A briefing on the new Adwords Enhanced Campaigns
Value/Importance to AdWords advertisers: [rating=4] - But only if you have high levels of mobile traffic and/or physical store locations.
Recommended link: AdWords Enhanced Campaigns announcement - 06/02/2013
Our commentary on AdWords Enhanced Campaigns
Google’s mantra has always been Relevance, Relevance, Relevance! They’re now really putting it into practice for mobile marketing with this exciting new feature which means that soon you will be able to more easily target mobile users with ads based on their location, device and time of day. These options were already available to advertisers, but it will become much easier to implement and measure mobile-specific ads. However, I understand that tablets can't be easily targeted any longer. Google says this is due to a blurring of different tablet devices and desktops. Nevertheless, savvy advertisers were using this as a way to reach a perceived more valuable audience.
The key features of…
Reviewing your Adwords campaigns to make them more effective
Paid search marketing using AdWords for cost per click (CPC) advertising can be a very effective way to bring targeted customers to your website. By targeting specific keywords, you can capture customers that are in a more advanced stage of the buying cycle and have a need that your product or service can fill.
Without proper management, AdWords can get very expensive and, over time, lose its effect. That’s why you need to do periodic audits of your AdWords program.
Performing a AdWords audit serves a few functions, but the main goal is to maximize the impact of your campaigns and, ultimately, your costs per conversion and return on investment (ROI). A mismanaged campaign can cost you more money than you need to spend and can also result in missed business opportunities. Below are some…
My experiences in allocating online ad budgets between PPC, Sponsored Stories, Promoted Posts and Facebook Ads
According to a recent Search Engine Land post, some Google customers are abandoning PPC due in part to rising keyword prices. It's an interesting post, and it claims that the majority of PPC companies are, in fact, SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises - SMBs in the US).
The final 2012 financial results reported for Google published on January 22nd 2013 show some evidence for reduced competition in that although paid clicks have increased overall globally, CPC has declined significantly, suggesting reduce competition for bidding or fewer advertisers in some markets:
Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 24% over the fourth quarter of 2011 and increased approximately 9% over the third quarter of 2012.
Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related…
Using cross-matching in your AdWords campaigns to improve ROI
I recently had a conversation with a Marketing Manager who was extremely hostile towards employing automated bidding, either within their Adwords account or via a third party tool. “It doesn’t work” they said “we were stuck into a spiral of diminishing results, and when we switched to an Agency that uses only manual bidding, our results improved significantly”.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard this type of story!
Many people have issues with utilising any sort of automated bid management technology because they’ve been burn't in the past. However, I’ve never encountered a reasonably sized account that a bid management tool couldn’t squeeze a little more profit out of.
The thing to remember is that the technology is only as good as the data it uses.
In this case, I took a quick a look at the account in question and it was very obvious…
Practical tips to review and improve an Adwords Campaign
When reviewing an account that hasn't been optimised, it's important for the paid search marketer to review that the basics are right. Bells and whistles are all well and good for later on, but if you fail to grasp the foundation principles of a paid search campaign, you’ll struggle to grow successfully. There are always new, exciting and innovative developments in paid search, all of which can distract you from the crux of your campaign.
A strong account structure forms a strong foundation for every successful Adwords account. If a PPC account does not adhere to best practice, the keyword quality score can be restricted, and effective management of the accounts can become a huge, uphill challenge. In this post I give 7 tips that are a core part of my approach to getting more from Adwords campaigns.
TIP 1. Micro manage high converting keywords
Conversions in…
Practical tips to refine your PPC targeting
Recent changes to Google’s AdWords tool allow PPC marketers to set up paid search campaigns without populating long lists of plurals, abbreviations, acronyms, misspellings and stems.
In my last post, I mentioned the need to review keyword match types regularly to ensure your paid search campaigns remain profitable. The recent AdWords changes make regular reviewing even more important; especially for small and medium enterprises.
Here, ClickThrough Marketing’s Paid Search Manager, Saiqa Bi, looks at the implications of the changes, and the potential pros and cons for internet marketing.
A brief recap on Adwords functionality
Before we delve any deeper into what the recent to AdWords functionality mean for you, it’s probably worth a quick recap of what does what in AdWords:
Phrase match keyword targeting allows advertisers to target an ad to any search query that contains…
Ideas to improve the effectiveness of your AdWords creative
In a traditional advertising sense, your AdWords text is your creative, your broadcast to the world aimed at helping (or is that interrupting) people on their journey as they use Google.
As you'll know, copy in AdWords is so important since it affects several factors that all relate to your return in investment. If you make your ads relevant to the audience searching, it will:
Boost clickthrough rate giving more visits to your site and better quality score
Reduce cost-per-click through the way quality score works
Reduce bounce rate and increase conversion through relevance to the landing page
It's a delicate balance since you want to maximise quality score and minimise cost-per-click through maximising clickthrough rate, but at the same time you don't want to pay for irrelevant clickers. So, to an extent your ad should attract and repel (those not likely to purchase) at the…
Ideas for making Google Adwords ads more effective
I've found when managing Pay Per Click (PPC), that it's a channel, much like SEO, in that it attracts intelligent people to manage accounts and it can quickly become extremely complex. Alternatively, it's easy to experiment in an
No doubt you will have seen this with your own PPC accounts, it quickly gets to a point where someone says, "we will have to restructure the account". It is inevitable in an environment with so much technology, data and ability to easily / quickly test. The motto for effectiveness in messaging though is, "Keep It Simple, Stupid" and I think this applies to PPC ad. The 5 tips below do not get into the intricacies of technology or copywriting, but instead aim to remove the blocks and limitations of technology and give you a process for a more creative approach to text-ads. Technology can come in afterwards.…
Which are the most popular search engines I should target in each country?
Its not often I look at trends data but its good to do every quarter. The popularity of search engines does change and within this blended search like video, images, local search is becoming more important.
My comments below focus on how this data has search implications but the links also show popular social networks & entertainment sites. This data is always useful when justifying time & effort for channels or campaigns. Another tool not mentioned below is Google's Adplanner (& its top 1000 sites report), this is a great tool when you need data / demographics on categories or specific websites.
Data on most popular UK search engines - Hitwise
March 2012 update - Hitwise have just published a simple infographic summarising UK search behaviour. The main insight which prompts questions about how we target through SEO and paid search…
Interesting online media trends for 2011 & 2012
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: eFrontier
Our commentary
A fantastic report from eFrontier, looking back over 2011 and with an interesting outlook on 2012. The report covers, in great detail, the spending patterns globally and across multiple platforms (Google vs Facebook for example) for their client base. It certainly sounds like Q4 2011 was the big spending month with regards to YoY growth, with US retail spend up 18% YoY. The key trends for you to consider from the report are:
Mobile spend (specifically tablets) is becoming increasingly important, likely to make up 16-22% of all paid clicks by the end of 2012
Facebook advertising spend will reach 5% of all spend by end 2012
Overall media spend will grow 15% by the end of 2012
You can view the full report here, or checkout the top level…
