Appearing in the number-one position of a SERP is no easy feat, but what if you were told that SEO was not the only way to achieve this mammoth accomplishment? Search marketing, in particular pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is another lucrative option available to you. The difference between SEO and PPC, however, is in the name—you have got to pay for PPC!
Have you ever noticed those three listings at the top of a SERP with a yellow ad icon beside them, almost unfairly pushing down organic search listings? Those are the product of PPC-savvy digital marketers, reaping the benefits of high click-through rates (CTRs) by paying a little extra.
Just like SEO, PPC has its own four-stage iterative process, which you can see in Figure 3.1. With this form of advertising every cent counts, and with the added element of expenditure you need to maintain an astute attention to detail so as to not spend your budget frivolously. Take a look at each of these four stages so you know exactly what is in store for you in this chapter!
Not only will this chapter demonstrate how to implement and manage search advertising campaigns, it will ultimately equip you with the technical understanding and skills needed to become a master in building an effective PPC strategy! Your PPC apprenticeship starts here, and by the end of this chapter you will:
As with SEO, the importance of defining and setting goals for paid search cannot be stressed enough. With a core grasp of the basics, let's delve deeper and begin stage 1 of PPC's own iterative process, which is highlighted in Figure 3.2. By the end of this section, you will have developed:
Goal setting can be a laborious task, so before discussing how exactly this should be done, take a look at the key benefits of paid search to see why the effort is worthwhile!
The Google AdWords ranking formula decides where your ad is displayed in a SERP. Your goal as an advertiser is to appear first—or at least within the top three ad results displayed at the top of the page. To do this, you really need to take a look at Figure 3.3 and understand the two key components of the ranking formula, which underpin everything to do with your campaign. So sit up, strap on your thinking cap, and start taking notes!
There are also a number of other factors to consider that contribute towards your quality score, such as:
All this information is great, but what if you have never run an AdWords campaign before, and Google has no campaign history on which to base your quality score? In this case, it primarily comes down to the search query entered and the keywords you choose. Google will look at how that particular keyword has performed over time and on that basis assign a quality score. Ad copies and landing pages will still be considered, so don't forget about those!
Now that you've been enlightened about the powers that PPC possesses, take a look at these four steps for setting goals. The flowchart shown in Figure 3.4 comes from Avinash Kaushik, an analytics guru at Google. The process involves initially focusing on broad business objectives, assigning goals to each objective, and identifying the associated KPIs in order to convert the broad objectives into very specific campaign objectives.
When defining objectives, the dumber the better! In his blog “Occam's Razor,” Avinash defines it as:
Don't fool yourself. Saying you want to increase revenue by $300,000 a month when you know you have only ever made $100,000 a month is not realistic. Set yourself achievable goals that contribute to the value of your business. If your goal is to drive online sales, don't strive to create more brand awareness if you hold the largest market share.
Business goals feed into KPIs, so hitting and exceeding your KPIs will eventually contribute to achieving your goals and ultimately contribute to the success of your business. The type of KPI used depends on the type of campaign, which can be broken down into the following three areas:
Well-defined goals will help you to keep on track as we progress on to stage 2 of the PPC process. Make your goals as DUMB as possible and success won't be far behind!
The PPC wheels are now in motion, and having defined some tangible goals, the fun part can begin. Let's create some campaigns! As you can see in Figure 3.5, setup is the second stage of the process. With so many detailed yet vital elements required to complete the setup, we have divided this stage of the process in two parts. Upon completion of this section, your mastery of PPC setup will be half complete with a core knowledge of:
Google wants a fair playing field for everybody—both big advertisers and small, tech nerds and technophobes. Designed to please the masses, navigating the Google AdWords interface is easy and efficient, so let's set it up!
Do you have a Google account? Those of you with Gmail will have automatically been assigned one. If you don't have one, sign up for Gmail—it's the easiest way to get a Google account, which is required to create an AdWords account. The setup consists of four easy steps. Start by entering your email address and website URL. The next step throws you straight in the deep end by asking you to create a live campaign. At this stage you are not yet ready to create a campaign, so let's go through the steps and fill in the bare minimum. You can return to this step at a later stage.
