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.

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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.

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Good Google Adwords Campaign Structure gives better ROI & Conversion

A good campaign structure helps you take good decision, and reveal the true states of affairs.

 A campaign which gives good ROI are actually those which have attained a structure where it is easy to figure out what converts and what doesn’t.

 Stating the otherwise, a campaign which doesn’t tell you where the conversion comes from in terms of ideas and themes is not revealing the true states of affairs and are having poor structure.

To make the Statistics of your account actionable, you shouldn’t stop with the keyword level data. They are misleading enough, unless you can interpret them around themes and ideas. A single keyword level data doesn’t tell you enough. A data of similar keywords grouped together gives you insight into a group of audience, and that is what you may term as a real clue! And that is the reason why you should put them together in an adgroup.

Google Adwords Optimization works on the reduction principle. You start with a lot of ideas and reduce and refine them to the most beneficial ones for you. It is how you break them into adgroups that helps you accurately figure out  which direction to choose and which ones to close forever. To get clear cut idea about what converts and what doesn’t You should create adgroups around themes.

There are definite advantages of creating adgroups around themes. First of all you achieve proper segmentation of traffic. A traffic with common interest and intent gets clubbed together. Second it helps you enhance the impact of message you want to give them. You can create ads dedicated to each stream of your audience and devise your plans accordingly. Above all, you are helping yourself know, what needs to be removed. This knowledge alone helps better ROI. Nothing else!

Every broad segment you create would contain a finer segment that you call junk. If you know where the junk lies in your campaign, you can remove them. Better Campaign structure in fact is one which properly segments them and helps you know where they are. The junk may be hiding beneath an idea, an adgroup, a keyword. The solution is suspect and Break, Break & Break, until you achieve a better converting campaign.

Segmentation is the key to enhancement of ROI. Optimization doesn’t create conversions for you, they only help you catch them. Segmentation helps you conserve your energy & propel it in the right direction, where otherwise you may feel wanting. Removal of bad part of the traffic also helps you bid higher on Better Traffic, by  saving cost on inferior quality traffic. In this way proper structuring also helps you get high rank traffic, which gives more return following Zipf’s Law. Those who are ignoring this fact will soon face elimination at the hands of their competitor, who have better structured campaign and can outbid them economically, because survival of the fittest is the rule of the market. 

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10 Surefire Tips for Landing Page Optimization to Maximize Conversion

A big part of Conversion maximization is dependent on the Landing Page. You can see great results by getting rid of elements which triggers Intimidation, and create feel which help the visitors lose Inhibition.

Following are some of the observations I have made managing Adwords Campaign that might help you optimize the landing page to make it more converting. Some of them provide result almost instantly.

1. More the Noise on the landing Page, worse is the response it generates. If your Page has Too many Bold, Caps, written in every nook and corner, it is noisy. You may check the page for noise and crumple. They all reduce conversion, because they are intimidating. Get rid of them!

2. If your Form Submit Button Color matches the skin color of the page/Box. It enhances the response manifold, because it helps visitors lose inhibition. Go and Try it!

3. If You increase the White Space (Blank Space on the Page), it enhances the conversion rate, because it makes your presentation less intimidating, You’ll feel it!  (Please note, I don’t mean simply leaving huge gaps)

4. Lighter Text and Darker Background combination is the most intimidating theme. Visitors try to avoid it as they would avoid mad dogs in a street.

5. Placing Query Form or Buttons in places which are straightforward irritating, like top of the page, reduces Good Query.  Please note, there is no thumb rule for the ideal position, the correct position is the most noticeable and  when the visitor is persuaded enough. So you need to make a balance, and create a feel where it is both noticeable and less intimidating.

6. Asking for unnecessary details intimidates Your Potential Customers, they fear you will Follow him back. Visitors get intimidated to find too many fields in the contact form. Lesser the field, better the conversion. Reduce, merge, condense the number of fields!

7. Shift the Fields related to very personal information like age, house no., mobile no., etc., which are unique to an individual’s identity to another step. Better avoid them, if necessary, hide them before collecting some important stuffs.

8. Use of less intimidating Button Texts will boost conversion.  Click, Go, Enquire, Ask, Send are better than Submit, Register… If it  generates lesser consciousness of leaving a trail, which may be used to track him back, one is more likely to go for it.

9. Use the Page background to increase the Heat near query form. Use of background bubble, sketches, and pointing graphics, helps to increase the attention towards query form and hence increase the response.

10. Increase the size of Submit Button up to the size of your Thumb, If it is more reduce it.

Please Also Read: 10 Blog Post Layout Tips, for Better Reading and Engagement!

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6 Tested Principles for writing most converting Adwords Ads

Adwords ads are written around product, prospect, problems and market situation. Sometimes they convert, sometimes they fail, because your ad depends on the landing page too. However, you may minimize the dependence on landing page, adhering to certain principles.

