Paid Search | SwellPath Interactive

Archive for the ‘Paid Search’ Category

New AdWords Search Funnels Add Value to Conversion Data

Published June 28th, 2010 Paid Search No Comments

Google has now added some long overdue Conversion Reporting functionality to the AdWords platform. These features have been in beta for several months, but have finally been unleashed to the masses. The new Conversion Reporting provides excellent new data and insight that we are using to help improve our client’s AdWords initiatives and you can use to provide value to your business.

The main Conversion Reporting interface is much improved, it now has a very similar look and feel to Google Analytics. Through the main interface you can view high level data such as total Conversions, average days to Conversion, and average Clicks to Conversion.

The real fun comes through the Top Paths Conversion analysis. This report allows you to view the paths that visitors who converted took through AdWords. The depth of data in this section is excellent, it allows you to view user paths for Clicks and Impressions at the Campaign, Ad Group, and Keyword level. For example, you can see that a user first clicked on a product category ad, then later a branded ad through which they converted. This data is incredibly valuable, and can help you attribute value to Campaigns or Ad Groups which may have seemed like they were under performing, though they were in fact assisting Conversions.

AdWords also has a section dedicated to Assisted Conversions, both for clicks and impressions, which allows you to get a better view of Campaigns and Ad Groups that are assisting your final Conversions, and allows you to assign a monetary value to these Assists.

Overall, the new Search Funnel and Conversion Reporting in AdWords will help provide you with a more holistic view of the Conversion activity on your AdWords account and gives you the data to make more informed decisions regarding account structure changes, allocating budget, and conversion timeline.

Preparing your Search Campaign for the Holidays

Published October 12th, 2009 Paid Search, SEO No Comments

The leaves have changed and the hats and scarves are out. Ready or not it is time to shop for pumpkins, finalize your Halloween costume and perfect that Sunday chili recipe. Preparing for fall also means that winter and the holidays are just around the corner.

Everyone loves the holidays and it is true that it’s better to give than receive. Though with the turn of the economy, retailers are expecting a tough season. In a report from E-marketer, 57% of Internet users plan to spend less on gifts this holiday season, and 58% were more concerned about how they would pay for holiday spending this year than last year. Since dollars will be tight, stand out above your competitors and start your online marketing now to catch consumers in their research stage.

Google recently blogged that 44% of shoppers have already began shopping and researching online. With this, search interest in the term “christmas gift” has jumped in the last weeks, demonstrating this increased phase. Since consumers are there, make sure you are in the right place to reach your customers when they are ready to buy. Here are a few pointers on capturing these researchers with a targeted paid search campaign.

Campaign History

Look at your campaigns, keywords and conversions from last holiday season, especially your daily budgets, keyword bids and time period of increased impressions and conversions. Expect to pay higher bids during the two or three weeks before the holiday as well as on Black Friday.

Key up your Keywords

Fine tuning your keywords and adding event and holiday targeted copy will increase your ad’s click through rate. Be aware that special terms such as “Christmas Gift” are targeted, though will be competitive and expensive. To be creative and beat large budget advertisers, use product names or bid on long tailed keywords with modifiers such as “Affordable Christmas Gifts for Moms.”

Start a new campaign around holiday text and sales such as “In time for the holidays” Or “Christmas Special.” Targeted copy will make your ads stand out, though again, these terms will be expensive. Competitors will also be increasing bids, so make sure you calculate your keyword bids and know what you can spend.

Test, Test and Test Again

Christmas is a busy time and in order to keep up with your consumers and ahead of your competitors, test and refresh your ads and groups. Review successful headlines, ad text and keywords and introduce new products or sales. A/B, or split test to see which headlines or phrases resonate with searchers.

Look back at your sales and see if there are trends for certain products in specific locations. For example, if your company sells snorkeling gear, you may want to consider creating a geo-targeted campaign aimed only in southern California or in Mexico.

