Monday, April 26, 2010
Official Google Blog: Fast.Forward. Connecting marketers with innovative ideas (and other marketers)
Official Google Blog: Fast.Forward. Connecting marketers with innovative ideas (and other marketers)
Thursday, April 15, 2010
PPC Bid Management
Steps To Set Keyword Max Bids
Set Low Maximum Bids
If you accept a majority of the tool's keyword suggestions, you'll be bidding on a number of different keywords and generating greatly increased clicks and impressions. Additionally, you should enjoy two pricing advantages:
• In authoring relevant, compelling ad text and in creating closely related keyword groupings, you are increasing Quality Score and lowering your costs.
• Combine this with long tail accumulation and manipulation tools enable you to find a rush of extremely cheap clicks. This means that you can afford to avoid overpaying for more expensive keywords.
Track Performance
This provides you with a fire-hose of inexpensive traffic; it is still useful to track the performance of your Ad Groups. The steps here are simple:
• Allot a small amount of time every week to briefly review which groups and keywords are under-performing and over-performing.
• Determine whether to raise bids, lower bids, or pause a group (depending).
Use Common Sense!
You know your business: take a look at underperforming Ad Groups. Is that a term that makes sense? If not, pause the Ad Group or lower the bid.
Tracking performance and managing bids
Having set a low CPC, it's worth-while to keep an eye on the performance of Ad Groups and even individual keywords.
First, login to your AdWords account. Click the "Campaign Summary" link and navigate to the account that is currently running:
You can then quickly investigate your account group performance in a few simple steps:
• Sort by Cost - We recommend first sorting by cost to determine if any Ad Groups are eating up spend without converting. Simply view the Ad Groups producing the greatest spend, and consider manipulating that group(s) (more on how to manipulate a group in a minute).
• Sort by Cost/Conv. - This will again give you a bird's eye view of under-performing groups. Quickly scan high-spending groups to see if their cost-per-conversion is higher than you're comfortable with. If so, optimize the group. The same is true in the other direction: for groups that are performing very well, consider raising your maximum CPC bids to generate more clicks and exposure.
• Sort by Conversion - This allows you to view the groups that are performing. You can then drill down to discover keywords that are performing well within your managed Ad Groups, and can dedicate a group to them specifically. This provides two benefits:
1. More Conversions - By creating a textual ad that's even more specialized, you can differentiate yourself for the queries this keyword is generating, providing you with more highly qualified clicks (and almost certainly, more conversions).
2. Lower Costs - By the same token, the conversions you do get will cost you less. The reason for this is that you're more aggressively qualifying these visitors, and you're driving up your Quality Score; meaning that overall, your costs will go down.
Raising bids and lowering bids to optimize ad groups
There are three tactics we generally recommend in altering bids for campaign optimization:
• Raise Bids - If you see a keyword or Ad Group that is converting very well, but has a low average ad position and a limited number of impressions and/or clicks, raise the bid to get that term more exposure.
• Lower Bids - For terms that are slightly underperforming or costing more per conversion than you are comfortable with, lower the bid to place less account emphasis on this term.
• Pause an Ad Group or Keyword - If a keyword is really eating up your spend; you might consider pausing that keyword. You can try a more specific variation of that keyword that is more likely to convert, optimizing more than just your bid management
PPC Bid Management-Step One
Effective Bid Management - Step 1: Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions
Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant Keywords in an account. Also identifies Keywords that have lost traffic and or conversion based on previous PPC bid optimization. Doing this based on 1-2 days or weeks of data would not be recommended unless you are dealing with a product that generates extremely high volume of traffic, clicks, and conversions within that time frame. Recommended time frame would be at least a month or more. After identifying these keywords, ask yourself:
• Is the Max. CPC too high?
• As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic?
• Is the ad copy not relevant to the search query?
• Is the landing page appropriate for the keyword and ad copy?