1. Three line definitions

   It is a great way to create a converting ad which gives maximum written in minimum effort. You must start with this. In line1, Write about the keyword. In line2, write about the product/service & in line3 write about the company. e.g.,  Send Flowers Delhi/Sameday Delivery 24 hrs/Local Florist Delhi. The beauty of this style is that, this most simple looking process gives most consistent and converting ad, in any kind of situation. This looks very simple but produces most amazing results.

2. Try an Elevator pitch

   You know an elevator pitch is a 20 seconds brief of your business. In adwords condense the entire information within 3 lines. The more you pack, the better you get.

3. Give your ad a subtle flash.

   This is the most tricky part of it. Art lies in making it as subtle as you can and making the flash as natural as you can. Let it get all the extra attention, but let it look very natural and real.

4. Don’t make a promise, which will bounce back.

   If you gain visitor creating too much expectation, the situation may become just like an overvalued check drawn, bouncing back for lack of fund. Better, not to raise the expectation too high. Rather understate the claim, and let the visitor feel wow on reaching the landing page.

5. Say few things to enhance the engagement.

   Here, it means something that will make the visitor dig deeper into site. If the visitor is asked to check, see or do something or persuaded to go deeper into website, his chance of converting increases. If you can make him click somewhere, you can increase the chances of conversion.

6. Design a funnel, and talk about each part of it in the ad.

   It requires successive steps, increasing the level of interest. The interest of visitor should increase after every interaction. Every word you add about each step, enhances the visitor’s chance of going farther.

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Why adding Keywords through – See Search Term tool – is a bad idea !

Obvious is not the best solution on many occasions. At least not when you are on the internet. Seldom with Google, which will tax you heavily for your ignorance. It surprises me to see people getting obsessive with their keyword list. Some boasts of numbers of keywords, ridiculously breaking the limits of account. So much! despite their deteriorating experience.

Ever since, Google has added the capability to let you see the exact searched term for your keywords, advertisers have instinctively tried to add all the seemingly converting search terms as keywords. An advertiser from Australia called me, to ask if I could help his real estate firm in showing their ads on Google with rare location tail keywords. The guy even had invested in procuring software to nest and generate such keywords, acting on the advice of a PPC guy. Many advertisers think they have created a goldmine of keywords accumulated this way. A false belief, which rather leads them the other way.

Most of the exact searched phrases are, very unique in their own way, which seldom crosses the threshold of traffic to trigger the ad through that exact phrase again. As a result, you only find Google notification around them that they are Low Search Volume keywords, hence impotent to trigger your ad. 

I’ve always advised clients not to distort the structure of your campaign, running after long tails. The best way to get the traffic through long tails is not by adding them into your keyword lists, but by seeding the properly tuned broad match keywords, which evenly distributes the traffic throughout the probable conversion region. The best way to optimally receive high converting traffic is to increase your presence through the entire Span of the traffic. You definitely require some insight and intuition to make such a list, which is capable of showing your ad through that coveted long tail queries. Simply adding the queries through See Search term tool or any such tool just won’t lead you to the desired destination. Sorry, there is no short cut to this method. 

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Conversion Mystery- Clues to get the insight into clueless

Chemists working in a lab knows there are many complex reactions which cannot even be balanced and fully understood but they can predict the speed rate of the reaction by knowing the single slowest part of it. This way they can even speed up the process and slow it down by simply applying a suitable catalyst.

Same is true with an assembly line producing car, bicycle or any other engineering good. The rate of producing the outcome is independent of the complexity of the processes involved. It only depends on the slowest of them all. If you can figure out the slowest process you can control the speed of the outcome.

The principle and its application goes far beyond manufacturing the chemicals in a lab or goods in a manufacturing plant. If a panel of judges not knowing each other are giving marks for a performing contestant. A single, the most sensitive one, who uses maximum variation on scale would be deciding the outcome of the whole event, provided we assume others are behaving  predictably or you may say they choose what you and most would choose and ignore what you and most would ignore !!

On the web we have many tools to identify which part of the funnel is slowest to pass through the conversion stage, and we have many tailor-made solutions for them too. Google analytics does a decent job figuring them out and any person having report in his hand gets creative enough to think of the probable solutions. Not a tough job!! Through some hits and trials and playing around with presentation people do improve upon some parts of the abandonment phases in the funnel.

However, the improvement in the eyes of cruel judges who holds the key to winning the war on the internet is not an easy task. They see what you can’t see. They figure out what you can’t figure out. They are the people who choose others over you. They are the people who leave you for something better than you. They are the people who goes to your competitor. You should look appealing to the most cruelest of them all. The most abnormal ones, the most weirdest of them all. Make these people speak about your site, through all around feedback. You won’t get clue about them from any analytics tool on this earth. It has something to do with feedback gathering mechanism.

