Are you confused about Pay Per Click Advertising?

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!

Let’s take care of the basics first. To be able to use ‘Revenue-per-click’, you will need to have set up goals within Google Analytics (GA) and assigned a value to each goal set up. The value of a goal is the revenue a conversion on that goal brings to you. You can set goal values during the goal set up process or return to the ‘Profile Settings’ page to assign/edit values to existing goals.

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.

Welcome to the final part of our introduction to PPC. If you’ve not already done so you may like to look over parts one, two, three, four and five.

So, by now you should have your account structure nicely planned out – it’s now time to write your ads and get that campaign live.

Back in part three we talked you through setting up your account, so you’ll now need to either login to that account, or if you’ve not done so already create your account.

Step One – Targeting Languages & Location

First you will be asked which languages, and which locations you wish to target. So, pick a campaign and input the relevant details.

Step Two – Creating Adverts

You’ll then be asked to create your first ad. This feels a little backward, as you haven’t inputted any keywords yet. Don’t worry – just pick an adgroup – you’ll be asked to input the keywords after you’ve created your ad.

You’ll see that you have a strict character limit of 25 for the headline, and 35 for the following two lines. Ultimately it’s all about targeting. You want your ad copy to match your keywords as closely as possible. Try to:

1. Mention the keywords targeted
2. Make the ad relevant
3. Add in an offer or call to action to encourage people to click

It’s not a bad idea to have a look at other advertisers to make sure that your ad is competitive – for example offering a 10% discount for online orders sounds great, until your competitor starts offering a 20% discount.

It’s all about testing and learning. You won’t know what works until you try. Always create a minimum of two ads for each adgroup so you can see which ad performs better.

Step Three – Keywords

Now you can cut and paste the keywords which relate to the ad you’ve just created directly from word or excel. Or type them in if you’ve formulated your keyword lists on paper.

Step Four – Pricing

Again here – this is a little confusing - you’ll need to input the daily budget for the campaign, (i.e. the amount you want to spend on all of the adgroups in the campaign) and the maximum cost per click you are willing to pay for the keywords in your adgroup.

Right now I would recommend that you do NOT bid on the content network. To do this, simply leave the box marked CPC Content Bid blank.

Step Five – Billing

You’ll then be asked for your billing details. Again, I know this feels kind of strange – you haven’t finished setting up yet have you? Don’t worry. Just complete your billing details, and you’ll then get the opportunity to continue to build your adgroups and/or further campaigns.

 

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

You should now find yourself in the Adwords interface. You’ll now need to input all of your other adgroups and campaigns. Until you’re 100% ready to go I’d recommend pausing all campaigns – you can then go live once everything is inputted.

 

Track Conversions…

If your customers can convert online, it’s really important to track this. If you’re using the new adwords interface, click on the tools tab, then on to conversion tracking. If you’re using the old interface, you can click directly on conversion tracking it’s the fourth option on the campaign management tab.

 

Don’t Go Live Yet! Top Tips to Save the Pennies…

When you’re starting out, it’s easy to blow your budget on clicks you don’t want – avoid this by following our top tips:

1. Make sure you’re geo-targeting the right area – if you’re based in the UK, you probably don’t want US clicks – check your campaign settings
2. Check that you’re not on the content network (unless you want to be) – again check your campaign settings
3. Add negative keywords – remember when we did keyword research in part four we were left with unrelated terms? Add these as negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing for unrelated terms – you can add negative keywords at a campaign or an ad group level.
4. Consider keyword matching options – for further details see Google’s explanation

Ok, so you’re good to go? Unpause those campaigns and make it live!

 

One Final Note

Remember – everything you’re doing right now is a test. You’ll find that some keywords work better than others, and likewise some ads work better than others. The key is to test and learn, then refine your campaign accordingly.

 

 

Image credit Miss Turner

Yesterday Google announced that the click measurement systems utilised in Adwords have now been accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC).

This means that Google’s click measurement technology adheres to the industry standards for counting interactive advertising clicks and that the processes supporting the technology are accurate. It also covers how invalid/fraudulent clicks are detected and handled.

The audit was conducted by an independent firm on behalf of the MRC.

This is excellent news for advertisers who are concerned about click fraud, (when ads are deliberately clicked upon over and over again, simply to cost an advertiser money) as this accreditation demonstrates Google’s commitment to accurately reporting clicks, and handling fraudulent clicks appropriately.

Read Google’s statement on the Inside Adwords blog.

Wow – we’re up to part five of the series! If you’ve not already done so, we’d recommend that you read part one, two, three and four.

So in our last post we dealt with keyword research – so hopefully you’ve now got yourself a lovely long list of keywords. Now it’s time to organise them into appropriate groups.

You might remember in part three we talked a little about account structure. To give a quick recap, an adwords account is structured as follows:

There are three levels account, campaign and ad group:

1. Account - this is the top level, your adwords account has a unique email address & password for access purposes and your billing information.
2. Campaign - A campaign is associated with your account. At the campaign level you set the daily budget, language & geographic targeting, distribution (where your ad is shown), when your ad is shown (e.g. particular days of the week, and timings) and if desired an end date.
3. Adgroups – adgroup are associated with a campaign. At the adgroup level you select appropriate keywords and/or placements, set the bids for those keywords/placements, and create appropriate ads.

At the adgroup level you control which adverts are shown for which keywords.

Ultimately you want people to click on your ad, then go on to convert (e.g. buy your product / service; sign up; become a member etc, etc). It’s therefore important that the ad (or ads) that you show for your keywords are relevant.

Let’s imagine that you sell fruit online. You might decide that you want to bid on ‘buy green apples’. Lets consider the following ads:

Buy Green Apples Online                                                             

Golden Delicious, Granny Smiths &

More. Free Next Day Delivery!

Buy Fresh Fruit Online

Huge Selection of Fresh Fruit &

Free Next Day Delivery!

Clearly the first ad is more relevant to the ‘buy green apples’ query. It’s therefore more likely to elicit a click than the generic fresh fruit ad. When it comes of PPC relevancy is King, both for attracting visitors, but also because of the way paid search networks calculate the price you’ll pay per click.

Quality Score

Google calculate the price you’ll pay per click based on a number of factors all of which contribute to quality score. Google say:

Understandably Google don’t want to reveal the precise weighting of their quality score formula, however the core components are:

1. The click through rate (CTR) of the keyword and matched ad on Google (i.e. the number of times the ad has been shown divided by the number of clicks it has received)
2. Account history – the CTR of all of the keywords and matched ads in your account
3. Historical CTR of the URLs in your adgroup
4. Landing page quality
5. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in the adgroup
6. The relevance of the keyword and the ads to the search query
7. The account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown

By taking the time to create your adgroups appropriately you give yourself the very best chance of achieving a high quality score, which will mean your ads will appear in a higher position, and at a lower cost per click.

Creating Adgroups

Now there’s no ‘ideal’ number of adgroups – it really depends on the account.

If we go back to the example of selling fruit online, I would create an adgroup for each type of fruit which I sold – e.g. apples, pears, bananas, peaches, plums etc, etc. I would then also create other adgroups for more generic search terms like fruit, fresh fruit, dried fruit etc.

When I’m trying to split keywords into adgroups I just try to think about the ads which I’m going to create – e.g. it would be awkward to create a good ad which simultaneously do a good job targeting those who want to buy apples and those who want to buy pears – hence I’d split those keywords into two separate adgroups.

 

Well that’s all for this week, next time we’ll cover writing your ads and of course getting your campaigns live on Google.

 

Image credit oskay