Google AdWords is a very impressive advertising platform. It provides us with numerous tools and features to work with and make our campaigns better. As long as you have the right mindset, resources and strategy, you can make your campaigns rock (and make your Conversion Rate Optimization Agency very happy).
I’ve always said: “you just have to get creative and analytic with the tools you are provided with.”
So with that in mind, I decided to create this guide with twelve ways to advertisers take their campaigns to the next level, especially when focusing on conversions. Please keep in mind that the features and techniques listed below are not sorted in any priority order. You decide which ones to implement first based on your specific case:
1. Start Rotating Ads to Optimize for Conversions
Ad Rotation is a basic feature that you put in place when you’ve already accrued a certain number of conversions (no specific number) and have started converting regularly. This feature gives you the power to rotate through several different ad versions to find out which works best for a given set of keywords.
It only makes sense to have your ads “Optimize for Conversions” when that is your main purpose, but when is it not? If you’re “Optimizing for Clicks”, you’re assuming all clicks turn into customers at the same rate. The ads that serve more and receiving the most clicks are not always the ones driving leads and customers.
2. Ad Scheduling Bid Adjustments
When it comes to e-commerce you may want to have your campaign running 24/7, since customers can complete a purchase online 24/7. However, certain times of day may generate lots of expensive clicks, but few purchases.
Use adwords to report on the hours of the day and days of the week to when your customers are really converting.
It may pay to schedule ads for e-commerce campaigns that exclude early hours of the day (after midnight and before dawn). I call this the “zombie hours” because I rarely see customers taking action during these hours. At these hours, customers just browsing around and this turns out to be a big expense that leads to higher cost per action (CPA) and lower return on ad investment (ROI).
You may see something different. It makes sense to exclude some hours and adjust bids based on the times you are experiencing more conversions.
For example, in the screenshot below you can see that I started doing ad scheduling (4 am – midnight), because in this particular case, there were very little to no conversions between these hours. Hence, I’ve raised bids on Tuesday and Friday to maximize the conversions on these days, since they convert very well, at a lower cost and lower position.
3. Location Target Bid Adjustments
If you’re running a nationwide campaign or one that is targeting multiple locations (states, cities, metro areas, etc.), take some time to figure out where most of your conversions are coming from. You would be surprised on how differently users behave from different locations, and it is sometimes best to target them geographically with targeted tactics.
The Adwords Dimensions tab gives you a good general insight on how each location contributes to your overall campaign’s performance. Use the “User Locations” View.
I guarantee you that if you have been running a campaign for a long time and have not taken the time to look into this, you will find locations that have a ridiculous cost/conversion or no conversions at all, representing an unnecessary expense for your campaign.
In this case, it is the best to exclude these locations from your existing campaign. If these locations are really important to your business and you want to really exploit them, you can target them on a separate campaign with a separate approach. All of these, after building an effective strategy based on that location’s user behavior and data pulled from Google analytics.
4. Bid Strategy: Enable Enhanced CPC
Enhanced CPC tells Google that they can raise your bids on ads that seem to generate more conversions. Use this feature carefully, because it works for some campaigns and not for others. Nevertheless, AdWords is all about testing, optimizing, analyzing results, and making decisions. Don’t be afraid to try new things, use features you have never used before or don’t understand very well. I always encourage everyone I talk to about AdWords to get creative and think out the box and get out of your comfort zone.
One of the best scenarios where I would recommend using this setting is when your campaign is in its early stages. If your campaign is converting regularly and has at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days, then it is probably eligible for Conversion Optimizer (which we will discuss further).
Enhanced CPC is 1 step away from Conversion Optimizer, which is why it is more reasonable to work with this setting if your campaign doesn’t have that much historical conversion data, yet you are looking forward to drive more conversions.
Some advertisers and business owners are skeptical about using the tool, because they are afraid of “giving Google control their bidding strategy”, which is why they take the conservative road and stick to manual bidding (this can also be the case of Enhanced CPC).
In order to have success with Conversion Optimizer, one must have solid knowledge of how it works and be careful how you set your CPA bids in order to obtain your goals.
The Conversion Optimizer is a very powerful tool. There are essentially two bidding types:
Max CPA:
Use this bidding type when budget is not limited or your CPA (Cost per-acquisition) is not very high. The algorithm will try to maximize the amount of conversions based on the conversion data.
Upon selecting this option, it will suggest a Max CPA bid (the most you are willing to pay for a conversion) based on the historical conversion data.
Target CPA:
Use this bidding type when your CPA is too high and you want to make it more profitable. This option helps you to reduce the CPA while continuing to bring in the same or higher amount of conversions (Google AdWords will also suggest to start Target CPA bid based on your historical data).
