QuoteSearcher’s PPC account covers a wide range of insurance products, including Landlord, Caravan, Motor Trade and Taxi Insurance. The aim was to lower the average CPC and CPA, while increasing the volume of leads generated through PPC.

The big part of the strategy, as with every PPC account, was to test and refine keywords, adverts and landing pages. Although with the QuoteSearcher account, the main focus was around the actual profit margin of each lead that was generated.

In just 12 months, leads generated rose by 89% while the average Cost per Click dropped by over 65p.
To find out more about our strategy, execution and results, read the article on Figaro Digital’s website.

If you would like to find out how Gravytrain can help your business, please contact our Business Development Executive, Alex Moran, on 020 8941 2364.

Too often we see PPC accounts where Broad Match keywords have been simply paused because although they were getting a high volume of clicks they were converting at a very low rate and just wasting lots of money. But there is another option to pausing them.

It is crucial, with Broad Match keywords, to not just look at them specifically but at the actual Search Terms behind these keywords that have been generating the clicks, as Google can sometimes have you appearing for some quite interesting and irrelevant searches.

What Am I Actually Coming Up For?

Last week we did a full search term analysis, over a 60 day period, for one of our Insurance based clients, in order to find search terms that were generating impressions and clicks but not actually delivering any conversions, and what we found was quite remarkable!

Over the 2 month period we found that our Insurance based ads had not only appeared for but had actually had clicks on searches such as “la senza in store returns policy”, “rugby ball shops”, “buy iphone 4 online” and “cher lloyds clothes”.

Now, I know that the idea of Broad Match is that it is ‘broad’ and brings your ads up for anything that includes one of your keywords, but some of these are still very baffling. “buy iPhone 4 online” could have been picked up by a keyword including “online insurance”, whilst “la senza in store returns policy”” could have been picked up by a keyword that included “Insurance Policy”, but “Rugby Ball Shops” and “Cher Lloyds Clothes” are even more broad and very far removed from any aspect of Insurance!

How do I stop this?

Well, the obvious solution is to add some of these search terms to the negative keyword list. Being insurance based, we were comfortably sure that by adding terms such as “la senza” and “iPhone 4” to our negative keyword list that we were not going to miss out on any conversions!

However, even if you do this analysis every month and add a bunch of negative keywords each time there is still the possibility that you will come up for others broad searches that are just as irrelevant (this wasn’t the first time we did this investigation!), and you can’t negative match every single phrase and word not related to insurance!

The other option is to not use Broad Match keywords at all. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “that’s mad” and of course I don’t think it is sensible to go and turn of all your Broad Match keywords and just have Phrase and Exact Match, as Broad is the best way to bring in a high volume of clicks and appear for a large amount of relevant search terms. But there is a compromise.

Broad Match Modifier

Yes there is more to PPC than Exact, Phrase and Broad Match! By simply adding a + symbol in front of a keyword you can make it a Broad Match Modifier. What this means is that you Google will show your ad for the exact keyword you have and close approximations.

For example, if you were to use the keyword +Car +Insurance, with the Broad Match Modifier, you would be able to appear for searches such as “Car Insurance” and “Cheap Car Insurance” but have no risk of coming up for searches such as “Car Parts UK” or “Home Insurance” which you may well have done if it was just a general Broad Match keyword.

Basically, the Broad Match Modifier gives you more reach than Phrase Match but without the random mess of searches you can get with simple Broad Match. So no more “Rugby Ball Shops”, “iPhone 4s” and “Cher Lloyds Clothes”!

“So what’s the secret with PPC?”

The question is usually something along those lines. I feel a bit like scrooge cancelling christmas writing this post (especially if you’ve found this post searching for the PPC silver bullet) because, quite frankly , there simply isn’t any silver bullet with PPC.

This is not to say that paid search can’t be complex (it often is) , or that there aren’t really any ways to make a difference to a campaign – just that there’s no 1 overpowering method to suddenly reduce your CPA or increase your clicks. You’ll need to do better than that.

There’s now more settings and options with adwords than there have been. Whether you want to add videos , text links or phone numbers to your ads, you can now do it. There’s new keyword match types, mobile device targetting, new ad formats and the ability to ‘remarket’ to people who’ve previously visited your website.

