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See how a Google AdWords customer realized a 124% increase in Clicks, 101% increase in impressions, 12% increase in Click-Thru-Rates while achieving a Cost Savings of 27%. If you’re ready to stop losing money with AdWords send an email to michael@SensibleMarketing.biz

I recently optimized a Google AdWords® Campaign for a large cable television network. Within two months, my client realized a staggering 124% increase in Clicks, 101% increase in impressions, a 12% increase in Click-Thru-Rates and a 27% REDUCTION in Costs!  Here’s some background; this network has seven prime-time television shows they promote through AdWords, each set up with a unique campaign and an annual budget of around $120,000 for each campaign. Their goal was to increase impressions, increase CTR and Conversions (registrations for their newsletters & promotions) and to lower their ballooning costs.

Across all their prime time shows, this TV network was spending over $1Million/year in Google AdWords but had no dedicated resource to manage the campaigns! This was going to be a big challenge, but I was ready for the job.

After starting work on the project, I quickly realized they had simply created their campaigns and used the default settings, or the so-called, “Budget Optimizer” tool within AdWords. Using the AdWords Budget Optimizer is a huge mistake on a campaign this size and complexity. In other words, they were basically writing a blank check to Google every month. No wonder Google was sending them those great holiday cards and gift baskets! Most advertisers using Google AdWords built-in campaign management tools are doing so incorrectly.


This is almost always due to a lack of knowledge of the different options that are available–and how/when to use them. You may be aware of the basic features, like the keyword research tools. However are you aware of some of the advanced features that Google AdWords Campaign Management offers? Do you know how these tools work and how they can impact your campaign? What about Quality Scores and Inactive Keywords? Keep reading! My initial work to optimize the TV network’s AdWords campaigns involved:

1. Rebuilding their campaign architecture
2. Improving keyword relevance and quality scores
3. Setting targets for lead volume and cost-per-acquisition
4. Establish synergy between keywords, ad copy and the landing page experience
5. Revise, report and retest every few days to tweak campaign performance.

The results??

As the charts below indicate: 124% increase in Clicks, 101% increase in impressions, a 12% increase in Click-Thru-Rates and a 27% REDUCTION in Costs! Needless to say, Google stopped sending my client those delightful fruit baskets, gift bags and holiday cards!

These great results are mainly due to my familiarity with optimization techniques (that work) and understanding how (and when) to use various Google AdWords automation tools and third party tools.



Having said that, if you’re going to get these kind of results, you first need to fully understand the 4 major options in Google AdWords Campaign Management. Each of these options determines how your ads will be served and thus has a major effect on how much money you will spend on your ads. Sometimes they should be used, sometimes not..depending on your goals, budget and target audience.1. Manual bidding/strong - This feature was formerly known as set maximum limits. This is the most common way an AdWords management account is set up. What this does is allow you to decide the maximum amount you are willing to pay for any keyword in your campaign.

2. Conversion Optimizer - If you are using Google conversion tracking code to track your leads or sales, this feature is available to you, if you have enough traffic and sales. You decide how much you’re willing to pay for an “action” and AdWords automatically bumps your bids up and down to optimize the performance on a keyword level.

3. Budget Optimizer - this is a nifty feature that you can use to automatically budget much you want to spend on ad words on a monthly basis. After it set up, will automatically manage your account to generate the most clicks within that budget.

4. Preferred Cost Bidding - This allows you to decide what is the average price you want to pay per click. AdWords will then set your bids to make sure the average price you pay for each click you receive is the amount that you selected. This doesn’t mean that all of your bids are going to be the average amount or less. Some bid amounts may exceed the average amount and some will be lower.

Inactive Keywords

Now that you are familiar AdWords Campaign Management Tools, we need to look at Inactive Keywords. Google Adwords has made some recent changes and has implemented yet another hurdle that many Internet Marketers are experiencing, so this is very important. Many large companies with complex campaigns often forget about inactive keywords or they don’t know how this will have a negative impact on their budget. It is a fact that with Google Adwords you can bid as little as $0.01 per click, but for Internet Marketers this will result in the keyword being set to Inactive for Search. This means that your bid price is not high enough for Google to display it in the search results. Here is the confusing part. All Google Adwords accounts are different, and the minimum bid for a keyword is different from account to account. The reason for this is that the minimum bids are determined by your overall Quality Score and history. If you have always had good CTR and your keywords and web pages are relevant to your product, then your quality score will be high. For this reason your minimum bid prices could be much less than someone with a poor performing account.