Before choosing any of these bidding options, you need to figure out what exactly it is that you want to achieve; whether this is an increase in the amount of conversions while sacrificing a higher CPA, or if you are struggling to reduce your CPA and trying to find a solution on bringing this down.
Something very important is to remember that once you choose your bidding type, the selected CPA bid will be applied to all your ad groups. You would need to review this afterward and adjust it accordingly.
Typically, every ad group has a different CPA and it should not be set to the default CPA bid suggested by the system. Adjust it according to your criteria, based on what CPA is best for each ad group.
6. Focus on Converting Keywords and Ads
On a campaign that is performing very well, there are ad groups, keywords and ads that are the main drivers for these conversions. Sometimes, 1 to 3 ad groups are responsible for 60% of the campaign’s overall results. The other ad groups convert every now and again at a decent CPA, and that is why we decide to keep them running.
- Once you’ve identified which are these keywords and ads, create variations, try to identify other potential keyword variations for your campaign based on the ones that have converted.
- Create keyword variations in different match types to cover more ground.
- Create ad variations based on the best performing ones, whether this is just changing the call to action, headlines or parts of your description lines – even small changes can have an impact.
- Analyze how these elements are performing over time and perform bid adjustments based on what has been the best ad rank to work with.
These are just a few of the creative and analytic adjustments that you can do with your keywords and ads.
7. Implement the Best Converting Ad in Other Ad Groups that Are Applicable
I like to compare ads’ performance across my campaign. There is always one specific ad that is your “killer ad”. It is important that we identify why this ad does better than the others. Whether it is a result of the call to action, description line, or benefits mentioned in the ad.
Once you’ve identified the driving factor, compare this ad with ads in other ad groups. If all ad groups are promoting the same products or services, but with different keywords, it would be beneficial to start using this ad across all other ad groups that are applicable.
8. Pause Non Converting Keywords to Focus Your Budget on Converting Elements
A beneficial practice is to perform a campaign evaluation at the end of every month, every 3 months and every 6 months. This facilitates a better grasp of how the campaign is doing from time to time. Performing a monthly or quarterly assessment is important, because it helps you identify historical trends, spikes and areas of opportunities.
One of these areas of opportunities is reallocating your budget to focus on what is actually being productive. For instance, you might have a campaign with 200+ keywords, but less than 50% of those keywords are productive.
I encourage you to take a look at your campaign at a keyword level, create a customized filter to show only keywords that have not converted in the past 3 months, and another filter for keywords that have converted at a higher CPA than your actual goal (or above ideal CPA).
You will be surprised of how many keywords will show in that filter, and how much money has been wasted on them throughout the duration of your ads.
Once you make a full assessment and decide to pause most of these keywords, you will have space to exploit your budget and focus higher bids on productive keywords.
9. For E-commerce Campaigns: Use Google Analytics E-commerce Transactions
If you’re running a campaign for an e-commerce website, it is crucial that you work with Google Analytics and that the e-commerce transactions tracking is setup properly. Google Analytics will provide you with an abundance of data to assist you in the success of your ad campaign.
With E-commerce Transactions tracking, you have the most granular level data; data for strategic account management, and business driven decision making.
As long as your AdWords account is linked to Google Analytics and reporting accurately, you will be able to determine:
- revenue driven per ad group
- per keyword
- per ad
- bounce rate
- visit duration
- and more.
Analyzing an AdWords e-commerce campaign through Analytics can be eye opening. One can be under the impression that the ad group or keyword that drives the most conversions in AdWords is the most profitable one, but there are times when having more conversions doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue.
The prices for each product differ and that is why an evaluation in Analytics is indispensable. You will be able to determine which ad groups and keywords are producing the most revenue and which ones need improvement.
10. Add Converting Keywords from Analytics that Perform Well in Other Traffic Sources
With goals setup in either Analytics, or “Ecommerce Transactions Tracking”, you are able to analyze and determine which sources are more productive for you; whether this is Google Organic, Direct Channel, Google CPC, etc.
One of the most competitive sources is Google Organic, particularly if your client is doing SEO and has decent ranking in Google Organic SERP. This is something that you should exploit and add the benefits from that source to your AdWords campaign.
One approach is to review Google Organic Source to see what keywords are driving conversions. To do this:
Go to Analytics > Go to All Traffic > Select Google / Organic > as Primary Dimension, choose Keywords.
Select a larger time frame than just the last 30 days, and do a comparison with the keywords in your campaign and other keywords from this source to determine which ones you have not implemented. Add them to your campaign and you will see results if implemented with the best practices.
