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Using AdWords Bidding Options to Spend PPC Dollars More Intelligently

Jun
16
2010
By

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.

2. Budget Optimizer – With this option, Google attempts to maximize the number of clicks your campaign receives for your budget.  The thing is, Google will bid whatever it takes for that to happen.  Therefore, the system is automatically not taking into account the ROI or profit goals of your campaign. Therefore, if your campaign has keywords in it that have different values to your company, you should not use this option for that campaign.

If you are looking to maximize traffic to your site with no regard as to what keywords the traffic is coming on or the ROI/profit you are receiving, then this is the option you want.  A good application for this is if you have early buying funnel keywords that you want to advertise on, but don’t lead to conversions.  In this case, you would set aside a budget for branding purposes and use this option to get the most traffic possible for your budget.

AdWords gives you the choice of setting a max bid for this option, which you want to do.  Even though your focus is on traffic and not ROI/profit, you still don’t want to pay a click price that causes you to spew money.  You also don’t want a Budget Optimizer ad showing on a keyword that is in your Max CPC campaign, which will probably happen if you are using broad matched keywords.  So, set the max bid for this campaign lower than your Max CPC campaign bids.

3. Conversion Optimizer – With this option, you enter a cost per action (CPA) and AdWords automatically adjusts your bids based upon your ad group performance to try and reach that CPA.  This is good if you are mainly concerned about ROI as it controls how much you spend for a specific conversion so that you don’t have to.  The thing you want to monitor though is total profit.  You may be making the right amount of ROI for your goals, but sacrificing total profit to your company at the same time.

For a simple example, if your max CPA bid is $10 and that leads to 10 conversions at an average profit of $40, then you spend $100 to make $400.  But, it could be that if you raised your max CPA to $15 that it would lead to 20 conversions at an average profit of $40.  Then you would spend $300 to make $800.  In this first example, your ROI is 400% as compared to 267% in the second example.  But, in the first example you only profit $300 as compared to $500 in the second example.

Therefore, you want to test the max CPA if profit is your ultimate goal. BTW, you must have at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days to use this bidding option in any particular campaign.

4. CPM Bidding – “CPM” stands for “cost per thousand impressions.”  This option is for visual ads on the Content Network only.  This is because text ads are not easy to recall and therefore aren’t as good at bringing traffic back to your site that may have seen your ad on another website.    This option fits well if your goal is to increase the recognition of your brand and what you offer.  Therefore, you want the nature of your ad to not be as commercial, but to communicate that you have valuable information to share that will improve the user’s life.

The thing to be careful about here is having your ads show on sites where users are not being highly exposed to your ads.  Maybe your ad is showing below the fold and is still counting as an impression or users don’t spend much time on each page.  You definitely want to avoid these sites or at least pay less for them.

Hopefully, this overview gives you a good idea of what bidding options you should be using for your particular campaign goals.  Once you’ve decided on the bidding options to use, make sure you dive into getting to know them really well.  As with anything involving money, things can get a bit tricky.  But, if you learn how to use these options correctly, you will be on your way to spending your PPC dollars more intelligently.

How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign to Profit From Every Click (For Beginners)

Jun
03
2010
By

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.

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SEO With Google Webmaster Tools – Part 6: Labs

May
27
2010
By

This final section of Google Webmaster tools provides some tools that Google calls “experimental”. The tools in this section change frequently so those mentioned here are available at the time of this writing. More may be added or others removed in the future.

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Stop Wasting PPC Clicks and Start Saving $$$ – Part 2

May
25
2010
By

OK, we got rid of some wasted clicks from our PPC campaigns there.  Now, let’s do some more.

Let’s say we have an ad group that is dedicated to selling something specific like “Gibson Guitars.”  We’ve got keywords and targeted ads directed to a targeted landing page dealing directly with guitars that are made by Gibson.  And let’s say we’ve got a decent amount of money to work with so we decide to use the broad match term “gibson guitars” in our ad group.  Well, with broad match, we will get our keyword matched to all kind of queries, even as simple as “guitars.”

