Tag Archives: PPC

Onset PPC Questions

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So, you have decided that it’s time to try your hand at PPC advertising to help you meet your business goals. ppc management strategies | BevelwiseBut, you’re having a difficult time deciding whether to hire a PPC agency, or keep your PPC efforts in-house by hiring someone full time to manage your program. Either way, you want someone working on your account that is diverse in best practices for PPC.

Yes, there is no doubt that this new addition or extension of your marketing team will do keyword research, set up your account structure, build out ad copy, adjust bids, test landing pages, and track conversion/goals with an ROI or CPA. But, even novice PPC managers know that PPC management goes deeper than adjusting bids or split testing ad copy.

Here are a few questions your PPC manager should be asking you.

What are your current business objectives?

I typically like to start with this question because it helps me get a sense of what their current business goals are, and where they want to take their organization over the next 12 months. If you can get your client to share their business objectives for the year, it can help you to develop their PPC strategy.

In addition to helping you craft your PPC strategy, this question also gives you a chance to ask how they measure goals internally. What cost per conversion targets do they have? What is their target return on investments?

Expect some push back from the client when asking these questions. If you experience some push back, explain to the client why it’s important to know what their business goals are and how it’s going to help you develop your strategy.

What are you looking to get from PPC advertising?

The second question I like to ask is, what are you looking to gain from PPC advertising? Are you looking to drive more sales? Leads? White paper downloads? By asking this question, you will find out whether or not your client has any predetermined goals set already.

This question will also give you the opportunity to uncover any unrealistic ideas your client may have. Sometimes clients get excited about their potential results that they come out of the gate with unrealistic goals. Don’t be afraid to “pop” that balloon.

What are your PPC goals?

Once the client has shared their business goals and what they are expecting to see from PPC with me, I asked them what their specific PPC goals are. A PPC campaign without goals is like traveling to a new city without a map. How can you expect to build a successful PPC campaign without identifying goals?

If your client sells products online, your goal(s) should be to drive more sales at a lower CPA and a higher ROI. If your client is lead gen, your goal should be to drive more leads to your client’s website. Either way, you should set PPC goals to help you gauge the success of your PPC initiatives.

What is your desired ROI or CPA?

After the PPC goals have been established, I typically like to ask the client if they have a target ROI or CPA in mind. Establishing a target ROI and CPA will help you gauge the success of your campaigns on metrics other than CPC or average position. Don’t get me wrong, CPC and average position metrics are important, but you cannot solely manage a PPC campaigns on those metrics alone. The additional metrics will help you determine in which ad position your keywords convert best.

Is there any Geo-Targeting?

The next question I like to ask is whether or not there is any geo-targeting that needs to be implemented. I like to ask this question because when you work with mid-size business, a few of them like to advertise locally or regionally. So, it’s important to figure out your geo-targeting to ensure you are driving relevant and qualified clicks and not unqualified clicks.

Making Mobile Paid Search A Priority For Your Campaigns

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making mobile paid search a priority for your campaignsI believe that if you’re in marketing or if you’re reading this that it’s not news to you that marketing to users on their mobile devices is a good thing.  I’m also not going to barrage you with the hundreds of stats that marketers have thrown out about how consumers these days use their mobile devices to do everything.  Chances are even very good that by now you’ve already rolled out some kind of specific mobile campaign in the last 12 months or so.  If you haven’t then I’d like to encourage you to take advantage of this segment of users.  You’ll want to approach this audience a little bit differently than you would approach those same consumers on other devices.  There are lots of ways to attack the mobile segment and get your message through to your consumers, but today we’re going to focus on using paid search to reach this audience.  Your website is an important piece of this puzzle.  Is the goal on your website different from a mobile perspective than the average visitor or are there any technical limitations you need to account for in where you send visitors and how you track conversions?  Should you bypass your website entirely and just try and make your phone ring?  Before you dig into some of the nuts and bolts of your campaigns you will want to assess your assets and how best to use them.

