Google Adwords
2nd October 2013
Contents
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Why Adwords?
Budgeting
Keywords & Adverts
Measurement
Google Grant
Why Adwords?
Why you are using Adwords
• People who search Google are actively looking for related information, i.e. in most
cases they are in ‘buy mode’ – the opposite to social media.
• Real-time adjustments to campaigns and bids – pause campaigns if you have site
issues and stay in complete control of your budgets.
• Option of using Google Content (Display) Network, with further option for using
Google’s ‘remarketing’ scheme.
• Demographic and geographic targeting.
• Approximately two out of three clicks on the first page are from PPC adverts.
• Adjustments of campaigns for effective ROI and within CPA limits (expertise required!)
• Your competitors use Adwords!
Further Features
• Ad Extensions allows you to include additional features to your adverts, such as maps
and a ‘call’ button. This can be especially useful for mobile devices where users do not
want to fill forms on donation pages.
• Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) is a new feature for Adwords search ads. It
allows you to show different ad content and bidding for users who have already
visited your site.
Don’t forget Contributions!
• First click, last click, middle click? Remember to have unbiased data analysis – over
95% of Google revenue is from PPC.
• Additional 13% of donations were ‘helped’ by PPC.
• PPC works together with SEO:
- 8.4% of PPC conversions were assisted by SEO
- 2.2% of SEO conversions were assisted by PPC
Data obtained from recent case study
Budgeting
How much should the budget be?
• Largely dependent on sector and campaigns.
• Keywords (groups) should be analysed for most effective CPA (sweet-spot). There is a
point where increasing the CPC bids will have little effect on conversions.
Spend
Revenue
PPC
PPC
Other
Other
Past Data. Past Data. Past Data.
• Use previous data (year on year) to establish trends, at keyword level, and bid
accordingly to achieve the target CPA. Google has the facility to automate bidding
based on clicks or conversions, but this is no replacement for your own year on year
data with competitor behaviour.
• The behaviour of your Ads will vary for different months of the year, especially with
the build up to Christmas. As your competitors start increasing their bids you need to
react to ensure you don’t get drowned in the rankings.
• Accounts can become large with thousands of keywords and you often need to react
quickly with changing bid amounts. The only way to achieve this correctly is to
analyse past data.
Keywords and
Adverts
Google Keyword Tools
• Different Types of keywords (“women’s glasses”):
Broad Match
Broad Modifier
Phrase
Exact
Negative
“buy ladies glasses”
“woman’s
glasses”
“buy women’s
glasses”
“women’s
glasses”
“glasses”
• Google “recommended keywords”.
• Use Google ‘Keyword Planner’ tools to:
- find suggested keywords,
- average number of searches
- competition strength
- estimated bids at different CPC levels
- suggested bidding amounts
Adverts
• The rankings of your adverts are based on ‘quality score’ and your CPC bid:
- Quality score relates to the relevancy of your advert with your site content,
and your click through rate (CTR).
- CPC is the maximum bid amount you will pay for a click.
• Adverts will perform differently with different keywords groups so be sure to create
unique adverts for each Ad Group.
• Adwords allows you to A/B test different ads and optimise based on clicks or
conversions.
Measurement
So many metrics
• It is important to import your Adwords data into a web analytics tool (Google Analytics
is free). This allows you to combine and compare your data with other sources, and
offers further insight.
• Use data analytics to monitor PPC performance with other advertising campaigns:
- Learn how PPC supports other advertising.
- Learn how PPC visitors interact with your site compared with other visits.
Cost per Acquisition - CPA
• Make regular adjustments to CPC at keyword level, based on exported year on year
data, to ensure CPC bidding falls within CPA.
• Limit Ad Group daily spend to ensure budget is not exceeded. Please note that you
can only limit spend on Ad Group level, not keyword level.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
Keyword Phrase Clicks Cost £ Donations CPC £ CPA £ (current) CPA £ (target) Cost £ (target) CPC £ (new)
"XYZ"
600
900
3
1.5
C/B C/D
300
120
360
G*D
0.6
H/B
Google Grant
Key Points and Restrictions
• The Google Grants programme must be a separate Adwords account and cannot be
combined with an existing account.
• Daily budget of $329 USD per day – You cannot add, or ‘top up’, your daily budget.
The budget cannot be ‘carried over’ to a new period.
• Maximum CPC of $2 USD per click (increase from $1 USD) – As with the daily budget
you cannot add to the maximum CPC amount. This is restrictive in the sense that may
be excluded from the top ranking positions.
• Google UK only.