Key PPC budgeting lessons for modelling AdWords investment for B2B companies

At any one time, there are only a finite number of potential clients searching for your product or service that you could convert to an enquiry.  Above this point, throwing more money at Pay Per Click or AdWords advertising will simply buy more traffic that will not convert to an enquiry. By analysing your data over a statistically significant amount of time it is possible to estimate the optimum PPC budget that will maximise customer enquiries and minimise money wasted chasing enquiries that aren't there.   Here I outline an example of a UK manufacturer running a B2B campaign who reduced their PPC spend by 30% to deliver the same level of customer enquiries.  The article then goes on to discuss applying the approach to your organisation.

PPC budget - the £700 rule of thumb

Deciding you optimum PPC budget is a difficult judgement call…

Research study tests show brand awareness lift in 12 different sectors

Simulated search experiment research from Google and IposMediaCT reminds us that search ads are not only about driving direct response for lead generation, but that they can also develop brand awareness. By measuring brand metrics and reviewing test Search Results (SERPs) with control groups, the study showed the impact of search ads across 800 consumers. Ads across 12 vertical sectors were tested and proved that 'search ads' placed their brand at the forefront of a consumer's mind, lifting awareness by an average of 6.6 points.

How search ads lifted awareness

Respondents were asked which brand first came to mind when thinking about a specific category keyword. An average of 14.8% in the Test group named the test brand, while just 8.2% of the…

AdWords data to be shown as “Not Provided” in Google Analytics and other analytics systems from 9th April 2014 - 5 things you need to know

Importance (to search marketers): [rating=5]

Recommended link: Google AdWords advisory

This is big news for companies that invest Google AdWords, particularly if it's a big contributor to their business and they mainly use their analytics system for reviewing effectiveness and ROI. It has less impact if you rely on Google AdWords own reports or a third-party system using their API.

1. It brings paid search data in line with natural search data. Google has been removing SEO keyword data for over 2 years. As we show in this post on not provided for SEO. The proportion of keywords marked “not provided” has risen over the past two years, so it’s now typically over 80% of searches.

2. It’s not unexpected - Google needed to make the privacy of search…

New Ad ranking research shows importance of position

You will know that how high up your ad appears on the Google results pages is absolutely critical in determining how successful your advert will be.  According to AccuraCast's recent analysis of close to two million Google ad clicks, the clickthrough rate for adverts in position one averages at 7.11%, whereas those in position nine averaged only 0.55%. Natural search result clickthrough rates also show this dramatic decline with position This shows just how much influence ranking has on your ads success. The graph above highlights the importance of occupying position one, showing a huge drop in CTR for ads in position two, and a gradual decline in CTR through ad positions. An additional benefit of getting an ad in position one can be seen in the image below. Ads get all sorts of additional bells and…

Five Powerful PPC Tips to Get More from your Google AdWords Campaign

Optimising PPC campaigns can seem daunting, especially for beginners. But when you know how to get the best out of Google AdWords, optimisation suddenly seems a whole lot easier. It can take years to learn the nuances of Google’s advertising platform, but by keeping a few key principles in mind, you can seriously boost your efficiency and ROI. In this post I'll share my five tips are my PPC ‘golden rules’ – the key things that everyone involved in campaign optimisation needs to know. Every paid search account is different. But with a bit of brain power, patience and attention to detail, you can apply these principles to any campaign you’re working on.

Auditing your AdWords account with BidCops

To help marketers audit their PPC as part of optimisation, we've developed BidCops, ClickThrough Marketing’s free AdWords audit tool. The 5 auditing and…

The Top Movers report helps review how Ad ROI changes

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Adwords New Top Movers report Whether you manage AdWords Hands-on, or manage others internally or at an agency,  we thought this was a useful addition to AdWords. The new Top Movers Report will help you compare Volume and Cost changes for each campaign quickly. You can compare periods of 7, 14, or 28 days, so it's ideal for weekly or monthly reviews although click quality and value measures need to be accessed from elsewhere.

How to access the new Top Mover Adword report?

Select the 'Dimensions Tab' to view this report.

In brief, it provides a comparison of two consecutive periods, and shows the campaigns and ad groups with the greatest changes in that period and potential…

An example of using Google's Multichannel funnels reports to prove the value of digital media

There have been quite a few recent stories detailing how big brands such as Interflora have fallen foul of Google or announcing they have ‘stopped using’ digital marketing as it ‘doesn’t work’. For example,  a piece of research conducted by Ebay, led to reports in the trade press claiming that ‘PPC doesn’t work’. These stories led me to dig a little deeper into the research conducted by eBay to identify what the real story was and not what the press would lead us to believe. The test conducted by eBay in essence stopped paid search on non-brand keywords for 60 days and results indicated that on average ‘consumers do not shop more on eBay when they are exposed to paid search ads on Google’. They found therefore that Google ads did not play a role in…

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 -…

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…