Device Targeting

First, you’re going to want to define the devices that you want to target.  For you this may or may not include tablets as well.  In my opinion, the tablet is more like a laptop or desktop than a mobile device and I think people use it more as a second screen than as a true mobile on-the-go sole device.  Time of day is also a large driver of that opinion I just mentioned though so take that into account.  You’ll need to decide whether you’re just targeting smartphones or if you also want to include tablets in that same audience.  You can also target more specific device makes and models depending upon whether you’re running an Adwords or a Bing Ads campaign.  Let’s match up some of these advanced targeting options.

Adwords lets you target

  • Operating System
  • Device Models
  • Carriers & Wi-Fi Networks

Bing Ads lets you target

  • Operating System

Keyword Targeting

When people are on a mobile device they aren’t using the same types of keywords that they use when they are on their laptop or desktop.  A lot of times they use shorter search queries because they aren’t using their thumbs to appease your long tail keyword strategy.  I know, I wish they would too…  Your keyword strategy may need to be more towards your head terms than your long tail terms.  Also, your negative keyword strategy might not help you as much as you’d hope because the more terms people use the more they explain their search intent.  We use this to optimize our campaigns using negative keywords to exclude searches we don’t want, but with less words we don’t get as much intent.

Let’s throw a new twist in here.  What if your products or service cater directly to the mobile search audience.  Do you sell cell phone accessories, and what if they’re just for a device like the iPhone?  Are you the company behind a new app or mobile game that you’re trying to market?  You may have an entirely different keyword strategy for your mobile campaigns than your other campaigns.  This may also help you target just the specific devices that you’re looking for.

Ad Copy Optimization

Another thing you should be evaluating is your ad copy.  Your ads should be saying something different to a mobile phone user than someone on a laptop or desktop.  The biggest difference in my ad copy that I’ve seen is our call to action and the use of ad extensions to attract calls and leads.  If you’re running a lead generation campaign then maybe getting a user with a click to call ad is a better experience than sending them to your website, or maybe you’d just rather give them the option.  Depending upon your business you can use Adwords to force a call or give them the option to call or visit your website.  Almost always you’ll want to say something specific to a mobile user giving them a phone based call to action.  Maybe that’s calling your business or downloading your app.  You could also investigate changing your products mobile check out experience to streamline your conversion process for a mobile user.

Enhanced Campaigns

If you haven’t been watching the developments from Adwords on the new Enhanced Campaigns then you will be forced in this direction sooner rather than later.  I’m not even sure that Google could have predicted how important mobile search has become in the last 12 months.  Enhanced campaigns are their effort to make it a bigger focus for everyone.  In their opinion it helps people optimize mobile campaigns more efficiently and at a better scale depending upon the size of your campaigns.  This whole topic has been thrown around the ring with PPC managers taking both sides.  Some people see the benefits and others say that they like their mobile specific campaigns being separate.

In summary, if you haven’t been giving the proper attention and optimization effort to your mobile campaigns then it’s time to reevaluate.  You’re missing out and it’s not like mobile campaigns are a fad that is going to pass.  Evaluate where your budgets are at and your management time should emulate the type of spread between where your budgets and ultimately your performance is coming from.

PPC Ad Group Segmentation, How Deep Should You Go?

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Developing keyword lists and building out paid search campaigns can be a very large and a very fun project.  I believe there is some debate among paid search managers as to when you should be adding new ad groups and how many ad groups are appropriate based on the size of your keyword list.  There is really no clear cut answer as to when it is appropriate to further segment your ad groups.  Like most things in this industry, it depends.  The further you can break your ad groups down the better your campaign performance can be.  It takes more work, but it pays off in the end.  You need to be able to analyze your keyword list to determine how many different groups of keywords you’re working with.  Also think about the potential of using different ad copy to speak to each of these different searchers.  Do these different groups of keywords show different user intent?  Are these searchers asking a question, or are they looking for a specific product or service?  Answering these questions will help you determine when you need to utilize some different ad copy to really speak to searchers in a different way.