Feedback is more important than routinely analyzing stats about traffic and conversion. Create occasions to make people speak. Get yourself into a ring with your competitor and ask people to rate. Hear the harshest voice from all around. If you want extraordinary success, you need to think beyond what you yourself and people like you think.

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Conversion Dip? You need to Move where people are moving, Move or Lose!

There was a time when people used to go to cybercafe for reaseraching anything on the web. Time is not too far away.

Now! You rarely find one in your locality. Desktop and even laptops are cheap and every household has one. People have many ways of connecting to the web too. In the recent past there has been a sudden spurt in the traffic through mobile devices like tablets, smartphones, Iphone etc. This has added to yet another dimension to the way people convert.

Those who have old websites, and by that I mean even ones upgraded within last two years may not be serving well on Mobile devices. Google adwords stops delivering your ads on those devices, if it discovers any rendering issue with it. You might have seen the bubble near an ad showing "Approved(limited):Rendering issues detected; landing page not serving on mobile devices with full browsers." If this message shows up inside your Google Adwords Campaign ads, you need to take this more seriously now, than ever before!The Bubble by issuing this warning, is also telling you that your ads are not serving on those mobile devices.

What to Do? Traffic through mobile devices has been moving upward at a very great rate. If your customers are browsing on mobile devices then you need to be serious about this issue. Merely making the site lightweight to serve properly may allow you to allude the warning by adwords. However, one needs to take it further and think about usability of the website from mobile user angle. You must answer if your website look compelling enough on Mobile browser. Are the fonts the pictures, the forms look user friendly on those devices. If not? You are losing a big chunk of your conversion than what you deserve.

Conversions are neither created nor destroyed, they move from one place to another!

 To increase or even maintain conversion rate, one needs to go to the places where they are happening. You can't create it at one place. If people have moved, you need to move yourself too. If transactions are taking at a different place, you cannot expect them to happen where you stand. In other words businesses have ceased to happen the way we want to believe they happen. Entire web is adapting to this mobile revolution. Recently, traffic stats of my blog has started giving me surprises, how many people are accessing it through mobile devices! You may also look at the recent move of Google to push the display url just below headline, it does help to highlight your domain in the ad and if presented well, may help people to recall and revisit your website on different platform too.

The time has come when people are using it more than ever, and governments across the world has plans to equip every citizen with such a device. So, while optimizing for conversion one must check, if the presentation is optimal across the devices rather than trying to push it through the Old desktop styled Ad Campaigns.

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5 Tips for instant improvement of a Google Adwords Campaign!

Many features within an adwords account are often ignored, or are not configured optimally. Using them may bring great results almost instantly.

1. Use of Automated Keyword Rules

Use filters to enhance bidding at top positions. You may apply rules to attain a better position, whenever your ad falls below certain position. It is very helpful in campaigns where sighting your ads at top position matters. It is must have for packers & movers, florists, gifts and other websites where people tend to fall in love at first sight.

2. Use of Call Extension

This is the best ad extension which should be used! You should enable it within ad extensions tab, by entering your telephone number. Whenever a visitor clicks your ad on a mobile interface, she can connect with you instantly. It should be enabled for any kind of campaign.

3. Use of Social Extension

If your plus one count is above 100, it reduces your CPC. Of course there is a threshold and if your ad is running, you should not miss this opportunity. it also helps you hold your visitor on Google plus, whom you can pitch later on. A must have extension.

4. Video Ads

Very few people really knows the magic. Ads on youtube are cheaper than what you may think. Just highlight your URL in the ad and let visitors search for your website. Great for traffic at very low cost.

5. Use of Remarketing

Just start collecting the number of people who abondanoned your site through the purchase funnel. You can pitch them differently, using a different combination of landing page and ads. Each time they visit a site of their choice, your custom ad made for them only start showing. You can show them new offers, and target them through a different landing page too. Something great for Real Estate business!

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Google Display Ad Templates Vs. Custom Uploaded Image Ad - A Comparison!

Template Display Ad Advantage

Google has added a big inventory of display ad formats, in your Google Adwords account over the past 2 years.

There were several barriers in trying image ad earlier. First, you needed to have it designed by yourself. Second, you need some technical knowhow to get it uploaded correctly. Flash files require click tags and size has to be compatible with given formats. Third, you need to pay the designer, who may not understand what idea to convey, and would have to stick to what she has given you for a long period.

Google Display ad templates, removes all the above barriers. It has some definite advantages over traditional image ads.

1. You get a large number of templates for various categories. You can choose and filter out them to meet your requirements. Your designer won’t give you so many choices. When it comes to ads, more the variety, better the outcome.

