Search2Sales

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Campaign optimization

Google Ads campaign optimization can mean different things, depending on your circumstances and objectives. For example, if you are selling a product online and you are using conversion tracking to register sales, then you may want to optimize based on the number of sales, the cost per sale or the amount of profit per sale. The point being that you reach a point where in order to get more sales, you must be willing to spend more per sale.

If you are not as concerned about conversions, you may want to get the most number of quality visitors you can, at a certain average CPC (Cost-Per-Click). But you cannot arbitrarily select an average CPC, because every product (keyword) is a market unto itself and every user search query is an instantaneous auction. Getting your campaign to an optimized state depends on many factors, depending on how much you are willing to invest in your campaign and your website. The most popular metrics related to optimization in an Google Ads campaign, are the number of clicks, average CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and impression share. Unless you are willing to make enhancements to your campaign and/or your website design, these metrics tend to work at cross purposes, meaning that if you improve one, the others get worse.

There are things you can do to bring down your cost if you are willing to make certain investments in your Google Ads campaign design and create additional custom landing pages that are highly relevant to the user’s search query, keyword and your ad copy headline. See my post titled A chain of success. If you do this, you will be rewarded with higher quality scores. Higher quality scores mean you pay a lower CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and you get a higher impression share. Here are some other reasons for Why use custom landing pages that are related to conversion optimization.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you are in the business of selling widgets. You sell widgets of different sizes and colors. If you offered small, medium and large widgets in red, green, blue, black and white, in order to optimize your campaign you would have a different ad group and custom landing page for each combination of size and color. That means you would have fifteen ad groups and fifteen custom landing pages. In addition, you would have an extensive list of keywords in each ad group with different keyword matching options. The number of keywords will depend on the actual search volume for any given keyword. See my post titled The keyword conundrum. Generally speaking, exact match keywords get higher quality scores. However, finding those keywords is an iterative process that requires research, data analysis and testing.

The biggest boost you can get in terms of quality score and ad rank comes when the user’s search query is your actual domain name. For example, if the user’s search query was large blue widgets and you had a keyword [large blue widgets] and the headline of your ad was Large Blue Widgets and the URL of your website was www.LargeBlueWidgets.com and your landing page was all about large blue widgets, then you would most certainly get a very good quality score and the lowest possible CPC. But it’s simply not practical to have that much relevance for every user’s search term. Therefore, it becomes an exercise in compromise and optimization.

There are other things you can do to improve your overall ad rank. Google is placing more and more emphasis on ad extensions. These are features that extend the size and usefulness of your ads. Things such as your physical address, phone number, hyperlinks to specific pages on your website (sitelinks), snippets of text that explain what differentiates you from your competitors (structured snippets) and more. These not only make your ads physically larger and more compelling, but Google rewards you with higher quality scores, ad rank and impression share. Also, Google likes to see at least two ads per ad group.  The implication being that you are testing to find the optimal ad copy.

Another important element of ad rank is your ad copy. When a user performs a search, Google selects the best keyword in your account, then it looks for the best ad copy in the ad group where the keyword resides. The ad copy with the highest degree of relevance (quality score) to the user’s search query, is the one that is selected for the ad auction. The take-away is that you can increase your overall ad rank if you have multiple ads in an ad group. You want to have ads that reflect words that are most often used in user search queries. Gone are the days of simple ad copy split-testing to find the single best performing ad. Now it’s like increasing the chances of winning a raffle (the Google search auction) by purchasing multiple raffle tickets.

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Death of the Yellow Pages

I’ve been an Google Ads consultant for 15 years so I’ve seen a lot of changes in technology and the advertising industry as a whole. But I’m now starting to see something that is having a profound impact on many small businesses. It is very concerning and I have nothing but empathy for many of these small business owners. I call it the death of the Yellow Pages.

Many successful small businesses that have been around for decades, built their business almost exclusively on Yellow Page advertising. Even though the costs kept going up, it was worth it because it kept the phone ringing and profits rolling in. But as the age of the internet began to take hold, the Yellow Pages book got pushed further and further back on the shelf, until it eventually landed in the trash, mostly because of one phenomenon, Google.com.

Some business owners were quick to see the trend and turned it into a competitive advantage, while others went kicking and screaming into the internet and smartphone age. Many of these reluctant business owners built minimal websites that quickly became out-dated and they resisted learning anymore than they absolutely needed to know about online advertising. They quickly became overwhelmed and confused, but the Yellow Pages were still producing enough leads to make this only a mild frustration. They could still make ends meet.

To make matters worse, many unscrupulous online marketing firms seized on the opportunity to sign up naïve businesses by making flowery claims of “being on the first page of Google” and promising a flood of qualified leads. These firms kept a sizeable list of unhappy clients too scared or confused to make a move, even though the business owners became increasingly disenchanted with their online advertising performance.

Then came the tipping point, the Yellow Pages finally died. This left many business owners stranded. In spite of cutting back staff, reducing inventory, hours of operation, geographic territory and advertising spend, it became an unstoppable downward spiral. They became stranded because they had not invested the time or resources to keep up with changing market conditions.