Fact of the matter is, if the keyword has not converted in over a month and has only contributed to negative spend then it will not convert anytime in the future and you should consider pausing it or deleing it from the account. Another important fact to note is, you might have only a dozen keywords with high spend or you might have 1000s of keywords with only $1-$2 in spend each but those 1s and 2s add up.
Lastly, those 1s and 2s that are mentioned above, you could use a statistical benchmark to determine if the keyword has actually had enough exposure to convert or not. You could do this by taking your overall account’s conversion rate; you can determine what is the minimum number of clicks needed for a keyword to convert. If the keyword has not incurred that many clicks, you might want to consider leaving the keyword active for a while.
• It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
• Depending on your product/service, only a week’s worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
• Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
• This analysis has helped me in eliminating Keywords with high cost and identifying Keywords that have contributed negatively to the account and were not suitable for their respective campaigns.
Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:
• Could be due to Seasonality?
• Could be due to Increased Competition?
• Could be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?
PPC Bid Management-Step Two
Effective Bid Management - Step Two: Filtering Keywords with No Clicks and No Conversions
Filtering Keywords with No Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant Keywords in an account or Keywords that are not getting enough exposure - mainly due to low Max. CPCs. It also identifies Keywords that have lost traffic and/or conversion based on previous PPC bid optimizations. This is usually an interesting set to monitor. One way to approach this:
• Identify the positions that convert the most and meet your business goals/objectives.
• Compare that to the position of these Keywords.
• If position of these Keywords is better than the average position at which your account is converting, then these Keywords are just not relevant to your account and hence should be paused/deleted.
• If position of these Keywords is worse than the average position at which your account is converting, then bidding to position (only for these set of Keywords) is an option to test their worth.
• It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
• Depending on your product/service, only a week’s worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
• Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
• This analysis has helped me identify Keywords that have no search volume or their PPC was set too low to prove their relevancy to the account.
• When testing a position based strategy, be cautious and consciously try to set a conservative Max. CPC ceiling for the Keywords, as bidding to position can sometimes generate a lot of clicks and cost without any returns, hence constant monitoring would also help.
Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:
• Could be due to Seasonality?
• Could be due to Increased Competition?
• Could be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?
PPC Bid Management-Step Three
Effective Bid Management - Step Three: Filter keywords that generate Conversions but Negative ROI or higher than your target CPA.
If your PPC account is structured keeping your business goals in mind and you have a solid keyword list in the account, you will only have a handful of keyword fitting this profile and for that matter only a handful of keywords converting in your account overall (80-20 rule always). Ask yourself questions:
• Is the Max. CPC too high?
• As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic and bringing down your overall Conversion Rate?
• What is the CPA or ROI goal and how does it compare to the CPA or ROI of the keyword?
Based on your business setting, use any formula you wish to use to adjust those bids. I personally tend to use the following two formulas the most:
(Target CPA/Actual CPA) X Current Max.CPC
OR
Target CPA X Conversion Rate
If you have an ROI goal, figure out what CPA value will help you achieve that goal and use the formula above to calculate bids.
• It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data.
• Depending on your product/service, only a week’s worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, Cost, & Conversions.
• Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
Before making a decision to change the bids or pausing or deleting the keyword, find out if the keyword has always performed similarly. If the answer is Yes, then ask yourself:
• Could it be due to Seasonality?
• Could it be due to Increased Competition?
• Could it be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased or increased aggressively)?
PPC Bid Management-Step Four
Filter keywords that are converting as well as meeting your ROI or CPA goals. You could set up another test around these by increasing their bids and being a bit more aggressive with them. Some recommendations:
• Create a separate campaign around them to focus only on those keywords with highly targeted ad copies (make sure you pause the original keyword).
• Analyze their position and test if a higher or lower position increases or decreases conversions overtime (be careful to monitor them and not to lose all your good work with them before the test).
• Testing their bids is another test that will eventually lead you to #b i.e. positions getting higher or lower.
• If you can, set up a new account and domain around the keywords converting at an acceptable cost. Generally, setting up a domain themed around keywords can contribute to incremental conversions.
