost your business much more.
We tested the broad keyword “party hire brisbane” in our business for our snow cone, fairy floss and popcorn hire service.
The cost per lead was 5X our specific keywords like “snow cone hire brisbane” and “fairy floss hire brisbane”.
Step 2: The Mistake (Most) Companies Running AdWords Campaigns Make
Taking into account the keywords in your ad group…
You now need to write the ad copy that people will see when they search for those keywords.
I won’t go into how to write the highest-performing AdWords ads that convert, ever.
That has already been written about elsewhere, like the “Swiss Army Knife” Method.
Just remember, the whole goal of your ad is to:
Get people to click through to your website.
If you want to get a higher percentage of qualified clicks…
You should try to pre-qualify clicks through your ad copy.
Example: Perfect for women aged 40–65, Packages from $330, etc.
This is a great strategy if you are frustrated about your quality of leads coming from AdWords.
The most important point to note is that…
You should always be a/b testing 2 ads in every ad group.
This applies if you have high traffic ad groups getting >500 conversions per month.
To determine when your a/b test is “cooked” you need to have an AdWords stopping rule.
My “AdWords stopping rule” for a/b testing which ad converts the best is this:
250–500 conversions per variation and 3–4 week test duration.
That is enough traffic so we can even talk about statistically valid data.
The guy who owns 1 of the world’s largest conversion rate optimisation companies (ConversionXL) knows this.
He is frustrated with all the false website conversion case studies on the internet.
Peep Laja from ConversionXL explains why:
“When your testing says that you’ve reached 95% or even 99% confidence level, that doesn’t mean that you have a winning variation.
Pay attention to the absolute number of conversions per variation and test duration.”
After 1 round of a/b testing is done:
- Pause the losing ad variation with the lowest number of conversions
- Test a new ad variation
Try and outperform your winning variation from the last test.
Split test completely different ad copy if you want to aim for big +50% wins.
This method will guarantee you are constantly improving your ads.
You will also increase the amount of people who click on your ad vs your competitors.
Most AdWords professionals and companies make this 1 big mistake:
Only testing 100 or less conversions per ad variation.
Although you will see statistical significance in your a/b testing tool.
The data won’t be statistically valid because your sample size is too small.
You could make the mistake of calling your test too early.
Which means you could make a decision to pause a winning ad based on invalid data.
Your leads and sales could spiral downhill and you won’t know why.
If you are measuring the dollar value of every conversion in your AdWords account…
You should compare which ad has the highest Profit Per Impression to find your winning ad.
Hint: this is advice from the guy who wrote the book on “Advanced AdWords”.
Brad Geddes from AdAlysis explains why:
“It turns out the ‘best’ ad is not the one with the lowest CPA, the highest CTR, or the highest conversion rate.
By A/B testing ads using Profit Per Impression metrics, you can be assured that you pick the ad in your tests that will bring you the most profit for your paid search account.”
If you have low traffic ad groups (<500 conversions per month per ad group).
Like most AdWords advertisers spending less than $100k/month on AdWords, then…
You cannot run statistically valid a/b tests.
1 split test may take you 2 years to run until statistical validity is reached.
In that case you might not be able to run scientific a/b tests.
But you can still optimise.
You can create “Labels” for different themed ads (eg: scarcity based ads vs product based ads).
Then after 1 month you can…
Report on 1 group of themed ads vs the other.
You will be able to see which themed ad copy outperforms the other.
Here is a group of 6 ads I labelled to test different calls to action in the ad copy across 6 different ad groups in my account:
It’s not entirely scientific, but hey…
Most of us are in the business of making money.
Not in the business of science.
Pro Tip: Use Ad Extensions to make your ad bigger than your competitors:
You can:
- callout unique selling points of your offer
- use a quote from an online publication your business has been featured in within the last year
- plus many others
Ad extensions will make your ad stand out.
So you get more clicks than your competition.
If you’re having a sale…
To add urgency, test adding a simple countdown timer within your text ads.