Many of these same businesses depleted their resources to the point where they simply couldn’t afford to make the investment necessary to catch up. And quite frankly, they simply don’t have the will.

One thing is now clear, if they have any chance of surviving, they must be able to be found on Google. But they don’t have the knowledge to make an informed decision on how best to do it. So they look for anyone who promises to make the phone ring again. And there are still plenty of firms out there that will imply or even promise to make that happen. Even Google will sometimes over promise and under deliver. I go out of my way to make it clear what I can and cannot do for clients and I never promise to make the phone ring.

This is when having an appreciation for the end-to-end online selling process becomes so important. See my post titled PPC Essentials. That’s because even a perfectly designed, developed, implemented and fine-tuned Google Ads campaign can’t make the phone ring. All an Google Ads campaign can do is deliver a qualified visitor to your website. The website must convince the visitor to take the action you want; fill out a form, call you on the phone or best of all, purchase something. If the website doesn’t look professional, if the landing page isn’t relevant to the user’s search query, if the offer isn’t compelling, the visitor will simply hit the Back button. But you still pay for that click.

Most business owners will get that. But what they find difficult to comprehend is how many clicks they must buy to get a lead. They focus on the number of clicks they are buying and can’t understand why the phone isn’t ringing. There are usually two reasons why this happens.

  1. The campaign was poorly constructed. The keywords used were too broad in scope and in many cases, the campaign manager didn’t have a good understanding of keyword matching options and they used too many broad match keywords. See my post titled The Broad Match Effect.
  2. The probability factor. The average conversion rate for a well designed campaign is 3-5%. That means you need to buy about 25 clicks to get one lead (phone call, form-fill, etc.). Multiply your average cost-per-click (CPC) times 25. If your campaign isn’t well designed, that number goes up considerably. And remember, that’s only a lead, not a sale. See my post titled A Game of Chance.

If the campaign isn’t designed properly, it is also reflected in the quality of the lead. You probably know what I’m talking about. You just spoke with someone on the phone and say to yourself, “why did they call me? Did they not read my ad? Did they not look at my website?” The answer is, probably not! The sad truth is that users (of search engines) don’t read ads and they only scan web pages. They click on your ad, go to wherever you send them on your website and in 3-5 seconds, decide if they want to stay.

This situation only reinforces the need to design an Google Ads campaign that is laser focused on the best prospects. That your keywords are relevant to your ad copy and your ad copy is relevant to your landing page. See my post titled A Chain of Success.

If you ask me to design a campaign for your business, I will rely heavily on what you tell me is a good search query from a qualified user, because you know your business infinitely better than I do. You know the market, your product or service, your competition and your geographic territory. You will need to teach me about your business, and to the extent you are interested, I will teach you about online advertising and Google Ads. It’s a collaborative process.

So whether you decide to hire me or someone else, be aware of what an Google Ads campaign manager is capable of and what they are not. If your objective is to get the phone to ring, I can’t make that promise and anyone who claims they can isn’t being honest with you.

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As good as it gets

As good as it gets 1One question I struggled with for quite a while, and I know most of my clients have as well, is how do you construct and manage an Google Ads account so you know when “this is as good as it gets”? What metrics should you use to manage your account and how do you evaluate those metrics to fine-tune your account performance? At what point do you stop building and experimenting, and start optimizing? At what point is your account essentially on auto-pilot? That’s what this article is about.

There are many different ways to manage account performance and several different levels. The different levels are:

  • Account
  • Campaign
  • Ad group
  • Keyword
  • Search term (a.k.a. search query)

Some examples of how you can manage your bids are:

  • Manual bidding
  • Google’s Enhanced CPC bidding
  • CPA or Google’s Conversion Optimizer

My strategy is based initially on manual bidding at the keyword level, but focusing on search terms, conversions and Analytics data. In many cases, my goal is to get to the point where I can use CPA bidding because this is Google’s “artificial intelligence”. More on that at a later time.

It’s worth noting that many business owners & Google Ads campaign managers can easily be overwhelmed and confused by the sheer number of options for managing an Google Ads campaign. Almost every professional uses a different strategy or tool. When I agree to take on a new client, it’s because I am confident that my strategy will work for the client and we can get to the point where “it’s as good as it gets”, with a relatively simple campaign design and level of effort. But with this important caveat. That the metrics for Conversions and Economics are met. See my post titled PPC Essentials.

In order to appreciate my point of view, you must believe that having an optimized campaign means you are effectively managing probabilities. What is the probability you can convert a particular user if they click on your ad and go to your website? See my article titled A game of chance. In this example, a conversion is defined as an action a first-time visitor to your website from a search engine would take within a 30-day period, where that action is both measurable (using conversion tracking) and a meaningful part of the selling process, like filling out your contact form, calling you on the phone or making a purchase. If you agree, then it’s also important to believe that every user search query (what a Google user types into Google, not to be confused with a keyword) has a unique value to your business, that can be evaluated based on probability theory.

