Today’s announcement from Google of their new seizure-inducing “Google Instant” search-as-you-type invention immediately made me stop and wonder (after rubbing my eyes from the headache of using it) how Adwords would count impressions on ads as they flash by in milliseconds.
Basically, those fly-by impressions as your ad flickers across the screen aren’t going to destroy your CTR. Looks like they (fortunately) gave this some thought ahead of time:
What changes
New predicted query
Although Google Instant won’t change the way ads are served, ads and search results will now be shown for a new “predicted query.” For example, if someone types “flow” into Google, an algorithm predicts that the user is searching for “flowers” (the predicted query) and therefore displays search listings and ads for flowers. Those results will continue to show unless the next letters that the user types lead to a different predicted query.
How impressions are counted
When someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations:
The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.
The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.
We recommend monitoring your ads’ performance the same way you usually do. Google Instant might increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant can improve the quality of your clicks since it helps people search using terms that more directly connect them with the answers they need. Therefore, your overall campaign performance could improve.
So as usual, if they stick with this as a default option and too many people don’t opt out, they think they’ve got it covered but “monitor your campaigns’ performance just in case it screws up”.
Domainers have long sampled domains by “tasting” them for traffic after they drop to see if they have any revenue potential before committing to a purchase. (EDIT: My friend John Andrews pointed out that domain tasting has been over for a while, but I’m sticking with the analogy:) )
The same principle applies to PPC and can represent one of the fastest and most profitable ways to scale out your campaigns.
The “Keyword Tasting” technique is one of my favorites. You grab a fairly broad type of keyword and toss it against the wall in a new adgroup to see:
a) is there any traffic there
and
b) can the keyword net ANY conversions.
We’re not worried about ROI at this point, we just want to see if there’s any juice there.
I typically let the tasting go on for a few days or enough time to capture enough data to get a look at the “actual search terms” in the Adwords Keywords tab. For most of my campaigns this ends up being a few days and 300-500 clicks.
If a few conversions roll in the broad term, have a look at the specific search terms that netted the conversions and add them as an exact or phrase match to the adgroup (or add them to a net-new adgroup if you like).
If the broadish keyword doesn’t result in any conversions after a decent amount of data, cut it. You’ve just saved yourself a ton of time going “deeper” on a keyword that most likely doesn’t have any conversion juice.
If the “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” approach results in some conversion potential and you can see via the “See Search Terms” button which keywords and match types grabbed those conversions, you’ve got some great new adgroups to expand with the foreknowledge that they can convert.
In a future post we’ll expand on the ‘wide then deep’ approach to keyword expansion. In the meantime, why not try this out today with a new broad keyword and see if you can find any gems!
The integration of the Search Query Report directly into the Keywords tab of your Search campaigns makes it super-easy to see if your keywords or match types are picking up non-converting or irrelevant searches that should really be added as negatives at an adgroup level at least, or at a campaign level if they’re “way out there”.
It should be noted that the search queries (even in the new UI option) can take a couple of days to fully populate with results, so it’s best to look a decently-sized block of time to make sure the data is valid.
To access your search queries, go into an adgroup and select the Keywords tab and the “See Search Terms” button:
Next, if you see an irrelevant or poorly converting keyword you’d like to add as a negative on-the-fly, check the checkbox next to the keyword and hit the “Add as Negative Keyword” button:
This box then pops up allowing you to choose the match type of that negative keyword (it defaults to adding the keyword as an adgroup-level negative keyword) and you can vary your negative match type depending on how surgical you want to get in avoiding a particular keyword or phrase:
Compared to the old method of cutting and pasting from the Search Query Reports to your various adgroups, this is a MUCH easier and faster way to improve your campaign’s targeting.
Cutting Display Network Placements On-the-Fly
The same approach also works for adding negative site placements to your campaign with some small differences.
To exclude placements quickly (and with all the conversion data right at your fingertips), in your content network campaign, select an adgroup, then hit the “Networks” tab.
On the Networks tab, regardless of whether you’re using Automatic or Managed placements, you’ll see a full list of domains (or URLs) where your ads are showing and how they’re converting.