• Or you can simply leave them as is and monitor them over time to make sure they maintain their performance
• This list of keywords is also a good start to spider the list and test variations of the keywords.
Set Low Maximum Bids
If you accept a majority of the tool's keyword suggestions, you'll be bidding on a number of different keywords and generating greatly increased clicks and impressions. Additionally, you should enjoy two pricing advantages:
• In authoring relevant, compelling ad text and in creating closely related keyword groupings, you are increasing Quality Score and lowering your costs.
• Combine this with long tail accumulation and manipulation tools enable you to find a rush of extremely cheap clicks. This means that you can afford to avoid overpaying for more expensive keywords.
Track Performance
This provides you with a fire-hose of inexpensive traffic; it is still useful to track the performance of your Ad Groups. The steps here are simple:
• Allot a small amount of time every week to briefly review which groups and keywords are under-performing and over-performing.
• Determine whether to raise bids, lower bids, or pause a group (depending).
Use Common Sense!
You know your business: take a look at underperforming Ad Groups. Is that a term that makes sense? If not, pause the Ad Group or lower the bid.
Tracking performance and managing bids
Having set a low CPC, it's worth-while to keep an eye on the performance of Ad Groups and even individual keywords.
First, login to your AdWords account. Click the "Campaign Summary" link and navigate to the account that is currently running:
You can then quickly investigate your account group performance in a few simple steps:
• Sort by Cost - We recommend first sorting by cost to determine if any Ad Groups are eating up spend without converting. Simply view the Ad Groups producing the greatest spend, and consider manipulating that group(s) (more on how to manipulate a group in a minute).
• Sort by Cost/Conv. - This will again give you a bird's eye view of under-performing groups. Quickly scan high-spending groups to see if their cost-per-conversion is higher than you're comfortable with. If so, optimize the group. The same is true in the other direction: for groups that are performing very well, consider raising your maximum CPC bids to generate more clicks and exposure.
• Sort by Conversion - This allows you to view the groups that are performing. You can then drill down to discover keywords that are performing well within your managed Ad Groups, and can dedicate a group to them specifically. This provides two benefits:
1. More Conversions - By creating a textual ad that's even more specialized, you can differentiate yourself for the queries this keyword is generating, providing you with more highly qualified clicks (and almost certainly, more conversions).
2. Lower Costs - By the same token, the conversions you do get will cost you less. The reason for this is that you're more aggressively qualifying these visitors, and you're driving up your Quality Score; meaning that overall, your costs will go down.
Raising bids and lowering bids to optimize ad groups
There are three tactics we generally recommend in altering bids for campaign optimization:
• Raise Bids - If you see a keyword or Ad Group that is converting very well, but has a low average ad position and a limited number of impressions and/or clicks, raise the bid to get that term more exposure.
• Lower Bids - For terms that are slightly underperforming or costing more per conversion than you are comfortable with, lower the bid to place less account emphasis on this term.
• Pause an Ad Group or Keyword - If a keyword is really eating up your spend; you might consider pausing that keyword. You can try a more specific variation of that keyword that is more likely to convert, optimizing more than just your bid management
PPC Bid Management-Step One
Effective Bid Management - Step 1: Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions
Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant Keywords in an account. Also identifies Keywords that have lost traffic and or conversion based on previous PPC bid optimization. Doing this based on 1-2 days or weeks of data would not be recommended unless you are dealing with a product that generates extremely high volume of traffic, clicks, and conversions within that time frame. Recommended time frame would be at least a month or more. After identifying these keywords, ask yourself:
• Is the Max. CPC too high?
• As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic?
• Is the ad copy not relevant to the search query?
• Is the landing page appropriate for the keyword and ad copy?
Fact of the matter is, if the keyword has not converted in over a month and has only contributed to negative spend then it will not convert anytime in the future and you should consider pausing it or deleing it from the account. Another important fact to note is, you might have only a dozen keywords with high spend or you might have 1000s of keywords with only $1-$2 in spend each but those 1s and 2s add up.