As you can see from Figure 3.6, there are a series of fields you need to complete, so let's go through each of them:
Bills, Bills, Bills. When you are done, hit Save and Continue. The billing section comes next. You will have to enter in a payment method or your campaigns won't run. For tax and payment type purposes, be sure to select the country you are based in as your billing country. You then need to decide how you want to pay:
The final and most important step is selecting your time zone. Once set, it can't be changed. The hour of day reports that are generated for your ad campaigns will be set according to the time zone you select, so be sure to pick the right one.
User Access. With your account set up, you may now decide to let some people in on the PPC action. To do this, you will need to assign different user access levels—of which there are four. Click the little gear icon on the top right-hand corner of the page and from there select Account Settings. Take a look at the table in Figure 3.7, which highlights all the features and limitations of each access level.
Establishing a well-structured, consistent architecture at the very beginning of any campaign is of the utmost importance! Not doing so will make it agonizingly difficult to fix when you start adding more campaigns, ads, and keywords. Believe it or not, a poorly structured account can actually impact your quality score, which means for every click on your ad, you are paying more. Take a look at Figure 3.8, which shows how your AdWords account should be structured.
Only one specific domain per ad group is permitted. This means if you have the domain www.example.com assigned to one ad group, you cannot also assign www.example.co.uk to the same ad group. You will have to create a separate ad group if you wish to do that. You can, however, have different landing pages from a domain within an ad group—for example, www.example.com/blog and www.example.com/choose.
Let's now take a look at how to create a campaign within the Google AdWords interface. As you can see from Figure 3.9, the tabs available are Home, Campaigns, Opportunities, Reports, and Tools. Click the red + Campaign button to open a drop-down menu that will provide you with a range of different options for creating campaigns. If you plan to ever run a Display campaign, make sure your Display and Search campaigns run independently of each other so that you can monitor the performance of each one separately. In this chapter, however, we are going to focus on the Search Network—so click that option.
You will then be brought to the campaign setup screen, as seen in Figure 3.10, where you should enter your campaign name. Campaigns and ad groups need to follow a very consistent naming convention in order to adhere to account structure best practices. For your own sanity, ignore the generic suggestions in Figure 3.10 and don't name them Campaign #1 and Ad Group #1. Make sure everything is named in a way that makes what you are looking for easy to find.
Next you need to choose whether you want your campaign to have Standard or All features. You can also choose to incorporate a CTA (call to action) button on the ad with options to call your business, download your app, and so on. For now, click on Standard. The next screen will ask you to choose between the Google Search and the Search Partners networks. If you don't have budget limitations and want to get as much visibility and CTR as possible, choose both. The recommendation is to start with both. You can then carry out a performance review later and decide which, if either, should be removed.
Did you know you can choose the device you want to target? Your campaigns should be running in line with the types of devices you want to reach. In the targeting section you will notice you have been automatically opted in to target all devices. After a campaign has been created, you can amend this and opt out of any specific devices you don't want to appear on. This could prove useful for those who have yet to optimize their websites for mobile, for example. You can't opt out from appearing on desktops or tablets. When starting off, try initially opting in to all devices; run a report on devices at a later stage to see how they perform.
Targeting by location is one of the best and most detailed features AdWords has to offer. It can be done in two ways:
As you can see in Figure 3.11, there are three options for you to target your campaigns by location:
The final element within the targeting setup is to choose and customize your language. By default, the campaign will be set to target the language in which your account was set up. You can also target other languages, but be aware that the language you target might not be the language the user is searching in. For example, if a user searches in Arabic but his language on Google is set to English, you won't be targeting him. You should also be aware that when targeting other languages AdWords does not translate your ads. If you choose to target Arabic speakers and your ad is in English, these users will still see an ad in English.
Part one of the setup has now reached an end, but before you decompress it's time to go back, review, and edit the elements of your campaign that were glossed over. You need to be fully prepared for what part two has in store!
By now, your account has been set up and your access levels, targeting, and location have all been defined. Without further ado, allow this section teach you how to get your AdWords account off the ground, so you can begin some seriously stellar PPC advertising by:
Let's kick off by choosing a bidding strategy. As you've just been introduced to the enticing world of Google AdWords, for now stick to either of the two options listed below. When you have become a true PPC Jedi, you can then begin to navigate the more advanced options.