11. E-commerce: Focus on Top Converting Products
Another way to exploit Google Analytics and E-commerce Tracking is by easily identifying which your best selling products are, how much revenue they represent to your total and work with them accordingly.
In Analytics, under the Ecommerce Overview, you will see: Your top selling products
Review this list however you want, within the interface or by doing a csv export, and run with it. Research the life of your campaign and see which of these products you are not advertising directly (as in using targeted keywords with the name of the products), include these in your campaign, tightly themed with some killer ads, you’re all set!
12. Explore Other Campaign Types Such as a Remarketing Campaign
From small to large companies, search campaign is one of the most effective online marketing efforts when your purpose is direct response. However, you can’t disregard the fact that there are other marketing channels to be explored and exploited.
Some marketers and business owners still are hesitant to expand their marketing efforts to other channels once they are doing well with a Search Marketing campaign. It only makes sense to invest more to get more. If you limit yourself with budget, you are limiting the reach of your success.
That is why expanding to other marketing efforts is so important, once you’ve already killed it with one channel.
There are so many other effective campaign types and efforts such as:
- Remarketing – Remarketing lets you show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web
- Display Campaign -You can reach a wide range of customers with broad interests, choose which sites or pages to appear on, and engage users with appealing ad formats when ads are in the display network.
- Product Listing Ads – A unique ad format that allows you to include rich product information like an image, title, price, promotional message, and your store or business name.
- Shopping Campaigns – Shopping campaigns are a better way to manage and optimize Product Listing Ads to promote your products online using retail-centric tools.
- Dynamic Search Ads – Dynamic Search Ads automatically show your ad based on the content of your website.
Don’t be afraid to expand and explore other marketing efforts, as you can see there are many options available to you.
Be Analytic, Creative and Always Think Out the Box
The Online Marketer that works on AdWords platform and doesn’t use Google Analytics for a better grasp on their user behavior analysis or to track ROI to produce measurable results, should now be expanding their marketing efforts with Google Analytics.
I encourage everyone who is still not working with the combination of these tools to get started – more than likely, you competition is using them already. If you are passionate about AdWords and Google Analytics, your deeper understanding and use of all that Google has to offer, you will stop at nothing short of success in your marketing efforts. Once you have these components in place, you should strongly consider which Conversion Optimization Services you can utilize to get maximum value of of your precious paid traffic.
“Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.” – Napoleon Hill
Derek Hooker is Chief of Search Marketing at White Shark Media™. He is both Google AdWords Qualified and Bing Ads Accredited. Derek is determined in constantly providing his Clients top results via his a ROI/customer care-driven approach. He specializes in both eCommerce and local search campaigns. You connect with Derek on GooglePlus and LinkedIn.
For further reading on maximizing conversions through Google, please read the following articles:
It’s All About You: The Future of High Quality Link-building
A New Kind of Marketing Battery: Google’s New Smart Lists
You Are What You Wear: Why Conversion Scientists Wear a Lab Coat
News & EventsWhy do superheroes wear costumes when a simple mask would suffice? What is behind the legend of the “Power Tie?”
Why do Conversion Scientists wear a lab coat?
This is one of the questions I answer in my interview with Roger Dooley for the Brainfluence Podcast. Roger is one smart cookie, and our conversation flows to a number of interesting topics.
You should certainly give this a listen, or pop over the the Brainfluence Blog to read the transcript.
Subscribe to Podcast
This interview originally appeared on Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence Podcast.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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Use These Surprising Web Tactics to Get More Phone Leads
Lead GenerationFor many of our clients, phone calls are far more valuable to the business than a completed form. You should prioritize phone calls when:
You get two scientists for the price of one.
Brian Massey and Joel Harvey – The Conversion Scientists – talk about the tactics that they used on a website to make the phone ring without compromising form fills.
Getting the Phone to Ring: How the Conversion Scientists Enticed New Clients to Call with One Simple Change
Subscribe to Podcast
This originally appeared on the LeadPages ConversionCast.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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It's Too Late to Optimize. It's Too Laaaaaate.
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingOne Republic’s breakout hit in 2007 was “Apologize.” It’s a very sad-yet-beautiful tune.
It’s also one of those songs that our brains like to play with.
“It’s too late to order fries. It’s too laaaaate.”
Every year when September rolls around, my brain hears a different word than “Apologize.”
“It’s too late to optimize. It’s too laaaaaate.”
Do you hear it? Many of the businesses we work with have huge spikes in traffic during the November and December holiday season. Unfortunately, if we hear from them in September, we have to confess that they’ve missed the window to do meaningful conversion optimization before the holiday rush locks everything down.