2. You can test several combination of text, font, color and background. Each gives different result and you can come up with best combination by testing. Testing is the key to get the best ad for you, which gives best result. This gives it a big edge over traditional image ad, where you remain stuck with limited creativity.

3. Template Display Ads very often have Better Performance Stats. If you haven’t yet run Template Display Ads, you won’t know it. Again I would stress here, better ads are achieved by testing many ads. Yes, it is the simple game of numbers. More you test, better it becomes. Because, traditional image ads have limitation with respect to testing, Template Display ads produce better results. In one account I found, it made the other image ads look useless in the account, which needed to be paused after sometime.

When you should Pay for Image Ad Designing

Image ads made by designers too can produce great result, and there are occasions when you should go for it.

1. When you have designer with exceptional skill.

2. When you have several creative to choose from. In that case, the picked ad has already beaten few ones.

3. When you know the message to be conveyed and have clear cut idea of what you want and what will succeed, after testing display templates.

4. When you want an improvement over display ad messages and have clearly understood that it will improve the performance.

5. When you get a chance to grab a winning idea. An idea which has already performed somewhere, maybe on some other network.

If you are a great fan of image ad and Display ad Templates, do not look appealing to you, you should place bid on some sites, which offers you choices. In any case, avoid going after a solo design, you would be taking a big risk going for it. On internet,

Nobody knows in advance when you are going to be proven wrong.

Internet tells you very quickly, when you have taken a wrong step.

It is always better to have something in store, when you are proven wrong.

Variety of ads reduces the chances of you being wrong and hence increases the chances of being successful. So, the strategy which gives you more options and security is a better strategy.

Recommended:

1. 
   Failed Ad Diagnosis - Why Some Ads Fail to Produce the Desired Conversion Rate and How to Avoid Them
   
2. 
   1+9Bold Ideas for Writing Google Adwords Ad Text/Ad Copy that Performs!
   
3. 
   Writing Adtexts to Boost Conversion of Your Google Adwords Campaign – Ad Writing Strategy!
   

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Failed Ad Diagnosis - Why Some Ads Fail !

Ads that do not produce conversion has Failed. It has failed to acquire attention. It has failed to acquire attention of the desired audience. There are several reasons of this failure. Some you can figure out after failing many times. Some are not so obvious and we cannot theorize on them. We can only eliminate the ads that fail and learn not to write the ads we know will fail.

My experience tells, some ads will fail even before they start running and some successful ones have common characteristics. It is through this sense that I create ads which I think will serve better than previous ones. While writing ads for Google Adwords, we all rely on this sense, which develops through experience alone. Key to develop this sense is to study the ads and just try to figure out why one is success and other is failure.

Let us talk about the ads that fail, and learn to avoid them.

Again from my experience I would share some characteristics of ads that push your conversion rate downward.

Ad aesthetics

it is an area, which is ignored due to laziness. A failed ad often has poor aesthetics. Not only image ads, Text ads too has to be written keeping this in mind. A question mark in wrong place, Exclamation and lack of punctuation at proper place adds to the poor aesthetics. Avoid it to get better results.

Message clutter

it confuses the reader. Don’t try to say too many things. Give a single clear-cut message. Best Ad is one which does not tense the mind of the reader, and invokes some involuntary action, an urge to take the next step. Avoid the clutter. If you are trying to say too many things, there is little chance audience would get attracted to any. Your buyer buys from you because you are unique to her in some way. Try to understand that and pitch accordingly.

Unjustifiable Call to action.

If you say Try it, You must give a solid reason before saying it. Present your “Try it” with a Punch. If the ad lacks that punch behind it, your call to action is useless.

Lack of scent.

A good ad conceals a hinted Wow on landing page. If it promises too much, traffic will call it a gimmick after arriving on landing page. Creating scent is an art which comes with practice and persistence. Try to drop this scent after analyzing the traffic and landing page carefully. This is not an easy craft, and you would hit the dot after many trials.

Lack of Phrases & Words from Landing Page.

You must not create an ad without going through landing page thoroughly. Users must be able to find what you are promising with ordinary diligence. If she fails to discover it soon after landing, she would call you a cheater.

Saying something which encourage rubbernecking.

Ads written with intent to create humor falls into this category. People will visit you to have fun, it won’t draw the attention of people who are serious buyer. Always try to talk about your products and services, if you say something humorous it would get the attention of wrong people.

Also See:

1. 1+9Bold Ideas for Writing Google Adwords Ad Text/Ad Copy that ...

2. User Behavior Anatomy: How You should Write your Ad Copy

3. Google Display Ad Templates Vs. Custom Uploaded Image Ad - A ...

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Writing Adtexts to Boost Conversion of Your Adwords Campaign – Strategy!

Some adtexts convert better than others.

Some ads have better CTR than other.

