The Power Of Ad Groups
If you want your AdWords campaigns to give you maximum ROI, you need to get good at creating ad groups. Don't worry, it's not hard at all. First, though, let's define the term.
An ad group is a group of keywords you'll target with a given ad. On your AdWords account page, you can establish groups of keywords, then write an ad for that group.
For example, suppose you have a campaign for dog training keywords. You could create a group for "dog training secrets", which would contain keywords like:
dog training secrets
"dog training secrets"
[dog training secrets]
the best dog training secrets
etc.
You could have other groups for different sets of keywords. The biggest rule of thumb here is that you want tight groups—groups of keywords that are strongly related. That keeps your ad very relevant for every single word in the group, and will boost your click through rate (CTR).
Once you have your groups, you need to write two AdWords ads for each one. Why two? Because Google will help you by split-testing your ad! Google will show one version for click number one, then the other version for click number two, and so on. Over time, you'll see which gives you a better CTR and you can delete the poor performer.
And make sure the headline of each ad for a given ad group uses the targeted keyword for each group. You'll have to pick one, of course, but a headline like "Ultimate Dog Training Secrets" would do great for the group above, for example.
Ad groups let you start your campaigns with lots of keywords (which is important for sifting through them to find the winners) without potentially spending a ton of money on a scattergun campaign. That's the name of the game.