Here I am trying to address strategies to minimize risk when starting new adwords ad campaigns. If you’re new to Google AdWords, have a limited budget, don’t know what your current conversion rate is, or want to advertise some new products and aren’t sure how well they will sell; than these tips will keep costs low.

1. When first setting up a campaign, turn off the content network. This option is “on” by default. It’s a form of contextual advertising and tries to position your ads on sites like About.com, The New York Times, Food Network and others. You typically will see high impressions in your system, but often low CTR–click-through-rates, as determined by impressions to clicks–and low-quality clicks. These aren’t serious buyers; they’re wasting your dollars and time.

New campaigns should be limited to Google.com and in some cases Google’s search network. This will limit where your ads are displayed to the strongest converting traffic until you can verify that you are getting a decent conversion rate.

2. Use VERY specific (long tail) keywords and keyword phrases to describe your product. Avoid generic words that apply to multiple products and especially if you sell only upscale or expensive versions of the item. (Searchers are more likely to be in the market for the cheaper versions. Whenever possible use keywords that will target only what you are selling.)

3. Keywords should be entered as phrase and exact match ONLY (no broad match keyword phrases). If your budget is really tight or there may be more traffic than you need use exact match only and create ad groups with one to four keywords, tightly matched.

4. Set up campaigns using keywords + geo targets using Google’s own internal selections (regions, territories);

5. Put negative keywords in the new campaign immediately. Use any single word that shows up in any keyword research that doesn’t apply to what you sell as a negative keyword. Then do a search in Google.com and scour the sites that show up for every other use of any word used in your phrases and add those as negative keywords too. (Enter negative keywords as individual words – not as phrases.)

6. Use negative embedded keyword phrases. To explain this concept, if you want your ads to display for all variations of your keywords except one add -[blue widgets]. Theoretically your ads will appear for blue fancy widgets, cheap blue widgets, blue widgets with pink spots, etc. and only NOT appear for a search for just the words blue widgets.

7. Never use the suggested bids Google’s system gives you. They’re either ridiculously high or way too low. Start with something reasonable or a guess that is within what you can afford. There are two basic strategies:

A. Lowest Cost: start bids low, get impressions and clicks, set the individual bids to get them barely onto the first page of results, then raise the default bid, get more keywords on the first page, set their bids, then raise again.
PROS: Least risk.
CONS: May affect CTR, will limit traffic.

B. Most Aggressive: Set bids high, get impressions and clicks, and then drive individual bids lower to the position you want.
PROS: More traffic, higher CTRs may lower CPC.
CONS: Higher risk, higher spending.

The new magnifying glass icon feature can be used with either method to get your keyword bids set faster. Simply point at the image after each keyword phrase to ensure that they’re active and the bids are sufficient to get onto the first page of results.