[Google AdWords agency support person],

Thanks for doing the work and for sending this (PDF document of AdWords account analysis and recommendations), plus for following up with the raw data (which we requested in order to further look at the same data they were referencing – p.s., when the data came, there was no date range anywhere on the document, so it was still difficult to look at the same data in the advertiser’s AdWords account – who sends data without referencing the date range from which the data is derived?? I mean, who does that???)!

In reference to the PDF, page 4 points out that during off-peak times, (our advertiser client: “the advertiser”) approaches “market” impression share, and that there is a gap between the advertiser’s impression share and the market during peak times. If we bid to a CPA target, how might we use this trend data to improve the account? In other words, if account clicks decrease, it is because conversion rates are decreasing and we are trying to hit target CPA. If we assume that the Google data shows we are missing out on an opportunity, how do we bridge the gap, knowing that we’re only decreasing bids to hit target CPA? Any ideas or insights would be great! (hint: I can’t imagine what these ideas might be — messaging that speaks to off-peak time periods? I don’t think so…)

Page number 6 assumes that the keywords on which we’ve lowered bids would actually convert just fine, if only we would increase bids to get these ads on page 1, but I’m not sure that’s indicative of reality. My feeling is that we have bid these keywords down for a really good reason – they are either not super relevant to the advertiser’s value proposition, or they are branded terms, where users have demonstrated they are really intent on seeking out the brand rather than signing up for another brand. (We’ve tested these branded terms extensively, of course.)

Thanks for listing some specific kw’s. We show that for (insert phrase-matched kw here) we have a CPA of (dollar amount), which is (about 30%) higher than target (dollar amount) CPA – but also that the Google Conversion Optimizer is doing the bidding – your spreadsheet is looking at the 1st page min estimated bid versus our current maximum bid – but our current max bid has no bearing on anything, b/c this is a conversion optimizer-managed campaign. We’ll go through the other keywords in the spreadsheet – maybe we’ll find something!

Page number 7 seems fallacious. The inference is that in general for this account (actually, the Google folks say this applies to just about any account), keywords in high ad positions convert better, which is totally false. There is a correlation between keywords in high ad positions and strong conversion rates; but the causality is that we bid higher on higher-converting keywords. We cause this correlation to be so.

Would love any thoughts.

SEM has grown very fast in terms of click spend and sophistication for several years running. The Google AdWords interface (both web and AE) continues to get more jam-packed with various bells and whistles (ways of looking at & controlling your click spend). 3rd-party technology for reporting, optimization, keyword discovery, ad optimization, etc., is as prevalent as ever.

CMOs need to know what’s important – what should their focus be, in order to get the best return on their time and effort. The answer gets back to the core of what search is all about, and it brings to mind the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

1) Focus on what your company brings to the table – what is the true value proposition, or need that your company fills?

2) What sorts of keywords might searchers use to seek out your products & services? Remember – the beauty of search is that users can find what they are looking for (rather than stumble across things they didn’t know they wanted! — that’s more for display!). Sure – go crazy with the long tail if that’s what makes you feel good – but don’t stray too far from your relevance curve.

3) Strive for a consistent thread in terms of user experience, starting with: a) bid on relevant keywords where user intent likely has to do with your value proposition; b) match keyword categories with ad text that is both relevant to your keywords and which encourage the click, but that also stays true to your value proposition; give the user a consistent post-click experience, with a landing page that messages benefits, additional info, and that includes the same offer/call-to-action mentioned in the ad, if possible.

4) Ask whether you are tracking and measuring the right things. It’s easiest to move SEM programs forward with a lot of daily conversion data. But at the end of the day we also need to measure actual revenue or lifetime value, or a suitable proxy for those. The trick is to be able to use a metric that gives the SEM manager enough data to do their job, but still (via an internal tracking system) be able to match that daily conversion data up with ‘harder’ metrics.

5) How good is the data? CMOs need to understand the data that they are looking at in order to gauge the accuracy of the data and the degree to which it’s telling them what it’s telling them. Google AdWords and Google Analytics often provide great data for making correct directional changes; but they are no substitute for a company’s internal database, which should be used to check against data discrepancies on a regular basis.

If the CMO stays focused on these big-picture items (where, actually, the details are all-imortant!) she will have the wind to her back.

Check out the vid:

Click here to read: (PPC Ad) Statistical Significance: Not Just for Geeks Anymore on SearchEngineLand.

10:48  The AdWords Search Query report is much, much improved. It shows a ton of search queries for which there may have been only 1 impression and 1 click. Although it may be true that other analytics data will be more granular, I think search query report data will give most folks 90-95% of what they need.

10:53  When using the AdWords search query report, focus on cost to figure out which search queries you may want to add as negative keywords. Queries with a lot of click spend and no conversions are likely candidates. Search queries that received conversions at a target CPA or better should be added as keywords if the search query type is not ‘exact.’ Bid your new keywords using cost/conv and avg. CPC data from each specific search query.

10:58  Set ad-serving to Rotate! This is very important and it’s often over-looked. CTR very often has an inverse relationship to conversion rates, so you need to make sure that all ads are rotated equally regardless of CTR so that you can figure out which wins in terms of conversion data (cost/conv or conversions per thousand impressions or whatever).

11:02  When doing ad optimization it’s very important to make sure that all ads you are evaluating got served up the same number of impressions. Otherwise you may jump to the wrong conclusions when deciding on champion ads.

11:06  I love that someone talked about how to make your long tail shorter. Yes, you can have too many keywords in your account, and this can have an adverse effect on your account performance in terms of 1) it can drag down overall account quality scores; and 2) it can add extra, unneeded “weight” to your account, which can make daily management less efficient (e.g. latency with AE and web interface). Focus on the long tail *that users actually search on* and the long tail keywords *that actually get conversions* and you’ll stay ahead of the game.  As an anecdote, we once took over a paid search program from a large agency and within one month we increased the number of unique keywords (excluding match types) that were contributing 1 conversion or more from 351 to over 735, an increase of 100%+. We did this while simultaneously decreasing overall keyword count by 85%, from over 200,000 keywords to about 15,000. It’s not the number of keywords in the account – it’s the number of converting keywords you have in your account that really matters.

11:06  Start simple, and go where the data takes you. This will save you a lot of time, which means you’ll get to better-performing PPC accounts more quickly.

11:38  Yes yes, LP testing is definitely for business reasons – don’t do it in order to raise quality scores.