Control Where Potential Buyers Land

Landing pages give companies the chance to not only capture consumers in a customized place around a specific holiday product, but your quality score will be higher as a result of this specialized destination, viable ad copy, and keywords. If your quality score is sufficient your ads will show in a better position at a lower cost, which in the end will drive more clicks and maximize sales.

By making your paid search list and checking it twice you will be ready for this holidays season. Begin now and with a little research, creativity and organization you will be on your way.

Managing Social Media Backlash

Published September 23rd, 2009 Paid Search, Social Media No Comments

A few weeks ago, John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about Obama’s health care reform initiatives. The comments made by the chief executive have been stirring controversy on the web and social media, spreading a Whole Foods boycott off and online through protests, a website, blog, Flickr page, Facebook page and group with over 30,000 fans, and a Twitter account with close to 630 followers.

There is an old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, though ignoring Internet press, good or bad, can hurt a company and their online reputation. Here are a few ways you can respond and manage a spiraling viral incident in a strategic manor.

Corporate Social Media Guidelines

First and foremost, make sure you company has corporate social media guidelines in place. Policies regarding social media are becoming a standard for today’s organizations and by outlining rules or best practices within your company, you can express the importance of your brand.

React, Don’t Retract

Be aware of the comments and confront them with positive feedback. Use the credibility and knowledge of your brand to interact with these users, answer questions, offer insight on marketing decisions and clear up any rumors or misconceptions.

Mackey posted a blog thread to set the record straight on his comments and also invited consumers to participate and share their thoughts through a forum devoted to that topic. Social networks may not capture your complete key demographic, but as seen by this Whole Foods incident, the Honda Accord Facebook fiasco, and last year’s Motrin Mom advertisement, consumers can have a strong and effective voice. If your marketing resources allow it, consider involving your audience on marketing decisions in the future.

Utilize Another Online Medium

When news spreads like wildfire people are searching online for what is being said. Use this targeted traffic to your advantage and customize a pay per click campaign. Using paid and organic search strategies together will result in a higher brand awareness as well as greater authority and sincerity from consumers. Since paid search advertisements are displayed along with search results, run a campaign with keywords based around your brand’s press-worthy events. This brings searchers into your domain, where you can develop a controlled and customized landing page to promote your company on your turf.

Display v. Search – The Last Ad Model Bias

Published September 3rd, 2009 Paid Search, SEO No Comments

Now many would argue that it’s not display v. search but rather the synergies achieved when both mediums work together. Search marketing currently comprises more than one-half of all interactive dollars, and will remain the biggest format through 2014. Most ad networks don’t love that stat and for obvious reason. Their response has been that they receive little to no conversion credit and thus a diminishing media budget.

The issue with display ad ROI measurement is the inability to assign a quantifiable value, which some believe results in a disproportionate value being assigned to search, otherwise know as the last ad model.

“The current “last ad” model attributes 100% of the credit for a conversion to the last ad seen or clicked. This is the current standard the industry has relied on to justify their digital media spend. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the contributions of any previous ads that led the customer down the road to that conversion.”

Source: Atlas Institute

Of course, the Atlas Institute (Microsoft) has been pushing their Engagement Mapping approach or the ability to measure cross-channel impact, but details into their technology are still blurry. Regardless of the technical ability to measure (another post altogether), there has been little credit given the role of search throughout the entire conversion funnel or search’s ability to generate demand.

While clearly there is somewhat of a “halo effect” between display and search whereas users that have been exposed to display ads are more likely to click on a paid advertisement – note case study by iCrossing. However, many mediums (that can’t all be measured) can be attributed with creating greater upstream demand; mediums such as TV ads, radio, billboards and yes, display ads. However, no credit is given to search as vehicle to drive awareness and demand in the last ad model.

A common argument is that the majority of sponsored search clicks are simply navigational; assuming that sponsored search is not bringing in new prospects but simply delivering people to a URL they are seeking. I would argue that savvy search marketer understand the importance of branded traffic but focus the majority of SEM efforts on non-branded traffic and new segments to target – essentially on “research” type queries higher in the conversion funnel. As such, search is not only the “last step” in a purchase funnel, but one integral throughout.