Which bid strategy are you going to use?
After this decision has been made, you need to set your default bid. Always bid between $1.50 and $2.00, because once you have gone through the campaign creation process, the system will tell you if you are below the minimum price it costs to display in the top three results of page 1, or at the very least, on page 1 itself.
Next up: setting your daily budget. You can figure this out by determining how much you are going to spend and dividing it by the number of days the ad will run. You should note that once your campaign goes live, AdWords can overspend on your daily budget by up to 20 percent. Similarly, there are days when it will spend a little less. Whatever the case may be, rest assured it will rarely spend more than 30 times your daily budget in a 30-day period. And if this situation does arise, Google will credit you the cost of the overage, meaning you get all those clicks for free! This is because search is based on demand, and so search volumes can vary greatly. As a result, daily budgets are never really set in stone.
How quickly you want your ad to be served is dependent on the delivery method you select, and there are two options to choose from:
You have already decided where and how often your ad is going to show, now let's determine when. Firstly, choose your start and end date. If you want the ad to run for the foreseeable future, simply leave the end date out, as shown in Figure 3.13. If your campaign is not starting for another few weeks, this feature is really useful because you can leave the campaign enabled and it will automatically kick into gear when the start date arrives. If you have a fixed end date and your ad is concerning a time-sensitive offer, then you should set an end date for the campaign.
Ad scheduling is particularly useful for businesses with fixed opening hours that may only wish to show during the hours they're open. Or if your budget is very limited, and you know from previous campaigns that most sales occur at specific times, you can set your campaign to show during those hours.
When it comes to creating your campaign, you will see that the best practice for ad copy dictates that you have two to three ads per ad group. This setting determines how the ads that you create are rotated within that ad group. There are four options:
The default is to optimize for clicks, which shows the ad that is most likely to get the click. If you have a KPI for conversions, then this setting won't really suit your campaign. Instead, you may consider choosing the Optimize for Conversions option, but in order to optimize the rotation, previous campaign performance is required. If you are creating a brand-new campaign, you will want to choose the Rotate Evenly option. That gives every ad a fair chance to determine its placement. Finally, the Rotate Indefinitely option shows lower performing ads proportionately with higher performing ads. This one isn't really a great choice, so steer clear.
To start, try choosing Rotate Evenly. Let it rotate for two weeks and then switch to either Optimize for Clicks or Optimize for Conversions, based on what your KPI is. Never let it rotate evenly for 90 days, it's simply too long to have each ad rotating evenly. Approximately two weeks is the optimum time frame for a campaign to really find its feet.
Your campaign is now set up and the next element involves selecting your keywords. This is the starting point for every campaign and is probably the most important part, because it decides which keywords your ads will be shown for. Don't forget that all your quality scores are assigned to the keyword; keyword selection is important because your ad copy, landing page, bids, and the like are going to be defined by the keywords you choose. It's all about deciding which keywords are most likely to generate the highest return, and which are the most appropriate in terms of your product or service offering. If you don't choose the right keywords, your ad will be shown for the wrong search terms, you will be irrelevant to your users, and you will be spending money on an audience that is not going to convert.
PPC keyword research can be tough if you are not equipped with the tools for the task. Luckily, the two tools listed below will serve as your virtual hammer and chisel, allowing you to uncover the hidden keyword gems that lie within the digital landscape.
Probably one of the best reasons to use Google Trends is for competitive research. For example, by entering Samsung, HTC, and Apple, you can see which is the most popular brand just by looking at the peaks and troughs in the search terms. You can also identify if there are trends in the time of year when competitors are more or less popular than you. The great thing about Google Trends is it includes news stories when relevant. So if Google News has picked up a news story about Samsung and there's a peak in search volumes for Samsung as a result, it will add a little annotation informing you which news story caused that peak in search volumes.
If you are unsure of the particular search term that you are looking for, click All Categories instead and take a look at a category (for example, food and beverages).