If you see a dud, hit the checkbox next to the junk placement and click the “Exclude Placements” button:
On the popup box, select whether you want to exclude the domain or URL placement for your entire campaign or only this adgroup. Because you can often kill the golden goose in another adgroup by doing a campaign-level exclusion, it’s usually best to stick to the adgroup level and evaluate each of your adgroup’s exclusion placements on a group-by-group basis.
All in all, the consolidation in the new UI is speeding things up considerably, it just takes some getting used to:)
As Google methodically picks off the reports in the Adwords Report Center, moving reporting to an ad-hoc model in the main campaign UI, some interesting little tricks are popping up.
In the past, if you tried to keep track of how much traffic Google is actually sending you compared to how much is truly available, you ran a campaign report and checked the box for “Impression Share”.
Now, that feature is gone from the Report Center, but with the new changes, you can tack it right to your campaign list columns:
Now you’ll be able to view your Impression Share in real time right from the campaigns overview screen:
Ever thought it would be nice if Google sent you a ping if your top keywords suddenly saw their Quality Scores tank? How about when you lose your top favorite top ad position?
Google’s new filters give you the ability to configure custom alarms that can alert you via email or SMS when one of your top keywords (or any keyword for that matter) goes inactive or stops firing ads for budget reasons, sudden Quality Score drops, or moves by your competitors.
In addition to watching for traffic stopages, you can also monitor:
Avg CPCs
Spend Levels (Cost)
CTRs
Avg Ad Positions
Clicks
Impressions
Conversion Counts
Conversion Rates
Costs-per-Conversion
You can set up these custom alerts at the Campaign, Adgroup, or Keyword level for specific, selected keywords or adgroups, or ALL of the keywords or adgroups in your campaign if you like.
To enable custom alerts, click on the “More Actions” drop down likeso:
Here’s a screenshot of the settings for doing this at a keyword level, where if the impressions on a top keyword disappear (for whatever reason, but usually QS drop) you’ll get a ping from Google via email (SMS if you give them your mobile number, but who are we kidding they probably already have your number anyway:p ):
I use an alert for “if this top keyword gets less than 1000 impressions in a given day, let me know” to keep on top of critical quality score changes:
Jen at PPC Hero also had some great suggestions on how to use the new Segments capability as well.
Do you have a favorite new alert to keep you on top of your campaigns? Share it in the comments!
You just signed up, selected a keyword terms – probably used your SEO keyword list – put in a few bids, and hit go. Some tweaking here, some tweaking there. Life was good.
These days, with quality scores, ruthless levels of competition (including Google competing against the advertisers), a wealth of segmentation options, and complex analysis and reporting, PPC has become more demanding, necessitating the need for more in depth training.
Should you bid on your brand? What match type should you use if you do?
Do AdWords Site Links increase yield? Or do they charge you for what you were already getting free?
When does it make sense to use any of those options?
Before you get down to detail, there are some higher level skills you should read up on, too. The fundamentals of PPC are similar to established channels. Because these channels have been around a long time, they’ve build up a lot of time-tested theory. You can apply much of this theory to PPC, without having to repeat the same mistakes.
1. Study Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is a form of advertising that communicates with the consumer using advertising techniques such as fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and street advertising. The techniques are very similar to PPC. Direct marketers target a group of people, seek to convince them using well-crafted written/pictorial advertising, and try to illicit a response and/or purchase.
The great thing about direct marketing theory is that there is so much of it. Direct marketing has been going since the 1860s. In order to be profitable, direct marketing had to ruthlessly test what worked, and what didn’t, else direct marketers could blow through a lot of money in print and distribution costs.
There are a lot of great books on the craft of direct marketing theory, but one good place to start is Tested Advertising Methods, by John Caples. Whilst the examples offered by the book are getting a bit long in the tooth, the psychology underlying the approach – how to appeal to your market segment using effective copy and constant testing – is sound.
2. Understand Your Customer
PPC is a sales channel.
A lot of sales theory is directly applicable to PPC, particularly in terms of identifying your customer, determining what they want, and making an offer at a price they want to pay.