These changes , combined with future improvments, make PPC one of the most exciting areas of digital marketing to be involved in – it means that , increasingly , every paid search account is different not only just in the keywords and campaigns , but in a whole range of ways.It also means that we need to take even more time to understand not just all of the options available to us, but how we can apply these to the client account in question.

The impact on PPC is subtle, yet important. Any marketeers approaching PPC with a fixed methodology are likely to find their work increasingly ineffective. To give an example, I’ve seen checklists and process plans for PPC management – while best practises can be beneficial, a checklist applied to every client is a classic way to get things the wrong way round.

As with traditional marketing, the best way to approach a PPC is to start with the objectives of the  business in question – for us, it means understanding our client. It may sound banal to point out that understanding a client means understanding how best to make the campaign work, but it’s nevertheless the case. The most important part of the planning phase for a new PPC client is in being able to map activities according to the level of impact they will have on the client – how much difference optimising them will actually make. When you’ve done this, you know what you need to spend time on, and what you really need to get right.

For cleints, rotating ad-copy can make all the difference , while for others it’s all about conversion rate optimisation. If rotating ads frequently doesn’t make the difference, don’t feel compelled to do it every week. Equally, If reducing the dropout of a form doubles your return on the entire campaign, do feel compelled to spend every last hour trying to achieve it.

If anything, the ’silver bullet’ of PPC could be as simple as understanding the impact of your work, before you start.

Right, lets get to it!

Firstly, you’ll need to create an account… but I’ve already got one – I hear you cry!

Well, nonetheless I would strongly suggest that you create a separate account for Facebook advertising – just to keep it totally separate from your personal profile. It does look like you can allow other people access to the advertising part of your account, without them seeing your personal profile… But still – I’d consider it ‘best practice’ just to keep them separate – our account manager at Facebook recommended we do it that way too… Better safe than sorry, eh?

So once you’ve created a new account, click on the ‘Advertising’ link at the bottom right of the page. Should you wish to, you might like to checkout Facebook’s Guide to Advertising – probably worth a look; although it’s fairly straight forward.

The first step is to create your advert…

Pop in your destination URL – you’ll then see that there is an option to suggest an ad – click on it if you like; quite handily Facebook will grab a couple of the images from the page – which may be the ones you want to use.

Less handily the auto-generated ad text is pretty rubbish, but you can amend that

Bear in mind that your ad needs to attract attention, so don’t be afraid to get a little creative with your headline and body copy. Also, you can of course upload any image you like… Just make sure you own the rights to it!

Just for fun, I’ve created an ad targeted specifically to Coca Cola employees – (don’t panic all will become clear in a minute).

I’ll now click on continue, to move on to targeting options…

Targeting on Facebook…

Here’s where Facebook is actually pretty awesome.

Remember my Coca Cola ad? Well thanks to the magic of Facebook I can get it to show up only to people who work for Coca Cola.

There are tons of options here – you can target by location, age, gender, sexuality,  relationship status, languages, their likes & interests, plus education & where they work. So, you can be as targeted or generic as you like.

The marketer in me, says ‘be targeted’ – but I guess it really depends on what it is that you’re looking to do. For example – if you were running some adverts for an online job site which covers all sectors and locations – you might just elect to be pretty generic.

As before, when you’re done, click continue…

Campaigns, Pricing & Scheduling

This bit is pretty self-explanatory – just set your pricing, scheduling etc and then hit review advert…

You’ll then get the opportunity to either ‘place order’ (which is an odd turn of phrase, but heigh ho) – or go back and edit your ad.

Then simply lather, rinse and repeat to create as many ads as you like.

The targeting is set at a campaign level – but you can create as many campaigns as you like – just be a bit careful if you are creating multiple ads for campaigns – as if you’re not careful you can find yourself adding the adverts under the wrong campaign.

To be honest the system is pretty slow, clunky and has an irritating tendency to crash. It would be really handy to have an offline Facebook Editor (as with the Google AdWords editor) as I’m pretty sure that this would speed up the process – perhaps something for the future eh, Facebook?