You can break trends down by country too, as shown in Figure 3.14. This could prove particularly useful if you want to identify your competitors in other countries, and also if you want to see the level of interest in certain keywords versus the country you operate in.
Spotting trends based on specific times of the year is incredibly useful and luckily Google Trends facilitates this, too. So, if you want to analyze trends during the holiday season over the last four years, you can change not only the date range but also the platform at which it is looking. Whether it's web, image search, or news search, Google Trends has you covered!
As you can see in Figure 3.15, the executive has typed in digital marketing course and learn digital marketing to see which keywords would be good to target for a campaign advertising digital marketing courses. After inserting your search term, you will find a list of keyword suggestions under the ‘Keyword ideas' tab. Even though Keyword Planner will suggest ad groups for you, you should still use your best judgment in structuring those ad groups and follow the naming convention you created for your campaign. Keyword Planner also gives you suggestions for new keywords, a suggested bid, and the total search volume for the keyword—great for calculating how much it would cost you per click.
Keyword Planner also shows you the level of competition, or how many people are bidding on those keywords, by stating whether it is high, medium, or low. If the competition is high, the bid will be higher because there's a lot more advertisers vying for that top spot. Once you have reviewed all keywords you can then add them to a plan. When you have reviewed all the keywords within the ad group, you can then click Add All to Plan. Keyword Planner will then give you a very top-line estimate of how much you might spend per day, but Traffic Estimator will give you a much more detailed cost. After this you have a couple of options. You can either download all your keywords from the different ad groups into an Excel spreadsheet or you can advance on to Traffic Estimator.
Click the blue Review Forecast button on the bottom right to access Traffic Estimator. This tool is great for seeing the differences in traffic and impressions that you could get, based on daily budgets. Try playing around with the bids and budgets to see what levels would incur an increase in clicks. As you can see, it's a lovely interface! Not only does it tell you on average how many clicks you will get per day, but it also tells you what your total impressions, total daily costs, and average position will be. What can't it do?
With your keywords well and truly chosen, you can now decide upon the match types that you are going to use. When bidding on a keyword, you need to choose a keyword match type that tells Google AdWords how precisely you want it to match your ad to the keyword searches.
You may remember that quality score is assigned to the keyword, but the quality score is defined based on the search query. Your keyword and search query are two very different things, and that's all down to the match type that you use. It defines what search queries and keywords will trigger your ad. While this may seem confusing at first, don't fret! Let's go through each of the five match types, using the example of a user searching for cheap hotels in Seattle, as in Figure 3.16, so you can have a solid understanding of what this is all about.
Got all that? Great! This concludes your PPC setup and with that, we can now progress to the next step of stage 2, the process behind the campaign.
With your account and campaigns fully set up, now seems like the right time to take the next step within stage 2 (see Figure 3.5): exploring the processes behind the campaign and taking a look at how ad copy influences the success of all search marketing advertising. This section is a toughie, so your full attention is required in order to:
Let's kick off this section by learning how exactly to compose the ad copy that will be served to users. The folks over at Google AdWords are extremely strict with character count for each line of your ad copy, so take note of these character limits, because you will need to stick to them! Ad titles or description lines with even one character over the limit will not be allowed, so you'll need to get creative!
Take a look at the ad shown in Figure 3.17. It is from the Digital Marketing Institute and shows adherence to these character count limits. Gold star for us! Ad titles (or headlines) have a 25-character limit, including spaces. The Display URL line is technically granted up to 255 characters; however, only 35 of those will be displayed. It's best practice to keep your Display URL line short and sweet. Use it to show users your website address; for example, www.example.com. You can then assign a different destination URL, which will navigate the user to the specific landing page the ad refers to; for example, www.example.com/sale. If you choose to do this, you must make sure the display URL and destination URL are on the same domain (in this example www.example.com). And finally, Description Lines 1 and 2 are allowed up to 35 characters each, including spaces.
Where do I start? When crafting your ad copy, start by thinking about what your customers would like to see if they entered a search term that triggers your ad. From here, you can then follow each of these best practices to create eye-catching advertisements that will have your user's hands twitching to click!
In your AdWords dashboard, click the Campaigns tab at the top, then select Ads underneath and click the big red + Ad button near the bottom of the screen. You will be presented with the screen shown in Figure 3.18.
