7 quick win ideas for your Google Adwords campaigns
At this time of year, search marketers are inundated with requests to push out new offers, react quickly to competitors’ promotions and, above all, maintain traffic levels and search engine visibility. However, January could be a great time for paid search marketers to beef up and fine-tune their Adwords campaigns in time for 2012 - I'll concentrate on quick wins for Google Adwords.
Here’s a list of housekeeping tasks and potential areas for expansion to investigate, once (if) the new year rush quietens down:
1. Run and review search query reports: If you have been pre-occupied with pushing out timely seasonal campaigns over Q4 then you may not have had time to review the actual searches that have triggered your ads.
If that sounds familiar, consider running a search query report. You may be surprised at the queries being entered, and by isolating frequently-repeated one,…
New research from Google suggests the investment is worthwhile - they would, wouldn't they?
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google Research Blog
Our commentary
Whether using Adwords is generates incremental visits when you already rank well in natural search is a perennial question within paid search, but the findings in are still relevant & should be taking seriously enough to run your own tests.
The research was aimed at answering one simple question: "Does bidding on keywords you already rank number 1 for in natural search just waste money or does it deliver additional traffic?". This situation is often the case with the brand search terms that are so important because they are the most important search terms for most well-known brands.
The answer from the Google Research clearly states that:
89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. This…
New options for understanding Performance by Ad Position
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Source: Inside Google AdWords & RKG Blog
Our commentary
For years now you have been able to use Google Analytics to garner insights on what position your ads were in when they were clicked and so evaluate the impact of position on click volume, quality and revenue.
It's important to understand the impact of bidding on position to target the right position which maximises volume against quality shown by conversion rate. We recommend this article by RKG which walks you through a way to test performance by ad position to bid at the right levels to maximise conversion and ROI. This is a summary of their test results:
The RKG analysis is made possible by an update from Google Adwords which we also wanted to…
A New way of reviewing keyword and landing page relevance
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Source - Official Google Announcement
Our commentary
Yet another algorithm update from Google, this time relating to Pay Per Click. The new updates are to help Google set a better Quality Score based on keyword relevance & landing page relevance. Just as a reminder, it's well worth quizzing whoever manages Adwords for you about Quality Score - ask for a distribution of Quality Score for your keywords. Its importance is shown by what Google state in this release:
Campaigns with better-performing ads for user queries will continue to see higher Quality Scores, lower average cost per click and higher position on results pages.
Google say you can expect a good few fluctuations within your campaigns over the next few weeks, so be sure to wait for things to settle back down before starting to change things. The quality score for a particular keyword remains based…
Managing budgets especially during a recession is a key part to any marketing managers role. Ensuring you are getting value from external agencies from is absolutely key to running a successful online business or marketing department. Managing external agencies to tight KPI's is an absolute must if you are to ensure you are getting a suitable ROI.
Setting objectives for a search agency
When setting any objectives it is key to give them a perspective, the story & previous data. Agencies need to know the background performance & previous actions to enable them to help set actions to hit future targets. As with all marketing objectives it's key to relate them back to business objectives, crucially revenue.
KPI's
Set monthly targets but have daily & weekly health checks
Overlay other channels to understand performance vs search
Relate them back to business objectives
Metrics to use:
Traffic from search
Leads from search
Sales from search
Isolating brand and non-brand traffic in your search reporting
When setting targets…
New report compares desktop to mobile advertising showing rapid growth, CTR X 2.7, 60% of CPC costs, but lower conversion
Over the last few years (largely thanks to the rise of the Smartphone and texting) mobiles have become a much larger part of everyday living. Their success is in making a lot of tasks easier & providing entertainment / connectivity while on the go.
Predictions of global use of the Mobile Internet such as the one on right all point it to exceeding desktop use by 2015.
But it seems that while businesses have started to "experiment" with mobile marketing there are few who have a clear strategy. Instead, mobile-based marketing tends to be through applications, some recent examples that caught my eye are:
Lynx Stream App
My Starbucks
Tesco Grocery App
New data on mobile search usage in the…
Is the Google Adwords Quality Score (QS) relevant to you?
If your company or agency is using any form of PPC then Quality Score is very relevant. If you are managing Adwords hands-on you will know QS well, but marketers working with agencies or specialists need to have an understanding of the Google Quality score. We find it's not always so well known, so is worth flagging up as THE key factor which affects your returns from Google Adwords. Have you asked your agency about the QS distribution for your keywords recently?
Further into the post we'll show you a hidden, secret? formula that Google no publishes but explains it well we think!
The aim of this post is to give a refresher on how Quality Score works, why it is important and how you can improve you current position. Through knowing the fundamentals of Quality Score you can:
Increase your reach -…
What is Google Adwords Remarketing?
Remarketing within Google is a specific use of the wider Google Display (formerly content) network (learn more about the content network). When remarketing is set up & configured it allows you to target people that visited your website with adverts on other website which have opted into displaying adverts from the Display Network. Check out this video from Google which outlines just how remarketing works...
Some further reading can be found here if you are interested : Google Remarketing
Is it worth the time & effort?
The answer is yes but as with everything in life it comes with a few 'but's"... It has to be configured correctly, what I mean by this is:
You HAVE to define & segment your…
5 basic questions to ask about your Google Adwords campaigns
With so much data, systems & best practice guides now available for Pay per click marketing, it is easy to get sucked in to data analysis and in actual fact never end up driving your business forwards. Afterall, there is sooo much to be doing and we only have a limited number of hours in the day, so we have to focus on the right things.
In this note I show what I believe are the right basic questions and related KPIs you should be asking yourself or your agency about.
The one thing I want to stress before starting with KPIs is that no one KPI will give you all the answers. You need to review a number of KPIs, with data over time & an understanding of the full picture before they…
"Are you wasting money with Google through its default options"
What is Google's Display (aka content) Network?
The Display network is a collection of third party sites like online publishers and bloggers who have agreed to display Google "Adsense" ads.
So here your ads are displayed entirely separate from Google - so it is, in my view, the biggest hidden secret to newcomers to paid search marketing.
Google gets around 30% of its revenue, not from searches on its own site, but displaying contextual ads on other sites or searches linked from other sites. These ads are displayed as part…