“It’s too late to optimize…”
It may not be too late to optimize.
Right now, it’s not too late to optimize. We can make meaningful progress on your conversion rate before Black Friday and Cyber Monday hit.
If you would like to ride the holiday season with 10% or 15% more sales, we can help you.
But we have to start soon.
Contact us now and ask about our Conversion Catalyst™, our proven 120-day process for finding improvements quickly and scientifically.
Optimize so you don’t have to apologize.
You tell me that you need me, then you go and cut me down.
You tell me that you’re sorry, didn’t think I’d turn around, and say.
It’s too late to optimize. It’s too laaaaaate.
Before You Pop the Champagne, Do Some Post-test Analysis [INFOGRAPHIC]
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingOne of the best reasons to do website optimization is for the wins, when you’ve found a change that delivers real revenue to the bottom line.
But before you celebrate, check out this infographic for Marshall Downy’s sobering presentation at Which Test Won’s The Live Event. The event was held in Austin, Texas, The Conversion Capital of the World.
Marshall is with Build.com and gave several examples of post test analysis that changed the decisions he would make based on the pure test data.
What is post-test analysis? It’s what comes after you’ve completed a split test or multivariate test and have a winning change.
The problem is that we often can’t test the right metric to determine if a winner is actually helping the business. A typical example of this is products with long sales cycles. You can’t really test much if you’re waiting six months to see which leads close. You can increase the lead conversion rate, but you’ll always wonder if the lead quality was the same.
Another example is subscription services. Your test may show you how to get more subscribers, but what if the cancellation rate goes up?
Marshall lists the following types of post-test analysis to help us evaluate the true impact of our test results.
1. Customer Satisfaction Scores – If the customers aren’t as satisfied, it may not matter if you’re selling more.
2. Return Rate – If significantly more people are returning the product, increased sales may not have been good for profits.
3. Profitability – I can increase your conversion rates by slashing your prices, but will that really help the business?
4. Customer Lifetime Value – An important metric for subscription and repeat-purchase businesses.
5. Brand- and Category-specific sales – What if we increase sales of one product line at the cost of another. Also see “Cannibalism.”
6. Signup to Purchase Rate – You may get more triers, but are they turning into buyers?
Marshall didn’t share his slides, but here is my Instagraphic infographic from his presentation.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
CRO Secrets of The Conversion Scientist [VIDEO]
Conversion OptimizationBrian Massey is a professional website optimizer. He runs the company Conversion Sciences and is the author of the book Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Formulas of The Conversion Scientist.
In this interview, Alex Harris uncovers:
1. The real reason Conversion Optimization works.
2. How his company gets the most out of a website.
3. A secret trick for getting higher conversion rates out of sliding headers.
Visit Alex Harris Marketing Optimization Blog.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Listener comments
Christine Draper said, “I was struck with your point about people being drawn to movement. Love the idea of a high converting slideshow.”
Paul Colaianni said, “Wow, great take away on the static image test. Gotta try that! Great interview for sure!”
ClearlyInfluential said, “Thanks for the advice!”
Celest Horton commented, “Such a great interview alex harris – alexdesigns. I LOVE Brian’s stressing the importance of optimization is really understanding one’s listeners or followers so that we can really work harder to serve them and it becomes a win / win situation!”
Justin Williams liked when Brian said, “Our definition of optimization is understanding your visitors.” He commented, “I certainly agree with you on this one. Great advice, Brian!”
Charlie Poznek quoted Brian saying, “With every test, you learn something.” He continues, “So very true! Test, test, and test some more to get the most information you can. Thanks for a great episode!”
Anthony Tran was very kind, saying, “Wow Brian is truly the expert in this arena. I learned a ton from listening to this episode. I like how he mentioned that the best way to ask questions is to make sure it’s an open-ended question … something that can’t be answered with a simple yes. Get’s your audience wondering and wanting to learn more.”
Amber Hurdle liked Brian’s comment that, “You have to address [the offer] before you have permission to talk about yourself.” She said, “Wow. That is the best part of it all. I have so much room to grow, but I do try! This is simply more to pull from as I move forward. Thanks, gents!”
FireStartersFireStarters said, “Great advice from Brian! Reminds me of measure twice, cut once to get it right. Thanks for the highly valuable interview Alex, great as always and looking forward to leveraging moving forward.”
Here's What a $10 Million A/B Test Looks Like to Us
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingWe don’t really know what $10 million in cash looks like, but we do know what $10 million in additional revenue looks like to us: it looks like winning A/B test results.
