Bid Management for Audience Targeting in Google Ads

Google Ads allows you to target different kind of audiences, in a Search Only Campaign, in two modes, 1) Targeting 2) Observation, I will discuss here the second kind of setting only, because first kind is dedicated to the targeting of the kind of targeted audience only.

There are three kind of scenarios emerging out of three kind of bid strategy: 1) No bid changes, only audiences are added. 2) If there are three audiences viz, A, B & C, in the order of importance giving incremental bid like 10%, 20% and 30% respectively. 3) Again if there are 3 audiences just like the previous, assigning bids in reverse order choosing decremental order like -30%, -20% and -10%. Now let us compare outcome of the three: In Scenario:1 Traffic through A, B & C will be governeed by the Default Bid and over a period of time you can allot a bit of incremental factor depending upon your analysis.

In Scenario: 2 All the audiences chosen will attract incremental bid over default and you would be bidding lower for the traffic which has not been marked by Google as belonging to a particular audience. So, you would be attracting more people on your website who has already been to many websites like yours before.

In Scenario:3 All the audiences chosen will get lesser than default and hence you are bidding higher for the traffic which has yet not been marked by google. It means you are spending more for the people who are fresh into market.

Now compare this with the real life situatrion where X,Y and Z all goes to the market looking for a product. X has the propensity to close sale in one or two shot, while Y in 5 shots aand z will keep bargaining the whole day.

Being a seller chances of sale happening is higher for X then Y and then Z. Scenario 3 gives you the best setting where you spend more for X and less for Y and Z, while though counterintuitive Scenario: 2 you are spending more for Z types and less for X and Y. You will lag behind competitors.

The more the no of sites a visitor visits less likely he is to buy. If a person visits 10 websites than sales probability is only 10%, I would strongly advise you to go for Scenario:3 kind of bid strategy for good results. Always bid more for Untagged traffic than marked audiences.

Read This >>

COVID Times Marketing - Who are selling and buying

Travel and Hospitality Industry are the worst hit. Many travel agencies have closed their operations indefinetily, because revenue generation has hit the bottom line. Travel industry which normally operates at their peak in Sepetember-March months every year looks frozen out this year with few signs of thawing though August is half past.Indian travel industry starts their marketing effort from June-July normally, but this year bearing a COVID impact there is very little action.

Some Positive signs of galavanizing this industry into action once again are:

• Religious Tourism are showing the signs of opening up again. Many temples and shrines inviting tourists. People of Indian origin who had postponed their India visit earlier can't wait more beause it is mostly the domain of the older generation.
• Domestic tours will start again, it may help travel agencies survive.
• International tourism though looks a far off gamble, you may still target them because 3-4 months lead time is considered normal.
• Strict adherence to Social Distancing, Sanitization and Safety assurance are the buzzwords. People want to come out again, but safety requirements has to be assured.
• Vaccines and Drugs claiming to cure the disease has added an impetus to confidence in people coming out.
• European Travel Industry has opened for european countries, it may spark off similar action in Asian Countries.

In a nutshell one may say though times are difficult one may adapt to the changing situation and can still earn by making some adjustments to their preferences and bend over backwards.

Read This >>

7 Golden Rules for Google PPC Bootstrapping

Google PPC on Bootstrap is a challenging task, which can be rewarding too if your project succeeds. If you have too many projects and you don't know which ones to pursue and ones to drop it is better to bootstrap and let them prove by themselves which are profitable. I run few projects on minimal spent and have been successful in picking the right ones in the long run for more focus and calculate the right ROI and traction they will give to investments.

1. Keep the Budget as low as Rs500. Just enough to kick your ads.
2. Keep keywords limited to Highest probability Converting ones.
3. Quickly identify Keywords which doesn't convert through real stats. You will be surprised, How many keywords which relates well with business and attracts relevant traffic still are poor in terms of converting. Filter them out ASAP.
4. Keep the margin you earn through product or service as close to the Daily Budget as possible, so that even a single sale will give you break even
5. Everytime you get the second sale immediately add the revenue earned to the Google Account.
6. Let the Projects which could not earn for themselves die, the survivors you will find are burgeoning with profits for you.
7. Start experimenting and expanding the projects which have More than Rs1500, account balance. You will find the business is growing by leaps and bounds.

Read This >>

5 Box Clever Google PPC Ads Survival Strategy

They can increase performance, save your cost and Life!

1. One step forward Two step backward

   When it comes to setting budget, be smart, economical and compliant with Google's recommendation. You know not following Google's recommendation may impact your visibility and performance. So when Google asks you to increase, just do it and then smartly bring it down again. You might be rewarded with overdelivery credit!

2. A saucy Cocktail with All their Color

   When you have no clue why you are performing below par, just put everything they are claiming. You don't need to be even slimy, just a bit of smartness, like if they are approved by xyz, then you too can say Approved(by inhouse specialists!). A Small caveat, don't lose the trust, but offer a credible explanation that you do meet the standards and deserve their attention as much, by disclosing who the Specialists are and why they count.

3. Split the Keywords into More Adgroups

   if x no of ADG didn't perform then 2x with same no of keywords in the campaign will increases the chance of your survival. If your adgroups contained 50 Keywords, break them into 20-25 each writing more specific ads around them.

