Your marketing research is done, you have chosen with care your keywords, and you've done all the figures for how much you can bid on your keywords to keep them in the top ranks on sponsored results. You went 2 steps further and used all the Google tools to help you choose synonyms and related keywords; You have your ad campaign set up for the next 6 months.

What's next?

Sorry to say, but now the true work starts. Careful tracking of the activities of all of your ads is necessary to determine how efficient they are and what kind of productivity they are having. There are a few ways to accomplish this task.

AdWords has tools that will allow you to see the amount of traffic generated by an advertisement; after all, this is how they make their profits. There should also be a tracking tool on your website which will show you which advertisements generated the leads that later led to sales.

This is important because an inefficient AdWords ad will only serve to be a continual drain on your resources, either sitting around gathering dust and distracting your efforts from places where they could do more good or generating unproductive leads which will lead to you paying money in advertising costs which will never be recouped; remember, you will have to pay the search engine for displaying your ad regardless of the amount of business it is bringing in.

What can you do if you have an unproductive ad?

If you have done your homework and your ad is appearing within the first five to ten pages of search results it is time to determine whether or not the problem lies in your keywords. It is very tempting when choosing a keyword to select one that is among the most popular-after all, if it is popular that means that more people are going to be looking for it, right? Supply and demand, after all.

The downside is that many of the most popular keywords are very non-specific ones. These are often the words that begin a search rather than end it. As a result, the browsers which are searching for these keywords are often unclear as to precisely what it is that they are looking for and will look at a number of sites without making a purchase. A good keyword will be general enough that an uneducated consumer will search for it but specific enough that it will only reach your target audience.

By carefully monitoring your ads you fulfill the vital ingredient to your Google Adwords campaigns successfulness and that successfulness directly effects the success of your business. Continue on this course and your future will be bright.