Sales relies on three aspects:
Quality Prospects – you need to target the people who are prepared to buy.
Your keyword selection process should involve weeding out keyword terms that sound like they are relevant, but do not convert.
For example, someone looking for “[keyword] coupon” has already made a decision to buy, they’re just looking for a discount before they do.
The person who searches on the keyword, but uses no qualifier, may be much further back in the sales funnel. They require a very different pitch to get them to the point where they are ready to give over their credit card details.
Sales theory, particularly relating to sales funnels, will help you pitch correctly.
Quality Presentation – you need to make a persuasive case. This comes down to your copy and landing page style. Are you responding to peoples needs, and are you doing so in a credible way?
Numbers – you need to get infront of as many people as possible, once you’ve selected quality prospects and got a quality presentation. Scale is near infinite in PPC, given the range of keywords and channels.
3. Understand Your Strategic Goals
What do you want your PPC campaign to achieve?
Whilst the obvious answer is “more sales!”, there are other ojectives you may wish to consider. You may want to increase market share, keep expenses under control, increase your profitability, increase your profit margins, or a mix of the above. Starting a PPC campaign without clear strategic goals makes it difficult to measure your achievement in a broader sense.
Another way of clarifying this aspect is to ask yourself “what problem am I trying to solve?” Are you trying to get more/better…..what? Why use PPC at all? Would another channel solve those goals more easily? Where does PPC fit into the overall business strategy?
If you have a regularly updated business case, it makes strategic planning easier than if you just wing it. A business case doesn’t need to be complicated. It can occupy a single page.
Be clear about where PPC fits into the broader picture.
Whilst the content network has had a bad reputation in the past, this has often been due to poorly targeted campaigns. Marketers have simply copied their existing search campaigns to the content network, and failed miserably.
The content network requires a different strategy. There are two key aspects to doing well on the content network: distraction and demographics.
Distract Your Audience
When a person searches Google, they are actively looking for something specific. When a text ad matches their search, they are likely to consider it relevant, and click on it.
Contrast this activity with the content network.
On the content network, the reader is viewing a page of content. They aren’t necessarily hunting for something specific. The advertising, therefore, is peripheral. Advertising on the content network needs to distract visitors away from their activity.
The content network offers more formats than the search network. You can run text, video and graphical ads. They are also different sizes and shapes. Here’s a rundown on the formats from Google.
You should develop ads in a number of different formats to test which works best for you. I recommend you create ads for the most common first, which are the Leaderboard (728x 90), the Medium Rectangle (300×250) and the Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600). Move on to the other sizes if you need more reach, or to target sites that only offer specific formats.
Of course, if you’re only using text ads, you don’t need to consider ad format sizes, but I strongly suggest you do develop graphical advertising. It gives you more options to distract.
When advertising on the content network, don’t be afraid to be outrageous. Remember, you’re aiming to distract people. So use imperatives! Offer free stuff. Use all the hooks of the direct marketing trade. In particular, focus on strong benefit statements.
You have very little time to make an impression with people who don’t actually have your product or service in mind. Advertising on the content network is more like print and television advertising than search advertising. The search network is about seeking. The content network is about discovery. To create and drive demand.
Separate out your content advertising from your search advertising. Run two separate campaigns. Don’t simply run the exact same campaign you are running on the search network.
The two are very different beasts.
Identify Your Market…..Right Down To The Individual
Because the Google content network attempts to match your ads to pages it determines your visitors might read, it pays to know who you buyer is, and what they are reading.
For example, grab a celebrity magazine and flip through the advertising. You’ll likely find weight loss advertisements, grooming advertisements, etc. This is because the advertisers have identified their target demographic. They know that people who are interested in celebrities are also likely to be interested in products a, b & c. You can do the same thing online.
In the above example, the keywords in the ad group would need to include keywords related to celebrities, even though the advertisement is advertising weight loss products.
Use the most common terms as the basis for your keyword list. This way, you’ll appear on sites that closely match your demographic. You’ve given Google the terms that would most likely appear in their copy. Remember to still use negative operators on keywords that don’t appear to fit.