4. Double the number of extensions

   Extensions are often ignored. However, they are as much important as the Adtexts are. Doubling their number or ven tripling would give the system more varietes to choose from and hence will increase the chances of qualifying in the auction where it used to fail. In other words it enhances quality score and brings your cost down.

5. Keep Experimenting with New Features

   Google keeps on rolling out new features and your competitors are just lazy adopting them. Actually they are goldmines, if you could master new features early, they are great source of good conversions. People who experimented with Display Network, Youtube, Mobile and nowadays Mobile Apps advertising, got rewarded and were far more sucessful than those who were stuck in Search Only.

Read This >>

Adwords Overdelivery limit raised to 100%, Know Your Monthly Limit

Few months back Google increased the overdelivery limit for adwords ads to 100%. Many advertisers have started complaining that on odd days spend goes too far away from what they envisaged.

There is a Daily Budget feature in every campaign. While setting up daily budget you actually tell Google How much you want to spend on any day. However, web traffic does not remain static over time, rather it varies widely across your chosen keyword/topic/interest... candidates. To comply with it Google used to allow your ad to go past your daily budget, so that it may survive the occasional surge in traffic. Earlier it used to be only 20%. Now this is upto 100%, which means Google can spend upto Rs200, if your Campaign Daily Budget is Rs100.

Impact on Advertisers

Advertisers need not panic. Google while delivering more than your daily budget also takes into account the monthly limit, which is Daily Budget x 30.4. So, Google's system while giving you extra exposure on some day always calculates, the deficit and gaps in scheduling to make up for it. That is to say overdelivery algorithm is designed to keep monthly spend within the limit of 30.4*DB and if by any chance it goes past it, Google won't bill you for that. Those clicks are free! So, if you are using ad scheduling limiting exposure of your ads Or to say your daily budget doesn't get consumed because of time limits you have set up or opting out of some days of the week or you are a casual advertiser who turns his campaign on and off manually, you are more likely to see your daily budget getting breached, on odd days. For advertisers, who keep their ads turned on for most of the time, Google won't find gap within Monthly Limit and real monthly spend & so this behavior is unlikely.

Advertisers should calculate 30.4 x Daily Budget, figure and actual expected spend, like if you don't run ads on sundays then you are expecting a total spend of only 26 x DB. Say, your DB is Rs100 & you don't advertise on Sundays & expecting a total spend of Rs2600 only. However, Google will see the limit as 30.4 x 100 = Rs 3040. To not get piqued at the end of the month, just equate the two, 2600 = DB x 30.4, So, DB = 2600/30.4 = Rs85.53 . Hence, if you set up Daily Budget as Rs85.53 with 4 Sundays in a month, you will see effectively a spend of Roughly Rs100 everyday. Happy!

Read This >>

Conversions in Mobile Era - Web Forms have had their Day!

Web Form Conversions are declining. That is the news which you either experienced or heard from your online marketing staff. Business Leads doesn't come the way it used to. Most people before contacting you have surely checked your web presence on at least two devices. So, mobile targeting is something you need to focus on. Here I must clarify mobile targeting doesn't simply mean ads on mobile. Even if someone is on desktop, if you don't have something for his mobile you are missing something.

Web Tracking and Conversion Figures are partially correct

The way businesses used to happen have changed considerably. First it changed in favor of online. That is why we considered everything online trackable. It laid the foundation of analytics and conversion tracking tools. Measurable ROI became the benchmark of online investment. Things changed with proliferation of different kinds of devices accessing web more conveniently. Desktops still rules the roost among all devices and we still consider it first deciding upon the layout of a webpage. However, a large part of decision making is influenced by mobile and other handheld devices which can serve you a webpage on the fly. No matter whether travelling, running, cooking or watching TV. If suggestion comes for spending a holiday somewhere, someone in the family is quick to look into details then and there and make an influence. Same is true with in an office. People are changing devices back and forth before coming to any conclusion & major part of it are not tracked!

Google claims, it extrapolates mobile data into All Conversion column, which you must take with a pinch of salt, but dismissing it altogether may too not be a wise idea given the fact Google owns Android platform which is used by a very big percentage of mobile users. So, we may assume Google knows which PC connects with which mobile and perhaps is capable of mapping and pairing them with clusters of devices used in decision making. Perhaps! Google too insists it is good for you if you believe this data. Its a Grey area and for those who are bogged into conversion data on dashboard its a bad news. Whole thing is too fuzzy.

You rather need to analyse things in larger perspective now. Just analyze it like other advertising program where you don't track outcome directly. To judge the success of ads you must look into the impact it generated on your overall business, ignoring what dashboard figure says.

Web form vs Mobile Forms

Forms served on mobile devices should be brief, intuitive and one which requires less typing, only then you can ensure they are not ignored. Also, make it limited to 3-4 fields max.

Form fill ups are still the most important part of conversions and gives you valuable insight about your prospects.

So, pull up your socks and give your mobile website a little bit more attention, everyday.

Read This >>

Horizontal & Vertical shift in Google Ads

Google removed Right side search ads some 6 months back. With this the game of search changed a lot. This escalated the bids to new levels and all of a sudden the metrics like lost impression share and relative CTR started looking relevant. In fact every metric which you dismissed as junk on dashboard needs to be analyzed for refinement opportunities. Google's Webinar a while back announced gradual roll out of features like demographic bidding and complete device wise targeting and bidding on search. So, competition on search won't be limited to the vertical space, it has many dimensions and more to come in future.