Or how about this one.  Let’s say we’re selling batteries for ATVs.  If we use the broad match term “atv batteries,” a search engine is likely to match our ad to the search query “batteries” very frequently.

The problem with this is we don’t want our ad for “gibson guitars” to be showing on the query “guitars” do we?  Who knows what kind of guitar or what kind of budget this searcher is looking for.  We don’t want to pay for the click unless that person is specifically looking for a Gibson.  We’d rather send that searcher to a more general landing page where they have the freedom to filter by what they’re looking for.  Therefore, we want to keep our ad for this ad group from showing on a term as general as “guitars.”

A searcher who searches for as general a term as “batteries” is most likely looking for double or triple-A’s.  So, that’s even a worse situation to have our ads show in.  And imagine getting curiosity clicks from those impressions!  What a waste of money!

Therefore, we want to make sure that our ads are only showing on queries that include searchers looking for specifically what our ad offers.

Now, of course we don’t want to add the terms “guitars” or “batteries” as negative keywords to our ad groups because then our ads won’t show up on any terms containing these words.  So, how do we keep from showing up on the general terms while still showing up on targeted terms with those specific keywords in them?  We add the specific phrases that we don’t want our ad to show on to our ad group or campaign as negative EXACT match keywords.

By adding “guitars” or “batteries” as negative exact matches, our ad will not show up on the general queries “guitars” or “batteries,” but will still show up on the queries “gibson guitars” and “atv batteries” like we originally wanted them to.   Once again, we’ve eliminated more wasted clicks from the mix.  Therefore, we should see our conversion rate and cost per conversion metrics in these ad groups improve as we continue to focus on getting only the most relevant visitors to our website and more intelligently spending our precious PPC budget.

Funneling PPC Money Into the Right Keyword Markets

May
17
2010
By

There’s a big temptation that PPC managers need to stay away from, especially when first building an account.  The temptation is assumption. (And yes, we all know what happens when….)  If you assume, you can waste a lot of time building out a campaign that you will just have to spend MORE time fixing later.

A couple of primary assumptions that would be easy to make…

  • Keyword phrase “x” is definitely going to work so I’ll spend the time to build an ad group and write targeted ads for it.
  • Keyword phrase “y” isn’t working, so I’ll just delete it.

This leads me to my main point.  Data, not opinions, should make decisions. If the data doesn’t tell you to do it, don’t do it.  As in the first case, if keyword phrase “x” hasn’t proven that it’s worthy of your time to build an ad group around; don’t do it.  First, let it prove itself.

And if you don’t have enough data to do it; don’t do it.  As in the second case, if keyword phrase “y” has only been running for a few months and you’ve only tried a couple of ad and landing page combinations, don’t delete it unless you realize that searchers are looking for something other than what you’re offering.  If it’s really a phrase that you believe targeted searchers are using to try and find what you’re offering, keep optimizing and testing.

It could be that you aren’t using the right messaging for your audience.  Or, maybe the phrase has a lot of synonyms or word combinations that are showing your ads that need to be added as negatives.  Whatever it is, you’ve got to give each keyword market enough of a chance to probe for how you might service it most effectively or you may lose out on significant business that you could have taken advantage of.

As I mention in the post “Scouting Keywords That Will Become Your All-Star Players,” the process of building out your campaigns is all about scouting.  So, especially at the beginning, don’t spend a bunch of hours building out hundreds of granular ad groups for every 3-word phrase that you can think of.  Use 1 and 2-word phrases to hunt for the 3 or more-word phrases that deserve your money, time and effort. Also, look for words and phrases that triggered your ads that were wasted impressions and clicks and add them as negatives.  The Search Query Report is your best friend in this endeavor.

For example, if my website sells guitars, I would use phrases like “acoustic guitars” and “electric guitars” to go out and scout for the long-tail phrases that will be my all-stars and then spend the time and money on those phrases.

The same applies to Content Network campaigns.  I would use contextual campaigns to go out and find the sites that perform well enough to pay attention to and exclude the ones that don’t.