It’s the graphs and spreadsheets that calculate the impact of often small changes on the fortunes of an online business. Sometimes, we print out some of our favorite winning tests and roll around in them.
Each graph represents a series of steps designed to pull stubborn revenue from online businesses. The well may have looked dry to our clients, but our process is a proven way to get that old well gushing again.
Before we can roll around in the winnings, we have to do a number of very important steps.
Choosing the Right Hypotheses
When we start a project, we don’t know what is going to work. However, we have a lot of good ideas. Our job is to figure out which will raise the conversion rates and revenue for the business.
Designing A/B Tests
We design tests that will tell us exactly what persuades more visitors to act. Is it the copy, the images, the layout or the trust symbols?
Coding and Design
We do the coding and creative work. We’re a turnkey operation for any business.
Execution
You can’t learn anything until you launch the A/B tests. We execute a test and let it run until the statisticians are happy.
Harvesting
When a winner is found, our clients expect to see the results when winning changes are rolled out onto the site. We call this harvesting the revenue found in the tests.
Ask Why
We then have to ask a very difficult question: Why did visitors respond to a winning treatment? In this business there are no answers, only better-informed questions.
Our answers to the question, “Why” are simply the hypotheses that need additional testing. This takes us back to the beginning.
It is the cycle of constant testing that turns online businesses into online leaders.
If you’re site is ready, we will take your site through two test complete cycles. It promises to be quite a ride.
To see if you’re ready, contact Conversion Sciences and schedule a call. Who knows. You could be rolling around in your own million-dollar graphs before long.
Tides of Your Website and Tests that Lie [AUDIO]
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingWhat if this test had been stopped on Thursday?
We encourage every online marketer to begin experimenting with split testing as soon as possible. It is a skillset that empowers marketing to really understand their visitors and generate more revenue from existing traffic.
One of the first hurdles you will have to get through is the “damn lying test” phenomenon. This is when a test has been run and has found a way to significantly increase results. The confidence level reported by the testing tool is 95%. You are going to be a hero.
Then you roll out the change to the site and nothing happens. Conversions don’t go up. Revenue per visit doesn’t move. What’s going on?
It’s the Damn Lying Test. One of the reasons tests lie is that they didn’t take into account the ebb and flow of traffic on your site. Tests must take into account peak and off-peak times. Form most sites, a test must run for a full week and end on seven-day boundaries.
How can you discover the rise and fall of tides in your website?
In Ride The Tides Of Your Website To Make More Money With A/B Split Testing, I discuss the various cycles and how to detect them on your site using analytics.
Listen to me read the column
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe to the Podcast
If you enjoyed this, please leave a review on iTunes!
I provide graphs and examples to illustrate a variety of website tides:
Understanding the rise and fall of the tides in your website will help you design better tests that deliver results you can take to the bank. Use your knowledge of website tides and some discipline to steadily increase the profitability of your site.
Special thanks to Craig Sullivan for inspiring this column with his Digital Elite Camp presentation 20 Simple Ways to Mess Up Your AB Testing.
This shop on a busy street is split testing, and you won't believe what they sell.
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingA “split” is not usually considered a good thing in the world of prophylactics. However, a condom shop that is “split testing” is going to have happy customers and prosperous owners.
I had the great pleasure of visiting Estonia and the Netherlands on a speaking tour. While in the Netherlands I stayed in a real 19th century windmill, hung out in an 18th century farm house, and walked by a condom shop housed in a 16th century building.
There are a lot of old places in the Netherlands.
I mention the condom shop because I discovered that this shop, called Condomerie® was split testing their store front.
It begs an important question: if a condom shop in the red light district of Amsterdam is split testing, why aren’t you? We can get you started.
While I was impressed that the Condomerie was split testing their products, I was just as excited about the number of condom jokes I could make in a blog post.
Start counting.
The Windows of Condomerie
The store front of the Condomerie was tasteful, consisting of two large windows separated by a door. In each window a selection of condoms were well-hung, having been blown up like a balloon to show off the size and shape.
I found the collection of colorful condom most interesting. As you can see from the photo below, these condoms were animals, vegetables, soccer balls, skeleton heads… there was even a Eiffel Tower condom. You needn’t worry about size when you’re sporting the Eiffel Tower.
And what says “I love you” better than a condom that says “I love you?” See them all in the picture below.
Click to “Enlarge” (snicker)
The Qondom
Being a geek, my attention was drawn to an artificial condom made from laminated paper that contained a secret QR code. I call it a QR condom, or Qondom.
Scott Stratten says that every time a QR code is used a kitten dies. However, you have to get creative when designing tests. Use whatever tools are at your disposal.