So… hopefully you’ve found this useful – as usual, any feedback, questions or declarations of love via the comments please

The pay per click model came about in the late 1990s and differed from previous methods of advertising which were based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rather than cost per click. GoTo.com (later Overture, now part of Yahoo) were the first search engine to offer PPC in 1998.  Google were a little late to the party, adopting the PPC model in 2002.

Back in the bad old days it was literally an auction with the advertiser who was willing to pay the most per click securing the top position.

However, it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t the best model – a pretty irrelevant ad which gets only 1% of the clicks @ £10 per click generates less revenue than a relevant one which gets 10% of the clicks @ £2 per click.

As such in the mid-noughties Google introduced quality score – an algorithm which essentially ensured that most relevant ads (i.e. the ads which generated the most revenue) would get pushed to the top of the results. Yahoo and MSN later followed suit with algorithms of their own.

This changed the face of PPC – as instead of fighting an auction war, PPC-ers had to get a little bit cuter and make sure their ads were as relevant and attractive to users as possible in order to secure a decent position on the page and (potentially at least) reduce the cost they pay per click.

Quality Score Explained

Quality score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query – that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad.

So, how is it calculated?

Quality score on the search network is calculated based on the following metrics:

1. Historic click through rate of the keyword, ad and display URL
2. Relevancy of the keyword and ad to the term which is being searcher for
3. Relevancy of the keyword to the ad copy
4. Relevancy of the keyword to the landing page
5. Landing page quality
6. Historic account click through rate

You can read more here.

For obvious reasons Google don’t reveal quite how these factors are weighted, however it’s easy enough to guess

It’s pretty much all about click through rate.

This a nice metric as high click through rate indicates that users think that your ads are relevant/offer an attractive proposition AND of course clicks = money for Google.

Should you *always* worry about Quality Score?

Frankly, no. Whilst having a high quality scores is good from a cost per click point view (as you’re likely to be paying less per click) – you shouldn’t necessarily let it bother you overly. Obviously Google want you to play by their rules and create relevant ads that people want to click on so they can continue to rake it in; however – on some occasions you might want to bid on certain keywords, but limit the number clicks you get.

For many clients we use ad text to pre-screen clicks. For example, we may bid on a term like ‘taxi insurance’; but because our client only wants to insure taxi drivers over a certain age we might elect to run an ad like this:

Low Cost Taxi Insurance

Over 25? Compare Leading Taxi

Insurers & Find the Cheapest Quote!

TaxiInsuranceExperts.co.uk

Now here, we’re actively trying to limit the number of clicks which we’ll get – which of course may impact our quality score – however it’s far more important for us to deliver the right sort of leads to our client. So it’s not necessarily something you ought to be tyrannised by

Questions, comments, etc? Hit up the comments my dears.

Image credit KB35

The general industry-accepted idea is that while Broad Match keywords are useful for new and old advertisers alike, there are many situations in where using them may not be in the best interests of the advertiser.

Whilst Broad Match keywords promise to give the advertiser maximum exposure, exactly how relevant that exposure is often called into question. The result is that many advertisers will get left with numerous mismatched impressions that negatively affect their campaign quality score and worse, clicks that result in no material gain; as in some instances searchers will click on these mismatched ads, but not go on to convert once on the site. Hence, the cost of that click may not be realised now or ever.

While the more restrictive Phrase Match option covers this issue to a large degree, it achieves that by compromising on ad exposure which means lower traffic and conversion volume. Increased ROI at the cost of significantly lower volume of conversions is not very appealing to businesses/marketing professionals.

The accepted norm in the search marketing community until now has been to start with Broad Match keywords with an extensive list of accompanying negative keywords to manage exposure to relevant searches. Search marketers will then identify the keywords/phrases that perform to the desirable level of ROI and subsequently move them to the stricter Phrase and Exact Match types. In all this, the start of the campaign has been most crucial and the precision and accuracy with which the initial selection of Broad Match and negative keywords work has been of great impact on the success of the campaign.

The search community has long debated over the usefulness of Broad Match and demanded an alternative for and more control over the random search queries their keywords end up getting impressions for. Google have finally answered by introducing a new match type in the arsenal. It’s called the Broad Match Modifier (BMM). Essentially, it fits somewhere between the Broad Match and Phrase Match keyword types. The object it satisfies is to stop individual words from Broad Match keyword phrases from triggering impressions on ‘deemed’ related words in user searches. Google have released the graphic below to explain exactly how BMM differs from all other match types.