It takes patience, but waiting for data to make your decisions will save you money, time and energy in the long run.  Slowly but surely, now you’re funneling your money into the right keyword markets and you don’t have to keep building, deleting, building, deleting.

Stop Wasting PPC Clicks and Start Saving $$$ Now

May
09
2010
By

If you have a PPC account, as you read this you are paying for wasted clicks.  Visitors that aren’t really interested in what you offer are coming to your website and you’re paying for them.  Isn’t that frustrating to know?  The bad news is that the nature of PPC won’t enable you to ever totally eliminate this from happening.

Why?  One reason is because you can’t control searcher behavior.  You could write the perfect ad for your most targeted keyword on exact match so that it cannot be mistaken what it is you’re offering.  But, searchers that are not at all candidates for purchasing will still click through for many reasons.  Maybe they thought you were in their price range, but aren’t.  Or maybe their query failed to return the kind of results they were looking for but your ad piqued their curiosity so they clicked through in exploration mode just to make sure.

Or how about when you are running keywords on broad match?  In exchange for larger keyword volume, you’re giving a search engine the right to decide what search queries match the search intent as your chosen keyword and show your ads there. And at this point in time, to put it lightly; that’s not an exact science.

For example, consider what I found this month.  I’m advertising on a keyword phrase that starts with the adjective “best.”  The query with the most impressions and clicks for that ad group?  Google decided that the word “cheap” matched the search intent of “best.”  Now, when has the best of anything ever been cheap? (No smart aleck answers please) :)

Needless to say that I didn’t receive a high click-through rate and not one conversion on that keyword phrase.  In fact, with “cheap” as a negative keyword, my click-through rate goes up by 18%.  Not only does this save money by not paying for wasted clicks, the improvement in click-through rate factors into Quality Score and improves ranking in ad auctions.  So, it saves money two ways.

The good news is you can get rid of many of these wasted clicks.  How?  Simply run a Search Query Report for your ad groups and it tells you what keyword queries Google decided to show your ads on.  You can then use the data to tell Google not to show your ads on certain keywords anymore.  And another little tip: you can also use keyword phrases that are performing rather well to give you intelligence into how you might communicate in your ads.

The result = paying for less visitors that aren’t interested in specifically what you offer, a happy boss, and a reason to ask for more money! :)

Scouting Keywords That Will Become Your All-Star Players

May
03
2010
By

What’s the best keyword research tool out there?  Google’s?  WordTracker? Keyword Discovery?  Actually, none of them.

The best keyword research tool is a broad match keyword in a PPC account.  Huh?  Doesn’t everyone say that broad match is extremely dangerous and you should only approach them with the utmost respect and gentleness?  Well, yes that’s true, but that doesn’t mean you abandon them!

OK, so why do I say this is the case?  Because broad match keywords are like scouts for you.  They go out and evaluate all of the possible “players” in the game and come back to you and let you know which ones are worthy of playing on your team and which ones aren’t.

When you just use phrase and exact match, it’s like you’re only scouting the most prestigious college-level players;  all the D-I teams in the major conferences.

And when you just use the pre-campaign keyword research tools, they are like scouts that just tell you that the player played at a big time school.  But, they don’t tell you how fast they can run, how high they can jump or if they’re likely to end up in jail by the end of their first season!

If you use just the pre-campaign tools, you’ll definitely end up with some good players and it is the place to start, but what about the guy from East Southwestern Triway Junior Community College that was a late bloomer and that most others are looking over that will eventually become an all-star?  That guy’s gonna be your best value.   Well, the only way you’ll find him is if you look at everybody.  And the only way to look at everybody is to use broad match keywords.

If I have a website that sells dress shoes, it would be a mistake to leave out the broad match keyword “shoes.”  Why?  Because you want him out there looking for keyword phrases that that the pre-campaign tools aren’t showing or that you may have failed to look for that will be valuable for you.

But, you know what would also be a mistake?  To bid the same amount and spend the same amount of your budget on “shoes.”  Remember, he’s your scout that you pay like a hundred grand, not your franchise quarterback you’re giving millions.  So, you just throw him in a separate campaign with a lower budget and lower bids and use your ad to communicate what it is you specifically offer (since you’ll get lower CTRs and conversion rates).