Keyword terms should also be specific. Try to avoid using terms that have double meanings i.e. Apple could mean a fruit, or Apple computers.Use two or three word phrases, where necessary, to add clarity.
The Adwords placement tool is very powerful. Once you’ve established your demographic, you can drill down further by targeting specific sites. You can tailor ads and entire campaigns for just those sites.
Ask yourself: who is the customer? What are their favorite TV shows? What magazines do they read? What are their interests? What are their favorite websites? Seek out sites that fit the demographic. Use the same keywords in your keyword list as they do in their copy. Target you advertisements directly to the the most appropriate sites. Your job is then to distract readers enough so they click on your ads. At least you’re in front of the right crowd!
Identifying and isolating demographics, and learning the art of distraction, is key to success on the content network.
Unless you’re lucky enough to be selling something absolutely unique, you’ll face competition in PPC. How you position against your competitors is crucial to your success.
Positioning is not simply a case of writing better ads, bidding higher, or occupying the top space. Positioning starts before you get anywhere near a PPC campaign.
It starts with research.
What Are Your Competitors Offering?
First, you need to get a sense of the market.
Whilst it’s possible to offer the same thing as everyone else, and win with great PPC chops, such a position is tenuous. Someone can make a more compelling offer. A competitor may offer something free whilst other bidders are charging for a service. They’ll likely win, even if their PPC skills aren’t great.
Start by making a list of what your competitors are offering. Conduct a keyword search and make a note of the text in their ads. What is their offer, and how are they framing it?
For example:
Are they competing on price? i.e. concepts such as cheap, discount, deal, sale etc
Are they competing on quality? i.e. concepts such as finest, luxury, exclusive
Are they competing on range? ie. concepts such as largest, widest, comprehensive
Are they competing on customer service?
Are they competing on free shipping?
Are they offering loss-leaders?
Are they competing on convenience?
Are they competing on security?
It’s likely your competitors will be competing on a number of these advantages at once.
This type of analysis can also hint at what works i.e. those bidders occupying the highest position over time most likely understand what their audience wants, else they would be unlikely to keep spending. Pay careful attention to their wording.
This analysis can also hint at what is missing. For example, you know that your audience is concerned about security, but none of your competitors mention it.
You should also look at the top SERP results. They are your competitors, too. Whilst some listings might occupy high positions based largely on aggressive SEO, as opposed to offering exactly what the searcher wants, you might find some great information if any of them provide a forum for user feedback. For example, forums, customer reviews, etc. Just by scanning customer review sections on the likes of Amazon, you can get into the minds of your customer, and find out the features most important to them, and/or the biggest problems they have with the existing offerings.
What Are your Strengths?
Now you know something about your competitors, make a list of your own advantages.
Think in terms of features and benefits. A feature is an aspect of your product or service. For example, “3G connectivity”. A benefit is the positive result of using that feature. i.e. “faster mobile browsing”.
Making such a list will help you craft your ads.
Be succinct. Not only is this forced on you by the format of PPC, but also by the environment. People scan the screen. You’ve got very little time to hook them in, especially when your listing is one of many. So make sure your features and benefits are stated explicitly, and match the intent of the search term.
Match Search Intent With Ad Copy & Landing Page
You should now have a list of a few unique benefits, or at least benefits that sound better than those offered by your competitors. You have crafted what is know in marketing as a “unique selling proposition“.
The beauty of search is that you can keep carving the market thinner and thinner until you find one. By crafting your ad to a specific keyword term, particularly one with little competition, you may appear unique, even if you’re not – it’s just that your competitors haven’t bothered to advertise against that keyword term.
Write your ad copy and landing pages around your unique selling proposition. You’ll be highly relevant and constantly reinforce your competitive advantage.
Re-check your competition to ensure you stand out, not just in terms of your ad copy, but your landing page copy and user experience, too. When a visitor lands on your page, they must be convinced you are not only relevant to their needs, but you offer something better than the advertisers surrounding you.