Let me pause for a moment to explain the two fundamental skills I bring to a client relationship: 1) a deep understanding of how Google’s algorithm works and 2) understanding the mindset of a visitor from a search engine, based on their search query. This would be a good time to read my article titled A chain of success so you can appreciate the fact that the user’s search query is the closest we get to knowing what the user is looking for.

The real key to understanding Google’s algorithm, is knowing how keywords and keyword matching options work. Almost anyone I speak with, prospect or client, thinks they know this, but there is so much they don’t know, and that is usually at the core of why they are struggling with Google Ads.

Over the years, Google has evolved their their algorithm for a variety of reasons. Some reasons are to help users, some are to help advertisers and others are so Google can increase their own revenue and profit. An advertiser’s strategy that worked pretty well yesterday, may be losing money tomorrow. It’s all rather fluid. My approach to creating and managing accounts has evolved based on what Google is doing so I fully expect my strategy will continue to evolve over time.

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A game of chance

A game of chance 2Being successful with search engine advertising (PPC or SEO) means you must get a lot of things right or you simply can’t make the numbers work. See my article titled PPC Essentials and pay particular attention to the Economics. One element of this has to do with how your website is designed. I talk about that in my article titled Lost in translation. This article is even more fundamental to having a successful Google Ads campaign. It has to do with what I call the search vocabulary of your market and the importance of selecting the right keywords so your ad displays for the right search terms.

Getting found on search engines using PPC is a lot more involved than most people think, because you are trying to walk a fine line. You want to get the broadest exposure you can, but only have your ad seen by users who you think you have a good chance of converting. See my article titled Who should see your ad. In a perfect world, you would be able to go back in time and only allow prospects to see your ad who will ultimately convert. But we don’t have that luxury. We must make important decisions about who should see your ad, before your ad is displayed.

Allow me to have a small digression to make an important point. SEO is not free, even if the clicks are. SEO, when done correctly, is an on-going, never-ending process that depends on fresh content with lots of quality inbound links. As soon as you stop, you begin a slow slide to becoming irrelevant; out of the top positions, then below the fold, then on the second page and finally out of sight. Therefore, you had better pick your keywords carefully or you can waste a lot of money and time. You need to make sure the keywords you are optimizing for, produce visitors you can convert. Remember, infinity (number of visitors) times no (conversions) is still zero dollars in revenue and profit! I can’t tell you how many prospects and clients I have spoken to that don’t really understand this point. See my article titled PPC versus SEO.

The same principal applies to PPC. You need to be very careful what keywords you chose or you will be paying for a lot of poor quality visitors you can’t convert or you will have some well qualified visitors, but not very many of them. The key is to find the right collection of keywords that are both relevant to your business and have enough search volume to make PPC a viable channel for your business. If you chose very specific keywords, but Google determines there isn’t enough people searching for them, you will get the status Low search volume. See my article titled The keyword conundrum.

If you have little or no previous search engine advertising experience or historical data to work with, finding that collection of relevant keywords with enough search volume, can be time-consuming and expensive. It means you will need to discover these important keywords through research and experimentation. Keyword tools are configured to produce broad-match keywords, which can be very inefficient and expensive if used incorrectly. There is no substitute for an Google Ads account with a rich history of visitor information, including meaningful conversion data.

Over the past few years, Google has introduced several new features designed to decrease their expenses and increase their profits. One of these is the keyword status Low search volume. This means that there aren’t enough searches for that keyword and you need to use a keyword with a broader reach. Unfortunately, that broader reach is also less relevant to your target market. Keep in mind that most search queries are only four words or less. If you have to use up some of those words just to get you into the conversation, it can be very difficult to accurately describe what you offer.

Here is another perspective. You may be able to describe exactly what you offer in 3-4 words, but if there aren’t enough searches for those terms, Google will not show your ad and you will have invested a lot of time, effort and expense planning a party no one will come to. It’s like having a beautiful retail store in the wrong part of town.

Here is an example. Let’s say you are in the business of selling blue widgets. However, when you use the keyword blue widgets, you get the status Low search volume! Now your only option is to use the keyword widgets and try to use other tactics such as qualifying ad copy or negative keywords to minimize the number of poor quality impressions and clicks.

Here is where it can get even more challenging. There is an important distinction between users searching for information and those searching for a product or service to buy! For example, let’s say you are a therapist serving a local market and you want to acquire new patients suffering from depression. If you used keywords such as depression or issues with depression or coping with depression, you will be exposing your ad to lots of users seeking information. And while you may be able to convert some of them into a lead, the probability (chance) of that happening is much lower than someone searching for depression counseling or depression therapist. The words counseling and therapist are indicative of someone who is expecting to spend money!

It’s also important to keep your keywords focused on one theme. Google’s algorithm is highly tuned to one important thing, relevance. If you try to combine multiple topics into a single keyword, you lose focus and relevance. See my article titled A chain of success.

In summary, think of PPC as a game of chance or probability that you have some degree of control over:

  • What is the probability of your keyword getting an impression
  • What is the probability that impression will become a click
  • What is the probability that click will become a lead
  • What is the probability that lead will become a customer
  • What is the lifetime value of that new customer worth

Can you make the number work? That is the question. If that makes sense, take another look at my article titles Who should see your ad and A chain of success.