I scanned it with my phone to see where it would take me. The URL contained a word my Dutch friend understood: “Right”.
We looked to the left window. Sure enough, there was a qondom there too. When I scanned it, the URL that was revealed contained the Dutch word for “Left.”
The Condomerie was split testing its windows! They had placed a Trojan Horse in the window designed to trap sightseers with smartphones.
The Hypothesis
If they were doing a good job of testing, they would be working from a specific hypothesis. At a glance, the hypothesis became pretty clear:
“If we display our funny condoms in the window, we will draw more attention and sharing as measured by QR Code scans and visits to our website.”
Their test placed the colorful cartoon condoms in the right window. I’m going to call this the right-brained window that’s creative, emotional and completely unconcerned that these condoms are far more intricate than necessary.
On the other side were condoms arranged primarily by size. This is the left-brained, “just the facts” side of the store. You can imagine that those interested in this window would be looking for a calibration scale to ensure they got the best fit.
The left window of the Condomerie is about size and fit.
The right Condomerie window features colorful and whimsical condoms.
Which window would you linger at? The left-brain, functional window? The right-brain imaginative window? Or, the window of the cheese shop next door?
At this point, only the proprietors of the Condomerie know.
An Inflated Sample
A problem with this test is that only tech-savvy condom users with smart phones are going to be part of this sample. Those with feature phones and those who’ve never bothered to load a barcode scanner app will not be able to participate.
This is a real problem, as it probably skews the results, inflating the sample toward early adopters. The sample taken wouldn’t be expected to represent the typical condom-buying public.
There are some fundamental issues with the landing pages that may be suppressing conversions, but we can expect all marketing channels to improve as an organization learns from split testing.
This shop is learning something about their tech-savvy audience, an audience who can often afford the more expensive condoms and profitable condoms. Revenues can be expected to rise when tested changes are rolled onto the shop floor.
What are you learning about your website visitors? How are you testing your assumptions about what people want, like and are persuaded by? Testing is the most effective way to consistently increase your revenue. The Condomerie knows this and so should you.
Let Conversion Sciences get you started on a website split testing program that will get more revenue from the traffic you already have.
Get a free copy of my book if you are the first person to provide a correct count of the double entendre in this post. Put your number in the comments.
Digital Elite Camp 2014 Photo Album
News & EventsDear Mom,
Just came back from a speaking tour of Europe. One of the highlights was Digital Elite Camp 2014 in Tallinn, Estonia. I met some of the smartest people in online marketing. We shared ideas, we danced, and we swam in the freezing Baltic Sea.
Here are some pictures from this adventure.
To new friends,
12 Rules for Maximizing Conversions from AdWords
Conversion OptimizationGoogle AdWords is a very impressive advertising platform. It provides us with numerous tools and features to work with and make our campaigns better. As long as you have the right mindset, resources and strategy, you can make your campaigns rock (and make your Conversion Rate Optimization Agency very happy).
I’ve always said: “you just have to get creative and analytic with the tools you are provided with.”
So with that in mind, I decided to create this guide with twelve ways to advertisers take their campaigns to the next level, especially when focusing on conversions. Please keep in mind that the features and techniques listed below are not sorted in any priority order. You decide which ones to implement first based on your specific case:
1. Start Rotating Ads to Optimize for Conversions
Ad Rotation is a basic feature that you put in place when you’ve already accrued a certain number of conversions (no specific number) and have started converting regularly. This feature gives you the power to rotate through several different ad versions to find out which works best for a given set of keywords.
It only makes sense to have your ads “Optimize for Conversions” when that is your main purpose, but when is it not? If you’re “Optimizing for Clicks”, you’re assuming all clicks turn into customers at the same rate. The ads that serve more and receiving the most clicks are not always the ones driving leads and customers.
2. Ad Scheduling Bid Adjustments
When it comes to e-commerce you may want to have your campaign running 24/7, since customers can complete a purchase online 24/7. However, certain times of day may generate lots of expensive clicks, but few purchases.
Use adwords to report on the hours of the day and days of the week to when your customers are really converting.
It may pay to schedule ads for e-commerce campaigns that exclude early hours of the day (after midnight and before dawn). I call this the “zombie hours” because I rarely see customers taking action during these hours. At these hours, customers just browsing around and this turns out to be a big expense that leads to higher cost per action (CPA) and lower return on ad investment (ROI).
You may see something different. It makes sense to exclude some hours and adjust bids based on the times you are experiencing more conversions.