So, every so often you take a look at your Search Query Report and find what your “scout” is reporting to you.  You’ll inevitably find phrases, maybe like “shoes for prom” or “blue suede shoes” that will stand out from the crowd.  Let your scout inform you of what picks to make and who to cut. (What targeted keywords and content to put on your site)

Are You Deleting Too Many Keywords?

Apr
13
2010
By

Have you ever gone into your PPC account, found a keyword that isn’t showing conversion numbers that are up to par and then make the decision to delete it?  If so, you may have cost yourself some business because of what is called “conversion attribution.”  This is the process of applying the value of a conversion to those channels which may have contributed to the result.

Up until now, no matter how many ads were seen or clicks were performed by a specific person with your PPC keywords and ads, only one was given the full credit…the last one.  The flaw with this is that it applies a “one night stand” philosophy of attribution to all customers.  Attributing all the value of a conversion to the last keyword and ad assumes that every customer converted on the first experience that they had with your ad and website.  Since we know the shopping funnel doesn’t work that way most of the time, this is a mistake in attribution.

Let’s say 500 separate searchers used the query “office chair,” saw your ad, clicked on it and didn’t convert.  Then, say that 50 of those searchers later performed the query “leather office chair” because they had decided that is the kind of office chair they wanted after analyzing their choices; which included helpful information and a nice product on your website.  10 of those searchers decide that your chair is the one they want and your website is the one they want to buy it from.

Up until now, the keyword “leather office chair” and the ad associated with it has received all of the credit for these conversions.  But the truth is that your website helped the searcher come to their decision that they wanted leather through the query “office chair” because it met them earlier in the buying process and helped them along in their decision-making process.

So, here’s where the problem lies.  You would go into your account and see these stats…

office chair

Clicks = 500, Conversions = 0, Conversion Rate = 0%

leather office chair

Clicks = 50, Conversions = 10, Conversion Rate = 20%

…and you might decide to delete “office chair.”  If you did, you wouldn’t necessarily lose out on all 10 conversions because the searcher might accomplish their research,  search on “leather office chair” and still choose your ad and convert on your website.  But, without the influence of the prior query and subsequent click, would all 10 convert?  Of course not.  Therefore in the above scenario, deleting “office chair” would cost you conversions on “leather office chair.”

So, if you’ve done this in the past with your keywords, it may be time to revisit your keyword list and add back some of those keywords that you’ve deleted that contributed to conversions on your site although it didn’t show up in the stats.

But, things are being done about this. Google AdWords just added what is called “Search Funnel Reports” to the Conversion section of AdWords.  It looks like its just in the bigger spend accounts as of right now in its “beta” form, but these reports allow you to practice better attribution with your keywords and ads by revealing which ones are contributing to conversions.  Click on the link above to check out a video about it.

Make Visitors Comfortable…They'll Stick Around

Apr
07
2010
By

You’re paying for all those visitors who click through to your website.  So….

What determines if your PPC visitors stay and engage with it?

Well, if there’s one thing we know about humans, its that they love to be comfortable.  Ironically, we spend a lot of time, money and energy trying to make sure that’s the case.  That’s why immediately after my wife got her dream home, she started talking about more vacations.  And that’s why 11 am on Sunday morning tends to be the most separated time of the week.  People tend to go to the church that fits their comfort levels in music, teaching, quietness or loudness, etc.  However we can manipulate our environment to be more comfortable, that’s where we tend to gravitate.

For me, the same is true with websites.  I go and stay where I feel most comfortable.

I’ve read a good amount about landing page design.  But, I think the simple questions brought up by Brad Geddes in the new PPC book Advanced Google AdWords are great at helping figure out what makes visitors comfortable being on a website and ultimately doing business with a company.

Side note: You should get that book if you are serious about PPC management.  The reason I like this book the most of any so far is because it doesn’t read like someone is just spewing everything they know about the subject like a lot of books.  I feel like I’m being taught by someone that is a teacher.  I feel like every time I read a chapter, I’m more of an expert than I was before.  And this is AFTER reading numerous PPC books.  Good stuff.

