Post By: Janine Stevens | June 5th, 2011
Yes, it is true. You can have more than 25 characters in the title of your Google Adwords Ad. I’ve seen it in action.
Being a Philadelphia Search Engine Marketing Agency, we tend to have clients in the Philadelphia area. Clients who want to advertise locally. So, Philadelphia is going to be used as a prefix and suffix for a lot of keywords ’round these parts. Philadelphia is not a short word. 12 characters to be exact.
Sure, we can use Philly and Phila, but they don’t have the same impact. We like to use the full term. So when a client came to us for a piano lesson campaign in Philadelphia, we knew we had our work cut out for us. Why? Because “Philadelphia Piano Lessons” is 26 characters. One over the permitted total. So we can’t use that in our Awords ad title right?
Wrong. See left…
How is This Allowed?
At first I thought this was a mistake. I counted the characters about 500 times. The total always came back as 26. Then I thought it was a glitch.
It’s not. I’ve seen it quite a few times and one case it was 30!
After some research, it seems Google is aware of the problem (if you want to call it a problem), but in no rush to fix it. Here is why it happens:
Different letters take up different amounts of space. For example, a W is much wider than an I. Therefore, 25 I’s would take up less space that 25 W’s. So if 26 characters can fit into the space of 25 characters, Google will allow this to happen…if you know how to get it to work.
How Can I Do This?
Dynamic ads are dangerous if used improperly, especially with broad keywords. Negative keywords would be very important to a campaign using broad match keywords and dynamic ads. However, if using dynamic ads with exact match keywords, then you may be able to use this strategy to your advantage.
Depending on the width of the search term, this may work for you. Set up a campaign with the exact match keyword that you think will fit. Try a keyword with 26 characters to start. Next, create an ad that has a dynamic title {KeyWord:Philadelphia Piano Lesson}.
I can’t promise it will work. A lot depends on the term and if Google will let you run it the way you want, but definitely experiment and see if you can use this trick to your advantage to improve your click through rate. As you know, you are always one character away from the perfect ad title. Now, maybe you’re not.
Tags: adcopy, google ads, google adwords, google sponsored links, pay per click, ppc, ppc ads
Posted in Google AdWords Help | No Comments »
Post By: Janine Stevens | May 31st, 2011
A lot of U.S. PPC advertisers would like to reach beyond the United States and even beyond English-speaking countries. But how does one do that? If you want to advertise in Spain, do you run English ads? Spanish ads?
The answer is both…sometimes. If you have a country where the native tongue and English are both used, then you may want to consider targeting two languages with your search engine marketing efforts.
Let’s use France as an example. You want to target people in France who search Google using English, but you also want to capture those searching in French.
Here’s what you do:
1) Create a campaign just targeting France. Use English keywords, English ads, and send the traffic to the correlating landing page, which should be in English. Easy enough. Same as you do in the U.S.
2) Now comes the tricky part. Create a separate campaign for France again. Set the target language as French. Use French keywords. Write French ads. Send the traffic to a French landing page.
While the concept seems simple, the execution is not. Especially if you don’t speak French. You need to translate all your keywords and ads. And also make sure they flow. You wouldn’t click on a Broken-English PPC ad, so don’t expect people to click on a Broken-French ad. On top of that you need a strong French landing page.
So the key key here is having a good translator. As you know, creating tail versions of your keywords is difficult enough in your own language, but you’re going to need a lot of help when using a foreign language. Also, there is the whole challenge of optimizing the campaign. Running search query reports to find negative keywords. Testing and editing different ads. Tweaking landing pages. It can be done, but a search engine marketer needs to be very careful.
This is why I highly recommend separate campaigns for separate languages even if you are targeting the same country. For one, you should have a good handle on the English campaign. Two, you’ll be able to differentiate which campaign performs better, the native language or the foreign language. And three, if you are having difficulties with the native tongue, you will at least get some exposure with the English campaign.
One last thing to mention regarding this issue. Quality score. Landing page is part of your quality score. So if you are sending French ads to a French landing page, that helps. However, what if you slap a French landing page on an English site? According to Google that may play a factor in your quality score.