Step 3: The Proven AdWords Landing Page Formula That Converts At 59.62%
Every ad group in your campaign should have…
It’s own dedicated landing page.
This ensures people land on a page 100% relevant to their search.
Not some generic page which lists all your products and services (like your home page).
Yes, this can be a lot of initial setup work.
But most people give up on AdWords early.
Because they send all the traffic to their home page.
Even worse… the traffic goes to a home page that is not optimised for mobile phones.
Then they wonder why AdWords isn’t working for their business.
It is because their landing pages are not designed to convert.
For the last 7 years, there is a proven landing page formula I have used.
It has gotten me consistent results ranging from…
18% — 59% landing page conversion rates.
This is the landing page formula I use:
- Small company logo on the top left of the page
- Big company phone number on the top right of the page (if you want people to call you)
- Headline
- Short 1–2 minute video on the left of the page (customer testimonial video works best)
- Call to action headline and button on the right of the video that says exactly what the person gets when they click (eg: Get My Free Quote, Buy My Socks)
- Company address in the footer on the page
- Privacy policy in the footer on the page
- No website navigation (so people don’t get distracted and go to other website pages)
Pro Tip: To improve the relevancy between the keywords, the ad and the landing page…
I also include my ad groups primary keyword in the:
- ad headline
- landing page headline
- landing page title, and
- landing page description
I do this to get more leads and sales.
It improves my conversions and AdWords Quality Score.
The guy who helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM and HP grow their revenue does this too.
Neil Patel from Crazy Egg explains why:
“Basically, you’re doing the basics of on-page SEO for your landing page, even though you’re in the paid search results.
But, relevance goes further than just mentioning a few keywords.
A high quality score usually coincides with good keyword targeting and well structured landing pages.
The most profitable campaigns will have a good quality score.
This is where many businesses mess up”
Quality Score is Google AdWords “secret sauce”.
Most people think that the more you pay per click, the higher you rank in the ad auction.
That is 1 of the biggest AdWords myths, EVER.
A 10/10 AdWords Quality Score is the secret to ranking above your competitors.
While paying less per click than they do.
You can be in the #1 ad position, and pay less per click than your competitor in the #3 ad position.
Because your Quality Score is higher than theirs.
Notice how Advertiser #1 can pay less for a higher position due to his quality score.
Optimising your quality score doesn’t just allow you to pay less per click.
A high quality score will also increase your conversions.
Below shows how I set up my AdWords campaigns, initially before optimising for quality score.
This next image shows how I adjusted my ads and landing pages in order to improve conversions and quality score.
Notice how my landing page headline and call to action now match the offer in my ad headline.
The enterprise a/b testing software company Optimizely’s most successful A/B test ever was…
A three-word headline change that improved conversions by 39.1% using this exact same strategy.
Before:
After:
Results:
So, there you have it.
Specific ads going to specific landing pages work.
Just remember to use a call to action that makes sense for your business on your landing pages when following this formula.
Common calls to action that convert include:
- free trial (SaaS)
- free demo (SaaS)
- free quote (local services business)
- free consultation (professional services business)
- buy now (eCommerce)
That AdWords Campaign Setup You Just Read Produced A 1,866% Return On Ad Spend
Because this campaign works so well…
I now use it with all my products, services and agency clients.
Here’s how the numbers shook out:
Total ad spend: $343.38
Total clicks: 263
Total leads: 155
Total sales: $6,750
For every dollar I spent on ads, I got $18.66 back.
$13.11 after all expenses were taken out.
Plus I got 155 new email subscribers and created tons of goodwill with them.
So I’m sure more will come from it.
Here’s The Bottom Line
It’s true.
Google rewards relevancy.
If you give people the right message at the right time.
You will be rewarded.
AdWords is like World War II in the Pacific Islands.
If you want to take over all the Pacific Islands (Midway, Okinawa, etc) you need a specific strategy.
Keywords are like beachheads.
You attack them 1 at a time.
If you have a truly fine grained campaign structure that follows “The Cookie Monster Formula”…
You can dominate every keyword in your niche and see your sales grow like nothing before.
What You Should Do Now
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