St. Louis Pay Per Click

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, then switch to even rotation to fully test all ad variations.

Earlier this year, Google AdWords added another way to track conversions other than the 1-per-click method.  The many-per-click method allows you to see the overall number of conversions occurring, but may cause some confusion.

First, conversions can be many things besides someone purchasing an item from a site.  You can choose an action you would like to count as a conversion, based on what is important to you.  For example, you can track purchases, form completion, or a certain page view as a conversion.  You can also track more than one of these types of conversions simultaneously.

With the 1-per-click method of tracking conversions, a user is only counted once within a 30 day period.  For example, if a user clicks on your ad, fills out a form and makes a purchase, it only counts as one conversion.  If that same user bookmarks your site, and returns the following week and makes another purchase, it does not count towards the 1-per-click conversion number.  So, within a 30 day window, all conversions one user makes only counts as one conversion.

With the many-per-click method of tracking conversions, every conversion a user makes is counted within a 30 day period.  Using the same example as above, if a user clicks on your ad, fills out a form on your site and makes a purchase, the many-per-click conversions would be two.  If that same user bookmarks your site, and returns the following week and makes another purchase, the number of many-per-click conversions would increase by one.  So, within a 30 day window, all the conversions that user made count, adding up to three many-to-click conversions.

If the number of many-per-click conversions seems too high to be true, it probably is.  There may be other things triggering this conversion, other than the ones you intended.  If a user refreshes the page or hits the back button to continue browsing your site after the conversion was completed, this may lead to an increase in the number of many-per-click conversions.  If a user bookmarks your converting page and returns to it within 30 days, this will also result in a conversion, although no purchase was actually made.  There are some ways to improve your code to prevent some of these issues, click here for more detailed information about how to do this.

If you are unsure about what you’re seeing, it’s always best to do a little research and look into Google Analytics to see if everything is matching up.

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.

Online advertising is seeing new methods for placing ads within the content of other sites. No I am not talking about Google’s AdSense program, which displays an advertiser’s ad on other sites within Google’s Content Network. I am referring to the in-text form of advertising that allows advertisers to bid on in-text links on other websites. We have all seen the links within blog articles that show a pop up window when they are scrolled over. The in-text form of advertising allows advertisers to bid on keywords that appear on other websites. The difference between this program and the content ads seen on AdSense, is the ads are shown when a visitor scrolls over an in-text ad link, rather than having the ad appear automatically on the page.

One program that offers this type of advertising is Kontera. The company offers in-text advertising for advertisers, through a bidding platform similar to other pay per click advertising programs. The platform gives advertisers control over their keywords, bidding, and ad creative. In text ads are a great way to get your message and products out infront of potential customers at the exact time they are looking for information.

We will be testing out this new form of advertising on one of our sites. Over the next couple of months I will reveal more about our findings.