Tag Archives: Conversion

Using Twitter in your Marketing Mix for Businesses

Posted on by

Twitter is a good idea for your business if you believe in Social Media as a way for humans to connect and engage in conversation. Twitter can bring great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn and grow as a company. Twitter is like blogging except you only have 140 short characters to communicate your message. It is like instant messaging except it is public and can attract traffic to your website. A Tweet is not directed to just one person because it is visible to anyone.

Twitter is a way to drive real traffic to your site. The way to use it is to build a network of “followers” and people/companies you are “following.” Following people shows that you are not just talking about yourself but also listening to what your potential customers and industry leaders are saying. By interacting with others you are giving people reason to listen to you as well. Think of Twitter as an intercom, not a megaphone.

When setting up your company’s Twitter profile, create your company image that lets your brand stand out. Put up a picture… make it your company logo. Make sure you fill out your profile bio/info. This authenticates your Twitter profile.

Follow your brand and industry in Twitter conversations. Use Twitter Search to look for conversations about topics that are of interest to your company. Look for conversations about your brand, competitors, and words about your industry. This is a great way to build and improve your network. Engage with your potential customers. Try talking about their interest too, not just yourself… you need to show that you are a human. If you are going to bother Tweeting, it means that you want humans to connect.

When sharing content, it is very important to only share information that is useful/fun/interesting. Otherwise, you might sound like you are “preaching” a sales pitch about your company or products to people and they might tune you out. Twitter is not a one-way conversation.

Share content that spreads rapidly such as:

  • New Content/data
  • Links to cool/relevant sites
  • Industry articles
  • Interesting blog posts
  • Videos (funny ones get spread the most)
  • Slides and presentations
  • News releases
  • Podcasts

Information that rarely gets shared:

  • Product info
  • Free trials

After you have wrote some “tweets,” added profiles to follow, and gained followers, you can check out how your profile ranks. Here is a cool free tool to grade your Twitter account: www.twitter.grader.com.

Tips to make Tweeting easier:

  • Use tools like “TwitterFox,” “TweetDeck,” or “Twhirl” to make managing Twitter easier and faster
  • Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about your company. Try to participate where it makes sense.
  • Use tools like TinyURL http://www.tiny.cc/ or http://bit.ly/ to shorten long URLs (because you only get 140 characters)

Twitter can be a great way to attract customers, network, and interact with your current customers, but you have to understand the Twitter culture or you could actually turn these people away. Time to Tweet! Feel free to contact us at Bevelwise if you have questions or need some help.

References:

http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

http://mashable.com/2009/01/21/best-twitter-brands/

Improve Adwords Pay-per-Click (PPC) Quality Score to Lower your Cost-per-Click

Posted on by

It can be very confusing to understand a keyword’s quality score. How does Google concoct my score? What’s a good quality score to receive? Why bother improving quality scores?

Bevelwise complied a bunch of information from the AdWords blog and help center to help clear this up.

Quality Score ensures that Google only shows relevant ads to its users. Searchers want to find the information they are looking for quickly and easily and Quality Score helps Google show more relevant ads. To make sure that your potential customers see your ad, you need to pay attention to Quality Score. It also influences your ads’ position, and it partially determines your keyword’s minimum bids, which can help reduce your budgets.

Quality Score is used in several different ways, including influencing your keywords’ actual cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and estimating the first page bids that you see in your account. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your costs and the better your ad position.

Quality Scores 1-10

  • 1-4: The keyword isn’t very relevant to users, and as a result may have a very high first page bid. This means that the keyword is not performing very well for your website, or even for your competitors sites. Try experimenting with variations of this keyword by using plural/singulars or grammatical tweaks. If you’d like to keep advertising with this keyword, you can optimize instead. To do this, try lowering the first page bid, writing a more targeted, relevant ad, or improving your landing page content.
  • 5-7: This keyword is performing well, and there isn’t a need to worry too much. On a grading scale, our AdWords Specialist at Google, said “a 6 or 7 is equivalent to an A-.” It may have a mid-range first page bid, and the keyword may not be very costly. Optimization can lower your overall costs, draw more clicks to your ads, and result in a better return on your investment (ROI). If you want to further optimize, try using more targeted ad text and keywords or improving your landing page content.
  • 8-10: The keyword is extremely relevant and may have a high click through rate (CTR), relevant ad text, and a unique, relevant landing page. The first page bid for this keyword may be low. This keyword is very relevant and effective for your ad campaign. Our AdWords Specialist at Google, said that it is very rare to get this high of a quality score from Google.