Changes in Adtexts

All of you must have gone through new format of ads. Display Url has two vacant fields. Since you can't change first one which defaults to TLD of your Final Url, the fun of writing myKeyword.XYZ.com seems gone for good. So, the format would only be XYZ.com/FirstText/SecondText. Probabaly, it has been done to keep ads along the line of Organic result's url structure, which shows breadcrumbs, like xyz.com > Category > Subcategory. I'd suggest you to always keep the spirit of change in your mind while writing ads.

People advertising on Bing already are familiar with continuously running two lines that Google has introduced now. Only thing to keep in mind is that Two Headlines sometimes become too long and Google Truncates them at many places. It has been observed that truncation of headlines on Desktop are quite common and truncation of texts below headlines are common on mobile devices. So, keep them a bit shorter, to avoid it.

Some precious Valuetrack Parameters

Set up your Tracking Template with valuable tracking parameters, like {adposition}, {devicemodel} and {Random}. Analytics , utm freaks tend to overlook adwords tracking features, but adposition and random are unique parameters that can be tracked only through adwords. The Random number tagging will help you identify & match the url with other metrics and present it side by side analytics data.

After tagging you would get valuable adposition data reported as 1t1, 1t2 for above organic result appearance and as 1o1, 1o2.. for below organic result ads. You know how helpful these data are these days! With proper tagging you would also know how ads perform on different device models.

Top Content on Display

A hidden control for display ads. You must have noticed this tab in Display Campaigns under setting tab. It is meant for changing the bid of placements you have opted for. Name of the tab is not intuitive. However, in one shot you can change the bid of all the "managed placements" in your campaign to a 10%, 20%, 30% higher bids than automatic placemets and hence improve the impression share on the placements you have selected compared to those which system has automatically selected for you.

Read This >>

Keywords are Curate's Egg, Make the Most of Them

Keywords are at the center of managing a search ad campaign.

You can further divide them into Exact, Phrase and Broad. They Provide targeting precision in the same order. Broad gives you really broad coverage of search queries, you need to block the bad part of it on routine basis. No matter how old and tight your campaigns are they will keep on surprising you. To a lesser extent same is the case with phrase too, however we can guess its bad part with reasonably good accuracy. Those who live and breathe exact matches find it too costly, sooner or later.

3 Solutions for Managing Keyword Match types

1. All Match Types In the Same Adgroup

   An age old practice in adwords. Soon after finishing up with Keyword List, break them into Three Parts: [kw], "kw" & kw, then & there. If you remember, we used to set the bids too using asterix after them. You can bid on them in decreasing order starting from highest for exact and lowest for broad for the same keyword. Earlier, no matter how many times you have added the keywords, Google consolidated the stats for them and assigned same Quality Score irrespective of the match types. However, things have changed now and all are treated differently. There are reports that it is no more the most restrictive type which will reflect the stats, actually broad may compete with exact and phrase for same query. So, this technique though has the merit of simplicity, there are some caveats associated with it.

2. Different adgroups for different match types

   Maintaining different adgroups for each match types allows you to add negative as exact in broad and phrase adgroups. So you go like this Phrase Adgroup will have Exact as negative and broad will have phrase as negative. In this way you will have traffic for each adgroups which does not interfere with each other and so you can set bids according to priority. This method achieves everything except for segregation of budget.

3. Different Match types in different Campaigns

   To allocate different Budget which are allocated to each type you need to segregate them into Campaign. I had talked about penumbra match type, for brand keywords. However, no matter what match type you added Google blocks all the queries around it and it spills over to many keywords. So, to keep tab on them it is better to put them into different campaigns now. Also, keeping different match types in different campaigns will give you better ROI, because there is nil chance your bad keywords eating into the share of Good ones. So, if you are dealing with account that has limited number of keywords and accuracy matters the most, it should be implemented.

Read This >>

The Best Way to Track Adwords Conversions

You can track adwords conversion in many ways. From Thank You Page tracking to import from analytics, to tracking via Tag Manager. There are different ways, and each has its own merit.

Thank You Page Conversion

Its the oldest and the simplest way of tracking conversions. You just have to download the code from your adwords account and paste it on a hidden page of the website, that is displayed only after completion of a process, you consider useful, like form submission. Though there are other new methods, I still prefer it. It doesn't make your other pages code heavy, its greatest merit. So, if it can be installed it should be your first priority. For websites which doesn't have too many kinds of form submission, it is still the best way to track conversions.

On Click Conversion Tracking

If you want to track clicks on some links or your website points to some third party payment gateway, where installing the code is not possible, tracking click on button is your best bet. For this again, you simply need to download the relevant code, from your adwords account, which is easy, and tag the links after a, like a YOUR ON CLICK CODE href="" with relevant tags. It will start tracking your onclick conversion. However, if your HTML Link contains Target_blank element, this method won't work. That is to say, if your links open in a new window, this method won't track it. Also, if it results into button freeze in some browsers then again you shouldn't install it.

Goal Imports from Google Analytics

This is preferred by Google analytics freaks. There are several caveats associated with it. One, very often it fails to give real time figures. What it gives are corrected after sometimes. Misleading enough, if you are on adwords dashboard. Two, Most often advertisers mix it with other kind of conversions, polluting the dashboard figure. Why not keep analytics limited to GA account. It looks nice, while analyzing it there, but messed up when mixed with Adwords Dashboard. I love to see adwords data inside analytics but hate to see its data on adwords dashboard. Just keep few metrics like bounce rate on adwords dashboard. No need to clutter it with too many imports from there.