Click for larger image

With Broad Match, the words ‘formal’ and ’shoes’ will both be independently considered and matched to singular/plural versions, synonyms and other related words not included in the campaign keyword. ‘Formal’ triggered impressions for ‘Evening’ and ‘Men’s Dress’, while ‘Shoes’ triggered ‘Footwear’ and ‘Wingtips’. If the advertiser earlier only wanted people searching for shoes and Phrase Matched ‘Formal Shoes’, they would lose impressions on searches like ‘Evening Shoes’ and ‘Black Dress Shoes’ because their ad will only show if the phrase ‘Formal Shoes’ was part of the search query.

However, by introducing a “+” sign just before the word shoes, they can achieve exactly what is desired, without losing on a possible load of other search queries that are not part of their campaign.

Google has reported that advertisers who used BMM during beta testing of the new match type reported seeing higher clicks and conversions than before. However, Google reported their findings from advertisers who earlier mainly used the Phrase and Exact Match types. Clearly, the increase in exposure lead them to receive more traffic, but with greater control over click-quality – this probably led to the rise in conversions. The report clearly shows the BMM as a means to entice cautious advertisers to have a more bullish approach with their marketing without losing too much control. But what does it mean for the rest of the advertising community that already uses Broad Match?

Other beta testers have independently revealed that on introducing BMM keywords into campaigns with existing Broad Match keywords, BMMs had significantly higher CTRs and conversion rates than the traditional Broad Match terms. We experienced similar results on testing the BMM with one of our clients.

Overall, we observed average conversions on BMM keywords to be double that of the Broad Match keywords.

All in all, Google seem to have hit the right note with search marketers with this release, although it will be interesting to see how keywords utilising these matching options perform in the longer term.

Please note, for now, the release has been made available to advertisers in the UK and Canada only.

If you can’t make it along to our Online Marketing for Profit knowledge session fear not – you can still view the presentation right here

Don’t feel bad, whilst the overriding concept is simple, in practise PPC Campaigns can quickly become complicated.

This free whitepaper explains all the key concepts you need to understand, and provides an easy to follow guide to create your own PPC campaign.

Click here to download our Introduction to PPC whitepaper.

If you’ve any further queries or questions feel free to post them here, likewise if you’ve any feedback on this whitepaper, or suggestions for other whitepapers you’d like to see in the future we’d love to hear about them!

Revenue per click is calculated as follows: Goal Value x Conversion Rate.

As such, ‘Revenue-per-click’ (RPC) simply allocates a value to every paid click.

Comparing what you earned per click to your average CPC will give you a quick indication on the profitability of a given keyword. As such, RPC can help you to identify ‘problem’ keywords that may be adversely affecting your campaign.

Example:

If you receive 10 clicks on a keyword and 2 goal conversions at £20, your revenue per click is

£20 x 20% = £4

i.e. each click is worth £4.

What does this tell me?

It tells you that if your website keeps converting at 20%, then you break-even at an average CPC of £4 on a conversion of £20 value.

However, if your average CPC for the keyword is £5, then you are spending £1 more for every click than you are earning from it. Therefore, you’ll effectively be making a loss of £1 with every click on your ad.

Conversely, if your average CPC is £3, then you’re making £1 in profit per click.

How to view ‘Revenue-per-click’ reports:

1. Log in to your GA account.

2. From the side navigation panel, select ‘Traffic Sources’, then select AdWords^Beta.

3. Select an option from the sub-menu to look at data in an overview or by campaigns (click on campaign name on the right-hand side to get data for the campaign ad groups), keywords, day parts, etc.

4. From the main view on-screen, select the ‘Clicks’ tab and find the RPC column on the right-hand side in the main view.

How do you make a loss-making keyword profitable?

a) Lower your average CPC. However, do bear in mind that significantly lower ad positions might also affect your conversion rate, thereby negating any potentially positive affect. Hence, we advise that if your average CPC is higher than your RPC, you should try lowering your CPC gradually to find the ’sweet spot’ which is where your keyword spends less enough per click but still converts at an acceptably high rate to start earning profits for you.