You will be forced to choose an ad group before being able to submit your ad copy, so make sure you do so before completing this step. Simply fill in all the fields and you are ready to go!
You should create two to three ads per ad group, using different ad copy for each. By doing this you can test different types of messaging and calls to action, and even different landing pages, to see which ones users prefer and which ones give the highest ROI. Even if you find that one ad that works incredibly well, never stop testing. Try new iterations of that one great ad and keep testing until you find one that performs even better!
Ad extensions take up more room on the search engine results page and also provide a richer, more relevant experience for the user. Extensions are great for enhancing your brand perception and encouraging users to convert in whatever way makes most sense to them, whether that's in-store, over the phone, online, or by app. Take a look at the examples in Figure 3.20 of how ad extensions can be used effectively.
In Figure 3.20 you can see examples of three different ad extensions being used by Emirates Airline: an enhanced site link, a call-out, and a review. Enhanced site links are the four links at the bottom of the ad, which are essentially four more paid search ads that deep-link into different sections of the Emirates site. Do you see how much space it's taking up on that SERP? It is pushing down both competitor ads and organic results, meaning it's a highly impactful ad.
Call-out extensions are the additional, unclickable pieces of information about your business that go below your ad. They are great for allowing you show extra information that would otherwise be lost due to character count restrictions. In this example, the call-out extension is Spacious seats · 30kg+baggage allowance · Gourmet cuisine · 140+ destinations.
The final element of this ad is Emirate's review extension. These extensions are great to have and can entice users to click. This extension is being used to display the text Emirates has 3,338,233 followers on Google+. You can also click this text, and the link will bring you to the landing page that proves that they actually do!
Check out Figure 3.21 for an example of a click-to-call extension being used by an AdWords management company. This extension allows users to call you directly from their cell phones by clicking the Call button.
You can even drive customers to download your app directly to their cell phones through the app download extension shown in Figure 3.22. The best feature of this extension is that it is device responsive, meaning an iOS app will automatically download for iPhone users while Android will download for those using devices powered by that OS. Pretty nifty, right?
These are only some of the ad extensions that are available to you. Create your own by going to the Ad Extensions tab and clicking View: Sitelinks Extensions, as shown in Figure 3.23.
Did you know you have eight seconds to impress users who click on your landing page? If the content does not match the ad copy in the search query they searched for, you can bet your bottom dollar they will vanish faster than Lindsay Lohan's music career.
Users should be able both to find what they are looking for and convert within three clicks of entering your site. If they can't, you are not providing the ideal experience. Get your act together! The best landing pages should:
Let's now take a look at the three different ways that you can set your bids and get your campaigns performing at the optimal level:
It's important to note that keyword bids will override ad group level bids if they are higher. For example, let's pretend you have a bid of $1.75 on an ad group called Restaurants, but decide to change the bid on one keyword within the ad group to $2.00. If the following week you decide to reduce your ad group bid to $1.50, your keyword bid of $2.00 will override the ad group level bid and remain the same. If you want that keyword bid to be the same as its ad group bid, you will have to change it manually using method 3 listed above.
Don't bid blind. When devising a bid budgeting strategy, it's vital that you bid based on priorities and KPIs. Applying a blanket bid across all ad groups and leaving them to run is bad practice and economically insane! Look at your performance in line with your KPIs and set your bids based on that. If your KPI is to drive sales, then increase bids on the keywords and ad groups that drive the most sales.
Analyzing your ad's average position should also be a key factor informing your bid strategy. If, for example, you want to increase conversions on a particular keyword but already have an average position of one, there is no point in increasing your bid because you cannot go higher than a number-one position!
GDN consists of websites that allow Google to place ads on its site through a platform called AdSense. When a user clicks an ad, the publisher and Google make money. Users can be targeted through standard text ads, image ads, and video ads. To check out your advertising options on GDN, click the Tools tab on your AdWords dashboard. It's a great way to place ads on websites that are relevant to what you are selling and that you know your target audience is visiting.