If you implement the tricks that are spoke in this articles, your quality score will go up, and your minimum bid prices will ultimately go down. This will save you money. For many keywords we are able to bid the minimum $0.01 while many other Internet Marketers have to pay up to.20 or.30 cents to activate their accounts. It is easy to do the math and realize that paying less per click increases your overall ROI. REMEMBER: Quality Score determines your minimum bid prices on keywords. The higher your Quality Score, the lower your minimum bid price will be.

Optimization of your Daily Budget

All advertisers have different budgets, which is why Google Adwords is a fair playing field. You have now learned that Google Ads are placed according to Quality Score, not simply bid price. Advertisers with small budgets can compete with the big players by learning tricks to increase Quality Score. Ad placement is not just based on bid price. If a keyword does not reach high Quality Score then the ad may be overtaken by higher performing ads. With this being said, it is important that you set your budget to something that you can afford. We have mentioned daily budget throughout this guide, however we need to talk it in more detail here because there are tricks that will allow you to reach more web traffic. When many people learn how Google Adwords works, they are never taught about budgeting. Here I will teach you some tricks that may answer some of your major web traffic questions. If you have a real budget of $5 per day, this is the amount that you are actually willing to spend to reach web traffic. If you set your campaign daily budget to $5, chances are that you will spend less than this amount.

Many marketers do not realize that if you set your daily budget too low, Google will not serve your ads with every search query that is made with your keywords. Most times you will never even reach your daily budget if you set it too low. For this reason we set our Google Adwords Daily budgets quite a bit higher so that our ads will be displayed as much as possible in the search results. Here’s a formula that works well. Set your daily budget 5x or 10x higher than your actual budget. If you are willing to spend $5 a day then you can set your campaign budget at $25. This will allow for your ad to be displayed in more search results. If your budget is too low, your ads will barely be displayed at all and you will most likely see little to no web traffic. Google Adwords also has a daily budget calculator that will recommend the daily budget for the keywords that you have chosen. If you set this budget 5x to 10x greater, you will be guaranteed to have your ad served in all search results.

When using this technique, you need to be sure that you monitor your account. Although we have never been affected by having a budget 10x higher than what we are willing to spend, in theory you could accumulate these click charges. It is very unlikely and we have never seen it happen, but we suppose it could. For this reason, you need to keep an eye on your campaigns at the beginning–this is critical, so don’t get lazy and forget!!

Split Testing Your Ads

Split testing is not a new concept, but it is one of the most powerful methods of optimizing your ads. To split test, you need to set up multiple ads for the same ad group. The great thing about multiple ads is that Google gives you statistics for each ad (CTR, Clicks, and Impressions). This is very useful for comparing ad writing tricks and refining your Ad Groups to get maximum CTR performance.

In this example both of these ads have the same descriptions, but have different titles. The data from these two ads will determine which is most effective in getting the attention of potential purchasers. Split testing can save you time and money. We have implemented man split testing campaigns and immediately noticed great increases to ROI & CTR. As we have already mentioned, higher CTR greatly increases your Quality Score resulting in lower CPC and higher ad positioning. Below are some of the most effective split testing methods. So where do you get the search keywords for your ad? There are four places that might help you find them:

• Logfiles : Examine your site’s logfiles. How are people finding your site now? What words are they using? What search engines are they using? Are the words they’re using too general to be used for Google Adwords? If you look at your logfiles, you can get an idea of how people who are interested in your content are finding your site. (If they aren’t interested in your content, why would they visit?) In fact, if you use Google Analytics to measure your site web traffic, you’ll find a category called Keyword Considerations that automatically tabulates the keywords that people have used to find your site via Google and other search engines.
• Examine your site : If you have an internal search engine, check its logs. What are people searching for once they get to your site? Are there any common misspellings you could use ? Are there any common phrases you could use?
• Brainstorm : What do people think of when they look at your site? What keywords do you want them to think of? Brainstorm about the product that’s most closely associated with your site. What words come up?
• Imagine someone goes to a store and asks about your products. How would they ask? What words would they use? Consider the different ways someone could look for or ask about your product or service, and if there’s a set of words or a phrase that pops up over and over again.
• Glossaries : If you’ve brainstormed until wax dribbles out your ears but are no closer to coming up with words relevant to your site or product, visit some online glossaries to jog your brain. The Glossarist links to hundreds of glossaries on hundreds of different subjects. Check and see if it has a glossary relevant to your product or service, and see if you can pull some words from there.
• Keyword tools : Google’s competitor Yahoo! has its own advertising network called Overture, and it offers a tool to test potential advertising keywords. Browse to the KeyCompete, Search Term Suggestion Tool , Keyword Research Tool , FreeKeyword Tool , Keyword Academy , and take a few of your ideas for a spin.

