AdWords Remarketing, - Sexy, Scary or Scam?

Remarketing is a fairly well established sales strategy but Google’s recently launched AdWords variation poses some interesting questions.

How it works...
You can now add a tag to any of your site pages that will track visitors. Once those visitors leave your site and continue to browse the internet, Google’s remarketing tool allows you to “follow” them around with custom ads placed on any of their content network sites.

Sexy?
Let’s say Jane Jones visits your holiday site and looks at the “holidays to Cuba” page but they don’t book there and then and instead decide to do some more research on other sites. Providing those sites are part of the content network, you can now place custom ads that will follow Jane around. You could choose to add a discount to your remarketed ad copy.. “10% off all Holidays to Cuba”
Let’s say you run an online retail site selling games hardware and software. Joe Bloggs visits your site and purchases an Xbox 360. Let’s also assume that Joe then goes on to visit other Xbox related sites to research games, accessories etc. AdWords now allows you to place ads on content network sites that will only be shown to people who have purchased an Xbox from you. In Joe’s case you can “remarket” him by selling him games.

Scary?
Internet users find this stuff a little creepy! The ads that run alongside Gmail for example have caused all sorts of issues and raised (albeit irrational) concerns over privacy). Getting an email to tell you your Aunt Betty has passed away is disconcerting enough without Google slapping an ad for “Funeral Directors” alongside it. The perception is that Google is reading your email in order to place targeted ads which are of course, a misconception. I don’t suppose for a minute that Google is going to personalise these ads to say “Hey Joe, remember that Playboy site you were looking at .... We’re back!” but the thought that ads are following us around the web is unsettling.

Scam?
OK, scam is a harsh word but it has occurred to me that if Joe came to my site from a pay per click ad, Google will be getting paid twice to advertise to the same user.

How to Get Quality Customers at the Lowest Cost

How Google AdWords gets you the best possible leads at a low cost and with very low risk.

Whether your looking to generate leads or looking to generate direct sales from your website, the quality of visitors you get is of paramount importance.

Pay per Click advertising on search engines such as Google and Yahoo offers a unique opportunity to promote your products or services to people who are actively looking for those products or services and at exactly the time they are looking for them.

Traditional advertising typically tries to reach an wide audience with a simple message...  "This is what we sell, do you want to buy it?".

Pay per Click marketing is dramatically different in that it is potential clients that are coming to you and asking "This is the product I want, can you provide me with it". 

With traditional advertising you pay the same rate regardless of how may people respond to your ad, with Pay per Click advertising you ONLY pay when someone expresses an interest by clicking on your ad.

The major difference between standard pay per click and traditional advertising though is that it provides (more or less) a level playing field regardless of how big or small your company is.

A standard pay per click advert is made of of lines of text. 

So this ad from a smaller company

Blue Skies Travel
Our Reputation Means A Great Deal
Custom made holidays & cruise www.blue-skies-travel.co.uk

competes with this ad from a much larger company

Tailor Made Holidays
Find great deals on package
holidays with Expedia. Book online www.expedia.co.uk

Now I'm pretty sure that Blue Skies Travel has a much smaller marketing budget than Expedia but for that keyword at the time that ad was shown, there is little difference between the two ads. What's more, it's quite possible that Blue Skies Travel paid less per click than Expedia ... how come?

The Price you pay per click isn't simply based on how much you're willing to pay. The price you pay per click depends on a number of factors including how good you are at understanding how pay per click works.  

Five AdWords Tips

Keywords
Start with keywords that exactly match the product or service you offer. If you sell "Red Widgets" bid on the keyword "Red Widgets" not "Widgets".  Spend your money on the keywords that are most likely to convert into sales and take the time to understand how keyword matching works.. it's important!

Ad Copy

If a user has searched for "red widgets", show them an ad that talks about "red widgets" and yes that does mean writing a new ad for every keyword!

The more your ad copy matches your keywords, the lower you'll pay per click

Qualify your ads

If its practical, include a price in your ad copy.  If you sell luxury red widgets at £10 a shot then put £10 in your ad to dissuade people only willing to pay £5 from clicking your ad.

Geo Target Your ads

If your product or service is available depending on the location of the end user, you can restrict your ads to only be shown in that area.

Being No 1 is often not the best place to be

In many (if not most markets) being the no 1 ad is not the best option.  Research shows that if your ad is at position 3, 4 or 5 it's a) likely to be much cheaper and b) more likely to generate sales.

Of course, we'd recommend using an experienced and qualified agency to manage all of this for you : ) 

New AdWords Features

There are a couple of new features in the AdWords web interface that help you segment and filter your statistics.

Under the main tabs you'll see some new options for "Segment" and for "Filter". 
What these allow you to do is cut up your data into segments so you can see what's what really quickly.  For example if you're looking at campaigns with the date range set to "last 7 days", you can set the segment to "Day" and immediately see the number of clicks, impressions etc broken down day by day for the last 7 days : )

Want to know how many clicks came from mobile devices?  There's a segment for that!

If the segment cuts up your data then the "filter" narrows your stats to manageable levels.  You can now limit your data to show keywords where the number of impressions is greater than 10 or 100 or whatever you wish. You can also layer filters to show keywords where impressions are greater than 100 but click through rate is less than 2%!  Great for really quick analysis.

AdWords Data Different From Analytics Data?

If you've ever wondered why the figures in your adwords account dont match those in your Google analytics account. Here's Why...