Rules Of Thumb To Help

There are a few different guidelines that you can use to help determine when you should be making a new ad group or just adding a few different keywords to an established ad group:

  • Use a 2 root words guide.
  • Try to not have more than 20-25 keywords in a single ad group.
  • Different types of keywords that show different intent.

To help explain more about some of these guidelines I’ll use a few different examples.  Let’s say you’re making a campaign to advertise your ppc management services.  You may have a list of terms that include: ppc management, ppc management company, ppc management services, search marketing management, search marketing manager, google adwords management, google adwords management services, etc.  Your ad group list should at least include 3 different ad groups with this small list:

  • ppc management
  • search marketing management
  • google adwords management

When you’re using more than 20-25+ keywords in an ad group you may have a specific reason you need that many keywords, but for most ad groups this seems like there could be further segmentation.  Maybe you’re taking over a campaign for someone, acquired a new client or maybe it’s just time to re-review your ad group structure.  Whatever reason it is I believe your entire campaign could benefit from this exercise.  If there are more than 25 keywords in a single ad group it’s hard to believe that all those different searchers should be seeing the same set of ads, which is why it might be time to build some new ad groups and write some new ads.

There are a lot of ways that people search the internet to find an infinite amount of different things.  This also means that we cannot think of all these searchers as the same.  Some searchers are just looking for information, while others are looking for that product that your site sells.  Professionals in search marketing have tried to group keyword searches into 3 different groups.

  • Informational
  • Navigational
  • Transactional

google adwords ppc ad group segmentation

This is a good way to think about your keyword and where these people are within your sales funnel, or are they in your sales funnel at all?  Based on the intention of the searcher you should have different ad groups with terms that have totally different ad copy which speak to that searcher on an individual level.  If it’s an informational keyword then your ad needs to answer the question or promise more insight into what problem they’re looking to solve.  If the keyword is navigational then your ad needs to direct that searcher to their destination.  Lastly, if the search is transactional then your ad should grab their attention and offer them the product or service that you’re selling and close the deal.

Whether you’re a seasoned PPC manager or just starting out this exercise of segmenting or adding to your ad group list is a great optimization technique.  Don’t get caught up in adding keywords over time to your existing ad groups to gain traffic and exposure be left with a small number of ad groups that all have hundreds of keywords in them.  Your campaigns and business are going to suffer.  Take the extra time to do it right.

Local SEO Building Blocks

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If you are a local business owner that has a physical location, it’s important for you to optimize your site for Local SEO. A report from Chitika found that 43% of search queries on Google seek local results, which demonstrates the value of a Local SEO strategy that targets local customers.

Often times when you talk to local business owners and mention Local SEO or SEO in general, you get a blank stare paired with a look of confusion. This is your cue to educate the local business owner on what Local SEO is and why it’s important. It’s also important to explain the complexity of Local SEO in layman’s terms so the business owners can understand what you are talking about.

With that said, I wanted to take a few minutes and outline some important features of a Local SEO strategy that would be simple for any local business owner to implement.

Get your site up to speed

Since local search volumes continue to grow exponentially, it is important for you as a local business owner to make sure that your website is properly optimized to target local searchers.  Here are a few tips to implement on your site to help facilitate better rankings and increase search traffic: (1) optimize your site’s architecture to ensure that search engines can easily navigate your site and determine what it is about, (2) author good content that engages users and moves them through the sales funnel, (3) optimize your pages for 2-3 keywords paired with local geo-modifiers, (4) optimize your on-page content to incorporate local keywords as well as helping to build relevancy between the page title, description and on-page content, (5) make your content information easily accessible for users to find.

Claim Local Business Listings

Claiming your local business listings will help boost your local SEO search rankings because the number of citations, reviews, more specifically, how positive those reviews are will help boost your Local SEO rankings. You will also want to claim your Google+ Local Profile, which now is a combination of Google Places and Google +. Reviews left on your Google Local pages will help increase your Local ranking quicker than reviews left on other citation sites.