If you are in a position of wanting to optimize an existing Google Ads campaign with a rich history, including accurate and meaningful conversion tracking data, this also becomes a question of managing probabilities. However, we now have some additional elements that come into play besides the user’s search query. We have Dimensions and Segments such as:

  • Search vs Display networks
  • Whether to use Google search partners
  • Location targeting
  • Time-of-day; day-of-week
  • Type of device
  • Top vs Other

You want to develop and optimize a campaign based on probabilities and these probabilities are based on either your intuition, if you are just starting out or statistically significant historical data collected by users who actually clicked on your ad and went to your website. The latter being the preferred method.

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The ascension model

profit_1Ascension is a term I learned from my mentor Perry Marshall. The root word ascend, is a verb meaning to rise or go up. In this situation it refers to how you, the business owner or advertiser, move customers from lower cost, less profitable products or services to higher cost, more profitable ones. If it isn’t immediately obvious why I suggested you read this post, please continue reading and I think it will become clear.

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to review many Google Ads accounts for prospects that are in hyper-competitive markets. Markets where the profit margins are thin, competition is stiff and the products or services could be described as commodities. This is especially true when the business is acting as an online distributor for a relatively inexpensive, branded product using an e-commerce website.

In this scenario, you not only need a highly optimized Google Ads account, but a website and fulfillment process that leaves no room for error. I won’t digress into the topic of conversion optimization because that isn’t the point of this post. But let me get your attention by saying you can have a highly optimized Google Ads campaign, a great landing page with all the right attributes, a great fulfillment process and even a decent conversion rate, and still be significantly out-performed by the competition. And when I use the term “out-performed”, I’m not referring to things like impression share, number of visitors, CTR, conversions or even sales. Those are just leading indicators to your ultimate objective, which is profitability.

I’ve talked with several online marketers over the years, some who have been selling online longer than I have been consulting in the online space, which is over ten years. They began using their website as a way to establish an internet presence, essentially creating an online brochure. Then they began implementing e-commerce and optimizing their website for the purpose of SEO, SEO being the first form of SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Then as the internet became mainstream and in many cases being the medium of choice, they began using PPC to increase exposure and ramp-up faster than they could respond with SEO.

However, these advertisers didn’t understand that PPC is quite different from SEO. See my article titled PPC vs SEO. They didn’t understanding The PPC cost model. That’s because SEO works well for products and services where the traffic is high and conversion rates are relatively low, where a lot of shopping takes place. On the other hand, this is a formula for disaster with PPC, unless you have an ascension business model where you can afford to just break-even or perhaps even lose money on the initial sale. Where you have a longer-term view than a single sale and take into account the lifetime value of a customer.

The classic business model for this is known as the Gillette theory, where you escentially give away the razor because you actually make your profit on razorblades. Another example is the car dealership industry. Many car dealers actually lose money on the sale of a new vehicle because they make it up with profits from their service business over the life of the customer relationship.

Now let me move on to the point which is the purpose of this article. If you are promoting a product or services using PPC and you have done a good job optimizing your Google Ads campaign, landing page, website and fine-tuned your offer, and still struggle to make an acceptable profit, ask yourself the following question. “Do I have an ascension model?”. “Does my competition have an ascension model?” Because if you don’t and your competitor does, PPC may not be a viable channel to promote your business.

I make this claim realizing that there is a good chance there is still room for improving your Google Ads account and website. However, I’ve seen too many accounts where the advertiser was beating their head against the wall or lambasting their PPC account manager, thinking the solution to their Google Ads ROI problem was simply making some feature or function change in Google Ads. They were simply barking up the wrong tree.

When a PPC advertiser has a viable ascension business model, they can afford to drive the bid price up to the point where it becomes unprofitable for competitors who need to make a profit on every sale. It makes PPC an unprofitable channel for the single-sale advertiser. This is why it’s important to study your PPC competitors as part of your online advertising strategy.

Often times what I conclude from analyzing a client’s PPC account and the competitive landscape, is that a hybrid model is possible. Meaning the client can only afford to advertise certain products. The products or services that have enough profit in them to make the numbers work. A variation on this strategy is to only bid on those keywords where the competition isn’t as strong and the CPC is lower. This means they can only afford to go after prospects that are earlier in the sales cycle by using generic keywords verses those that are indicative of someone ready to buy.

The key to making all this work is to have a good handle on your key metrics. In particular, your cost per conversion. If you don’t have accurate and reliable conversion tracking and web analytics data to work with, you have an even bigger problem on your hands!

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Remnant keyword impressions

keywords1Google’s definition of broad-matched keywords says it will display your ad for “singular or plural forms, synonyms, stemming (such as floor and flooring), related searches, and other relevant variations”. The most significant word in this definition is the word synonym. That’s because it’s the most powerful and also the most dangerous.

Synonyms give Google a tremendous amount of latitude to display your ad and you will be shocked to learn who Google has shown your ad to. What’s even more disheartening is to know that users searching for these seemingly unrelated search terms, actually clicked on your ad. To see what I mean, you should run a search term report. But even that does not tell the whole story because it does not contain all the search queries for all the impressions where your ad was displayed or all the search terms for all  of the clicks you purchased. Nevertheless it is quite telling.

