Archive for Paid Search - PPC
Use the Impression Share Metric in Adwords to Uncover Opportunity
Posted by: | CommentsUse Google’s Impression Share report to get the metrics to determine if you have room to grow your Google AdWords PPC campaign in your target market. Impression Share reports on the percentage of times your ads were displayed out of the total number of page impressions possible to you in your market. For example, if your report range chosen was last week and your impressions are showing the number 1,000 and your Impression Share is showing 10%, you can infer that there is a possible 9,000 more impressions available to you to go after. Compare impression data over selected time periods to see if you are losing or gaining ground in your available market, or if there is more room for you to grow.
However, make sure you also compare this to your backend data and align with your marketing strategy as there may be available ground to gain in impressions but with less benefits to receive in gaining those additional impressions. Those who are using their PPC campaign ads as part of a branding strategy may want to gain more impression share than others for instance. With a highly profitable keyword or group you may want to test gaining more impression share.
So I bet you are wondering just how to improve your Google AdWords Impression Share? Google gives a few quick tips to improve your impression share such as improving ad quality, increasing you budget or bid, adjusting your keyword match type, and adjusting regional or placement targets.
Want to know how to view the Impression Share metric? View detailed steps in AdWords Impressions Share Reports FAQ .
Optimizing In A Tough Economy – When Paid Search Costs Rise and AOV is Down
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a no-brainer that it is undeniably more important now so than ever before to be consistently and aggressively optimizing your websites for conversions (both macro and micro-conversions) when the economy is tough as it is right now.
For many online businesses, paid search is one of their primary acquisition sources of new customers, sales and leads. Paid search competition is equally as tough right now as the customer has less money to spend to make their purchases.
Simply and sadly put, it will cost more to acquire the customer who spends less. No one likes to hear those words, ever.
According to this press release from SearchIgnite, who reviewed trends from January 2006 to September 2008, Paid Search growth was strong in the third quarter of 2008 revealing an increase of nearly 27% compared to the same quarter in 2007. The release stated that intra-quarter retail spend showed a decline – and even with a small increase in conversion rates the AOV (average order value) showed a decline.
Two primary solutions with your paid search campaigns are to work on converting more customers that are already coming to your website via this channel or to increase AOV (or both) in your short-term and long-term plans. This is of course involves the incorporation of optimizing your paid search campaigns too.
This is where the familiar “which comes first the chicken or the egg” syndrome comes in. Do you optimize your PPC campaign first to reduce unnecessary spend going out and then optimize your website for better conversions from that traffic? Or, do you optimize your website first in attempt to maximize the conversions from the traffic you are getting and then optimize your PPC campaign from there, or do you do a combination of both at the same time?
Searching the web and depending on whom you read and what theories you subscribe to, you will read many viable reasons why each of these three starting points are the best solution. In the end, most agree the right solution is the one that fits your marketing strategy and goals. But almost all agree that if your testing and optimizing, no matter which end you start with, if results are statistically sounds and financially trustworthy, you are headed in the right direction.
In the end, this is definitely not the time to make guesses on what you think might work to improve your online results (nor was there actually ever a time to make guesses). Rather, this is the time to get proven answers via testing and optimization strategies and to use this data to make the changes needed to increase your online website performance to get closer to your goals.
Google Adwords Releases Seperate Metrics for Search Partners
Posted by: | CommentsToday Google announced in their Inside Adwords Blog that they have increased the level of detail available to you in the Summary section view to help you gain better understanding of your Google Campaigns and Ad Groups performance.
Previously, you could only view performance of just the Content Network and Google Search (which combined Google Search with Google Search Partners such as AOL, Ask.com, and others). But with this update they have broken out Google Search Partners into a separate metric allowing you to more finely tune your account to peak performance.
The also announce that this level of detail will be available soon in the Reports Center.