Conversion Tracking via Tag Manager

You need to create an account in tagmanager.google.com and download the container code from there. Once you paste it all across your website, you can manage what to track via a configurable dashboard. You can load conversion code via it and it is compatible with many services apart from adwords like analytics, linkedin etc. So, no need to paste code again and again on your website. Simply get some ids like conversion id, label id etc and configure it through web interface. It is very beneficial for tracking form submission if you have different kinds of forms across the website at different places. It can identify forms easily if you are using standard html coding and has <form></form> element, otherwise you may have to tweak it further and let it sniff through some class and other ids. It does make it a bit complicated but its worth attempting. Again, don't forget to tick off the option for validation, otherwise your subsequent pages won't load till all values are passed via this code. Don't go for too much accuracy, because page load time has to be your priority. When this was launched I didn't recommend it to anybody because of this issue only. However, it has the option to deactivate. You can easily track link clicks via this too, even if your link opens in a new window. In this way it gives you maximum with minimum efforts.

Read This >>

Good Cop Google leans left leaving Right hang out and dry

What is Left?

You do Adwords Marketing, Right way or Wrong Way. Right way is strictly following all the guidelines in letter and spirit. Google adwords was created in such a way as to reward the honesty and punish the wrong no matter how sneaky they are. It was true in the initial phases of adwords marketing. Google has broken the mold it was cast in, long back. Right Wing practitioners of adwords marketing who bought into the idea of radical honesty on internet marketing should be alarmed or be ready to get edged out by ones who are not right but fits into Google's scheme of doing the semblance of legality, hence not wrong either. Prod at Google for quality check falls flat.

Free Voucher Economy Thriving

In fact good number of agencies have made fortune out of free voucher program. A little gaming with the system allows them rake in huge profit by quoting to advertisers at the fraction of Click cost & running adwords at zero cost. Another trick employed is using $100 coupon(meant for US account only) in new account and then request to turn it into Rupee account after which about Rs7000 becomes the free credit value. Some claim Google automatically turns them into rupee account detecting Indian mobile number during SMS verification. This loophole is deliberately created to benefit to whom it is communicated. You should know Indian new accounts are eligible for Rs3000/- max. free credit Only. Google's benefit is, they help push the click cost in auction upward and make some honest advertiser pay higher. Google has altered TOS for applying these vouchers to pander to these bad boys of PPC. When I last checked Terms & Condition, I could find this poorly written document with a conspicuous grammatical mistake, promising credit in your account after "an minimum" spent. It tells on them, how much analysis has been done and how many people actually care about reading it. Clearly, Google didn't even check it back after posting.

Tech Support ads still run

Its an industry created by Google. You know Microsoft Bing pulled itself out of this murky business by categorically declaring Third Party Tech Support won't be allowed on Bing Platform. It is in black & white and talking to Bing support I felt they are in no mood to cut you some slack. In contrast, Google has no cut and dried version on this business. It continues to play fast and loose on this front. Most of its sales partners, SMB, Google authorized, blah blah.... were heavily dependent on this industry and may not like to be saddled with other kind. So, you still find some ads in this category running on Google, terms of which are not above board.

Double Serving is an art

Google in 2008, relaxed double serving rules. It has four points out of which at least two should not be breached. 1) Two websites should not be owned by same person. 2) Brands & Logo should be different. 3) Pricing difference should be more than 25%. 4) It should not lead to same customer support experience. If co. X & Y, points you to same customer support after buying then they are one and same breaching the fair use policy of ad network.

Despite all said about it. It is considered an art by many and Google turns blind eye towards them. In fact some agencies, close to Google, are considered specialist in this area. Talking to some advertisers, it was revealed, Google recommends them or rather they are "Authorized".

Abuse of Invoicing Account

Google extends direct invoicing privilege to some advertisers with good credentials fulfilling both regular account spent and legal norms. However, it has been brought to my notice that several advertisers get this privilege even if they fall short of requirement. In fact these accounts are abused to run Free PPC by many agencies who are in cahoots with some Google India Reps. Higher Threshold is set for payment which are never reached actually and so they are never billed. They also keep on creating New invoicing accounts using fictitious credentials to run Free PPC at regular interval in collaboration with Google! One guy confided some "Mr. V" is so smart and have such great inside track that every detail of click and cost is reset or wiped off after some time, looking like the account had never run in the past. Having myself seen a disapproved ad mysteriously turning into approved, I can't doubt this claim either.

It is the common observation of PPC guys around the globe, if your ads run 24x7 and you are willing to pay a decent amount to Google then Google seems more than willing to cut you some slack. They only pick on small advertisers.

Read This >>

Right Side Search Ads Disappeared- Implications !

Post February, 23rd, 2016, Google Adwords has stopped showing Paid Ads on Right Hand side of the search result pages.

To adjust with the new situation, advertisers need to tune their campaigns.