Remember that time you visited a website, only to see an ad exactly related to that page you were looking at a short while later? That's remarketing! If users have been to your site before, you can target them as they are browsing other websites and mobile apps, or even as they are searching on Google. Some call it cyberstalking, while others view it as a clever way of reaching consumers who have already visited your site. Take a look at the five different ways you can remarket to users:
Let's explain the benefit of remarketing by taking the example of three different users who have visited www.example.com.
If you are unable to obtain any information about them, how can you place a value on them? Take a look at these three scenarios and decide which two have the most value:
Users 1 and 2 are the most valuable and likely to convert, just in case you are still scratching your head for the answer.
You can kick off your own remarketing campaign simply by inserting a piece of code between the <body></body> tags on every page of your site. Get your code from the Campaigns section of the AdWords dashboard. Select Shared Library from the menu on the left and click Audiences underneath it.
New AdWords account owners will be asked to set up remarketing; once you have completed the required fields, your code is ready to go! You can either export the code yourself, or if your skills don't stretch that far yet, email it directly to someone else, such as a web developer.
When your code has been inserted onto your site, you will see the Audiences section of your AdWords dashboard. You should pay particular attention to the Membership Duration section of this page, which indicates the amount of time users will be remarketed to before they are removed from the list. The default is set to 30 days, but it can stretch to as long as 180 days on the Search Network and 540 days on GDN. Your membership duration should be amended based on your knowledge of how long it takes users to convert. The List Size field will tell you how many users are on your remarketing list, divided by Search Network and GDN.
Be selective. Because every user and that user's online behavior is unique, you won't need to remarket to each person who has visited your site. For example, remarketing to a user who reached the basket page on your site should have a higher priority over remarketing to someone who has already purchased something. This is where custom audiences come in!
To create a custom remarketing list, click the red + Remarketing List button. Enter in a descriptive name for the list and then decide whether it is for a website or app. In the Who to Add to Your List field, you can select from a range of options for the users to be targeted. Better still, by clicking the +Rules button, you can remarket to anyone based on preset rules. Rules allow you to specify whom you target and to get quite specific with the message you serve. They are also great for excluding people who have already completed a valuable action on your site, such as a purchase. When you have set your membership duration based on how long you think it takes a user to convert, click Save.
Before you go creating ad copy worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, remarketing to the right people, and turning your bidding strategy into a cash cow, you need to know how to manage your campaign! Stick around—we are going to cover that in the next section.
If your friends are impressed by your newfound abilities from stages 1 and 2 of the PPC process, then what you learn from this next section will definitely bowl them over! Stage 3, highlighted in Figure 3.26, is about what happens after your campaign has launched and you are managing it effectively on an ongoing basis. Pretty soon, you will be able to tell your friends all about:
Once your campaign has been created, you will need to report on and analyze its performance—which can be done through the variety of tools AdWords has to offer. The tricky part, however, is choosing which tabs and sections of the interface are most relevant to you, because each business is unique. Fasten your seatbelt, this guided tour of the AdWords interface will help you decide and locate the tabs and sections your business needs.
These are the five main tabs that you will navigate through when you start to report.
The Home tab is great way of getting a quick snapshot of how your account is performing and telling you what the top changes have been over the last week.
The Reports tab is where you will click to get a more vibrant visual representation of how your campaigns are performing. You can pick and choose which data points you want displayed and display them in a table, a line chart, a bar chart, or a pie chart.
The Campaigns, Opportunities, and Tools tabs are much meatier, so let's look at them in more detail now.
All your campaign management will be run from this section and the screen shown in Figure 3.27 will also be the default screen when you log in. Let's now see what each of the sub tabs within the Campaigns section can do for you.
For beginners and seasoned professionals alike, the Opportunities tab gives very informative optimization tips and ideas—just like the ones shown in Figure 3.28.
These tips get very detailed, advising you on budget spends and how to achieve more clicks. They are all based on algorithm calculations, meaning they are a prediction of sorts and therefore subject to fluctuation. The best feature of the Opportunities tab is that the tips are updated in real time, meaning you could get totally different suggestions each week.