Quality Score Formula:

  • The historical click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
  • Landing page quality
  • The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
  • The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
  • Relevance of ad text (especially the title)
  • Historical account performance (CTR)

How Quality Score Impacts Your PPC Campaign:

  • Cost-Per-Click – A keyword’s Quality Score influences its CPC – that is, how much you’re charged for a click on your ad when it’s triggered by that keyword. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its CPC, and vice versa.
  • First Page CPC Bid Estimates – On your Keyword Analysis page, you’ll see a metric labeled ‘Estimated bid to show on the first page.’ This metric, also called the ‘first page bid estimate,’ approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for your ad to reach the first page of Google search results when the search query exactly matches your keyword. The estimate is based on the Quality Score and current advertiser competition for that keyword. Ad placement will still be dependent on Quality Score, your cost-per-click (CPC) bid, your budget and account settings, and user and advertiser behavior.
  • Eligibility to Show Up when Searched for – Every time one of your keywords matches a search query, our system evaluates its combined Quality Score and cost-per-click (CPC) bid to see if it’s eligible to enter the ad auction. Keywords with a higher Quality Score will be eligible to enter the auction more easily and at a lower cost. Our goal is to encourage relevant ads for our users, so our pricing system is designed to favor more specifically targeted ads and keywords.
  • Ad Position – Ads are positioned on search and content pages based on their Ad Rank. The ad with the highest Ad Rank appears in the first position, and so on down the page.

Monitoring Your Quality Score

Search advertising is a dynamic, evolving marketplace, and the Quality Score of your keywords can fluctuate. Google continually monitors the performance of all ads, keywords, and landing pages to reward high quality ads and encourage advertisers to improve low quality ads. The best way to maintain a high-quality, cost-effective campaign is to frequently optimize your account to help ensure your ads have a high Quality Score.

Improving a Keyword’s Quality Score

Optimization is the best way to increase your keyword’s performance (Quality Score, CTR, conversion rate) without raising costs. If your Quality Score is very low (below a 5), you may be using keywords, ads, or landing pages that aren’t as targeted or relevant as they could be. This can mean higher cost-per-clicks and a potentially poor ROI. Remember: The higher the Quality Score, the lower the price you’ll pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses on keywords and relevance of pages to popular keywords. Looking at quality score, if your landing page isn’t viewed by Google as relevant to the search query, you can work improving landing page content, meta tags, image tags, etc to make the page more relevant and possibly improve your Quality Score.

While a high quality score may seem like the most important part of your PPC campaign, the conversion rate is a best indicator. A high CTR or Quality Score doesn’t necessarily mean a high ROI or that people are buying your product or service. The conversion rate tells if your keyword is driving sales, sign-ups, or whatever else your company is trying to achieve.

For more information please contact us or read our whitepaper.

 

References

http://adwords.google.com/support/
http://adwords.blogspot.com/

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/

Actionable insight into your advertising and website design

Posted on by

Just discovered this great Google Analytics overview video on their conversion university channel. Google Analytics helps you find out what keywords attract your most desirable prospects, what advertising copy pulled the most responses, and what landing pages and content make the most money for you. Here is the video from Google.

Google conversion tracking site stats logo is now optional

Posted on by

Finally! Google AdWords conversion tracking users are no longer required to display the “Google Site Stats” logo on the conversion pages of their web sites.

Previously, a small but visible text block that read “Google Site Stats” automatically appeared on the page where the conversion tracking code was placed on your web site. The logo would appear only after a conversion occurred via your AdWords ad, and it provided converting visitors links to information about AdWords conversion tracking and instructions on how to block the tracking.

The logo was redundant with almost all web site privacy policys, where they already notify users about the tracking technologies in use on their sites. A

If you currently have conversion tracking tags installed on your web site, the Site Stats logo will continue to display unless you take further action. If you choose to remove the logo, please inform users about the tracking methods you employ on your site by modifying your site’s privacy policy.

For those of you who are new to conversion tracking, it’s a powerful tool that allows you to measure conversion metrics for your AdWords campaigns. An added benefit of using conversion tracking is that it allows you to use the Conversion Optimizer, a bidding feature that uses your conversion tracking data to optimize the performance of your campaigns, helping you make the most of your advertising dollars.