Following Implications are immediate concerns:

1. Reduced number of ads will show on the Search Result Page. Although Google has increased the number of Top Listing from 3 to 4, this is only for Highly Commercial queries
2. Search ads will show on Top and bottom of the Organic Results. It means number of ads on a page will vary from 3to7. How frequent bottom ads shows is not certain. Even if we assume 7 ads on a page, its a drop from earlier 11-14. Huge!
3. Only Exception so far disclosed are Product Listing Ads, PLAs Or Shopping ads, which are eligible to appear on the right side.
4. It is not clear whether, ads without extensions and all other bells & whistles are allowed to enter the Top or not. Documented Position so far which perhaps still holds is such ads get preference. So, if your campaign contains only ads and keywords, they will be worst hit with this change.

Your To-Do List after the change:

1. Immediately extract Top Vs Other Report and calculate the bid to cope with the situation.
2. Study the Competitors Report via Details tab. How many have outranked you how many times and figure out How to survive in the changed ecosystem.
3. Create as many extensions as possible. Although only 3 can show at a time, you never know which will give you extra punch and impressions, when others fail to trigger.
4. Make your campaign as much feature loaded as possible. More features you add more likely they are to appear
5. Elevate your bidding to the level of CPA/Portfolio. It would act as a hedge against crazy competition. Let Google’s algorithm take care of your Cost of Acquisition.

Read This >>

Entanglement of Keywords/Topics/Interests, the Spooky Action!

Evolution of Entangled Targeting

For a long time Keywords were the only way to define the context where ads should appear. A lot of Keywords were required to match the context correctly. With time Google upgraded its algorithm to single keyword matches. Now, you don't require many keywords to define the context, even a single keyword is enough. Google soon rolled out Topics and Interest, categorization of webpages and audience, and from here things became complex.

Now, contexts are defined, by not only keywords but also Google's categorization of pages & audience, known as topics & interest. Just like early days of adwords when few people understood how to get around keyword targeting on display network, same was true with these new features too. Adding to the confusion were target and target & bid feature.

Google does a great job by graphically representing the targeting on the side, but not many are masters of set theory, so the explanations about them on web by many bloggers are full of goof ups. If you understand union & intersection concept of sets then it should not confuse you, for more accurate analysis of what is happening just look into the spheres on side. It gives pretty good insight.

So, there are three ways of contextual targeting, which is of most interest for you, which you can either keep separate or entangle them.

Pure vs Entangled Targeting

If you keep keyword, topics and interest in separate adgroups or campaigns, it would give you most wide coverage of each kind. If you add interest or topic or both with keyword then they become entangled and context and bid is defined by whether you have chosen, bid only or target and bid.

If you have keywords in your adgroup, then they are always target & bid and you can't make it bid only. Using keywords entangled with topics helps refine targeting, where each of them alone may expose your ads on irrelevant pages. If you set up both as target and bid, it will result in decrease in exposure but definite enhancement in CTR and conversion rate. you may choose according to your requirement and competition you are facing. when competition heats up refinements of targeting is must. Same can be said about interest targeting. You can keep them separate or entangle with keywords or topics. Google charges 20% of CPC for identifying interest target audience, so its a tricky affair.

Who are Interest audience & why you must watch them closely

I don't want to receive call from people who are Marked Interested in SEM by Google. Why??

They are people who are always searching for someone in the industry and for what you just guess. Same is true for many services. They are highly dissatisfied people. They are hard bargaining people. Worse, you will meet some cheats too who keep on changing service providers.

I have got good result with interest categorization in diseases, homemaking, real estate and shopping goods targeting.

Before using it, you must try to answer why should one use his computer so much that google should mark him.

Read This >>

Tech Support from India: The Good and the Bad

Tech Support, as they prefer to call themselves, are call centers, mostly concentrated in the Nearest to Capital Region (NCR), Delhi, India. The major chunk of this pie are Noida & Gurgaon. There are many factors contributing to the mushrooming growth of this industry in this region.

First, they are the industrial hub of near to Delhi region, famous for excellent infrastructure, which are busy during daytime, but would otherwise remain idle at night but for these kind of Call Center industry who work during night. So, the kind of infrastructure they get is far superior to what they would get at the same cost during daytime.

Second, the region is full of well trained, highly skilled call center people, who are available at night for some decent extra income. Many of them have shifted full time into this industry.

Third, the resources both tangible and intangible become readily available at night, combined with the opportunity to present their services to the best paymasters of the world, the US people, who by nature’s design are about 7 to 12 hours behind in time zone, desperately seeking services of these kind. A perfect match of demand and supply!

What is Technical in Tech Support?

If this is a call center industry who are dab hand at registering the complaint of brand consumers and helping them services, reach out to them, what is technical in them, one may wonder. Actually, the bad part of this, very little! Most of the solutions offered are common sense application, which tech savvy people themselves, can fix easily.

No Doubt, there is a big need of professional help for these kind of daily tech nuisances, despite the apparent simplicity of the problems. Software issues even minor ones, can be quite handful and solution though simple may not be everybody’s cup of tea. However, very few of these so called tech-support companies, devote time and money into mastering these technical stuffs or hiring someone with such capabilities. So, only few of them fulfill what they promise. Rest of them are just champions of words and at best be described as con artists, who know how to pull a fast one, selling some fictitious service bundles.

More important, they gain the insight into what consumers are actually looking for, from their experience while actually working for some brands like HP, Dell, Microsoft etc. You can say, the expertise these companies bestow on their employees for serving their customers, are used in fooling their customers buy some fictitious bundles by their ex-employees or even existing ones!