An example given by Atlas is one that looks at users searching for basketball shoes. A user compiles their research for basketball shoes, decides to buy Nike, and returns to a search engine and searches “Nike basketball shoes”. They state that 100% of the credit is given to the “nike baseketball shoes” and search had little to do with the research but was simply navigational.

I would argue that a “basketball shoes” search query is a research query whereas a user is comparing brands, prices and reviews and users find this type of data more often than not, online and specifically via search engines. Now display ads can clearly support the brand but are not the main vehicle for research or driving demand. Additionally, there are numerous retailers selling Nike basketball shoes, thus a users’ intent is possibly to find where to buy and not necessarily navigate to Nike.com.

The point is that search is credited for capturing users towards the end of the sales cycle but is also ideal for conducting research and generating awareness, something display ads try to claim the majority of credit for. Other mediums certainly have an impact on demand and search and should be a part of the online marketing mix. However, mediums need to be evaluated based on the industry and data at hand; data that needs to be accurate and opaque.

Alternative Value in Paid Search Traffic

Published August 5th, 2009 Analytics, Ecommerce, Email Marketing, Paid Search, SEO, Social Media No Comments

When analyzing paid search traffic the central focus is obviously on conversions, the sale, lead gen form completion, or whatever the primary conversion event is. But this shouldn’t be the only focus, and you shouldn’t calculate the value of your paid search activity entirely by conversion rate or ROI. Here’s some other ways you may find value in paid search, and some ideas for calculating that value.

Usability & Conversion Improvement

What does paid search traffic have to do with usability? Look at it like this: paid search traffic is a random sampling of visitors that have strong purchase intent, or strong intent to learn about your offering. Those that don’t convert, as a group, provide insight into what is “not working” with your site. You should be able to ask and answer questions like these:

Are these visitors bouncing at high rates? If so, you need to start testing out some different landing pages, or take a good look at your offering.
If they aren’t bouncing, are you tracking specific events on your landing pages? Implement event tracking on any key potential actions on your page and see if visitors are engaging at all.
Beyond the landing page, are they navigating to other pages or areas of your site? Why are they not finding what they came for on the landing page? What are the common paths their taking, and where are they exiting?
Are they using your site search field, and if so, what keywords they searching for? Are they getting results? How do these terms and results relate to the original paid search keyword and landing page offering?

Answering these questions will initiate a process focused improving conversion. Use unconverted paid search visitors as a “focus group”, and look into your analytics data for their “responses” and “feedback”. You’ve paid for them to visit your site, get value out of their behavior and actions.

Email Sign-ups, Catalog Sign-ups, & Social Media Follows

Let’s suppose I’m shopping for vitamins. I’ve decided I need to start taking ginko biloba supplements again to combat the lack of sleep that seems to come with running an interactive marketing agency. Disclaimer: I have no idea if ginko would help with this, or of the actual health benefits of this product, it is just a good example. So, I normally buy my vitamins and supplements at VitaminShoppe.com or Trader Joe’s or some other grocery store. But I decide to price it out and buy it on the internet, so I search for “ginko biloba” on Google. I see a paid search ad for Vitamin World and I click through. After researching their products a bit, I decide I’m a little skittish about buying this new addition to my diet on the internet, so I’m just going to buy it at Trader Joe’s the next time I’m there. Failed PPC conversion for Vitamin World right? Maybe not, before I exit, I notice the two links highlighted in the image to the left: Email Specials and Request a FREE Catalog.