There are two points I’d like to make in this post. When you use broad-match keywords:

  1. You get clicks for a fraction of what you would pay if you targeted that search query with a more restrictive keyword match type and
  2. Your ad is displayed for search terms that you could not target any other way.

The analogy I use is that it’s like buying carpet remnants. If you carpeted your entire house with carpet remnants versus a specific style and color of your choosing, you could do it at a fraction of the cost. While you may have had several impressions and clicks for a specific search query you really like, your ad was only shown for a fraction of the time (Impression Share) it was able to be shown for that same search query. That’s because every search query is an instantaneous auction and Google displays ads to maximize their profit potential. The fact that your ad was displayed for those auctions means Google couldn’t find any other ads to display that were potentially more profitable than yours. Therefore, you got a real bargain. But don’t expect to get that same bargain every time that same search query is used. If you do want to display your ad for that search query a lot more often, you must use a different keyword and match type and bid considerably higher.

Targeting low-volume search queries can be difficult, even impossible if you want to achieve a higher impression share. See my post titled The keyword conundrum.

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Who should see your ad?

One of the most common occurrences I see when reviewing a client’s Google Ads account, is that the keywords, and often the ad copy, is too broad in terms of who is able to see their ad. This means the advertiser’s ads are appearing for relatively poor quality users, which drive up the number of impressions, and results in poor quality visitors (clicks). This produces a less than optimal account performance and ROI.

At its core, the issue is that the novice Google Ads advertiser doesn’t understand how keyword matching options work. In fact, many advertisers don’t even know what they are. This is particularly relevant in cases where the advertiser has a preponderance of broad-matched keywords. Depending on your Google Ads proficiency, you may find my article titled The broad match effect particularly enlightening.

Choosing the right keywords, matching options, ad copy and landing page, all have to do with how aggressive you want to be in using Google Ads and how much effort you want to put into optimizing your campaigns. Here again, it all comes down to ROI. And one particularly important metric in the ROI calculation will be the lifetime value of a new customer. See my article titled PPC essentials and pay particular attention to what I call the tactical triangle.

When I describe the two most important skills I bring to our relationship, I say it is: 1) a deep understanding of Google Ads and 2) the mindset of visitors from search engines and display ads. If you have a good sense of how visitors from search and display think and how they are likely to act, you are able to make some important decisions about who should see your ad and who shouldn’t. How you implement your decision has to do with knowing how keyword matching options work.

The process of determining who sees your ad is often a collaborative decision made between me and the client. I am usually not familiar enough with the client’s business and there will be terms that require the client’s perspective. But that alone isn’t enough. I usually have to explain to the client, the subtle nuances between seemingly equally relevant keywords and search terms. In the absence of clear and compelling conversion data, it comes down to probability theory. What are the chances of converting this visitor verses that visitor? And while I may offer an opinion on specific keywords, it is the client who makes the final decision.

Quite often, I need to explain to the client that there will be more traffic available than they can afford to purchase and therefore, we need to make some important decisions about who sees their ad and who doesn’t. This is particularly relevant in the case where Google is indicating that the campaign is “Limited by budget”. That almost always means that the client is spending some amount of their daily budget on relatively poor quality visitors and experiencing the very real possibility that their ad is not being shown when their best prospects are searching! It’s important to note that when Google displays the Limited by budget warning, not only will your ads stop running at some point, but Google will also be displaying your ad intermittently before it stops running altogether.

When it comes to analyzing the historical data in your account or using a keyword tool or constructing your own keywords, it’s important to ask yourself, “is this user looking for information or a product / service?” I think it’s safe to say that if you are running an Google Ads campaign, you probably are not in the business of selling information; you are trying to sell a product or service. Therefore, keeping your focus on users searching for a product or service is very important. If you still have room in your budget after you have that base covered, then I suggest you have a separate campaign for users looking for information.

Let me illustrate by providing an examples using my own Google Ads campaign. If I were to use the keyword “Google Ads management” for example, it would be too broad because it can mean many different things besides consulting services; such as an automated tool, a book or training course. Therefore, all my keywords have words in them that imply some kind of professional help, meaning they expect to spend money! Words like consulting, expert, professional or specialist.

Users searching for information may be good suspects, but not necessarily a good prospect. They will typically be higher in the sales funnel and won’t convert at a rate that compares with those searching for a product or service. Your first priority should be to focus on keywords that are indicative of prospects that are lower in the sales funnel. In other words, closer to making a buying decision. Once you have optimized your account for those keywords and if you have any budget left over, then you can consider buying clicks for information seekers. This could be considered your branding campaign. It’s just something you do because you feel it will have a long-term positive effect, much like a billboard on a busy highway.

Here is a tip to improve ROI. Once your primary campaign reaches its daily budget and you decide not to increase your daily budget, consider running your ads only on Google.com and not their search partners. That’s because Google.com has the highest quality traffic and your Analytics data and quality score are more accurate there than on the partner sites. To get a sense for how your existing campaign is performing, in the Keyword view, use the Segments tab and select the Network. Then compare the performance on Google search verses Search partners.