To get optimum CTR and Conversion, You need to continuously test ads for performance. Some phrases do the trick, experiment them as much you can. From my experience with managing vast number of campaigns I can tell you what works best, rather what has worked best for me and my clients.

While creating adtexts, it is always a good idea to do some searches on keywords you are targeting to see what people are already writing. Now, you have to evolve a strategy. you have to cut through this clutter.

There are some basic rules which you should learn first and there are some advanced strategies, which I would discuss later.  some of the points that you should always follow are:

1. If you are writing for search, don’t ever ignore the keywords, you have  in the adgroup. Use them as much as you can. Use them in Headline, text line & Display URL. More keywords you use, more attention you get.
   
   
2. Use at least 3 adtexts in an adgroup, and seldom go beyond 5.  Fewer adtexts would give you lesser choice of eliminating the worst performer. Also, fewer ads mean you are testing fewer ideas, and testing is the key to take your campaign to higher level. Too many would also be a problem, because then you won’t get enough data for each of them to eliminate the worst. More the data better the decision you make.
   
   
3. Always use some lines from the landing page itself. It helps maintain the scent, you already have dropped in the ad. Conversion happens because visitors sense something on reading the adtext, if she easily finds the same on the landing page, she falls in love with the website and is eager to take the next step.
   
   
4. Use call to actions like, Try, Buy, Get etc. Point to be noted here is that all call to action don’t give the same kind of result. Some does just the opposite of what you have anticipated. So, testing is again the key.
   
   
5. Always try to write Full Length Adtext. This means you should make use of all available character limits. It has been observed, full length adtexts perform better, with lesser chances of failing.

Above rules would help you get started with your Search Ads. For better results, you would need to keep on eliminating the worst performer and creating the new ones for further testing. You can in this way keep on trying and eliminating the ads, and hence, keep on boosting your performance to the next level. While refining you should keep in mind:

1. If wide variation in CTR is observed. Don’t knock out the High CTR ad, if it performs mediocre in terms of conversion. Very often you would find, low CTR ads give better conversion rate, but once you knock out the high CTR ad, QS of ADG start suffering, ad delivery deteriorates, and hence conversion rate drops and rather cost of conversion shoots up. So, while filtering always have your eyes fixed on CTR, which must not fall below the optimum.
   
   
2. Also while filtering, see if some Ad Keyword pairing would perform better, if shifted to a new adgroup. So, before knocking out try exploring if these ad-keyword pair may perform better in a different adgroup. If you can identify adgroup within an adgroup, it opens a fresh new opportunity.
   
   
3. Apply logic what idea converts and why they converted, if any ad has any conversion data to its credit, however poor it may be. If that ad you are going to remove had an idea which you can grasp, that gave conversion, try using that in combination with other ideas, in other ads.

If you find Adtext1 and adtext2 are top performers. Try to create Adtext3 which sums up the merit of the two. I call this Summation. This often gives wonderful results. If you can catch which idea is getting converted in those adtexts, you can always come up with a better ad copy.

Just like summation, also try removing something from the ads. sometimes you may hit upon a great ad copy doing this. You might be able to figure out what is turning off potential visitors, or even concealing something may actually be beneficial!

Keep on repeating the above two processes to continuously improve your ad copy.

Last but not the least, the real key to write great ad copy is to discover the persona of your buyer. If you hit upon the right trigger, you will gain great advantage over all your competitors. Always discover as much as you can about them.

Also Read:

1. 1+9Bold Ideas for Writing Google Adwords Ad Text/Ad Copy that ...
2. Red Signal to Green on Landing Page
3. User Behavior Anatomy: How You should Write your Ad Copy

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Google Analytics is the Google Adwords Conversion Booster

Try to know your prospects as much as you can.

Conversion through off the site optimization has a limit. You can break this limit only by on site optimization.

Google Analytics gives you enough data to profile your visitors. There are many more tools to give you more data on this. However, data are useless unless you harness actionable insight from them. Google analytics throws unique visitor, returning visitor, bounce rate, geographical distribution of traffic and much more than you can crunch.

You need to make a profile of your visitor regarding, what they are looking for, how they navigate, why they leave and how you can address them in better way.

Whenever, looking into the stats of analytics always try to make a picture of your visitor into your mind and then try becoming one and try navigating your site according to their persona. It will give you the feel of what your site lacks. Too much of data are not desirable, you have just too many of them. You have some free analytics tools and some paid ones promising to throw even more data on your face. What is important is How much actionable insights you have gained from them and how capable you are to interpret them into actionable tasks ahead.

To get better insight into google analytics, you must have organized it in such a way that it gives you refined data to clearly indicate, what is up and what is down. If you don’t have segregated figures of different sources of traffic and different parameters, you are very likely to ignore potential insights that can revolutionize your business. We want refined data to look how the different traffics have different user behavior on your page. How people from different sites reacted to your page.