For example, in the screenshot below you can see that I started doing ad scheduling (4 am – midnight), because in this particular case, there were very little to no conversions between these hours. Hence, I’ve raised bids on Tuesday and Friday to maximize the conversions on these days, since they convert very well, at a lower cost and lower position.
3. Location Target Bid Adjustments
If you’re running a nationwide campaign or one that is targeting multiple locations (states, cities, metro areas, etc.), take some time to figure out where most of your conversions are coming from. You would be surprised on how differently users behave from different locations, and it is sometimes best to target them geographically with targeted tactics.
The Adwords Dimensions tab gives you a good general insight on how each location contributes to your overall campaign’s performance. Use the “User Locations” View.
I guarantee you that if you have been running a campaign for a long time and have not taken the time to look into this, you will find locations that have a ridiculous cost/conversion or no conversions at all, representing an unnecessary expense for your campaign.
In this case, it is the best to exclude these locations from your existing campaign. If these locations are really important to your business and you want to really exploit them, you can target them on a separate campaign with a separate approach. All of these, after building an effective strategy based on that location’s user behavior and data pulled from Google analytics.
4. Bid Strategy: Enable Enhanced CPC
Enhanced CPC tells Google that they can raise your bids on ads that seem to generate more conversions. Use this feature carefully, because it works for some campaigns and not for others. Nevertheless, AdWords is all about testing, optimizing, analyzing results, and making decisions. Don’t be afraid to try new things, use features you have never used before or don’t understand very well. I always encourage everyone I talk to about AdWords to get creative and think out the box and get out of your comfort zone.
One of the best scenarios where I would recommend using this setting is when your campaign is in its early stages. If your campaign is converting regularly and has at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days, then it is probably eligible for Conversion Optimizer (which we will discuss further).
Enhanced CPC is 1 step away from Conversion Optimizer, which is why it is more reasonable to work with this setting if your campaign doesn’t have that much historical conversion data, yet you are looking forward to drive more conversions.
5. Implementing Conversion Optimizer
Some advertisers and business owners are skeptical about using the tool, because they are afraid of “giving Google control their bidding strategy”, which is why they take the conservative road and stick to manual bidding (this can also be the case of Enhanced CPC).
In order to have success with Conversion Optimizer, one must have solid knowledge of how it works and be careful how you set your CPA bids in order to obtain your goals.
The Conversion Optimizer is a very powerful tool. There are essentially two bidding types:
Max CPA:
Use this bidding type when budget is not limited or your CPA (Cost per-acquisition) is not very high. The algorithm will try to maximize the amount of conversions based on the conversion data.
Upon selecting this option, it will suggest a Max CPA bid (the most you are willing to pay for a conversion) based on the historical conversion data.
Target CPA:
Use this bidding type when your CPA is too high and you want to make it more profitable. This option helps you to reduce the CPA while continuing to bring in the same or higher amount of conversions (Google AdWords will also suggest to start Target CPA bid based on your historical data).
Before choosing any of these bidding options, you need to figure out what exactly it is that you want to achieve; whether this is an increase in the amount of conversions while sacrificing a higher CPA, or if you are struggling to reduce your CPA and trying to find a solution on bringing this down.
Something very important is to remember that once you choose your bidding type, the selected CPA bid will be applied to all your ad groups. You would need to review this afterward and adjust it accordingly.
Typically, every ad group has a different CPA and it should not be set to the default CPA bid suggested by the system. Adjust it according to your criteria, based on what CPA is best for each ad group.
6. Focus on Converting Keywords and Ads
On a campaign that is performing very well, there are ad groups, keywords and ads that are the main drivers for these conversions. Sometimes, 1 to 3 ad groups are responsible for 60% of the campaign’s overall results. The other ad groups convert every now and again at a decent CPA, and that is why we decide to keep them running.
These are just a few of the creative and analytic adjustments that you can do with your keywords and ads.
7. Implement the Best Converting Ad in Other Ad Groups that Are Applicable
I like to compare ads’ performance across my campaign. There is always one specific ad that is your “killer ad”. It is important that we identify why this ad does better than the others. Whether it is a result of the call to action, description line, or benefits mentioned in the ad.
Once you’ve identified the driving factor, compare this ad with ads in other ad groups. If all ad groups are promoting the same products or services, but with different keywords, it would be beneficial to start using this ad across all other ad groups that are applicable.
8. Pause Non Converting Keywords to Focus Your Budget on Converting Elements
A beneficial practice is to perform a campaign evaluation at the end of every month, every 3 months and every 6 months. This facilitates a better grasp of how the campaign is doing from time to time. Performing a monthly or quarterly assessment is important, because it helps you identify historical trends, spikes and areas of opportunities.