OK, now that Brad loves me, here are the questions.

  1. Am I in the correct place? Visitors are searching for answers.  If you look at the page for 3 to 5 seconds, does the page appear to lead someone down the path to finding their answers?
  2. Is this what I expected? Give them the reason they came to your site in the first place and do it quickly.
  3. Do I trust this site? This is a major concern, especially for ecommerce.  People need reassurance that they are safe doing business on the site.  People are getting more prone to look for these reassurances.
  4. How long will this take? People value their time and before committing to any action, they unconsciously calculate how long it will take to accomplish the action they came for.  If it looks like it might take a long time to complete a task, make sure to tell the visitor how long it will approximately take.
  5. What should I do next? Once they are satisfied with the preceding questions, they want to know what they should do next to complete the action.  Tell them what the next step is to obtain the answer.
  6. Where should I go next? If someone knows what to do next, do they know how to do it?  The human mind can hold five to seven thoughts in short-term memory.  If your website has 20 links on the landing page all going to different places, you can confuse the visitor.  Your main button/image should be where you want the visitor to go next.
  7. Should I click the Back button? They will answer no if the previous questions are quickly and easily answered.

What I like about these are they are fundamental questions that I think help us all determine if we’re comfortable staying and engaging with a website and a business.  If we can master the task of knowing what the answers to those questions are for our prospects, we can make them comfortable enough to commit to sticking around longer, and hopefully comfortable enough to bring their friends.

Maximize Your PPC Budget with Granular Ad Groups

Mar
30
2010
By

One of the most important things you can do to get all that you can out of your PPC campaigns is to practice granular ad group organization. This is because the more of your budget that you can funnel into granular ad groups, the better your results will be.

Basically, this means that your ad groups contain keyword phrases that are specifically the same in their search intent, as well as the same language that the searcher used in their query.  Typically, I’ve found that this means each ad group’s foundational or anchor keyword be at least a 3-word phrase. No, this does not mean you throw out 1-2 word phrases.

Yes, “tv, hd tv, flatscreen tv and Panasonic flatscreen tv” could all be in the same ad group and you would sell some tvs.  But, you wouldn’t have as good of a CTR and conversion rate as if you practiced granular ad group organization.

Plus, to which landing page are you sending your searchers? To your hd tv landing page?  To your Panasonic tv landing page? To your flatscreen tv landing page?  If you chose the first, you would be giving the shaft to those searchers specifically looking for a Panasonic.  If your headline offered me a Panasonic and you took me to a page with a bunch of different brands, I would feel a bit shafted and would be more likely to bail.

If you chose the second, you would be assuming the searcher on the phrase “tv” was looking for a flatscreen.  They’re more likely to bail.  You get the point.

Like I said, this does not mean you leave out 1-2 word phrases because we know they carry a lot of needed volume and conversions.  So, what do we do with them?  Put them in their own campaign where you can better control them.  Then, pull 3-word phrases that perform well enough to have their own ad groups and create them as you optimize your account.

So, how would this look?

Campaign #1 – Head Campaign – Ad groups would include “Flatscreen tv” and “Hd tv”

Campaign #2 – Flatscreen tv – Ad groups would include “Panasonic Flatscreen tv”.

Campaign #3 – Hd tv – Ad groups would include “lcd hd tv”

My head campaign would contain the ad group “flatscreen tv” that would drive a larger volume of traffic and conversions at lower rates and higher costs on average.  But, one of its major functions is as a testing ground that will reveal 3-4 word phrases that should be their own ad groups.

Over time, I will be able to pull 3-word phrases that have performed well in the Head campaign that I have not given their own ad group and write a more specific and targeted ad for these searchers; as well as send them to the specific landing page that I know they are looking for.  This will lead to increased CTR and conversions.

Over time, the money you spend on the Head campaign slowly shrinks because it gets transferred into the more granular ad groups you’ve consistently created over time in your other campaigns.  As your budget is transferred, it is spent more wisely.  This is a great way to build out the long tail in your PPC account.

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