The Tools tab is where you will find the Keyword Planner, Display Planner, and most importantly, Conversion Tracking tools. The latter looks at the post-click success of your campaign, moving past search engine analysis and focusing on what users are doing when they enter your website. Ultimately, conversion tracking holds PPC accountable for the money it's spending, allowing you assess whether or not your investment is getting a return—even if that return is simply driving video views.
Don't be under the illusion that conversion tracking is only for businesses that seek online purchases or hard conversions, such as leads. It's for branding and awareness too! For example, if a user spending a certain amount of time on your site adds value to your business, then it's a conversion.
Conversion tracking can be done in two ways:
The recommendation would be option 2 above, using GA. By creating the conversion in GA, you eliminate the need to create another one in Google AdWords. Even more importantly, option 2 is far more efficient for comparison purposes. If you create a Google AdWords conversion tracking code, that conversion is specific to AdWords and will only tell you how many conversions your AdWords campaign generated for that particular goal.
However, by importing a GA goal or transaction, it will allow you to see your PPC campaign performance in comparison to other channels. For example, you can see how many goals and transactions your PPC campaign generated in comparison to your organic search, display, or email campaigns.
The decision as to which option you choose is yours to make, so let's look at how both conversion-tracking techniques can be implemented!
Conversion tracking: Google AdWords style. If you do decide to ignore the recommendation (how dare you!) and go down the AdWords route, start by clicking the Tools tab and select Conversions from the drop-down menu. If you have not created conversion tracking before, you will need to click the red + Conversion button to begin. Regardless of which option you choose, you will still create all of your conversions here.
Next you need to select the source of the conversions you want to track, as shown in Figure 3.29. Usually you will be selecting the Website option, so let's just focus on that one for now.
Hit Select underneath the Website option and the process of creating a conversion tracking code will begin! You will need to complete each of the fields:
When you are done, hit Save and Continue to be brought to your very own conversion tracking code as shown in Figure 3.30. A momentous occasion for first timers—relish it. Just like that time you inserted a remarketing code onto your site, stick this one between the <body></body> tags of the appropriate webpage too. As soon as that page loads or the designated button is clicked, the conversion will be recorded for you.
Conversion tracking: GA style. Before importing goals or transactions, you need to tell GA to recognize when a click or conversion has come from a PPC campaign. To do this, you must have both a GA and a Google AdWords account that are linked together. Don't worry, you will learn how to set up a GA account in Chapter 9! When it is set up, you can link the two accounts by clicking the cog symbol at the top right of the screen and selecting Account Settings.
When this is done, hit the Tools tab, select Conversions, and click GA from the menu on the left. If you have valid goals or transactions that have converted via Google AdWords in the last seven days, then you can import those goals and transactions by clicking the +Conversion button.
You are progressing quickly and your PPC mastery has almost come full circle. Let's now move onto the final stage of the iterative process to see how you can really analyze and report on your campaigns!
Believe it or not, we are now at the final stage of the PPC process, as highlighted in Figure 3.31. This means only one thing—it's time to analyze and report on the successes (or failures) of your PPC campaigns! Pretty soon you will:
With such an abundance of data available, how are you to know where to start your analysis? Try on these key performance reports for size:
A report that should be pulled biweekly, you can download it within the Campaigns tab. Click Keywords, select which metrics you want to compare, and hit the little downwards arrow button beside the search box. After choosing which format to download the report in, try downloading multiple reports and combining them into one super report. This way you can get a really detailed, handpicked report of your campaign's performance.
Not only does this report allow you see the performance of each individual ad for the date range you set, but it also shows how your keyword groups are performing against each other—both of which are great for informing decisions on your bid strategy. You can download this in the same way as a keyword performance report; just make sure to set the data range at the top right corner of the screen first. Try pulling this report biweekly.
Great for a quick update, this one gives you a high-level overview of how the account is performing. Has it dipped in performance compared to last week or are there any trends you should be aware of? Download this report once a week to find out.
The reporting, insights, and level of data that a dimensions report provides is the cherry on the cake. Just like the other reports, click the download button and you can export all this data in whatever format you wish. When you have selected a view, take some time to explore the plethora of options available, all of which provide rich levels of data.