One of the resources I like to use when search for local business listings for clients is, getListed.org. getListed.org is a resourceful website that allows you to enter your business name along with your zip code to see how your business is listed on the three major search engines, as well as other second tier directories that can create good local citations.

Another great resource for building local citations by city is getListed.org’s “Best Local Citation Sources by City” webpage.  If you’re not comfortable building citations by city, you can build them by business category. Both of these citation guides are very helpful in building authority citations.

It is very important to make sure the continuity of your business information is carried throughout all of your local business listings and citations. Also keep in mind that local business listings are a support tool to your primary website. That’s why continuity is important.

Social Media for Local Businesses

Recently Facebook updated the “Nearby” feature within their interface that allows Facebook users to search for establishments near their current location. This update changes how local businesses should be utilizing Facebook. Local businesses should optimize their Facebook pages for the appropriate service category or categories; include their physical address, phone number, hours of operation, and a link to their site.

Social indicators are also an important factor in Google’s Local Search algorithm. It’s important to not passively watch, but to actively engage with users on your social media profiles.

Local Business Schema and Geotag

Local business schema and geotag essentially allows you to use schema markup for your business type, business address, business contact information, business hours, and much more.  Another great feature that Schema offers is giving webmasters the ability to specify your geographical location by including your longitude and latitude coordinates.

Google has favored structured and semi-structured data for years, and when reviewing a site, Google will look for structured or semi-structured data before review plain HTML.

Here is an example for Schema.org:

Local SEO Schema Example

 If you are a novice and would like to implement schema markup on your site, I have found Schema’s Local Business instructions to be very helpful with implementing this code.  You can also implement schema markup through Google Webmaster Tools with their newly released markup tool.

Mobile Versions of Your Site

Earlier I mentioned that 43% of searches done on Google are local searches, but what I did not mention is that the same study found that 27% of the 43% of local searches were done by users using smartphones.  With that said, it is important to not only optimize your primary site for local SEO, but it is equally important to have a mobile version of your site that is optimized for local search as well.

Not only do you want to optimize your mobile site for local search, but you will also want to make sure your site and your Google+ Local profile are listed on Google maps, and that you are listed on all popular local review and citation apps (yelp, Google+ Local, and so on).

If you are feeling up to the challenge and want to test a mobile site before having one professional designed, Google does offer a free mobile site builder that will allow you to create a mobile version your site. However, if you want a mobile site that is going to yield a return, as well as help boost your local rankings, I would partner with a firm that has experience doing so.

So there you have it. I have put together a simple list of tips that will help you make an impact in 2013 with your local SEO.

8 Ways to Improve Your Online Marketing Efforts in 2013

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With the end of the world behind us (we made it!) and 2013 just a few days away, it may be time for us to start looking ahead. In 2012, the world of online marketing took some hard turns and some trends have begun that will carry us into the next year.

I won’t ramble about what happened in 2012. Instead, I’d like to focus on some actionable items that will play a larger role in your online marketing success in 2013, based on changes and shifts we’re already seeing.

8. Pay per click

If you have been putting off pay per click (PPC) marketing, I have some unfortunate news for you: search marketing is increasingly becoming a paid game. First, Google announced that Google Shopping results are now “Pay to play.” Meaning, if you want your product feed to receive the benefits of higher clickthrough rates and conversion rates that come with Google Shopping results, you need to integrate that feed with your AdWords account.

Second, we’re seeing search engine results pages (SERPs) increasingly dominated by paid results. Between Shopping results, regular PPC ads and the increasing availability of rich snippets, organic results are being pushed out of view. Below is what I see above the fold (view of the SERP without scrolling) following a search for a new camera:

I see a total of eight full paid ads and just 2 ½ organic listings. Plus, how can I resist clicking on those Shopping results in the upper-right corner?