Role of  Search Engines

Search engines are the first place where a person seeking the solution for his problem would go and type a search query. Here, the Search Engines, like Bing and Google connects a person in USA to the Call center in India and the rest is fate. Google, the most dominant search engine, provides most of the opportunity.

The Ugly

Google, till recently, used to provide dedicated support to this industry through some “Google Authorized” agency and some self proclaimed “Operations Partners” of Google who were also privileged to use google.com email ids. The free adwords voucher program of Google, run through its privileged partners, increased the number of players exponentially. Many new entrants knew the free route to enter this industry. It was an era when Google Adwords free vouchers used to arrive with a covering letter shamelessly suggesting all you have to do is to open a New account (errr… with New Business Address). It helped Google push the  CPC astronomically higher. There were other perks too into the bargain. I have witnessed an account which had the privilege to use trademarked term of brands they pretended. I was not buying into the client’s story, initially. However, I could myself see, just as claimed by the client, the ads first got disapproved and magically all of them termed approved the next day! My jaw dropped! 

Read This >>

Flexible Bidding, Solution for Top Clicks

Flexible Bidding, is the new kind of bidding strategy option added by Google, in the past few months in accounts across the world. This Option you can find clicking on the settings tab, choosing from bidding options. To activate it, you have to set it up through Shared Library.

Go to Shared Library, click on bids and find, Target Search Page Location >Top of the Search Page, Option. You will find details of this bidding strategy on the following pages, which has several advanced options for you to set up according to your preferences. Give it a name(e.g., TopClick) and click save. It will start showing as an option in Bidding Options in settings and also in Bid Strategy Tab at Campaign, adgroup and keyword pages. You can also create another strategy, say Maximize clicks within budget. You can shift between different strategies through,the Bid Strategy Tab. Flexible Bidding has Target Search Page Location and Maximize Clicks as Bid Strategy type. You may choose either Target Top of the page, or First page as option in the first type.

What Top of the Search Bidding does?

If you have chosen, Top of the Search Page option, it will dynamically raise and lower your bid to produce maximum above the fold clicks. The greatest merit of the algorithm behind this is that it adjusts different bids for different keywords, taking into account Quality Score and probably budget too. It is wise enough to judge what percentage of keywords should be given top bids, if enabled for entire campaign or adgroup. You can also enable it for one, two or more keywords!

Whenever, you want, you may shift to manual bidding through simple click on Bidding Strategy.
For those who were unhappy with the absence of position preference and run the rule now option should find this as a better solution. It is indeed better and economical than earlier features, retired now, intended to produce top rank click on adwords ads.

Read This >>

Effective Steps to Minimize PPC click fraud

Click Fraud is an Industry, so play safe

Clicks on Competitors' ads with malicious intent to exhaust their budget, are termed Fraudulent clicks or Invalid Clicks in PPC. Some advertisers consider, spend on PPC should be both way, so they also pay for clicking on competitors' ads. Google has a system for detecting such clicks. However advertisers feel it is not 100% accurate and can catch only some clicks by amateurs in this field. On many occasions they find clear cut indication in stats that they have been charged for clicks by competitors. Masters of Click Fraud Industry have evolved many innovative techniques to escape Google's auto-detection system, like 3 refresh after every click & using automated software which automatically clicks on ads changing/spoofing IP. Some are also using different IPs for search and click to evade blacklisting. Google's TOS clearly states, clicking on competitors' ads will disqualify them from Google's adwords program. However, till we find people prosecuted by court of law for such activities, playing safe is a better strategy.

Make best use of Geographical Setting

If you suspect people of some nationality or location would be maliciously clicking on your ad, you must use the targeting exclusion tool.

Change the default setting to only Target People physically present in the targeted location, and exclude either those physically in excluded region, or use the second option of excluding both who are physically present in excluded region and those who are interested in excluded region. The second option would exclude even people of those nationalities who are present in the targeted region. For example, if you are targeting USA and suspect Your competitors in India are maliciously clicking on your ad. You should exclude India, and set exclusion setting to exclude people physically present in the excluded region, and also those who visit pages related to the excluded region. This brings great result in most of the cases. People won't be able to access your ad either sitting in India, or most likely even in USA, if they visit India related pages on the same computer.

Use Location based bidding

Advertisers should avoid common bidding in entire targeted region. Use low bid for the whole region and increase the bid for specific locations within the targeted location. This way one can minimize the loss through fraudulent clicks incurred. For example, set the bid for whole of USA, $2 and increase the bid of city and states by 30%, 40%....

Use IP Exclusion feature

Directly exclude IP Addresses by entering IP Data from where suspicious activities emerge into IP Exclusion in Settings. If you don't have access to weblogs of your website you can easily create such a log by inserting a piece of code into your website. Statcounter.com generates excellent stats of IP and session. You can use its free service. There are some software like Clickbrainiacs available in the market, which can do this automatically and with more accuracy in real time. If you have big budget, you must try and buy them.

Stay away from some obvious...

In the worst case, you may avoid exposure on terms where your competitor would obviously assume your presence. Simply add some Exact negatives, in negative keyword list. It is a technique which works wonderfully.

Change the Domain Name

If you are in a highly competitive industry, prone to click fraud. It is better to shift some keywords, identified in the above step and set up a new campaign with new domain. Are you still surprised why you find some industry leader missing on some great keywords.

Read This >>

Keyword Details, Search Term Report- Blunders!

