St. Louis Pay Per Click

Posts Tagged ‘pay per click ads’

Google AdWords has many different extensions that allow for increased versatility with your PPC ads.   I have been writing about these extensions in the last few posts, including local extensions, site links, and product extensions.  Google debuted yet another new extension earlier this year that is still in beta testing called ‘Contact Form Extension’. The Contact Form Extension will be an expandable feature in your PPC ad that will allow visitors to fill out a contact form directly from your ad, rather than clicking through to your site.

The following image from PPC Hero provides an example of what the drop-down will look like:

 

The form will allow you to collect information on the visitor, including name, phone number, address, and up to 3 custom questions, all for the price of a click. However, this will only be available to the ad in the top position. PPC Hero was selected to test this feature and explains in detail how it works in this blog post.

There are pros and cons to this new feature.  On the plus side, it can simplify the conversion process. However, you may miss the opportunity to draw visitors in to your landing page and provide additional them with additional information that may lead them down the path to conversion.  And, users might be reluctant to offer up contact information such as their phone number so quickly.  This might also mean an increase in the bid needed to maintain the number one position. For more thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages from ROI Revolution on this new extension, read this article from BGAmedia.  This is only in beta right and the time this feature rolls out to all, there may be some changes so it will be interesting to watch and see the effect this new feature will have.

Back in November, Google AdWords introduced two new features, Ad Sitelinks and Product Extension.  Both are tools that you can use to enhance your PPC ads and direct traffic to internal pages within your site.

With Ad Sitelinks, you can choose internal links to display beneath a new or existing ad in your campaign, up to 4 destination URLs.  Doing so will allow you to pick pages that you would like users to find easily from your PPC ads and direct visitors deeper within your site without having to send all users to the same landing page.

Currently, only some accounts are eligible for this feature, based on the quality of the ads in the account.  To check if this feature is available on your account, look under the Campaign Settings tab under the Ad Extensions section.

The Product Extension feature also allows you to direct traffic to internal pages by displaying images of your product. You can include titles and prices with your images. You are charged the same cost per click as other PPC ads, and are not charged if a user expands the ad to view the images but does not click through to your site.

To set this feature up, you must have the images, titles, and keywords in your Merchant Center account that you would like to use, and then link your Merchant Center account to your AdWords account. This can be done by adding your AdWords customer ID to your Merchant Center account.  Then, go to Campaign Settings and under the Ad Extensions section and select “Use product images and information from my Google Merchant Center Account”.

Local Extensions allow you to show your local business address with your PPC ad.  These ads will display a plus sign next to the ad on search engine results pages, allowing users to click on the plus sign to access additional information about your business. Along with the address, the ad will display a map and directions to your business.  This type of localization of a PPC ad is a great way to increase the trust level and authenticity of your business while allowing visitors to easily find your location.

Add an address at the campaign level:

Campaign level extensions will appear with all relevant ads in your campaign.

To add and address at the campaign level, go to the Settings tab and make changes under the Ad Extensions section. If you are a business owner, select this option to link your existing Local Business Center account to your campaign. There is no limit to the number of address you can add.  If you are a non-business owner, select this option to manually enter your address. You can enter up to 9 different addresses.

Select an address at the ad level:

When using ad level extensions, you can choose one address to be the only address that displays with a given ad.  If the address is not relevant to the user, no address information will be shown. This allows you to promote specific information for one location.  For example, if one location of your business is offering a special and the others are not.  This also allows you to direct those users to a targeted landing page with that special offer.

To display a certain address with an ad, click on the edit icon next to the ad, and then select “Always show with one address”.  A box will appear with all of the addresses you entered at the campaign level, allowing you to just choose one to appear with the ad.

According to Google, Quality Score is determined by a variety of factors and that a higher Quality Score will result in higher ad position at a lower cost-per-click.  Clearly Quality Score is a vital component of any successful AdWords campaign.  But, how can you improve it?

 Here are some steps to increase your Quality Score:

1.)  Organize your campaigns and ad groups well.  Make sure your keywords within an ad group are related and relevant to your ads.

2.)  Use negative keywords to increase your CTR and decrease unqualified traffic.

3.)  Bid on your brand to increase CTR since your ad will most likely be relevant to those searching for your brand.

4.) Move underperforming keywords to their own ad group and write new ads for them.

5.) Manage your ad copy so that all ads in an ad group are closely related to the keywords in the ad group.

6.) Test destination URL’s to determine which ads produce the highest CTR.

7.) Test different ads to determine which produce the highest CTR.

8.) Make sure your landing page is relevant to your ad and keywords.

9.) Test different landing pages to determine which produces the highest CTR.

10.) Optimize your landing page, because Google also looks at landing page load time, navigation, links on the page, etc.