7. Company Blog

The trend for the past two years will continue: Fresh, quality content is crucial to maintaining favorable organic rankings. Search engines want to present sites that offer continuous and useful content for their audience. It isn’t always easy for what some would consider “boring” industries, but you need to find a way to always add value to your website. Continue reading →

Improve Your PPC Campaigns With Ad Extensions in Adwords

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Believe it or not pay per click ads have taken over the majority of the real estate on your search engines results pages.  If you don’t believe me then go take a second to do a Google search for some product you planned on going and buying this weekend.  There is a great infographic Google ads and the war on free clicks that Wordstream put together.  Aside from the fact that I love all the little pandas and penguins with deadly weapons that I think is hilarious the point of all this is that people searching the internet with a high commercial intent are most definitely clicking on PPC ads and they are converting to sales. If those aren’t your ads then they’re your competitors.   So let’s talk about how we can improve your Adwords campaigns using ad extensions.

Google Adwords Ad Extension Options

There are a couple different ways to enhance your ads and attract more attention from searchers.  The first question you need to ask yourself is what ad extensions will work best for you.  The answer to that question is based on the goals of your campaign and the type of business you run.  Here are your options and some applications for each:

  • Location Extension
    • If you run a local business where your address is important then this reinforces that you’re the business they want to work with.
  • Call Extension
    • If the goal of your campaign is to collect leads and you can close those leads on the phone then you need to be using this.  Also, anyone say mobile devices?
  • Sitelinks Extension
    • Basically if you have a website then this one is for you.  Any campaign can be improved by enhancing their ads with sitelinks.
  • Product Extension
    • One of the best tools for a PPC manager who runs campaigns for an ecommerce website.  Get your products right up there on the top with photos.
  • Social Extension
    • Has your company gone social?  Google+ is a great social tool and you can give your SEO manager and social media manager a little love by enhancing your ads with your business’ Google+ presence tied into your ad copy.
  • Mobile App Extension
    • If you’re promoting a mobile app then you can get direct downloads from your PPC ads.

Location Extension

To add a location extension with your ad you can either pull the information from your Google+ Local page or manually enter your address.  Once you do your ad could stand out from the crowd and look like this:

local yoga ad extension

Call Extension

When you add a call extension you have a few different choices you can customize.  You can use a Google voice tracking number so that Adwords will give you in-depth call detail reports (for a price), or you could use your normal business phone number.  This also works with campaigns that serve to a mobile device, which allow you to establish “click-to-call” ads that connect searchers right with the top salesperson in your company (of course).  This is what your ad will look like with a call extension:

auto insurance call extension

Sitelinks Extension

Pretty much every website can benefit from this ad extension and every campaign should have it included in some way.  This creates the same display affect that organic web listings have when they display sitelinks.  You can customize up to an additional 4 links that can be taken to other useful areas within your site.  Why offer 1 landing page to your customers when you can offer 5?

callaway drivers sitelinks extension

Product Extension

Do you have an ecommerce site?  Please see picture below.  Enough said!

lcd tv product extensions

You can link your ads with your Google Merchant Center and have full product listings with prices, photos and brands.

Social Extension

There are many benefits to growing your following on social media and getting more exposure for your brand.  When you setup this extension you’ll link it with your Google+ business page to drive your following.  You’ll have the ability to engage with your customers,share your message with social users and even get some SEO benefit from that Google+ exposure.

dodge social extension

Mobile App Extension

If you’re building exposure for a new mobile app your company has created then drive not only search traffic but also direct downloads using this ad extension.

mobile banking app extension

If you have had a great success story with your campaigns from using one of these ad extensions feel free to share it with us here in the comments.  We’d love to hear how you increased CTR by 2% using sitelinks, or that you drove 258 sales leads into your office using call extensions.  Hopefully you’re seeing the same types of successes we are.

How SEO, PPC & Social Influence Each Other For Success

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Look out, the web is getting increasingly…webbier? What I mean is, no single marketing channel exists in a vacuum. Increasingly, different channels are relying on each other to further help push their own efforts. Truth is, that’s exactly how Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and the other big players in search and social like it. The more signals they can get for your content, the better they are able to rank it, promote it, share it or even trash it.