One of these areas of opportunities is reallocating your budget to focus on what is actually being productive. For instance, you might have a campaign with 200+ keywords, but less than 50% of those keywords are productive.
I encourage you to take a look at your campaign at a keyword level, create a customized filter to show only keywords that have not converted in the past 3 months, and another filter for keywords that have converted at a higher CPA than your actual goal (or above ideal CPA).
You will be surprised of how many keywords will show in that filter, and how much money has been wasted on them throughout the duration of your ads.
Once you make a full assessment and decide to pause most of these keywords, you will have space to exploit your budget and focus higher bids on productive keywords.
9. For E-commerce Campaigns: Use Google Analytics E-commerce Transactions
If you’re running a campaign for an e-commerce website, it is crucial that you work with Google Analytics and that the e-commerce transactions tracking is setup properly. Google Analytics will provide you with an abundance of data to assist you in the success of your ad campaign.
With E-commerce Transactions tracking, you have the most granular level data; data for strategic account management, and business driven decision making.
As long as your AdWords account is linked to Google Analytics and reporting accurately, you will be able to determine:
Analyzing an AdWords e-commerce campaign through Analytics can be eye opening. One can be under the impression that the ad group or keyword that drives the most conversions in AdWords is the most profitable one, but there are times when having more conversions doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue.
The prices for each product differ and that is why an evaluation in Analytics is indispensable. You will be able to determine which ad groups and keywords are producing the most revenue and which ones need improvement.
10. Add Converting Keywords from Analytics that Perform Well in Other Traffic Sources
With goals setup in either Analytics, or “Ecommerce Transactions Tracking”, you are able to analyze and determine which sources are more productive for you; whether this is Google Organic, Direct Channel, Google CPC, etc.
One of the most competitive sources is Google Organic, particularly if your client is doing SEO and has decent ranking in Google Organic SERP. This is something that you should exploit and add the benefits from that source to your AdWords campaign.
One approach is to review Google Organic Source to see what keywords are driving conversions. To do this:
Go to Analytics > Go to All Traffic > Select Google / Organic > as Primary Dimension, choose Keywords.
Select a larger time frame than just the last 30 days, and do a comparison with the keywords in your campaign and other keywords from this source to determine which ones you have not implemented. Add them to your campaign and you will see results if implemented with the best practices.
11. E-commerce: Focus on Top Converting Products
Another way to exploit Google Analytics and E-commerce Tracking is by easily identifying which your best selling products are, how much revenue they represent to your total and work with them accordingly.
In Analytics, under the Ecommerce Overview, you will see: Your top selling products
Review this list however you want, within the interface or by doing a csv export, and run with it. Research the life of your campaign and see which of these products you are not advertising directly (as in using targeted keywords with the name of the products), include these in your campaign, tightly themed with some killer ads, you’re all set!
12. Explore Other Campaign Types Such as a Remarketing Campaign
From small to large companies, search campaign is one of the most effective online marketing efforts when your purpose is direct response. However, you can’t disregard the fact that there are other marketing channels to be explored and exploited.
Some marketers and business owners still are hesitant to expand their marketing efforts to other channels once they are doing well with a Search Marketing campaign. It only makes sense to invest more to get more. If you limit yourself with budget, you are limiting the reach of your success.
That is why expanding to other marketing efforts is so important, once you’ve already killed it with one channel.
There are so many other effective campaign types and efforts such as:
Don’t be afraid to expand and explore other marketing efforts, as you can see there are many options available to you.
Be Analytic, Creative and Always Think Out the Box
The Online Marketer that works on AdWords platform and doesn’t use Google Analytics for a better grasp on their user behavior analysis or to track ROI to produce measurable results, should now be expanding their marketing efforts with Google Analytics.
I encourage everyone who is still not working with the combination of these tools to get started – more than likely, you competition is using them already. If you are passionate about AdWords and Google Analytics, your deeper understanding and use of all that Google has to offer, you will stop at nothing short of success in your marketing efforts. Once you have these components in place, you should strongly consider which Conversion Optimization Services you can utilize to get maximum value of of your precious paid traffic.
Derek Hooker is Chief of Search Marketing at White Shark Media™. He is both Google AdWords Qualified and Bing Ads Accredited. Derek is determined in constantly providing his Clients top results via his a ROI/customer care-driven approach. He specializes in both eCommerce and local search campaigns. You connect with Derek on GooglePlus and LinkedIn.
For further reading on maximizing conversions through Google, please read the following articles:
It’s All About You: The Future of High Quality Link-building
A New Kind of Marketing Battery: Google’s New Smart Lists