All posts in google adwords

Yesterday at SMX London was full of information and handy tips on Paid Search and Analytics. There were four sessions:

Google announced new matching behaviour just over a week ago, nicknamed ‘near exact and phrase’: exact keywords will match misspellings and ‘close variants’, and phrase keywords will cover searches containing misspellings or close variants of the phrase. It’s not live yet (and won’t be until mid-May) but the setting for the new behaviour is already available in all campaigns and is switched on by default.

So, should you opt in or out? Here are my thoughts:

What will the effects be?

Even if you turn the setting off, you can still be affected.

As campaigns are opted in by default, it seems likely that the majority of advertisers will be using this new match behaviour. So there may well be a sudden increase in competition on misspellings and close variants – clearly this will affect you if you already bid on them.

I was in the process of performing an overall account-level audit on a client AdWords account; keyword research – or keyword auditing – was an integral part of this process. I am aware that there are a number of posts covering this very topic in a number of different perspectives. But I thought I’d share with you my method when performing keyword research on a fairly mature account. Also, please note that my client operates within a niche B2B market and to a certain extent, within an oligopoly. If the business operates within a fairly specialised sector like my client, then it would be a good idea to get your client involved in the keyword research process as well. This is so that you could tap into their expertise about what they sell, and what keywords matter to them. This is a two way process, so at times, the client may propose keywords that may require your critical analysis and recommendations. For example, what does “asset management” mean? Are you referring to the process of protecting your assets? Or are you referring to “asset management” within the financial industry? If your client’s core competence is in asset protection and security, is it still worth competing for this keyword even though competition will be extremely fierce? Discuss this with your client and decide on next course of action.

Full-blown bid automation tools are available, but they can cost too much for many businesses. But there are forms of automation available for free in AdWords. These could save you money on your advertising – but only if used correctly!

Conversion Optimiser

You specify a target CPA (cost per action) or a maximum CPA. AdWords then uses the CPA to calculate appropriate bids for each search auction depending on how likely it thinks a conversion is. The CPA you give may not be the actual cost per conversion, because in actual fact you are still paying per click.

To turn this on, go to ‘Bidding option’ in your campaign’s settings and select ‘Focus on conversions (Conversion Optimiser)’.

The real value of internet marketing is in the ease of setting up analytics by communication channel, measuring performance of campaigns and thereby directing/redirecting valuable marketing budget toward campaigns that yield higher return. Therefore, setting clear marketing KPIs is crucial before implementing any online marketing activity.

It must be reiterated that executing marketing campaigns in any channel is a tactic, perhaps one of several tactics that a marketing manager or director might include. Other online and offline channel tactics might include SEO, Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter, email marketing, newspaper and magazine ads, radio and television ads, brochure distribution and leaflet drops etc.. It is important to recognise that Facebook ads is a channel in which we undertake tactics to sell things. Hence, think of your KPIs as what you want to accomplish and the relevant tactics as how you undertake your marketing activities to achieve these KPIs.

Google keeps making updates to the Display Network – so what’s going on?

Display Network Tab

The main change is that AdWords is collecting Display targeting options under one new Display Network tab

Previously targeting information was scattered between four tabs (Campaigns, Networks, Audiences and Topics), so the change should simplify management greatly. Although you can only edit keywords on the new tab if you have a Display Network-only campaign (as you should have!) and don’t have a Display Network bid.

Google also promises “a diagram that shows how your targeting methods, like keywords and placements, interact” – which is certainly an improvement from having to dig out the right help page to make sense of it. There will also be reach estimates (although their accuracy remains to be seen).

The most important part of this change is the addition of keyword level statistics – previously you could only see performance at ad or ad group level, but now you can see which individual keywords push traffic and conversions.

Is this helpful? Obviously access to more data is a good thing, but the Display Network’s keyword targeting is in my experience broader than the Search Network’s, so I’m not sure how much difference it would make having (say) different bids on ‘red widgets’ and ‘widgets’. Time (and experimentation) will tell. Still, the change means you could start with broader ad groups and split out the keywords with the most impressions or cost.

If your ads display on irrelevant searches, then either you get clicks and waste money (as the searchers are very unlikely to convert), or you don’t get clicks and CTR drops (which affects Quality Score and therefore your CPC).

So how do you stop this? Part of the answer is choosing keywords carefully – be careful with general terms and use modified broad-match where appropriate – but for the best performance possible you need negative keywords to target your traffic properly.

1. Search Query Reports
The most obvious way, but also the most important. Look at your search query report and see what terms your ad is actually displaying for.

Earlier in the week I ran a poll to ask if people thought Google AdWords remarketing was a great marketing tactic, or just annoying.

There’s often many mixed opinions when talking about this, which fall into two groups:

  1. People who find that they are constantly being re-marketed to and almost stalked across the web, often to the point that it puts them off making a future purchase from a brand because the ads are so annoying.
  2. Advertisers who find that AdWords remarketing yields a positive ROI and is a great marketing tactic to re-connect with potential customers, who didn’t quite make a purchase last time they visited your site – but are likely to in the future.

So I thought it would be useful to run a quick poll to see how these opinions are divided, here are the results:

If you’re already using paid search marketing, how can you improve your results? Here are nine tips for sharpening up your campaigns.

Use conversion tracking & Google Analytics
Which keywords produce what results? Which cause people to make purchases, which result in newsletter sign-ups, which drive traffic to your forum or blog? You need tracking to answer these questions. AdWords (or AdCenter) will tell you what ads searchers click, but it won’t say what they do when they get to your site.

If you don’t have any conversion tracking installed yet, then install it. AdWords and AdCenter have their own conversion tracking, which records a conversion when someone who clicked on an ad subsequently visits a page on your site with conversion tracking code. This is usually a ‘thank you’ page for a sign up, or a receipt page after a purchase – it depends on your website’s goals.

I recently read an AdWords Remarketing tips post which made me think of a few ways to improve your AdWords Remarketing campaigns by introducing a delay between when a person visits your site and when you start showing adverts to them.

Image from Stuck in Customs on Flickr

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