In the early (good ole’) days of Google, links drove the majority of the relevance for a single piece of content in organic search results. Someone links to your page with the anchor text “discount shoes,” and Google counts that as one vote that your page should rank for a search for discount shoes. Simple, right? Now, a couple hundred factors influence where your page ranks in search results, including social signals—but we’ll more into that in a moment.

On the social front, Facebook and Twitter didn’t have much reach beyond their own domains. Then, the social graph was introduced, mapping out millions of pages and relationships on the web.

Today, SEO, PPC and social media are intertwined, and success in one channel can easily translate into success on another. In other words, without a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, you’re probably missing out.

How SEO Influences PPC

Someone asked me this question recently, which actually inspired this post. First, improving PPC performance can mean a number of things. Improved conversions, clicks, impressions, quality scores and lower CPCs can all be considered “wins” depending on your strategy and goals.

The first component is how SEO can improve your quality scores, which in turn leads to lower CPCs and higher average positions. Part of good SEO includes optimizing your entire website for a list of well-researched keywords and integrating primary pages well into the site. By choosing these well-optimized pages as landing pages for relevant keywords in your PPC ad groups, you can boost quality scores and positions while lowering your costs.

Also a key component of good SEO is eye-catching calls to action and easy site structure. These components can lower bounce rates and increase conversions, which are successes that translate into both SEO and PPC.

Lastly, it is important to keep in mind that SEO is the long term strategy and takes significant time and effort to build an effective presence in SERPs. When you’re still working your way up the organic rankings, PPC serves as the perfect short-term strategy for maintaining a presence on page 1 until your SEO efforts take over. Continue reading →

Website Landing Page Optimization Based on Traffic Source

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Just reading through a Marketing Sherpa report on Landing Page Optimization and I thought I would share a few thoughts. They typically look at it from three types of landing pages; E-Commerce, Incentivized Leads, and Direct Lead Generation. These are, after all, the reasons you are out there with internet marketing campaigns – to drive leads and sales.

With the tools available (Google Analytics is perfect and FREE), you should spend some time figuring out who converts the best on your site from what medium of advertising. You also need to look at assigning a lead “quality score” in order to balance quantity and quality. Paid media, customers, e-mail blasts, social media referrals, and general organic traffic all do different things when they get to your website and you should be looking at the data to tell you what you need to do based on the source.

Which takes me to some work we did a few months ago for a big automaker here in Michigan. They created a comparison site for their brand site and wanted to know how it was working.  We helped them understand all the ways they could measure their traffic patterns and usage so they could make changes to improve performance based on EACH way someone got to that site – paid, social, Brand site, mobile, etc. for the next model year. This is extremely important to look at in order to make sure you are maximizing your opportunity with each and every visitor to your site based on how they get to you and what they do once there.

Continue reading →

Google Adwords Call Metrics Effectiveness and Billing Changes

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If you haven’t already been using Google’s Adwords Call Metrics feature then you really need to look into it. Sadly, if you don’t already know about it then you have missed some functionality that was initially rolled out as free. This will not be the case very soon. Let’s first take a look at the functionality and the value that it adds, excluding the cost initially.

Call Metrics & Its Benefits

If you’re driving traffic through any form of internet marketing you are always looking for ways to track its effectiveness and justify ROI for your ad $$’s. Often times we are all tracking conversions on sales leads and sales through e-commerce, but what about the person who also gets value from phone sales or drives user interaction through offline communication? This is a great way to justify the offline conversion of your traffic and add value to your clients by letting them know the real effectiveness of a campaign if you are ultimately driving sales leads or calls over the phone.

