Amazing Results with Adwords

Call Six: ABC's of A/B Testing and Analytics

    1. For Starters
      1. Put your best foot forward
        1. Determine an Adwords budget that assumes success not too conservative
        2. Look at your Adwords engagement as AT LEAST a 90 day period (it will take awhile to work out the bugs)
        3. Check your emotion and pride at the door (this will help you avoid bidding wars and needing to see your company in the #1 spot)
        4. KNOW what every visitor is worth when you know, you can have a good starting place for your bidding strategy
        5. Start narrow in your strategy and widen to gain impressions once youve optimized
      2. Max CPC
        1. The highest amount you're willing to spend on a single click
        2. Do research and use Traffic Estimator to help you set this in the beginning the tweak over time depending on ROI
      3. Daily Budget
        1. The highest amount you're willing to spend in one day
        2. Google can exceed this by up to 20% then make up for it later in the month (or automatically credit your account)
        3. Traffic Estimator can help, but only you know your business and marketing budget to determine how much is right for you.
        4. If it's working, invest more in the high-yield campaigns.
    1. Google's Recommendations
      1. Caution: Fox guarding the hen house (They actually have a quote on their help site that says "When in doubt, bid high." Need I say more?)
      2. Use it as a guide
      3. Traffic Estimator
    2. Delivery Method
      1. Standard you're letting Google decide.
      2. Accelerated
        1. As fast as the impressions come
        2. If you're not spending your daily budget, switch to this; you will be more like to meet your budget.
    3. Ad Scheduling
      1. Depends on your business and, of course, your ROI!
      2. All time
      3. Weekend
      4. Weekdays
      5. Set up identical campaigns with different scheduling parameters and test!
      6. By limiting your ads to certain days/times, you can increase your daily budget and max CPC
      7. Advanced mode allows you to adjust your bids for up to 6 different times of the day (bid more or less depending on WHEN the clicks are more or less valuable to you)
      8. Think like a prospect. When would he/she most likely be searching for your product in order to BUY?
    4. Position Preference
      1. Lets you determine where you want to be shown
        1. Select the exact position
        2. Choose a range
      2. Enable (works for search network, not content) Heres why:
        1. Gives you control
        2. Allows you to choose position or quantity (whichever gives you better ROI)
        3. Lets you choose the visibility of your brand
      3. My favorite position
      4. Analytics & testing will tell you where you do best.
      5. Beware: if your max CPC isn't high enough to achieve the position you want, Google wont show your ad at all
    5. Ad Serving
      1. Optimize Google's attempt to A/B test.
        1. Google's version of A/B testing
        2. Best if you can't constantly manage
      2. Rotate True A/B testing.
      3. How do you know when to say when?
        1. Don't guess
    1. Differing philosophies when you start
      1. Bid high
        1. Get top position to get higher CTR off the bat
        2. Increases Quality Score and allows you to lower bids within days
        3. Google's Daily Budget calculations will ensure you don't overspend even though your individual bids may be high
      2. Buy low
        1. Start off with conservative bids (set default Max CPC to $.25 or less usually)
        2. Keep your campaign parameters tight
          1. Search Network only
          2. Times of day with Ad Scheduling
          3. Position Preference (3+ or lower depending on budget)
    2. 10 Bidding Tips & Wisdom (All are As a rule and must be verified by you with your own conversion stats!)
      1. Bid a few cents more than $.05 increments (i.e. $1.02 instead of $1.00 you never know, you may just beat out the next guy by a penny!)
      2. Don't immediately increase your budget to increase position try optimizing your ad copy and headline first (refer to call #4)
      3. The more qualified and specific your search term, the higher your can set your position preference (i.e. for the phrase [purple fuzzy iPod cover], we could choose to come up #1, but for iPod cases, we should absolutely NOT come up #1)
      4. Bid lower (often much lower) on searches more like to result in a looker vs. a buyer (searches for review, info, guide, prices etc.)
      5. Bid just as much for misspellings they have the same intent! (Tool for generating common typos is http://www.searchspell.com/typo/ )
      6. Bid lower for competitor brand names/model #s (shown to be not as valuable a click often a curious looker)
      7. If you opt for the Content Network (which I regularly pass on), utilize Content Network bids and mark them down by about half
      8. Use your Advanced Search option in the Tools section to quickly make bidding changes without having to manually change bids one by one.
      9. When going into your ad groups, sort by click cost or total cost and IMMEDIATELY compare it to your conversion statistics
      10. Constantly be checking and re-checking to see if there are any NEGATIVE key phrases that you should be adding to your campaign level or ad group level key phrase lists to limit wasted budget.
      11. BONUS: Look everywhere for key phrases you might be overbidding on. Experiment with lowering bids while still maintaining position.
    3. A/B Testing
      1. Hope is not a strategy so we test!
        1. You gotta start with an analytics program
          1. Several to choose from that are FREE
            1. A/W Stats
            2. Google Analytics
          2. Paid Analytics to research
            1. Web Trends
            2. Hit Box
            3. One Stat
            4. Keyword Max
            5. Hits Link
            6. One of my favs Open Tracker
            7. TONS more just Google it!
        2. Auto tagging
          1. Under Account Preferences
          2. Destination URL Auto-tagging
          3. Google is privy to your conversion data
        3. Manual tagging
          1. http://www.URL.com/?c1=campaignname&source=adwords&kw=put+your+keyphrase+here
          2. Cool tool to quickly generate your manual code http://www.advertinfo.com/quick/qt.php
          1. Use your own analytics program to assess your campaigns and keywords
      1. The basics
        1. Limit the changes
          1. Single variable the only way to know for D-I-Y
          2. Multi-variate (Dave loves Taguchi!)
          3. Need ad testing software (Vertster, BetterPPC)
          4. Heres a neat one for free http://www.adcomparator.com/
        2. Get a statistically significant sample (thousands, usually)
        3. Testing tools are available, but you can also just use good common sense with your testing (it's free!)
      2. Ad wording
        1. Headlines
        2. Copy content and capitalization
        3. URL capital, directory
      3. Landing pages
        1. Page elements
        2. Content
        3. Calls to Action
        4. Promotions
    1. You can't have an effective bidding strategy or have true A/B testing without analytics
      1. Do NOT pass GO until you implement tracking
      2. Getting higher CTR is just the beginning
      3. How many sign-ups, leads, SALES are you getting?
        1. Today
        2. Lifetime (will this customer come back and buy more?)
      4. Knowing is half the battle!
        1. Increase winners
        2. Dump dogs
    2. It's a marathon not a sprint don't run out of gas!!
      1. Your bidding strategy requires consistent maintenance
      2. The best of times and worst of times you'll have both, but know that in the long run, ADWORDS WORKS
    1. Be omniscient see everything online and offline
Useful image links:

Next call: Bonus Interview Call!