I have talked about the blunders, advertiser do, interpreting search term report earlier, too. This time I want to elaborate on them. Some Most Common mistakes are:

1. Deleting the broad match, after adding all converting search terms as exact:

   I equate this situation with a gamble with dice. A dice has 6 possible outcomes. Search Term reports are like, you know the 3 occasions when you were successful matching, say (1, 3 , 5). If you decide to quote only (1, 3, 5), your chances of failure to catch (2, 4, 6) are 100%. Because a dice has 6 possible outcomes, with equal probability you are reducing your chances of success by relying on historical data. 

2. Adding converting search terms as they are in the search term list, in the keyword list:

   After adding these terms, most of them get marked, low search volume. Some do get impression, but seldom converts again. What you missed, is that, keywords actually Never Converts. What converts are ideas and themes. A visitor rotates on searches throughout the theme/idea, through many websites, he may convert any time, on any of them. So, you rather need to crack the idea/theme which converted. Simply adding those keywords are of no use.

3. Promptly adding negatives, which seems non-converting:

   People easily figure out, some terms which they see as non-converting and try to block them. After this conversion falls, because they seldom went through the digging part, what triggered them? Dice analogy fits here too. I would like to block all the outcomes which are beyond 6, but would retain all that is within (1, 2, ... 6). Conversion dice has some unknown value! You have to dig deeper into the problem. Real problem may be bid, match type or keyword itself within the existing keyword list.

4. The only action which one may do easily without committing mistake:

   The only thing you may do with this report without doing major blunder is identifying some terms to be added as Exact Negatives. You are safe doing it!

Read This >>

Broad Match Modifier- The Best Practices

Broad match modifier restricts the queries triggered by a broad match keyword to the inclusiveness of all the words modified in the keyword. A '+'symbol is used just before the modified word, which means any query triggered through them must include the modified term or its close variants.

For example, if I use modifier in the keyword, say, purple flowers online delivery. I may use it for all, some or one of the word in the keyword. If my concern is, it should not trigger ads on green, blue ... flowers, I may use modifier for the word purple and make it, +purple flowers online delivery. It solves my problem. It won't show on any search term which doesn't include the term purple. Additionally, if the advertiser want to show ads only to people who are interested in delivery, then modifier should shift either only to delivery or both to purple and delivery. This is the basic part of the usage of the modified broad match

We shall now explore further, the practices which may deliver better targeted ads.

Use to limit the exposure of ads to certain brand search terms

It is particularly beneficial for tech support business, who would like to avoid the exposure of Mcafee antivirus ads on norton or avg. To achieve this, simply use modifier for all the terms containing mcafee, like +mcafee support, +mcafee antivirus support etc., Similarly, in other adgroups containing norton use +norton, in all keywords. In hp printer adgroup, use +hp throughout the adgroup and so on.

Use to gain exposure on some rare terms

One may use to gain exposure on terms which attracts little traffic on related terms. So, some location like +location, is useful, or +term can also be used. It is same as we earlier used "location", or "term", phrase match keywords.

Use to improve CTR & Quality Score

An adgroup themed on roses, may contain +roses in all the keyword and this will improve the CTR & quality score of entire adgroup.

Use to improve the cost of acquisition(CPA)

If you use modifier throughout the adgroup for words like +buy, +sale, +deliver, it will catch people at the last stage of the buying cycle. This achieves a short term boost in sales, however, those who are long term players and are concerned about branding, I don't recommend this practice. However, the technique does improve your CPA.

Read This >>

Adwords Adtext Optimization for Phone Calls

You all know, Google, no more allows phone number in adtext and sitelinks.

It has been documented that any new ad created with phone number in adtext or sitelink, will get disapproved and old ads will get disabled after sometime. Some old practices have become obsolete and new ones are in place!

You can still write Phone No. in Adtext Display URL

Is the new call extension, the only way, to show your phone number in adtext? Definitely Not! In fact, you can still show, phone number in adtext, because from what I have observed, Intelligent Google, neither considers Display URLs to be part of Adtext, nor Sitelinks, so Adwords Specialist, examining your ad would Approve it! So, the only thing you don't have to do is, not to write phone no. in Headline & the remaining two text lines of the ad.

Use of Suggestive prefixes in Display URL

You may write your display url like, example.com/Call-9910115853, or example.com/+91-9910115853 or example.com/dial-9910115853 or +91-9910115853.example.com. I have seen all these gets approved. I haven't tried but would suggest you to try, example.com/tel-9910115853. I think, it too should get approved.

Choose Mobile Call Extension in the option.

There are two options in the new call extension, one you all know will show phone number along with the ad text, and give users the option to call clicking on it if she is on a mobile interface. However, the other option, where on mobile device, click anywhere on the ad connects to your phone, is worth considering.

User won't land on mobile site but would rather get connected to you. This appears as 9910115853(mobile), in extension report. The difference is observed on mobile interface only, on desktop both kind of extensions appears the same. However, some callers may feel awkward, getting connected to the advertiser, when they actually wanted to examine their site. So, I personally run both the extension side by side. It is simple, you have to include both, 9910115853 & 9910115853(mobile) in setting and they will appear in rotation on mobile devices. Reporting too would give you two rows. After sometime you can take decision, which one is best for you !

