Your online advertising campaign can be made or broken by the right PPC company. Nowadays, there are lots of companies promising to maximize their clients’ ROI (return of investment), but research shows that only a smal fraction of these companies are doing what their supposed to do. To get your …
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Guide in Shopping for a PPC Company
The beginning of the year is a great time to take a step back and to re-evaluate marketing plans for your clients. Of course, one key ingredient in a successful marketing plan is the website. Over the next couple of months, the Google Agency Team will be blogging about how you can work with your clients to review their website and landing page performance for 2010. Today, we’ll discuss how site testing can benefit both you and your clients. 1. Testing is good for PPC management agencies Whether you specialize solely in pay-per-click management or you also help your clients with website design, the creation and optimization of landing pages for the best possible user experience will help you achieve your performance goals. We’ve all seen this situation before: you’ve already worked exhaustively to ensure that your search marketing efforts are bringing in relevant traffic, but are still not seeing conversion results. The reason? The current format and messaging on the site does little to retain even the most qualified traffic. Remember that doubling your conversion rate is essentially the same as doubling your traffic at your current conversion rate. (click here to view image) If you’re a design shop, establishing a strong culture of testing will also bring great benefits. As with PPC campaigns, it’s best to consistently monitor current site performance and then optimize based on data. Even if you’ve designed the site yourself, there’s no way to predict exactly how it will perform and as a result, there will always be an opportunity for incremental improvements. Build these expectations in with your design clients. Consider also that market and visitor expectations change frequently (e.g. holidays and the recession). The beauty of testing and re-optimization is that you can address the immediate site issues and help the client adapt to any changing conditions. 2. Testing is good for your clients Often a major concern from clients is the production resources and money necessary to move forward with testing. But it’s worth it! We all know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover; but let’s face it, first impressions matter, especially on the internet. If users don’t like what they see at first glance – even if it’s for a superficial reason – they are likely to move on. Explore the possibilities with your client. We have an extensive library of success stories with Google Website Optimizer that showcase some of the increases in conversion rates for businesses that have done landing page testing. Higher conversion rates mean more sales and/or leads at the same cost. If the client already is doing PPC and has an understanding of the opportunities in online marketing, the importance of providing visitors with the right on-site experience for their goals will be easy to demonstrate. Your client will appreciate your expertise in helping to develop this crucial piece of their marketing plan. 3. You likely have the data to identify site problems If your client has web analytics data, you can begin to identify site and landing page weaknesses today. In Google Analytics, the “Content” section houses some of the most useful reports. Start by looking at Top Landing Pages. If the bounce rate of these pages is higher than or close to the site average, you may want to examine possible issues with these pages that would cause a user to leave the client’s site. To see if visitors are proceeding down the expected path, set up a funnel if you haven’t already to find out if there is kink in the trajectory to conversion (i.e. if visitor volume is dropping off at any point in the process). You can then open your Navigation Summary to see where those visitors are actually exiting out of the funnel. 4. You can test with Google Website Optimizer for free Remember that while Analytics may help identify issues with the site or landing page, a website testing tool can help you find the solution. With Google Website Optimizer, you can quickly set up a A/B or multivariate test. Website Optimizer can work with almost any site infrastructure or type . It’s free and easy to get started, and a great way to add value to your existing client services. Be sure to check back soon when we explore more ways to use your Analytics data, industry-specific challenges, and testing strategies. Happy Testing! Posted by Michael Giannotti, Agency Team
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Four things agencies should know about site testing
Google adwords have provided results that are higher-than-anticipated by the promoters and their clients, laying out the means for a replacement system of online advertising. The online advertising experts have created smart techniques, which can influence be cost efficient, as additionally be an effective means that of increasing the congestion …
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Adwords – The Public Tool That Can Make Your Online Business Boom
You may remember that earlier this fall we announced the launch of Place Pages for Google Maps, which are web pages for every place in the world. Interested users can find relevant information, photos, directions, and reviews for their favorite places. Users will also see contextually targeted ads, and with the inclusion of Place Pages in Placement Performance reports , you’ll now have insight into whether your clients’ ads appeared on a Place Page and how they performed. With this update, you can more closely monitor and optimize your clients’ campaigns. While placement targeting is not available for Google Maps, you can increase the likelihood of appearing on Place Pages by increasing bids on high-performing keywords or by creating ad groups with highly specific keywords to target Place Pages relevant to your clients’ products or businesses. Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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Place Pages now in Placement Performance reports
For the sixth installment of the Holiday Campaign Countdown series , I am happy to share some tips on the Opportunities tab to ensure you’re maximizing coverage for your clients this holiday season. Opportunities tab serves as a central location for easy access to budget and keyword suggestions, as well as other AdWords tools you’ve used before. (Click to view full size image) The ‘Budget Ideas’ area will suggest you adjust your budget if your campaigns are missing out on valuable traffic due to budget constraints or increased click volume on keywords popular around the holidays. To help you decide, this section will demonstrate potential increased click and impression volume that would result from an increased investment. The ‘Keyword Ideas’ area will provide automatically customized keyword suggestions based on your client’s website, account information, and actual searches on Google.com. Like the budget suggestions, you will be able to see the traffic increase that would result from including additional keywords. Since some suggestions are based on actual searches performed on Google.com, you may find some cost-effective long tail keywords to add to your client’s list. The tool will even suggest specific campaigns and ad groups in which to add these keywords. The best part is – you can add them right from the tab into the campaigns! You’ll also notice that other familiar AdWords tools are available on the Opportunities tab on the lower left hand side of the page. You know your clients’ businesses best – so please assess our suggestions with your clients’ goals in mind. Finally, visit this tab often – we’ll be refreshing suggestions every few weeks and adding new features soon! For additional information on the Opportunities tab, visit the AdWords Help Center . Posted by Erin McMahon, Agency Team
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Maximize coverage this season with Opportunities Tab
The snow showers which dusted the Northeast last week were a great (albeit chilly) reminder that the holidays will be here before we know it. To help keep your spirits warm, the fifth installment in our Holiday Campaign Countdown series brings you a gift that keeps on giving – daily holiday posts on the Google Retail blog , which will run through the end of 2009. These posts will provide you with useful data to better understand consumer intentions and purchase trends so that you may refine your clients’ marketing plans accordingly. For a little taste of what’s to come, check out the posts on holiday purchase trends to date and early bird vs. last minute shoppers data . Interested in having these posts delivered right to your inbox? Subscribe to the Retail blog here . Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency Marketing
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Retail blog: the gift that keeps on giving
There are a lot of metrics that matter to your clients when evaluating performance, but one of the most important figures for your clients’ success is conversions. Our Google teammates in the UK have started a blog called the Conversion Room that focuses on how to use Google tools to measure and increase the number of conversions your clients receive. Occasionally, some of the information may be UK-focused, but you’ll find the overwhelming majority of tips and tools to be applicable no matter where you’re located, such as how to use the Search Based Keyword Tool to find high-converting keywords . We hope you find the Conversion Room blog useful. Bookmark it, follow it with Friend Connect, or subscribe via RSS, and get hands-on with your conversion knowledge. Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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It’s all about the conversions