A single percent decrease in bounce rate may bring sharp increase in conversions. Always try to make your visitor stay a bit longer on your page. Give me some more time and give me some more attention has to be your attitude.

If you study analytics regularly, you begin to feel the shortcomings in a website by just looking at it and start feeling the required changes. On many occasions I can tell the website must be having a bounce rate of more than 70%, without even looking into the stats, because I can feel what a new visitor would feel arriving on it. If link to your goal is not visible clearly, they are very likely to miss it. On site conversion optimization mostly is to make the important links visible and clickable as early as possible. This simple looking fact, though, is the main problem of most of the websites.

If a percentage of visitor simply fails to notice your offer, your ad campaign and hence your objective fails. No matter how well targeted and well written your ad copy is, if the visitor bounces off your website because it fails to present him with what he wants you are losing.

People who ignore analytics are simply losing. Even if you are making great killings today by not implementing required changes in your website, your competitor would start making the killing because they would have moved ahead of you in terms of presentation by implementing those actionable insights gained through analytics.

You know, only 2% of people make the most online and rest are just trying and failing. to secure your place in this 2% you need to be on toe. Conversions won’t always be coming at the same rate if you don’t position yourself to meet the coming challenges. So, in the days of throat cutting competition, it is not your adwords campaign that fails, but you fail to accept adwords and analytics goes together. Any lacuna in accepting this would get you near to negativity of ROI sooner or later.

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How Adwords has changed from 2006 to 2011

Google Adwords has changed a lot, since I started using it for marketing.

In 2006 everything was simple from interface to managing. Google kept on introducing new features and things became more complex thereafter. People were shy of targeting content network. I remember, clients used to tell specifically – No content targeting. Now, scenario has changed and people do want to see their sites on premium content listings. Those who were targeting content initially were very fortunate people. Lesser advertisers targeted it. Still lesser monitored them closely, and very few knew the real magic of this network. 

Now the scenario has changed completely with many advertisers monitoring it and in many segments there is nearly war for impressions. Publisher network too has gone smarter, they too monitor the result very closely and knows the optimal layout to make the battle fiercer.

Search Targeting too has evolved with idea of match types and adtext writing becoming more common than before. It is no more confined within the network of professionals, rather advertisers are highly familiar with the concept within their niche.

Keeping watch on their competitors is very common among advertisers. This is also because internet has now become the premier weapon in their marketing arsenal, which earlier used to be TV and print media. If you change your ad, response is visible in your competitors ad too. Finally, the advertising has become highly competitive and survival requires a lot of patience. 

Positioning yourself with respect to the cost effectiveness is highly challenging, and cost limits need to be sharply defined. When to be aggressive and when to become passive is the key to keep yourself living in the competitive market. Most advertisers who had made PPC, their sales channel are facing sharp decline in their ROI. Entry of bigger players who understands the importance of branding keeps them ahead of those who only calculates immediate sales.

Advertisers who can play bigger game and have long term goals are more likely to win this game rather than those who have limited short term goals. Better advertisers with better goals will eventually eliminate those with inferior goals. Goal setting was always the focus of adwords campaign management and it looks like it would always be. 

Earlier, cheapest click was considered to be the goal. we saw proliferation of bid management tools and techniques. This has become obsolete now. It gave way to conversion based strategy and bid based strategy became inferior. Now, conversion based strategy too has become obsolete, because conversion may not come immediately and concept of conversion needs refinement. If sales was your conversion consider abandoning it. Rather, focus on long term. Improving user interaction on your site might be a better idea. 

Start seeing sale as a function of engagement rather than something which comes instantaneously. Trying to improve this engagement is a better idea rather than just focusing on some immediate outcome. Those who have understood it are only likely to stay longer and those who cannot would surely make an exit now.

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Impact of Adgroup Restructuring on Conversions

We tend to break keywords into themes. Its a good practice. However, an optimum level exists, where further breaking may result into decrease in conversion rate, which might result into negative ROI.

We often break Adgroups into Themes and microthemes. You can break adroups into as many themes as you can. People tend to think, breaking Adgroups into themes increases Quality Score and hence decreases cost per conversion. However, it is not always true. It may increase your quality score but may also decrease your conversion rate. Further, Google's system does not have any Adgroup level Quality Score. System recognises only Keywords and adtexts. However, a pseudo quality score does come into existence at adgroup level, because of this very set up and assuming its existence is beneficial, but tighter theme does not enhance it. Consider a case, where:

ADG= Theme1 + Theme2 + Theme3. ; Now breaking it into, ADG1, ADG2, ADG3 for individual themes, would increase the frequency of ad delivery. However, it would also decrease the rate of conversion. It is my observation, though can be proven mathematically too, Conversion rate for ADG > conv rate of (ADG1 + ADG2 + ADG3). If you are concerned about the cost and have budget limitations, which is practically a barrier for every advertising campaign, breaking keywords into too many themes is not a good idea. Advertisers who manage dedicated campaigns for Display network alone, should pay more attention to conversion data, because you never get keyword level data for these campaigns, and adgroups are structured according to themes alone. If you have too many adgroups in your campaign, try consolidating them by removing unnecessary grouping. A good campaign does have keywords grouped around a theme into adgroups, I do not mean to propose anything against this idea. However, it might become too much and may require consolidation to improve your conversion rate, and this does improve it.