Increasing your Quality score is critical if you want to increase ad visibility and decrease your spend at the same time. The most important thing to remember is relevance.  Make sure your keywords, ad copy and landing pages are all relevant to each other.  This will increase both CTR and Quality Score and improve the success of your overall campaign.

Google AdWords allow you to choose how your ads show; you can choose to have all ads within an ad group rotate evenly or let Google optimize by showing the “better performing” ads more often.  But, Google defines “performance” as the ads with the highest CTR.  This makes money for Google, because they are making money every time an ad is clicked, so showing the ads that get clicked the most makes sense. But, what about conversions? You may define “performance” as ads with the highest conversion rate, not ads with the highest CTR.  There are many reasons why you may or may not want to optimize your ads.  Here are a few pros and cons to help you decide:

Even Rotation

Pro: You have control of your ads and define “performance” how you choose.

Pro: You can fully test which ad variations for many factors besides CTR – also for conversion rate, ad text, landing page success and more.

Con: AdWords looks at CTR when determining Quality Score, and a higher Quality Score means better ad position and a lower CPC.

Optimize

Pro: Because AdWords does a great job showing the ads with the highest likelihood of being clicked, you can quickly tell which ad has the best CTR, rather than waiting to see results with even rotation.

Pro: Continually showing the ad with the highest CTR results in a higher Quality Score, which again, means better ad position and a lower CPC.

Con: You may end up spending money on ads that aren’t converting.

The common school of thought is to maintain full control of your ads and the ability to test them by choosing even rotation.  That said, you may choose to start your campaign on optimize to let Google tell you the ad with highest CTR quickly while improving quality score.  Then, with that information you can tweak ads, based on what worked while on the optimized setting, and then switch to even rotation to fully test all ad variations.

The Geographic Performance Report in Google AdWords allows you to determine how your keywords and ads are doing by location. You can analyze your impressions, clicks, and conversions by their geographic distribution by the account, campaign, and ad group levels.  You can use this report to calculate data on a daily basis by Country, Region, Metro, and City. 

Currently, the report only gathers data on a daily basis.  According to Google, reporting across multiple days would result in an under-representation of impressions. This is because there is a threshold on impressions in the reporting calculations.  But the number of clicks would be accurately counted, resulting in an inflated CTR.

However, due to the large amount of information being compiled in this report you cannot run a report for the current day.  Complete data for a given day isn’t available until 3 PM PST the following day.  To get the daily report for your campaign, wait until after 3 PM the following day and then choose the “Yesterday” option in the “Date Range” drop-down menu.  Click here for step-by-step instructions from Google on how to create the report.

Based on what you see in your report, you may want to separate your campaigns into several smaller campaigns, specifically targeted to different locations.  For example, if clicks from a certain location aren’t converting, you may want to create a specific campaign targeting that location and try a new tactic, or you may want to exclude areas that don’t convert altogether.  On the flip side, you may consider separating top performing locations into their own campaigns.  This way, you can create ads customized to that audience and direct more of your budget towards these higher converting locations.  This report allows you to breakdown your campaigns in a way that will help you fine-tune keywords and ads targeted to a specific location, while making the most of your budget in the locations you want to focus on.

When writing ads for your product or service, it is important to consider the buying process consumers go through when deciding to purchase a product. For instance, a consumer that is in the awareness stage is gathering information and is not necessarily sure what he or she is looking for. In this case, you would use general keywords to capture a wide range of possible consumer searches. On the other hand, if you sell dog collars and you should also be prepared with keywords such as “buy dog collars” to capture consumers in the purchasing stage. There are six steps in the consumer buying cycle: awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. This blog will appear in three parts. Below are some helpful tips for creating targeted ads for consumers at the awareness and interest stages.
 

Awareness/Interest Stages

The awareness/interest stages in the buying process occur when the consumer identifies a need that he or she desires to fulfill. In order to meet this need, the buyer is going to gather information to determine the product or service that will best address his or her need. Consumers today are much more technically savvy, so it is likely that the internet is the first place they will go to gather information. With this in mind, it is important to have a pay per click message that will grab the consumers attention from the beginning. The message at this stage should be informational. Going with the dog collar example, a possible keyword at this stage would be dog collar, with a broad match. This will allow you to capture additional keywords that consumers are searching for at this stage, as well as help to ensure that your ad is more likely to show up.

Once they develop interest in the product or service you sell, they will look for further information on both the products and companies. It is important to give them as much information as possible at this stage as they will compare your company to your competitors. The ad’s landing page should provide the consumer with an overview of your products/services and their features. During this stage, consumers will begin evaluating the information they have gathered. They have information on their top companies and a list of criteria to judge them against.