Lastly, those 1s and 2s that are mentioned above, you could use a statistical benchmark to determine if the keyword has actually had enough exposure to convert or not. You could do this by taking your overall account’s conversion rate; you can determine what is the minimum number of clicks needed for a keyword to convert. If the keyword has not incurred that many clicks, you might want to consider leaving the keyword active for a while.
• It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
• Depending on your product/service, only a week’s worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
• Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
• This analysis has helped me in eliminating Keywords with high cost and identifying Keywords that have contributed negatively to the account and were not suitable for their respective campaigns.
Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:
• Could be due to Seasonality?
• Could be due to Increased Competition?
• Could be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?
PPC Bid Management-Step Two
Effective Bid Management - Step Two: Filtering Keywords with No Clicks and No Conversions
Filtering Keywords with No Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant Keywords in an account or Keywords that are not getting enough exposure - mainly due to low Max. CPCs. It also identifies Keywords that have lost traffic and/or conversion based on previous PPC bid optimizations. This is usually an interesting set to monitor. One way to approach this:
• Identify the positions that convert the most and meet your business goals/objectives.
• Compare that to the position of these Keywords.
• If position of these Keywords is better than the average position at which your account is converting, then these Keywords are just not relevant to your account and hence should be paused/deleted.
• If position of these Keywords is worse than the average position at which your account is converting, then bidding to position (only for these set of Keywords) is an option to test their worth.
• It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
• Depending on your product/service, only a week’s worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
• Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
• This analysis has helped me identify Keywords that have no search volume or their PPC was set too low to prove their relevancy to the account.
• When testing a position based strategy, be cautious and consciously try to set a conservative Max. CPC ceiling for the Keywords, as bidding to position can sometimes generate a lot of clicks and cost without any returns, hence constant monitoring would also help.
Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:
• Could be due to Seasonality?
• Could be due to Increased Competition?
• Could be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?
PPC Bid Management-Step Three
Effective Bid Management - Step Three: Filter keywords that generate Conversions but Negative ROI or higher than your target CPA.
If your PPC account is structured keeping your business goals in mind and you have a solid keyword list in the account, you will only have a handful of keyword fitting this profile and for that matter only a handful of keywords converting in your account overall (80-20 rule always). Ask yourself questions:
• Is the Max. CPC too high?
• As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic and bringing down your overall Conversion Rate?
• What is the CPA or ROI goal and how does it compare to the CPA or ROI of the keyword?
Based on your business setting, use any formula you wish to use to adjust those bids. I personally tend to use the following two formulas the most:
(Target CPA/Actual CPA) X Current Max.CPC
OR
Target CPA X Conversion Rate
If you have an ROI goal, figure out what CPA value will help you achieve that goal and use the formula above to calculate bids.
• It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data.
• Depending on your product/service, only a week’s worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, Cost, & Conversions.
• Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
Before making a decision to change the bids or pausing or deleting the keyword, find out if the keyword has always performed similarly. If the answer is Yes, then ask yourself:
• Could it be due to Seasonality?
• Could it be due to Increased Competition?
• Could it be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased or increased aggressively)?
PPC Bid Management-Step Four
Filter keywords that are converting as well as meeting your ROI or CPA goals. You could set up another test around these by increasing their bids and being a bit more aggressive with them. Some recommendations:
• Create a separate campaign around them to focus only on those keywords with highly targeted ad copies (make sure you pause the original keyword).
• Analyze their position and test if a higher or lower position increases or decreases conversions overtime (be careful to monitor them and not to lose all your good work with them before the test).
• Testing their bids is another test that will eventually lead you to #b i.e. positions getting higher or lower.
• If you can, set up a new account and domain around the keywords converting at an acceptable cost. Generally, setting up a domain themed around keywords can contribute to incremental conversions.
• Or you can simply leave them as is and monitor them over time to make sure they maintain their performance
• This list of keywords is also a good start to spider the list and test variations of the keywords.
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