Here is another interesting reality when it comes to search engine advertising. Users of search engines don’t read ads! They only scan them. If your ad appears near the top of the search results page, chances are, you are paying for a lot of clicks that delivered relatively low quality visitors, especially if you have keywords that tend to be broad in scope. A quick review of your search term data will bear this out, which is all the more reason to be prudent in terms of who sees your ad. The sad truth is that many users blindly click on the top listings (organic or paid) and then determine if the website has what they were looking for. If they don’t like what they see, they simply hit the back button and repeat the process.

This is a great lead-in for another bit of search engine advertising trivia. The further down the search results page your ad appears, the higher the quality of visitor you get. Why, because when your ad is further down the page, users actually read the ad! This is one reason why I never intentionally want any of my ads to appear in a position higher than #3. And for some keywords, I intentionally want to be lower than #6. Why, because it’s all about ROI. How many clicks do I have to buy to get a prospect? If I know it will take more clicks of a particular keyword to get a prospect, I bid lower for that keyword.

Ad copy also plays an important role in the ROI equation. Your ad needs to be highly relevant to the user’s search query, the keyword that triggered your ad and the landing page you send the visitor to. If it isn’t, you not only pay more for the click, but you will probably get a relatively poor quality visitor. Your ad should be relevant, compelling and transparent. By transparent I mean it needs to be clear about what the user will see if they click on your ad. For example, if you sell relatively expensive widgets. Then you should have wording in your ad that indicates you offer premium widgets or top quality widgets or widgets priced from $x. Do you remember what my ad looked like? I say in every ad I run: “$100/hr“.

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Web Analytics

web_analytics2_120x157You’ve probably heard the saying, “in real estate it’s location, location, location”.

Well, in the world of direct marketing, especially online direct-response marketing, it’s “test, test, test”. Knowing what to test, why you are testing it and how to make changes based on the data, is somewhat of an “art”, but mostly “science”. The science part means having the proper tools to know:

  • Where did the visitor come from: an Google Ads ad, an organic listing, another website, an email, etc.?
  • Exactly what did the visitor type in the search box that caused them to see your ad?
  • Are they using words like “free” or “red” when all you sell are “blue”?
  • How were search queries linked to keywords?
  • Did the visitor just look at the landing page and “bounce” or did they look at several pages?
  • How many pages did they visit?
  • How long did they spend on your website?
  • Did they visit a specific page you wanted them to see?
  • Did they take an action you wanted them to take?
  • Are they a new visitor or have they been to your website before?

Knowing the answers to these and many other important questions is all possible by implementing web analytics. I like to refer to it as “peeking behind the curtain”. Web analytics are a very powerful tool, but it does require some additional work. It’s not a requirement, but it is very helpful when it comes to optimizing your Google Ads campaigns.

And one more thing, here is another ism I like which is very appropriate. “You can’t improve what you can’t measure”.Web analytics is the tool that allows us to measure.

OK, so how do I get web analytics? It involves using your webmaster to put a few lines of Java code on each web page of your site. This code sends data on visitor behavior to a data base which can be queried to provide valuable information about how well your campaign is performing. Google Analytics is not the best web analytics application, but it is pretty good and best of all, it’s FREE.

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The PPC cost model

ppc 1The challenge some advertisers face is they simply can’t make the numbers work for their Google Ads campaign. They have to spend more money on click charges and other related costs, than they make from a lead or sale. There simply isn’t enough profit in the sale of their product or service to off-set the costs associated with developing and managing an Google Ads account.

This sometimes happens slowly, over time. Advertisers that began using Google Ads several years ago, when there were far fewer advertisers, much cheaper clicks and Google Ads was a lot simpler. These advertisers are now finding it difficult to compete. Years ago, you may have been able to sell a $20 item to a one-time buyer, but not today.

Having a PPC campaign means you have now entered the world of “online direct marketing”. And while PPC is the fastest and most flexible form of direct-response marketing ever invented, it still conforms too many of the marketing industry’s statistical averages that have proven out over the last 100 years.

dollar_sign_160x120Unless you have unusual circumstances, you should expect a “conversion rate” of around 3-5%. That means about 4% of the visitors to your site from a PPC campaign will take “the desired action”. The desired action can be any one of a number of things, such as; filling out your contact form, signing up for your newsletter, downloading a special report, calling you on the phone or perhaps buying a relatively low-cost item. These are actions a visitor from a search engine will realistically take within 30 – 90 days. I use 30 – 90 days because that is how long Google Ads tracks a visitor after they click on your ad. But in many cases, the desired action only produces a lead, not a sale. Once you have the lead, you then need to convert it to a sale. Conversion rates from a lead to a sale are typically 20-50%.

I want to emphasize that there can be a wide variation in what is considered a conversion and not all desired actions can be recorded using Google Ads conversion tracking. However, if you do register actions as conversions in Google Ads, remember that conversions can be registered in Google Ads up to thirty days from the date of the last clicked Google Ads ad.