By selecting the time view, you can assess performance by day of the week, and this data is invaluable for mapping your customer's journey. To show how beneficial this report can be, let's use the example of a retail company. In terms of performance, it knows not every hour of the day is created equally. Sales lag during the middle of the night but Fridays are great because they tend to be paydays. The company also knows midday is usually good for desktop conversions because users are sitting at their desks, whereas more mobile conversions happen in the evening when users are relaxing at home. The retail company can use this data to track their customers' movements and customize how they are targeted.
If in-depth data soothes your soul, you could also try segmenting your reports. If, for example, you have multiple conversion types and want to see how your keywords perform against lead generation versus purchases, you may want to segment them by conversion type. Doing this will tell you the conversion type of each individual keyword.
You might also want to segment your reports by time of day, search term, or device. You can segment any of that data and add as many segments as you like. Just bear in mind that the more segments you add, the bigger the Excel file and the more data you will have to manipulate. Try just one to two segments per download, then you can start merging reports together.
Next you need to decide how you are going to receive the report. Within the Reports tab, click the little calendar icon and select who will be emailed the report. Here you can also schedule how frequently these reports are sent. Should you choose to save a report, you will need to give it an easily identifiable name, and when you have done that it will forever more be available to you within the Campaigns tab, from the Shared Library section of the menu on the left.
Columns are the most important and relevant way of generating richer insights when reporting, in any section of the interface. You can change them to alter the view or presentation of the data. To the left of the download button lies the option to change your columns. To add or remove a column, click the Columns option and select Modify Columns. You will then be able to drag, drop, and rearrange columns to your heart's content, as shown in Figure 3.32.
The types of columns that are presented depends on the view and tab that you are in, but generally you will always be able to select attributes, performance, social, Gmail, and YouTube metrics. If you have GA and Google AdWords linked, you will also be able to see all of your GA metrics.
With a clearer understanding of the reports that can be pulled from AdWords, let's now look at the KPIs you should be reviewing and optimizing on a continual basis in the context of your PPC campaigns. You should make sure to develop achievable KPIs that will contribute to the overall success of your business. For example, if your goal is to generate more revenue then don't focus on engagement metrics. Instead, focus on hard-conversion metrics, sales metrics, and ROI.
If something is performing really well against your KPIs, increase your bids, if you can afford to do so. On the flip side, you should also take budgets out of other areas that are not performing so well and reinvest them into the areas that are. It's all a process—define your KPIs, analyze the performance against those KPIs, make the necessary changes, and reanalyze the performance based on the changes that you have made.
When measuring the impact of Google AdWords, pay strong attention to each of the following KPIs, which will help determine if AdWords is helping or hindering your business.
Alternatively, you can view your quality score by hovering over the little speech bubble underneath the Status column within the Keywords tab, as shown in Figure 3.34. This will give a breakdown and ranking of your quality score.
With a rock-solid understanding of how to report and analyze the success of your AdWords campaigns, let's complete this PPC process by looking at the laws and guidelines you need to abide by.
We have now reached the final stop aboard this PPC train, and before it turns around to begin the journey all over again—why not jump off and explore the terrain of laws and guidelines? Key attractions include:
One of the most important areas surrounding search marketing is data protection. It is your job to ensure that any data collected is used fairly and lawfully, and for limited, specifically stated purposes. Remember all those times you saw a website's cookie policy when you first clicked in? Every website must do this to be in line with cookie legislation directives. These directives state that you must always be upfront and clear with your users about what you intend to use their data for. This use should be in line with their data protection rights, and their data should be kept safe and secure and never transferred outside the country you are using it in without adequate protection.
When running your PPC campaigns, make sure that you do not collect any personal information about users, such as their names and addresses. This is related to the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) policy, which Google quite strictly enforces.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides a process for a copyright owner to give notification to an online service provider concerning copyright infringement. Google AdWords' trademark policy is based upon this act. It stipulates that trademarks within ad copy cannot be used unless the trademark owner has sent Google the necessary form granting permission to the advertiser. If you are found to be in breach of this rule, you could face stiff penalties.
From starting off with well-defined goals to setting up your AdWords account, navigating the interface, and developing bid strategies in line with your KPIs, you are now PPC royalty—but before you go here are a few more jewels for your crown:
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