Use of word "Call" in Headline or line after that

Use of word call in Headline, increases the response rate on phone, if you depend on call extension.If you have phone number in adtext(display url), both the positions, Headline and line just below it works well, to boost call response rate.

Call Forwarding Feature and Conversion Tracking

Call Forwarding feature allows you to investigate, all the interaction through phone number displayed on your ad. If opted in, Google shows unique number to every user who even if dials it after sometime, triggers the data metrics in your account. This feature is not available in India. So, the accounts which doesn't have this feature and also those who haven't opted for it by choice, will see considerable fall in reported conversion in their account, but that is a false alarm and you know why! Don't you??

POST SCRIPT: Google has clarified that an algorithm works behind, the call extension, which judges the occasions, where showing Phone number is of interest to users. So, stuffing nos. in display URL, may send wrong signal to the algorithm. It may cause rendering and Quality Score issues, while delivering ads. So, you may not use these techniques, if you find these issues in your account, and better rely on call extension. As claimed by google algorithm behind call extension, judges according to different signals it receives, from user behavior and website

Read This >>

Adwords, New Call Extension is The Game Changer

Tech Support Business in India

The business of Tech Support for overseas clients is booming in India.

The formula is simple. Arrange for a few tech experts, run ads through google adwords account and charge the customer for services. An Ideal Low Investment Business Opportunity! Because of seemingly very low  entry barrier, it has become an attractive business opportunity for tech savvy people.

Reasons why India is ideal for this kind of Support Business are:

1. India has great number of Engineering and Software experts. In fact India is among topmost countries producing such skilled labor at low cost.
2. Indians can speak good English. They can even be easily trained to fake american accent and there is very little chance native Americans may even notice. The reason why it is the most preferred destination for MNC call centers. 
3.  People in US, Europe are willing to pay for Tech Support services. If one can provide tech support in  specified time limit, people are willing to pay for it.

Old Style Tech Support Adwords

For a long time, Google adwords has played a significant role in call generation for such kind of businesses. Ad text written with a strong emphasis on call, with a toll free number written in the text itself, had made the click and website redundant. There used to be significantly higher number of calls compared to clicks on the website. Ads used to generate calls purely in direct proportion to the impressions gathered by the ads.
Google apparently took note of it and decided to disable ads with phone number in ad texts.

New Call Extension, The Game Changer

The upgraded call extension or new call extension, is the only way now to display your phone numbers in the ad text. So, now Google decides, when to show your telephone number and when to hide it. I've seen typically when Ads start falling in CTR, call extension stops showing and ads start gathering clicks. So, the era when such businesses were thriving on few clicks and a lot of calls is gone now or it is soon to become past. Yes, the ads which were written in the past are still showing on google. However, they will soon be disabled and PPC experts shall have to write it in a new way.

If you want to generate good number of calls through adwords, then, you can't ignore CTR & Quality Score now. Otherwise, phone number may disappear! Yes, all such companies shall have to rework on both the campaign and economic side of this business.

Read This >>

Targeting Long tail Search Terms, marked Low Search Volume!

What are Long Tails?

Contrary to what many people believe, Long tail has nothing to do with the length of the search query. Even a short search term may be the part of long tail. The terminology has something to do with its graphical representation. If you  plot keywords against search volumes, you will get a graph of Small number of Search Queries getting most of the volume, which shows as a Graphical Peak with steep slope downward, and a Long tail afterwards, with steady slope almost running parallel to the axis, representing terms which are Larger in number, but individually triggers very low volume of searches.

History

Historically, it was Amazon, who discovered that a large number of their collection were unnoticed because of low volume of searches against them on homepage, and they can boost sales by presenting them alongwith their mainstream products. Individually, they have few seekers, but combined together they become huge!. Hence the term Long tail !

Importance and Targeting of Long Tail Keywords

What is of importance here is, in the Graph, Area under the curve represents, the Reach of your Ads. You can cultivate and grow this Long tail in the curve to such an extent that
Area (Long Tail  Search Terms)   >    Area (High Search Vol.. Keywords) !
Can you afford to ignore them?? 

In Google Adwords, Google doesn't allow you to target most keywords which are part of this long tail, because they are huge in number and individually have very low search volume against them. Since, Google has to monitor ads targeting search queries for a large number of legal, ethical and safety parameters and requirements, it is not feasible for them to allow targeting ads on such queries. So, you find Low Search volume notifications against them. However, you may have your ads appear for these terms through broad matched similar looking keywords. That seems to be the only simple way of targeting Long Tails. Other way you can use Dynamic Search Ads, but then a lot depends on Data Structuring of your Website and Content Optimization.

Chances of appearing on these Long tail terms increases with better structuring of your adgroups. If your adgroups are well themed, giving clear cut message to the system, what they mean for, with respect to keywords, categories, situations etc., it will in most probability, occupy most of the Long tail terms, automatically. The Google, though in its documentations  doesn't reveal much about the mechanism of how broad match keywords are matched, the point not to be forgotten is it always adds a factor, Other relevancy factors, in various documentations. So, actually it is all into the structuring of your Adgroups that gives the message of what is being targeted and where it can be matched and more important Projected ! You can fine tune it further by adding Nagative Matches or if you are willing to go farther, try Penumbra Match Type. Something, you should never forget, in adwords, it is actually the Good Structuring of Your Adgroup/Campaign, that leads you towards perfection in targeting, not by inserting a lot of keywords into your account.

Read This >>