How To Setup Call Metrics

First, go into your Adwords campaign under the Ad Extensions tab and add a Call Extension to your campaign. The next step is to establish what the phone number you want those calls redirected to. Then check the box to use Call Metrics and you’ll be able to establish whether you would like a toll free number or a local area code number associated with your tracking that will be displayed. This brings up another factor of marketing and the local spin of your business if this applies to you. Users love to see local phone numbers and know that they are talking to someone local, so if you are a local business then I would recommend using a local phone number. Even if you need to start separating out campaigns for different geographic areas to achieve this the extra effort is worth it. Either way now Google will use its Google Voice platform to assign you a phone number and they will handle the forwarding and tracking of that number. Another thing I want to mention with this is there is also another feature I have skipped over. The Call-Only Format is only possible to use if your device is capable of making phone calls. This could be any mobile phone or computer with Skype or a VOIP system. This will disable the functionality to click the headline of the ad and go to the website, and give the user only one option to interact with the ad and that is using the Click To Call functionality. If you’re trying to drive sales through a phone number then who doesn’t love a 100% conversion rate. Also, if you haven’t broken out your PPC campaigns and separated out a mobile strategy then you need to do that as well, but I’m not really covering that whole concept in this blog post.

Call Metrics Changes Very Soon

What will be changing very soon is the way Google bills for this value added service. Soon campaigns will be charged $1 for every time this number is called manually. Now when I say manually basically I mean any time the number is called NOT using the Click To Call functionality. This could be when the user sees the number on an Adwords ad, doesn’t click, but calls the number. You would be charged $1 in that scenario. The worst thing about this is users who may call your business for the first time through a PPC ad and then save the phone number in their contacts list. Users could be using this number in excess and costing your campaign money. This is just one downfall to think about. I still believe the functionality is worth the cost and will be testing to see how many times users will actually be calling the number manually. We can measure this against how many users call the number and do not charge the additional $1, and make our judgments after we see more data.

Reporting On Your Call Details

An extra feature that makes this even more valuable is the way in which we are able to report on this data. If you go into your campaign and look under the Dimensions tab you’ll want to view the Call Details information. This will give you:
  • Start Time Of The Call
  • End Time Of The Call
  • Status – Received or Missed Call
  • Duration In Seconds
  • Caller Area Code
This information is very valuable because it gives you very valuable information regarding the effectiveness of your PPC budget. Also you should be using this data to setup your Day Parting strategy to further target your ads to drive the most ROI.

Google Adwords Extends Ad Titles To Test And Improve CTR

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Google is always making changes and testing the way they display results and ads. We all know about the change from a while back when they stopped calling ads “Sponsored Results” and starting call them “Ads”. This made a big impact, even though it was just a simple change. Well they’re at it again and this time they are testing extending the Ad Title’s of text ads. What they are doing is taking the first line of the ad copy and appending it to the title. This has a variety of things to take into account with this change:

  • Ad Titles are the clickable area of an ad, and extending it gives users a larger area to click and make the text appear as a hyperlink.
  • It will increase CTR and drive more traffic through paid search.
  • As PPC managers we will need to alter the way we write ad copy taking into account the mix of ad titles and ad copy.

To see Google’s post about this topic you can visit the Google Adwords Blog where they describe how they rolled this out and how your ad needs to be formatted to receive this change. You’ll need to end your line 1 ad copy with a form of punctuation. A period or question mark will need to be used to imply your ad has actual sentence structure. The example that the Adwords blog used to illustrate the difference in ads can be seen here.

The implication of this could be huge from a CTR stand point and the volume of traffic that can be driven to your site through paid search. We like when changes like this are made because when you know how to manage and optimize campaigns we can maximize results for our clients. If you’re not actively managing your Adwords campaign then you’ll miss the boat when big changes like this can affect results on a large scale. This is a good reason to have a professional manager of your campaigns that will stay up to date for you. The scarier thing may be that your competitors could be using this to their advantage, which will give them the better CTR and overtake your ads position with a higher quality score. You may be left in the dust.If you have seen this in your own campaigns and have noticed the differences in performance leave a comment and tell us how this has affected your results and strategy. If you haven’t made adjustments that take this into account… go make them now and measure the results for yourself.