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Optimizing the Conversion Funnel

Landing Page is where a visitor lands after clicking an ad. She has certain assumptions, which she has made about you reading the adtext. If she cannot find what she expected, she may get turned off, or if she finds something more exciting than expectations, she takes a step forward . There are many moments of truths, from adtexts to landing page to thank you page. You must woo her at every stage in the funnel, asking her to wait, there is something more! The tesed and proven driving force in a funnel is the counter-intuitive nature of your presentation. If you promise a package for Rs7000/yr in your ad & she gets 2 years offer instead on landing page for the same amount, she is bound to get crazy for it! If your ad says, you deliver roses for Rs500, but on landing page you pomise, if she want to get it delivered second time, it is just for Rs300, she feels a compelling urge to order through your site. In this case people who order for the first time would increase more than who would order the second time, it is the hope which increases the sales. This was what you can achieve by suitably presenting your package in the funnel, revealing the Wow factor, in each step. However, this is not limited to presenting the offer alone. It is true with, very aspect of the web presentation. The site navigation, layout, colour and overall theme, everything contributes for better or worse. People conceive the package wholesome first and then they drill down. Not only what you say matters, but also the entire theme and ways of presenting it matters. Optimization is a two way process - 1) keep on identifying and adding what will bring delightment. 2) Keep on identifying and removing what will turn off your visitors. Both way you can gain. Fortunately there are tools to achieve this and most of them are free. You must track your conversions through conversion tracking, analyze them using Google Analytics, and experiment using Website Optimizer. Analytics lets you know the figures where you should improve & Website Optimizer lets you experiment with different versions of your page and hence choose the best one. Analyze the analytics data, and pick the tasks for improvement, most of the time, it is not the one magic big change you need that may turn the results but routinely doing several small changes which would change your story.

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Position Preference on Google Search - Why, When and How to use it.

Position preference was the choice of very few advertiser. It was mostly used for ego satisfaction to always grab the first impression of the users. Not anymore, it is the necessity on few search result pages. You know, first fold of SERP has been occupied by big box of Local Listing. So, on these pages if you rank low, you are out of sight. Some queries have the tendency of very low click through down the order. These are the queries where users do little research work before taking the final action. If you are an advertiser advertising on those keywords, you cannot afford to remain low. In such type of circumstances, position preference becomes necessity. Also, your CTR may get spoiled if you absorb most of the impressions below the fold. Moreover, there are definite advantages of remaining higher in the order, because clicks and conversions follow the the Zipf's Law. So, higher the rank, higher the clicks and higher the conversions and the degree of difference has the propensity to increase as you go higher up the order, that is to say no.3 is more beneficial than no.4, no.2 is more beneficial than no.3 and proportion of benefit between occupying no.2 and no.3 is more than no.3 and no.4. Hence, in circumstances where you have clear cut evidence of low conversion rates at the bottom, it is wise and pofitable to cut down the impression from these positions. Hence, a florist may find, impressions below position 4 is useless because so many sponsored link and Local listing are already present above them that users have little incentive to go any further. Blocking these impressions would not only cut down low converting clicks but would also boost CTR and hence Quality score and hence lower cost per click. So, there are definite advantages of not advertising below certain positions.

Google has made it clear that bottom preference of your ad is treated as hard limit, which means if you have chosen 1-3 as position preference, your ad would never show below 3. However, if you have chosen 2-4, your ad may show above 2 (See:Position Preference Failures). Google's policy of honoring bottom preference as hard limit, is sufficient to block unwanted below the fold impressions, which is required in some situations.

Biggest mistake, while choosing position preference is to choose 1-1. Although most tempting, this position can be very easily beaten by your immediate competitor, andworse for you, he won't feel the heat of your bid because what he pays is based on the bid of the next ad showing! The bid of the ad not shown is not taken into account while calculating the actual CPC an advertiser pays. To understand this situation let us take the case of Advertiser A, B and C. Suppose for the sake of simplicity, they have almost equal quality score and positioning is determined by the bid alone. Let A is bidding Rs100 with pp 1-1, B is bidding Rs150 with pp 1-3, C is bidding Rs50. in this case a won't show at all while B would show at Top and would be paying only Rs51 or something around that. Strategy of B is much better in this case compared to A which does not show at all. If A changes its strategy and decides to become flexible and opts for position preference 1-3 just like B, the game changes. In this case, B would still be at the top, but A would occupy the second position and also, determine the actual CPC paid by B. So, B would now be paying something around Rs100 to occupy the top slot, and would start feeling the heat of A's bids and may be tempted to lower the bid if it gets too hot to resist. The wisdom, is in judiciously choosing the bottom limit.