AdWords Data
AdWords provides information relating only to your PPC account. Traffic generated from other sources are not reported upon by AdWords. AdWords reporting is not real time but click data (such as clicks, impressions etc) are typically updated within 3 hours. Conversion tracking is typically updated within 24 hours.

The key stats that can be gained from AdWords include clicks, impressions, average CPC, Click through Rate, costs, conversions and quality score.

The only data that AdWords collects relate to the ads as they appear on Google and Conversions as they appear on your site.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) tracks all traffic sources to your site and not just PPC Traffic. Although GA is published by Google it can be used completely independently of the adwords system.

Analytics appears to update less frequently than AdWords and conversion data typically tends to take 24 hours to be updated.

Analytics Limitations
Whilst Google Analytics is now a very comprehensive application it does have its limitations. These limitations are common to most if not all “Page Tag” based analytics applications.

Some of the more common reasons for Analytics inaccuracy include:

JavaScript Errors
Javascript coding issues and errors can effectively stop a web page from fully loading and therefore stop effective page tracking.

Firewalls
Corporate and aggressive firewalls can prevent page tracking solutions from accurately collecting data.

Cookies
Users and firewalls can reject or delete cookies thus causing inaccurate tracking.

Computer sharing
Much of analytics data is based on cookies. Where users share computers, this can result in inaccurate data.

E-Commerce Gateways
e-Commerce gateways are notoriously difficult to track. Passing data from one domain to another is a complex process and makes tracking very difficult.

Dynamic Page Generation
Many sites use the same page to handle different functions and this can cause tracking difficulties.


How They Differ
Because AdWords is a commercial application where users are being incurring significant costs, it’s accuracy in terms of tracking clicks has to be flawless. In our experience AdWords data is extremely reliable. Because GA has to track traffic from many different sources and is far more reliant on the site owners ensuring tracking codes are implemented correctly, its data tends to be less accurate.

Additionally, Google AdWords filters certain types of clicks from the data. Clicks that it deems to be fraudulent are not shown in the AdWords stats.

Offline AdWords with Google Gears

Saw a new feature in the AdWords interface this morning that allows you to download your adwords account to your local machine using Google Gears! Gears is part of Google big "Cloud Computing" strategy. The big issue with cloud computing (where your software is hosted on the internet) is that if you're not online then your not in the cloud and therefore your apps are not usable. This is where Google Gears comes in. Gears stores your data on your hard drive so you can still access it offline. In the context of AdWords I guess this will simply mean that the whole interface experience will be quicker as opposed to full offline but that's no bad thing.

Is Paid Search Marketing Recession Proof?

We’re often asked how our clients are reacting to the economic climate.

It’s true that clients are paying more attention to their daily budgets, their cost per click and to their conversion rates. Our strategies remain relatively unchanged as a result of the economic climate because great PPC optimisation has always been about getting the best results from the lowest spend.

Paid search marketing spend is increasing at a time when most other forms of marketing are in decline. One of the reasons behind this phenomenon is “risk avoidance”. When times are good and marketing budgets are high, advertisers are prepared to take risks with their marketing spend. When budgets are tight the opposite is true and budgets are focused on strategies that advertisers know work well.

If you run an ad in a newspaper or on radio you may have a “gut feeling” that the campaign has been effective. You may notice a general rise in sales or more enquiries but it’s difficult to pin down exactly which advert generated which sale. If you have a varied marketing programme, how do you know if the rush of sales you have experienced is as a result of your poster campaign, your radio ads or your newspaper ads.

One of the most significant benefits of PPC marketing is that tracking allows you to know which campaigns, adverts and keywords generate which sales and affords you the control to make improvements in the right areas. In short, PPC allows you to make evidence based decisions about where and when you should focus your marketing spend.

When times are difficult there are certain strategies you can employ to ensure a limited budget is spent wisely.

• “Ad Scheduling” allows you to reduce the amount you spend or even to pause spend completely at specific times of the day or specific days of the week. If you’re not open for business on Sunday why spend money advertising when you’re less likely to generate a sale?
  
  
• Spend more time researching the less obvious keywords, they’re cheaper and often convert much better.
  
  
• Set your bid price at level that you can afford and forget about average position. If 25p a click is your limit then stick to it. If you don’t know what your optimum cost per click is... find out and find out quickly.
  
  
• If you have reliable conversion tracking in place, only bid on keywords that are directly contributing to the sale. If you don’t have reliable tracking, prioritise your keywords into groups of high, medium and low according to their commercial value. You can then bid more for the high priority and less for the low.
  
  
• PPC allows you to target customers very precisely. If people in Wales are more likely to buy your product than people in Scotland then pay for more clicks from Wales and less for clicks from Scotland. If people from England are unlikely to buy from you then don’t advertise in England at all.
  
  
• You can also target according to age and gender. Only 38% of the people who search for “Britney Spears CD” are male but males make up 75% of the people who search for “Britney Spears Video”. If you were selling Britney Videos, who would you be better off targeting your adverts towards?

we're cloudbusting daddy

Excuse the reference to that classic 80's Kate Bush track but this week I am mostly cloud busting! I'm going to try and get through the entire working week using only cloud based applications. No word, no AdWords Editor (!!!), no Excel, No outlook (ok no bad thing) and no CRM.

Most of the powers that be are telling us that cloud applications are the next big thing. Google's Chrome Operating system, Apples IPad et al are literally banking on it.

So here's the deal, no desktop apps... Instead of Word I'm going to use Google Docs, instead of Outlook I'm going to use OWA, Photoshop.com instead of Fireworks so on and so forth.

Hell... Do Iphone Apps count as dekstop apps???