Another challenge that confronts novice PPC advertisers is when the most desired action is a phone call. That’s because a phone call cannot be easily tracked and reported in Google Ads. This presents at least two problems. 1) You lose the ability to track the action back to a search query, keyword or ad, and 2) It becomes more difficult to see tangible improvement in the near-term. If you will be judging the performance of your Google Ads account based on the number of phone calls, you need to have a reliable benchmark and plan on at least a 2-3 month test to gather statistically significant data on which to evaluate the new campaign. For additional information, see my article titled Telephone conversions.

I usually suggest using conversion tracking for actions a visitor from a search engine would realistically take within 30 days of visiting your website from an Google Ads ad. That’s because, as a campaign manager, I want to get as much data as possible that indicates you have made a connection with a prospect. Therefore, I would typically want to track whether a visitor performed an action such as downloading a white paper or signing up for a newsletter, rather than if they purchased a $500 item. I suggest this because I will have a lot more data to work with.

Now back to the example of a 4% conversion rate. If your average CPC (Cost-Per-Click) is $1.00, you are paying about $50 for a conversion. If the initial conversion only produces a lead, then you still need to convert the lead to a sale, which will increase you cost per sale even further. Are those numbers realistic for your business? Can you live with the results? Only you can determine that. My job is to get the average CPC down as low as I can, while still getting qualified visitors. I do that by having lots of relevant keywords with lower CPCs, having compelling, yet qualifying ad copy and using techniques to filter out unwanted impressions and clicks. There is a lot more to it, but these are the basics. If you want to get an idea of what the average CPC might be for some of your most popular keywords, go to SpyFu.com.

There are other factors to consider. Perhaps the most significant being the life-time value of a customer. Once you have acquired a customer, what is the likelihood of them buying from you again? How extensive is your offering? Really successful internet marketers can afford to lose money on the first sale because they have an extensive “back-end”. Meaning they have many other, more profitable products or services they can sell, once they have acquired the customer. If you don’t, then you can’t effectively compete with these advertisers.

Some industries are particularly vulnerable to this situation. It is particularly challenging in markets where the main keywords are relatively short, only 1-2 words, and the competition is fierce. Businesses such as computer repair, software development, locksmith and auto repair. It becomes particularly difficult if you are targeting a nation-wide audience because there is a lot of competition and you often compete with “lead brokers”. These are very skilled internet marketers that have fine-tuned their campaigns to operate on very thin margins.

Here is another challenge that occurs when your most popular keywords are short. It’s very difficult to maintain good quality scores, which means you are forced to bid higher. I consider anything “7/10” or above to be good. The reason is that these keywords tend to be quite broad, meaning lots of advertisers are bidding on them, and the overwhelming element of the quality score is “how the keyword performs across the entire Google system”. Unfortunately, this is something we have no control over. Although, there are tactics we can use that could help minimize this condition.

In summary, some advertisers face a unique set of challenges when it comes to making Google Ads a successful channel, and quite often these advertisers tend to be smaller businesses with limited budgets and lack the experience and commitment necessary to perform an adequate market test. All the more reason to engage the services of a professional. If you only try making it work yourself and fail, you may never know if Google Ads can actually work for you.

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The keyword conundrum

In this post I’ll be discussing the following topics:

  • The evolution of keyword advertising,
  • The relationship between search queries, keywords, ad copy and landing pages
  • Optomizing keywords for maximum ROI
  • Myths about keyword tools

The evolution of keyword advertising

Gone are the days when you could load hundreds, even thousands of keywords into a campaign and allow them to sit idle, waiting for that rare instance when that unique group of words appeared as a user’s search query. Those were the days before Google went public and became accountable to Wall Street. You see, those keywords consumed valuable hard-drive and CPU resources.

But perhaps more important is the realization that back then, it was all about aquiring new advertisers and making Google Ads as easy to use as possible. Today at Google, it’s about cutting costs and increasing profits. How can Google force more advertisers to compete for those precious “top spots”, let alone the first page of search results!

The harsh reality of search engine advertising is that you must know what your prospects are searching for, the search vocabulary of your market and how it relates to what you offer. For example, if you describe your product as “tissues” and prospects are searching for “Kleenex”, you won’t be successful with search engine advertising! Also, you may offer the greatest product or service every conceived, but if no one is searching for it, you won’t be successful.

As advertisers, we can’t control what prospects search for. We can only try to influence what they see when they perform a search. It does little good to optimize your website or build an Google Ads campaign for terms prospects don’t use or don’t use often enough. Therefore, our first task is to identify what users search for, how often and then match that to what you want to promote. Creating a successful campaign requires research, testing and adjusting or as I refer to as, fine-tuning. How all that actually gets done is not trivial.

The relationship between search queries, keywords, ad copy and landing pages

In a perfect world, the words you use to describe your product or service are exactly what prospects would be searching for. Your landing pages and website would be optimized for those terms and you would structure the visitor experience to accommodate prospects who were delivered to your website from your Google Ads ad, based on the search query they used. As you know, that isn’t always the case, but the reality is, that is what Google demands if you are playing by their rules. Therefore, don’t be surprised if I suggest changes to your website to comply with this reality.

