Archive for the ‘PPC’ Category

Here is an absolutely delightful new little (but really huge!) feature in Google Analytics that should make anyone interested in improving their web business results smile from ear to ear.  It’s called Weighted Sort.

The problem:

Click here to keep learning

If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad.  You also know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search queries.  Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.

Then, broad match became “expanded broad match” where Google’s algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close enough match in search intent to show your ad.  Many of the results were not even close.  Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.

The overwhelming advantage of broad match of course is that you get more impressions, clicks and conversions; although you most likely would have a lower conversion rate that will make you pay more for each conversion.  So for some it works and for some not so much.  The major disadvantage is that you have to spend time going through your search queries very often to weed out those that are not applicable to your business because you paid for clicks state ids and business plans.

Click here to keep learning

Now that you’ve created your keyword-themed ad groups and masterfully rolled out your display ads for those ad groups, your ads are running and collecting impressions, clicks and conversions.  The next step is to allow a fair amount of data to collect so that you can then analyze how different sites are performing for you.

The most useful tool for this is the Placement Performance Report in your Google AdWords account.  It segments your ad serving by domain or individual URL so you can see the performance metrics for them separately.  This will allow you to find sites and categories of sites where your ads perform well and where they are struggling.  The best, most important metric to analyze when looking at a site’s Display Network performance?  Cost Per Conversion.

Click here to keep learning

Now that you’ve chosen your keywords to create ad group themes, you want to have ads that will move targeted users from whatever they’re doing online to being aware and interested in your product or service. Remember, since the Display Network operates by completely different rules and the users are in a completely different state of mind, the ads should be different than Search Network ads.

With Search, users are somewhere in the buying funnel; whereas with Display most of the users are likely not in the buying funnel at all. Therefore, the goal of the ads in the Search Network is to persuade the user that your solution is the best choice out of all of their options to make their life better; whereas the goal of the ads in the Display Network is to make users aware that you have a solution that could make their life better.

Click here to keep learning

So, you’ve come to realize that there’s a whole Display Network out there through Google AdWords that, if utilized correctly, will take your online business to new heights.  But, you’ve also realized that’s a big “if utilized correctly.”  You may have been burned by the Display Network before (formerly called the Content Network).  Maybe you just jumped right into AdWords because you knew you wanted more traffic for your site.  You heard how easy it was to get it by whipping up a few keywords that were relevant to what you were offering and by writing a few ads to entice the searchers to your site.  Then, since you were never taught that the Search and Display networks operate by completely different rules, you went ahead and turned them both on and started getting more traffic.

Man, getting traffic can be so easy…. and dangerous to your bottom line.  The truth is, there is an art and science to getting traffic just like any other vocation.  It takes skill and knowledge to be successful.  So, when it comes to utilizing the Display Network, you need to gather the knowledge that is going to enable you to use the tool correctly to accomplish your goals.

Click here to keep learning

First, we took a look at types of ads that you can test and then we look at how to analyze the results of your tests and set up new ones.  But, one more thing we must know is when to consider a test complete and ready to be analyzed. If you consider a test complete before you have statistically significant results that prove with great confidence that what you observe is actually true, you may find yourself making conclusions that simply are not.  Therefore, you need to know when you have enough data for this to be the case.

You’ve got two options -

Click here to keep learning

OK, so you get this previous post about ad testing and you set up some tests… now what?  How do you measure the results?

One of the cool features of AdWords is the ability to make a report to observe almost anything about your account.  In the case of measuring ad performance, you can create an (that’s right, you guessed it) Ad Performance Report.

It shows each ad you’ve created and any metric that you desire to analyze.  You can export this data into an Excel spreadsheet for analysis as well,  to make it a bit easier to sort the data and look at specific metrics for specific insights. Click here to keep learning

Once a PPC account is set up and running, a good account manager is always looking for ways to improve results to better reach the account’s marketing goals.  One such way is to test different types of ad messages to gain insights into what attracts your industry’s customers to your products/services so that you can better understand and communicate with them.

Some of these message types include: Click here to keep learning

The guide for what bidding options to use in your PPC campaigns is the same for any other option – your marketing goals.  What are you trying to accomplish with this campaign? Once you figure that out, then knowing the options available and which goals that fit well will help you more intelligently reach those goals.

Here are the bidding options and some guidance for using each:

1. Maximum CPC Bidding – If you are bidding for ROI or profit and/or want to use any of the advanced options in AdWords like Ad Scheduling or Position Preference, then you must use this option.  With this, you manually control your bids down to the keyword level in order to find the best bids for ROI or profit.

Click here to keep learning

Google, Yahoo and Bing have made setting up pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns fairly easy and painless. Within hours you can have your ads up and running, and delivering traffic to your website for a small fee per click. Unfortunately, the ease in which a campaign can be set up often convinces business owners that they can throw up some PPC ads and the money will start pouring in. I’ve talked to many businesses that think PPC doesn’t work because they tried it once and never made any money.

It’s not that PPC doesn’t work, it’s that the campaigns were not set up and managed properly. All too often a PPC campaign is created by the business owner but left to run with little or no management, supervision or oversight. Even a properly (or professionally) set up campaign needs constant oversight.

Proper set-up and management of your PPC campaigns is vitally important to ensure you have a profitable and high ROI PPC campaign. Without effective bid management and ongoing testing of ads and landing pages the campaign will soon be nothing more than an expensive traffic delivery method. As time passes, bid clicks will rise, positioning of ads will fall, landing pages won’t be as targeted and your cost per conversion will increase. Your PPC campaign may continue to deliver both traffic and sales, but the cost of those sales may be outside of your zone of profitability.

Click here to keep learning