Google Adwords 2 nd October 2013

Contents Why Adwords? Budgeting Keywords & Adverts Measurement Google Grant

Why Adwords?

Why you are using Adwords People who search Google are actively looking for related information, i.e. in most cases they are in ‘buy mode’ – the opposite to social media. Real-time adjustments to campaigns and bids – pause campaigns if you have site issues and stay in complete control of your budgets. Option of using Google Content (Display) Network, with further option for using Google’s ‘remarketing’ scheme. Demographic and geographic targeting. Approximately two out of three clicks on the first page are from PPC adverts. Adjustments of campaigns for effective ROI and within CPA limits (expertise required!) Your competitors use Adwords!

Further Features Ad Extensions allows you to include additional features to your adverts, such as maps and a ‘call’ button. This can be especially useful for mobile devices where users do not want to fill forms on donation pages. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) is a new feature for Adwords search ads. It allows you to show different ad content and bidding for users who have already visited your site.

Don’t forget Contributions! First click, last click, middle click? Remember to have unbiased data analysis – over 95% of Google revenue is from PPC. Additional 13% of donations were ‘helped’ by PPC. PPC works together with SEO: - 8.4% of PPC conversions were assisted by SEO - 2.2% of SEO conversions were assisted by PPC Data obtained from recent case study

Budgeting

How much should the budget be? Largely dependent on sector and campaigns. Keywords (groups) should be analysed for most effective CPA (sweet-spot). There is a point where increasing the CPC bids will have little effect on conversions.

Past Data. Past Data. Past Data. Use previous data (year on year) to establish trends, at keyword level, and bid accordingly to achieve the target CPA. Google has the facility to automate bidding based on clicks or conversions, but this is no replacement for your own year on year data with competitor behaviour. The behaviour of your Ads will vary for different months of the year, especially with the build up to Christmas. As your competitors start increasing their bids you need to react to ensure you don’t get drowned in the rankings. Accounts can become large with thousands of keywords and you often need to react quickly with changing bid amounts. The only way to achieve this correctly is to analyse past data.

Keywords and Adverts

Google Keyword Tools Different Types of keywords (“women’s glasses”): Broad MatchBroad ModifierPhraseExactNegative “buy ladies glasses”“woman’s glasses” “buy women’s glasses” “women’s glasses” “glasses” Google “recommended keywords”. Use Google ‘Keyword Planner’ tools to: - find suggested keywords, - average number of searches - competition strength - estimated bids at different CPC levels - suggested bidding amounts

Adverts The rankings of your adverts are based on ‘quality score’ and your CPC bid: - Quality score relates to the relevancy of your advert with your site content, and your click through rate (CTR). - CPC is the maximum bid amount you will pay for a click. Adverts will perform differently with different keywords groups so be sure to create unique adverts for each Ad Group. Adwords allows you to A/B test different ads and optimise based on clicks or conversions.

Measurement

So many metrics It is important to import your Adwords data into a web analytics tool (Google Analytics is free). This allows you to combine and compare your data with other sources, and offers further insight. Use data analytics to monitor PPC performance with other advertising campaigns: - Learn how PPC supports other advertising. - Learn how PPC visitors interact with your site compared with other visits.

Cost per Acquisition - CPA Make regular adjustments to CPC at keyword level, based on exported year on year data, to ensure CPC bidding falls within CPA. Limit Ad Group daily spend to ensure budget is not exceeded. Please note that you can only limit spend on Ad Group level, not keyword level. ABCDEFGHI Keyword PhraseClicksCost £DonationsCPC £CPA £ (current)CPA £ (target)Cost £ (target)CPC £ (new) "XYZ" C / BC / D G * DH / B

Google Grant

Key Points and Restrictions The Google Grants programme must be a separate Adwords account and cannot be combined with an existing account. Daily budget of $329 USD per day – You cannot add, or ‘top up’, your daily budget. The budget cannot be ‘carried over’ to a new period. Maximum CPC of $2 USD per click (increase from $1 USD) – As with the daily budget you cannot add to the maximum CPC amount. This is restrictive in the sense that may be excluded from the top ranking positions. Google UK only.