Alternatively, you can try to lower your average CPC by improving your keyword Quality Score. In the earlier example, you were converting on a keyword at 20%, earning £4 per click. If your average CPC on that keyword was £5, you were making a loss of £1 per click. If you can improve the Quality Score of the keyword, you may find that you can reduce your bids without necessarily dropping down to a lower ad position.

b) Improve your site conversion rate. You might do this by testing new landing pages, forms etc.

These methods can be tried alone but it is generally a good idea to try both (together or one-by-one) for best results.

What if I do not have goal conversion values, only target CPAs?

No problem. Just use your target CPAs as goal values in your GA account/profiles. All you have to do is work to break even.

A Word of Warning…

Before undertaking a major optimisation project make sure that you have a representative data set to balance out any peaks/troughs due to external factors.

Also, it is important to bear in mind that availability of granular data like GA makes possible can lead you to create an ‘over-optimised’ campaign that converts at fantastic rates and with low costs, but fails to deliver sufficient volume. A good adwords campaign will strike the balance between driving cost-effective leads/sales and driving volume.

Whilst falling prey to these sins is unlikely to see you in one of Dante’s nine circles; chances are you will be adversely affecting your campaign; and so, without further ado – I give you the seven deadly sins of PPC…

Wrath

Also known as anger or rage; wrath encompasses both actions against others, and indeed self-denial. It also includes the desire to seek revenge, and generally wishing to do harm to others. In PPC such acts of wrath might include clicking on your competitors ads in order to run down their budget…

Don’t do it. Google in particular are pretty good at spotting click fraud so chances are your efforts are being wasted in any case. Your time and energy would be much better spent focusing on improving your own campaign.

Avarice

More commonly quoted as greed, avarice is an excessive pursuit of wealth – perhaps at the cost of everything else. Now in PPC terms this perhaps isn’t quite so sinful; unless of course it’s misguided. Are you so busy ensuring you’ve covered every conceivable keyword that you’ve forgotten to optimise your campaign and focus on what actually works? If you’re in e-commerce are your prices competitive? Alternatively it may be that you’ve swung the other way entirely – in your quest for a perfectly optimised campaign you’ve created a narrowly targeted campaign which works brilliantly from a cost per acquisition/sale point of view; but fails to deliver the volume you really need.

Envy

Envy can cause poor PPC management decisions. You see your competitor consistently appearing for a set of keywords (often head terms) which despite rounds and rounds of testing you’ve never managed to make work for you. You think, how are they making that work? Why is it that they can make it work and I can’t? Focus on your own campaign and your own objectives. Many companies run ‘loss leaders’ within otherwise successful PPC campaigns. Maybe those keywords are just that – loss leaders. Are they something you can afford? If not, pause them. Similarly, some go to great lengths to copy their competitors landing pages, just because they assume they will convert better; rather than checking their assumptions by split testing first.

Sloth

Sloth is the most common of PPC sins. If you want your campaign to deliver, you’ll need to work at it. You’ll need to consistently improve and refine your campaign – you can’t just set it up and let it run…

Pride

Pride is described as an excessive love of self. In PPC those who are overly proud probably think that there’s nothing left for them to learn. They believe that their PPC campaign is so well optimised that it really couldn’t be improved. I’d suggest that’s unlikely. No matter how well your campaign’s performing there’s always something which could stand to be improved, so continually test and learn.

Gluttony

This sin refers to the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In PPC terms this might be likened to those who regardless of the cost *want* to appear in the top spot. Appearing first isn’t always the most cost-effective place to be in terms of conversions. Sure in some instances there may be some excellent reasons for wanting to appear in the top spot; but to optimise a whole campaign with this goal in mind is wasteful in the extreme.

Lust

Ordinarily thought of as sexual in nature, I’m going to be use a little artistic license here and use Aristotle’s definition – ‘an excessive love of others’. Some believe that other people’s PPC ads are so good that all they really need to do is copy them. This is a little short-sighted – it may work in the short term, but without developing your own key selling points / benefits / points of difference etc you’re likely to fail in the long term.

Image credit Lori Greig