Optimized Ad Copy Testing

When setting up a campaign there is an option to allow Google to optimize the serving of your ads. With this option turned on, Google will display your better converting ad more frequently. This allows you to write more than one ad, and the best performer will be displayed more than the others.

In the example above, the correct box is selected which will allow Google to optimize your ad serving. If you really want to split test ads to find out which is working better, you need to turn this option off.

Non-Optimized Ad Copy Testing

This is the true test of CTR & CPC. Do you want to know which ad is performing better, and which ad CPC has been set lower from a higher quality score? Not allowing Google to Optimize your ads will allow you to truly test which ad is actually performing better because each ad will be displayed equally. Typically you want to allow for a total of 200 clicks before determining which ad is the better performer.

Both tricks can be used to determine different tests. If you want to determine which adcopy is performing better, you need to disable optimized ad serving. Optimized ad serving will display your best performing ad to your potential customers and in many cases increases your ROI. Both tricks can be used for different purposes and it is important that you understand the differences.

Many marketers simply leave optimization on because it is the default option when building a campaign, while many do not even know what its significance is. The first part of the phrase is the word KeyWord, this inserts your keyword capitalizing the first letter of each word. This is followed by a : then by the Alternate Text. If a user searches a key phrase that is too long to fit within the ad, the default text will be displayed instead.

Run Better Tests..Period!

Go into the “edit campaign settings” area of your account, for any given campaign. The default method of rotating ads is set to Google’s advantage. Google will start crowding out the ad that gets fewer clicks (a lower CTR) and start showing your high-CTR ad more often. That puts more money in its pocket, but it doesn’t allow you to run the test evenly to measure through to your revenue stream to be sure which ad is truly the “better performer.” To ensure even ad rotation, un-check the “show better-performing ads more often” box. Incidentally, the even ad rotation continues to be an underused feature of Google Adwords. You can use it to test more than ads.

If you have two or three alternate landing pages, you can send your Google Adwords web traffic to them equally from a given group of keywords just by setting up more than one ad for an ad group, with identical ad copy, and changing only the destination URLs associated with the ad. If you have tagged each ad URL with unique tracking code so your analytics package knows what’s going on (or are using Google’s Conversion Tracker), you should be able to compare the conversion rates on these landing pages without having to use any fancy content management tricks on your site. An example would be testing the home page against a tailored landing page, or a category page showing a selection of choices against a page describing a single product in depth. Don’t guess, test.

Run Smarter Reports…always!

You don’t need to sign up for Google’s Analytics service, or buy Webtrends Enterprise, Omniture SiteCatalyst, or other high-powered analytics services, to get useful tracking of your clicks right through to a sale. Google’s entry-level Conversion Tracker gives you plenty of information if you set it up right. It’s fairly similar to most analytics software in that you have to install the correct JavaScript code on your site and sometimes customize things to pass through revenue data, if desired. But what if you want to determine the return on investment on ad copy you’re testing, as opposed to which keywords or groups of keywords are performing better? Many users aren’t aware of how powerful the advanced reporting is in Google Adwords.

Go to the Reports tab and, once on the Create Report page, select Text Ad Report. You can then select a time frame and limit the report to the campaigns you’re interested in. Finally, you need to customize the stats shown in the report. Conversion-related data isn’t included by default, so you need to bring up the whole range of available report elements (under Advanced Options: Columns, further down the Create Report page) and then click some additional boxes to add them. Run the report and view it either online or in your preferred downloadable format. Quite simply, if you’ve made enough sales off the groups of keywords in question, you should see comparative data showing exact cost-per-conversion numbers for ads you’ve been running head to head (no fancy tracking codes required on your destination URLs). If you determine that one ad is significantly better than another in its ultimate revenue generation effect, you’ve made the most important discovery you can make about ad performance, and next, you’ll want to delete the nonperforming ad and perhaps run new tests.

You’ll also want to attempt to learn lessons from the test, which is easier if you’ve been testing certain elements of your copy based on industry theories and your own hypothesis.

Sometimes, these tests are amazing. I ran a test on one product a new ad competing with the old for the month of April 2006. Both generated about 600 clicks. The old ad generated 11 unique new customers at a cost of $9.73 per customer. The new ad generated zero transactions, so we’re still waiting on that cost-per-acquisition figure as it is currently at “infinity”! Wow……110…on 600 clicks! This helped us confirm that our call to action in the old ad, relating to free shipping and available inventory, was working well. Unfortunately, Google Adwords doesn’t give me suggestions for how to explain to a client that I wasted his cash testing a “great new ad” that turned out to suck.   Maybe we can chalk it up to “branding.”



