Advanced AdWords Tools (@Trada)
In case you missed it, we wrote a guest blog post on Trada’s blog: http://www.trada.com/blog/advanced-adwords-tools/.
We all love feeling as though we’ve dodged a bullet, right? In this post we provide some practical tips and real-life examples for using AdWords tools without them using you. The AdWords Search Funnel Head over to Trada and read the post! http://www.trada.com/blog/advanced-adwords-tools/
Search marketing ad spend expected to grow 50% by 2016
via @emarketer @sengineland
PPC - The Stereo System Analogy
PPC is like a stereo system. Why splurge for fancy cables when your speakers stink?
Google AdWords putting attention back on positions
This week there were two new announcements from Google AdWords’ product team:
- Click level data on an ad’s position is now freely available. For insights on this, you’ll want to follow George Michie’s posts, specifically New Insights into the Google Auction. The gist of it is you can now tag your urls with additional parameters which Google parses (understands) inside Analytics to reveal data about where on the page (in which positions) your ads were clicked.
- Top of page bid estimates are now available to view at the keyword level within AdWords. Inside AdWords lays out the details nicely.
Interesting that both announcements occurred just days apart. How you will utilize this is up to you and your analytics team, but at least we know how to aim for the coveted top spot and how to track click from there.
Google Analytics now offers multi-touch attribution, signaling the end of an era limited to last-click attribution. Finally, an affordable (free) multi-channel, multi-touch attribution platform is available to marketers, analysts, webmasters, CEOs and CMOs. Kudos, Google!
Search advertising can only carry you so far
If you rely on search advertising to bring home the bacon, be careful you don’t fall into a common trap for search marketers: putting everything into search and not enough into the outer reaches of the web, where people spend most of their online time anyway.
Building out your search campaigns fully is absolutely necessary. But you may reach a point where you’ve over-engineered them yet you’re scratching your head wondering why all the hard work optimizing and building isn’t paying off like it used to.
If this happens to you, let me ask you: what are you doing besides search?
I believe in a holistic approach to online marketing. It’s unfortunate Google Analytics is a last-touch attribution model because search appears to be your big winner when you’re winning. It’s true, search does deliver you people who are already interested in your brand or products. But that’s just the thing: they’re already interested. How did they get interested in the first place? This is where you should be looking when you’re in stuck in a rut wondering why search just isn’t performing like it used to.
In a recent article on Clickz entitled “How to distinguish between good and average talent,” writer Joni Ngai sums it up well:
One of the biggest myths that I have heard is search advertising, email, or what-so-ever channel is the most effective marketing channel. If you are looking into the customer journey, there are many customer touch points, including both offline and online communications. Search is normally the last mile used to drive the customer to take the desired end action, such as to register for the special deal or purchase the product. Without understanding that there are other activities and customer touch points that would ‘attribute’ to the final outcome, wrong decisions are often made. I have seen brands that have stopped all other advertising and allocate their entire budget to search. Unfortunately, they didn’t get the desired results. Why?
Those who understand the attribution model would not make such a decision because they always think through and focus on the customer journey in a more holistic way and they use technology to help them when it is necessary. It is this ‘integrated’ strategy that takes the customers through the journey to the end goal.
Infographic! The Top 20 most expensive keywords in Google AdWords advertising via @takingpitches
Awesome infographic from @Chango showing 7 effective forms of retargeting.
#Groupon users (#Grouponers) can wreak havoc on your #SEM.
Nothing against Groupon, but the behavior of its users can be a little… costly!
Typically, the Grouponer:
- Checks out your deal
- Conducts a search on your brand
- Clicks your paid ad in position #1
- Likes what she sees
- Heads back to buy the deal
How This Affects SEM
The last click gets credit for the sale. In this case, that’s your paid ad. Cool, right? Not so fast! That cost you a click. Not cool. Plus, your CPA on the sale will be a few bucks, which might just wipe out your margins on the Groupon deal. This has done repeatedly for my client.
Granted, this really only becomes a problem when you’re running multiple deals throughout the country, but I see a trend moving away from local deals to national deals, and marketers need to be aware of the potential negative effects on search campaigns.
How to Solve This Problem
One solution: Just ask your Grouponer to click the link that is embedded in the deal, you’d have saved several bucks per sale. Put it clearly in the deal copy. This will be huge!
Another solution: Pause paid ads for your brand. Hmmm. Sound risky? It sure is.