Search marketing is typically associated with PPC and SEO. However, there’s an overlooked aspect of search that can provide some very powerful data – internal search.
Internal searches occur, obviously, when a person doesn’t find what they need on the page they land on.
You don’t often see internal search boxes displayed prominently on PPC landing pages, however if users do not find what they are looking for on your landing page, they are likely to click back.
However, if they make a further search on your site, you have another chance to get in front of them and collect data about their needs. You can then feed this information back into your PPC campaign by adding these search keywords to your ad groups and by creating new landing pages to target them.
Search lets users control their own destiny and assert independence from websites’ attempt to direct how they use the Web. Testing situations routinely validate this. A typical comment is: “I don’t want to have to navigate this site the way they want me to. I just want to find the thing I’m looking for.” This is why many users go straight to the home page search function.
If the user doesn’t find what they are looking for on your landing page, then it makes sense to offer them a search option.
This also provides valuable insight about what might be “broken” on your site i.e. the areas where you aren’t giving users what they want. For example, if your top internal search query is “contact details” you may have inadvertently buried this information.
If your analytics package is comprehensive, you can link the PPC keyword they clicked-thru on to their internal search activity. This gives you a valuable insight into what may really be on their mind when they use a particular keyword. You can then re target your PPC campaign accordingly.
Try:
Placing a search box in a prominent place on your landing page – Neilsen recommends top right hand corner, but also consider placing a search box at the end of your copy, or near your desired action.
Track keyword terms in your analytics – once you have a list of keyword terms over, say, a week, you should start seeing patterns. These patterns might point to content that you aren’t providing, lack of clarity in your web design, or poorly targeted keyword terms i.e. the user searches on a keyword, but their intent is unclear
Make sure site search is accurate – Neilsen also noted that poor site search is next to useless. Check out Google’s Custom Search offering. There are various alternatives, of course.
Use site overlays – Some analytics packages offer site overlays that tell you where on the page users click the most. If you’ve got your ducks lined up, users really shouldn’t be using the search box in great numbers. If you’re getting a lot of clicks on the search box, it’s time to tweak your landing page content and structure.
Examine the exit rate on your search results page – if it is high, it indicates people still aren’t finding what they need in your search results. Consider adding appropriate content to your site and reviewing the relevancy of your search results
Internal search can provide some great data. It’s especially useful if your landing pages are getting a lot of click-backs, and you’re not sure why.
Shortly after going pink, Google has now decided to extend AdWords by placing their comparison ads below the AdWords ads. so if you search for [credit cards] in the UK there are now 4 ads above the organic search results.
In addition to including the comparison ads as a separate ad unit, you can see multiple of the AdWords ads in the above picture have sitelink ad extensions, which means that the #1 organically ranked site is the 11th link on the page. On Google’s last conference call Jonathan Rosenberg highlighted how this feature has moved from brand/navigational queries onto broader search terms like [flowers]:
The click to call ads on the high end mobile phones are doing very well. The click through rates go up 6% when you put ads with a phone number, 8% when you put a local address. So, click to call is doing very well. It’s easy to see some of those. If you want, just take a look for yourself if you tried travel agency from a smartphone, you will see under thousands of active campaigns on click to call, so you can take a look at that.
Site links is also making pretty good progress. We’ve given you examples on past calls where you type a big brand like Sears and then you see the more useful links that you can get through and the click through rates on those can go up as much as 30% over the ads without the site links. But we changed the way we do site links and we’ve added a new one line format. And that also allow site links to show up in more places. You can try flowers if you want to see that. Then the other format that’s getting some adoption is the – we are adding the seller ratings, which shows merchants ratings out of six stars aggregated from reviews on the Web. You see that if you look for things like digital cameras. And that’s doing pretty well as well.
The net result of new ad extensions and new ad formats is the organic results keep getting pushed down. Of course it only impacts a few results for now, but over time it will spread…just like Google Checkout buttons on ads, advertiser ratings, maps, product search, video results, and news results have. Each new feature gives your ads a new dimension to test. Couple in geo-targeting and dayparting and the possibilities are endless.