You know how the story ends: I sign up for a catalog, end up visiting a Vitamin World store in my local mall the next time I’m there, and become a lifetime customer worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars to the company. So, that’s best case scenario. But the gist of it is, Vitamin World is making an effort to keep the “conversation” going with me. While I’m not a big fan of the Email Specials link, I love the big call to action on the catalog request link. Beyond catalogs and email, you might also track if visitors are clicking through to your social media profiles. Track these actions specifically for y0ur paid search visitors and develop a value for them. This may be a more complicated equation if you have advanced analytics and direct marketing programs in place, where you can track multiple touch-points and segment customer types based on product categories; or something as simple as calculating the estimated value of an email recipient, then applying that to number of signup conversions you have in your PPC account. Now, obviously you can track these as conversions in your PPC account, but that can muddy up your PPC data. Using analytics to track the goal, and segmenting your PPC traffic out for analysis is usually a better option.

Keyword Testing & Strategy

I’ll tiptoe around this, because I’m definitely not the SEO specialist (or PPC for that matter) around here but the gist of thsi is that you can use your PPC account to test and refine your SEO strategy. If certain PPC keywords are limited in their conversions, but result in high-levels of engagement or some other key performance metric, you may decide to integrate them into your SEO strategy and target some pages for them. This is somewhat of an extension of the usability and conversion improvement section, but with an obvious focus on SEO and the value of certain keywords.

In conclusion, don’t write off your failed PPC conversions. You paid for those clicks – get some value out of them any way you can. This might mean putting in some sweat in the form of analysis, testing, or development, but those costs will likely be recouped over time, because you will never convert 100% of your search traffic.

Paid Search ROI & the Point of Diminishing Returns

Published April 21st, 2009 Paid Search No Comments

More often than not, PPC budgets are set based on a hunch rather than being rooted in data – ROI and the point of diminishing returns. Paid search should be managed based on a ROI that is maximized to the point of diminishing returns but only when figured with other online marketing programs.

First let’s understand PPC ROI, not to be confused with the return on ad spend (ROAS), which is additional value gained after media spend. Here’s the PPC ROAS equation:

PPC should be evaluated based on the overall return on investment, which should include agency services. Here’s that equation:

It’s valuable to generate both ROAS and ROI – ROAS to help manage the day to day activity within an account and ROI to put value on the program as a whole. Depending on the sales cycle and type of business, ROI may be harder to generate. For instance, a lead gen site may want to use CPA instead of ROI to calculate the point of diminishing returns.

The paid search point of diminishing returns is the point in which additional PPC spend decreases the overall return on the account. The law goes, when you hit your point of diminishing returns, stop spending. However, the point of diminishing returns is a formula that is most applicable in production scenarios, yet it’s still extremely valuable and largely unused in PPC programs.

To effectively use the point of diminishing returns for paid search, the law needs to be applied and evaluated in comparison to other online marketing efforts. For instance, a robust online marketing plan might include the following programs: email marketing, banner campaigns, SEO, affiliate marketing and PPC.

First step is to evaluate these programs on the same level by generating an ROI for each program. Here are some monthly numbers we can use:

*Program*	Cost	Sales	ROI
Paid Search	$7,000.00	$32,000.00	357.1%
Email Marketing	$1,500.00	$5,000.00	233.3%
SEO	$5,000.00	$11,000.00	120.0%
Banner Campaign	$5,000.00	$3,000.00	-40.0%
Affiliate Marketing	$400.00	$850.00	112.5%

Total	$18,900.00	$51,850.00	174.3%

Let’s assume the PPC account is managed using the point of diminishing returns, any more spend is trickled down into campaigns that bring down the overall PPC account ROI. Thus following this theory, spend is frozen and current ROI is maintained. The issue here is that while an increase in spend may drop the PPC ROI, the return for this program is still much higher than other programs, thus the point of diminishing returns becomes irrelevant.

Say for instance, there is an additional budget available to invest online and an investment in PPC drops the ROI% – contrary to the point of diminishing returns practices. The graph would looks something like this:

Any additional spend over $7,000 decreases the account ROI. Yet the 250% ROI earned at the $9,000 is still higher than other programs – assuming ROI for other programs is also at the point of diminishing returns.

The law diminishing returns can be effective when applied to paid search but only when evaluated in conjunction with other online efforts.