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Conversion Tracking - What you should Track?

When it comes to tracking conversion, people very often choose single point conversion. Most popular choice is the query confirmation page. It is good if objective is to measure the ROI of the campaign with respect to revenue only. However, it has inherent danger of excluding keywords, which although may not have sent visitors to query confirmation page, but might have helped them to take action after sometime. So, eliminating them indirectly eliminates some conversions too. If you want to improve the overall user experience on your website, then tracking should be multiple points. Anything useful, should be called conversion. So, not only the hardcore revenue generation page, but all the pages which measures visitor interest in your website, should be called conversion. It helps boost the queries infact, and gives you chance to improve upon multiple points. If you only measure revenue generation as conversion, then you fail to notice the other weak points of your campaign, and conversion improvement is nothing but improving upon the weak points. Slowly I have started to change my views on measuring conversion. earlier I used to believe in measuring the single point of sales as conversion and have used it thoroughly in many of my campaigns. However, sale is the result of too many factors and one should not bother too much about it, when the sole purpose is the improvement and continuous improvement. Optimization with respect to conversion called final stage of sale is counter productive in the long run. You simply miss the opportunity to improve the campaign with respect to several other interesting factors, like view of some key pages. whereas, views of some key pages would measure the interest people took in your product and website, simply optimizing it with respect to final monetary action would lead you in the wrong direction, many a times taking decisions based on factors which are driven by market dynamics rather than usability of the website. Yes, it would increase the number of conversions in your campaign and that won't be any approximation of final dollars going into your clients pocket, but isn't it not the purpose of campaign manager. We want figures to improve, and market dynamics is beyond our control. If a campaign compels the visitor to look into the details of an offer, taking some useful action, the campaign is successful. Campaign should be focused on generating interest in the product rather than buying, because there is a period of latency between the two and increasing interest surely increases the final sales. Any keyword which is generating view of key page, is worth having, and you would learn it only when you see the differences in revenue generation comparing the two approach.

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Is Google Redirect Notice ruining your campaign?

Perhaps you haven't come across any Redirect Notice served by Google, after clicking an ad on its content network. I too hadn't till I decided to click on some of the ads, I manage, to get the feel of customer behavior. To my disbelief, some of the placements (Not All though), serves you notices like I have posted above, just click on them to know what they read. Some ads, after clicking would say "The previous page is sending you to ....., If you do not want to visit that page, you can Return to the Previous Page". Another one says, "The previous page is sending you to an invalid URL, If you do not want to visit that page, you can Return to the Previous Page". I found Url is valid in both the cases, because one of the ad I have myself created, which works well at other places, serves "invalid url" notice. Check your own ad too, Google might be preventing, visitors from reaching your website!

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How to Interpret View through Conversion Metric

View through conversion metric which has recently been added to your adwords account, needs some analysis before you consider it a success or failure. Important questions are:

1. What this says

2. What are the ads it take into account

3. Should you add them to conversion through clicks or not

Before you puzzle yourself with these questions, you should read this helpful resource from Google. Important interpretations are:

• This metric says how many people, who saw your ad, didn’t click and got converted

• It takes into account only ads triggered through adsense network.

• For adwords advertisers it will only show conversions on content network.

• It would only show conversion of display ads.

• It won’t work on search network.

• It won’t work for Text Ads.

It is pretty clear, this metric is only for tracking the success of display ads on content network. As the article makes it clear, the cookie in this case is set by adsense code on the page. It means if the page displaying adsense ads is displayed on your system, tracking cookie would get installed. It really does not matter whether your ad was above fold, second fold or blind fold. It would record the conversion if the **Page** carrying the ad is opened and some action has been completed on the site of the advertiser which advertiser has chosen to call a conversion.

If you are an advertiser who is targeting same site through different ad channels then, view through conversion would overlap. It means you won’t be able to know which ad/channel really worked. If you are targeting only through one channel say adwords then you can easily trust the figure what it says, however, it is not clear, whether the system takes into account only the conversion where people haven’t click on the display ads or do they include figures where, although visitor didn’t click on the display ads, he clicked on some text ad and got converted. Whether or not the two columns, conversion after click and view through conversion, has overlap and to what degree. Google or some researcher may reveal it in coming days. Till then just keep an eye on this figure and apply your common sense to arrive at conclusions.

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