Control Your Ad Positions and Control Spend

You can now tell Google Adwords keyword by keyword to show your ads only in certain positions in the advertising area of the search engine results page. This is available in Advanced Options under Edit Campaign Settings. Let’s say you want your ad to show up only if you can be no higher on the page than ad position 3 and no lower than 6. Enabling the ad position control provides a drop-down box in “keyword settings” for every keyword. The default is “any position,” but if you say to show your ad no higher than third position, and no lower than sixth, Google simply doesn’t show your ad if your ad rank forces you outside these positions. Be careful with this one. Essentially, what it’s telling the system is to keep your ads turned off unless your positioning criteria are met, so you could see sharply reduced ad impressions if you use the feature.

This feature won’t adjust your bid for you, so this is not “classic” bid-to-position functionality that is available with some third-party bid management tools. It looks like Google is testing the waters on this feature, including the revenue impact, in order to decide whether to implement a more robust set of bid management options. For now, Google still has no bid-to-position feature and no day-parting feature. Advertisers seeking such exotica need to investigate third-party options or custom programming on their own through the Google Adwords API.

Keep in mind, though, that the existing bid system is easy to use mainly because it has an automatic bid discounter, and it subjects your ad delivery to whatever budgetary parameters you specify. Frequent (several times daily) bid changes are overrated, especially given that your ad rank is not solely dependent on your bid.

CTR and Keyword Match Types

Knowing the difference between keyword match types and how to effectively use them can greatly increase your overall Quality Score. The goal of Defeating Google Adwords is to teach you how to build effective advertising campaigns that will outsmart your competitors. You will pay less, experience better results, and increase your ROI. Few marketers know how to effectively use match types. In this section examples will be used as much as possible to simplify the explanations of the techniques. The first thing that you need to know are the definitions of the match types that Google Adwords allows you to use for your Ad Groups. These definitions are directly from Google.

• Broad Match - This is the default option. If you include general keyword or keyword phrases-such as tennis shoes-in your keyword list, your ads will appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads will also automatically show for expanded matches, including plurals and relevant variations. Broad matches are often less targeted than exact or phrase matches.
• Phrase Match - If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, as in “tennis shoes”, your ad will appear when a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and possibly with other terms in the query. In this case, the search can also contain other terms as long as it includes the exact phrase you’ve specified. For instance, our ad will appear for the query red tennis shoes but not for shoes for tennis.
• Exact Match - If you surround your keywords in brackets-such as [tennis shoes]-your ads will appear when users search for the specific phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and without any other terms in the query. For example, your ad won t show for the query red tennis shoes.
• Negative Keyword - If your keyword is tennis shoes and you add the negative keyword -red, your ad will not appear when a user searches on red tennis shoes.

There is more that you need to know about keyword matching options so lets dive right into things. Using broad, phrase, and exact matching options for each keyword or phrase within your Ad Group will dramatically increase your CTR and Quality Score. Use all three match types for every keyword that you include in your Ad Groups. This trick will dramatically increase your CTR! I recommend using a maximum of 25 unique keywords per Ad Group, however when using Broad, Phrase, and Match type options you will end up having 75 Keywords. This is fine as you still only have 25 unique keywords.

Control Your Geography and Increase CTR

During campaign setup, you’re offered “location targeting options.” For existing campaigns, you can edit these settings. Specify countries and territories, regions and cities, or custom. Whatever you do, don’t show your ad to the whole world unless that’s your intention. Using custom geography, you can even target a radius of a few hundred miles, or a geographic “shape,” if you’re handy with the tools, which are now easier to use with a WYSIWYG-type interface on a map. Boo-yah! This functionality works fairly well subject to the limitations of mapping users’ IP addresses to exact locations.It’s currently available in about 15 countries.

Even national advertisers may find this highly useful, running campaigns in several dozen major metropolitan areas and adjusting their bids upwards in some of them to reflect the cities that are most responsive in terms of sales conversions. A lot of these features can be a downright blast to use, especially for junkies. Don’t forget your goals: acquiring new customers and communicating with them effectively and consistently.

The Bottom Line from Sensible Marketing

Ultimately, it’s about customers, growth, and profit whatever those concepts mean to you and your business. Many of the most advanced features have the effect when boiled down of causing you to buy too much media, or too little. Keep that in mind as you build and refine a campaign that runs consistently in an optimal range for your business.

If your Google AdWords Campaign is a drain on your scarce marketing dollars or you’d like to get better, more qualified leads (that convert to paying customers), give me a call for a FREE AdWords Analysis.  I’ll take a look at your campaign and give you a detailed report on what can be done to improve things…and what you can expect as a result.  Its that simple!

Filed under: Lead Generation, ad words, advertising, adwords, google adwords, pay-per-click, ppc marketing, ppc optimisation, ppc optimization, sem optimization