If you had the benefit of hindsight, you would first perform the necessary research to know how prospects searched for your product or service, the search vocabulary of your market. Then you would describe your product or service using those words and then you would build your ad groups, ad copy, landing pages and website all around those words.

Unfortunately, what usually happens is just the opposite. You build your website and then you decide to use search engine marketing (Google Ads) to advertise your product or service. It’s then you discover that one or more of the following occurs:

  • The most popular search queries, keywords and ad groups don’t align very well with your landing pages or website design.
  • Google’s quality score algorithm gives you a low grade for “landing page or ad copy relevance” and your CPC is higher than you like.
  • Your Impression Share is lower than you like because your CTR and quality score are low.
  • Your conversion rate is not as good as it could be because you don’t talk about what the prospect was searching for.

At this point you have two options, either live with this sub-optimal situation with regard to CPC and conversion rates or do something to improve your landing pages. See the page on my website titled Google Ads optimized website design.

Now that you have an appreciation for the importance of knowing how prospects search for your product or service, it’s time to take that knowledge and mold it into campaigns, ad groups, keywords with appropriate matching-options and relevant ad copy that you carefully split-test to optimize performance.

When I review a prospect’s account for the first time, one characteristic I notice pretty much every time, is that the advertiser does not understand keyword matching options. This is so important and often is the source of considerable waste and missed opportunity. Proper use of keyword matching options separates the novice from the professional.

Keyword matching-options have a lot to do with how you spend your daily budget or how aggressive you want your campaign to be. Broader keywords and matching-options will bring in more visitors, but may not have the best ROI. There will always be more traffic out there than you can afford to buy (clicks), but having the right account design will allow you to control where that fine line is between the who sees your ad and who doesn’t. See my post titled Who should see your ad.

But wait, we’re not finished. It’s time to return to Google’s need to conserve resources and maximize their profits. That’s because even if you have the most comprehensive list of highly relevant keywords, with carefully configured matching options, tied to the best ad copy, you are still at the mercy of the dreaded Low Search Volume keyword status. That’s right, if by the grace of Google’s infinite wisdom, your keyword doesn’t get enough searches, it will not trigger your ad to be displayed, even if a user types that phrase exactly as you defined it.

In that case, the only way to increase (not guarantee) the chance your ad will display for a specific, low-volume keyword, is to use a broader keyword that encompasses the keyword you want. The downside is that you will also be receiving additional impressions and clicks from other search queries you may not want. This is where negative keywords can really help. For some additional insights on the topic of keyword matching options, especially broad-matched keywords, see my article titled Remnant keyword impressions.

The last point I’d like to make is that every search query is a market unto itself. Actually, Google calls every search query an ad auction. If you’d like to have a better understand of how the auction works, watch this great 9-minute video by Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist titled Introduction to the Google Ad Auction. It’s very well done.

Optomizing keywords for maximum ROI

Having a truly optimized Google Ads campaign comes down to ROI. There will always be more traffic available than you can afford to buy so the question becomes, where is that fine line between traffic that consistently produces a good visitor and traffic that doesn’t? This is a judgment call. Making the right call requires knowledge of the market, your product or service, how Google’s algorithm works and some knowledge of statistics.

In the beginning, I will usually give the client the opportunity to make some decisions and they usually error on the side of receiving more traffic. However, after we have gathered enough statistically significant data, I will make decisions regarding keywords, matching options and negative keywords based on what I believe will deliver the best ROI for the client. Of course, you have the final say.

Myths regarding keyword tools

  • Don’t be fooled into thinking that if you only knew what keywords and ad copy your competitors used, you hold the key to success. There are many important unknown elements such as; keyword matching options, negative keywords, landing pages, offers, visitor experience and much more. There is no substitute for actual conversion data in your account based on prospects that have seen your ad, visited your landing page and taken your offer and converted!
  • While keyword tools can be helpful, they only provide estimates for broad phrases of what everyone searches for. The data in your server logs or your search query reports only tell you what people who clicked on your ad searched for. Conversion tracking data tells you which of those visitors actually took action.
  • Having the best set of keywords will only allow a prospect see your ad. Having the best ad copy only allows the prospect to see your landing page. Once a prospect reaches your web site, the website must do the selling! It must convince the visitor to take the action you want, whether that means filling out a form, sending a message, calling you on the phone or perhaps making a purchase. By limiting your selling to the written word, you lose 93% of your communications muscle. You give up body language, touch and gesture, facial expressions, and tone of voice. And that leaves you with only the meaning of the words themselves, which is 7% of the impact of a full human communication.

In summary, having a successful campaign requires meticulous research, a deep understanding of Google’s algorithm, creative ad copy, a relevant, compelling landing page and a commitment to the fine-tuning process. Nobody ever gets it exactly right when a campaign is first launched and markets are always changing. Google’s policies and algorithm change, competitors come and go, and most advertisers regularly manipulate their bids.

 
Search 2 Sales, LLC, Internet Marketing Services, Dallas, TX

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