There may not be much you can do unless you want to have separate web sites for different languages or even microsites. That may not be feasible. However, I just want to make you aware of the fact in case you are struggling with lower Q-scores in the foreign language campaign.
Like I said, the theory seems simple enough, but the execution is a different matter all together. Not to say it can’t be done because many people are doing it. However, take the time to get it right and hedge yourself with an English-campaign as well.
Tags: foreign adwords campaigns, foreign google campaigns, foreign search engine marketing
Posted in Google AdWords Help | No Comments »
Post By: Janine Stevens | May 29th, 2011
Now that Bing is “taking the world by storm,” a lot of people want to try it out. Businesses want to know if their Google Adwords account will perform as well on Bing.com. So all they have to do is a lot of cutting and pasting, right? Well, maybe not.
I’ve read a few articles that say it’s as easy as downloading and uploading, but truth be told there are some bumps in that road. Yes, it’s not rocket surgery, but it’s not as easy as tree science either. Let me walk you through it.
1) If you know how to use the Google Adwords Editor, the first part is easy. Just select “File” on the menu bar and download the campaign you want to a CSV file. That’s the easy part. If you don’t use Adwords Editor, now’s the perfect time to start. It will make life so much easier for you.
2) Before you even attempt to upload the file to Adcenter, I need to make a suggestion. Open the CSV file and copy and paste the negative keywords to separate file or spreadsheet. Save it and put it aside for later. Now delete the negative keywords from your CSV file and re-save. (Don’t worry, we will add the negatives back in down the road)
3) Nope, we’re not ready for Adcenter just yet. More precautions. Don’t use Firefox to do this. I love Firefox, but it won’t work in this case. It bugs out. Also, I heard Safari and Chrome are no better for this exercise, but don’t take my word for it. I use IE 7, however I don’t know if it works with IE 8. You’ve been warned.
4) If you haven’t already, you need to create an MSN Adcenter account. Just create a temporary campaign that you can delete once you complete the upload.
5) Once all of that is done, only now can you upload the Google campaign to Bing. So how do you do that? Click on the “Campaigns” tab in Adcenter. Then Click on the “More” tab on the menu above the list of your campaigns (your temp campaign should be listed here) for a drop down menu. That is where you will see “Import Campaign” tab. That should take you where you need to go.
6) When prompted, enter your time zone and language. Then “browse” for the CSV file and upload. If you haven’t hit any snags, this should work.
So now that the campaign is loaded it’s ready to run, right? Nope. More work to do. Your adgroups have not been submitted and you should adjust your settings.
1) This is when you add your negative keywords. Open that negative keyword file and paste your negative keywords in the campaign settings (unless you want them at the adgroup level if they vary for adgroups). Yes, I know you only get 1,000 characters for negative keywords. It drives me crazy, too. So, make sure you prioritize.
2) Alter your other settings as well. Do you want to be on the content match network? Do you want to set specific times or days for your ads to run? Do you have specific geographic regions to target for your ads? This is when you set that up. Here is more about Google Adwords settings.
3) Next you have to go to each adgroup and submit them. Adcenter actually takes you through the same process as when you create a new adgroup, but at least this time your ads and keywords are loaded.
4) Before you approve your ads, make sure your tracking and source codes in the destination URL’s are correct. For example, if you have source=google, you may want to switch it to source=bing and so forth. And make sure you re-save the ad and not “create a new ad”. This way you don’t have two of he same ads with the only difference being the source code.
5) For some reason, all of your bids come in at a nickel so you have to reset your bids during this process. You can do it at the adgroup level or at the keyword level, but either way, you have to do it.
6) Once you go through this process for an adgroup, save it and jump back out to the list of adgroups. Now, go back in to that very same adgroup you just saved and check your bids. Sometimes, the bids you set don’t take. I’ve run into this a few times, so make sure you check your bids for each adgroup or any keywords where you set individual bids.
NOW you are done!
Despite these little obstacles, the process is pretty painless and I think it will be worth it for you. If you have large campaigns and lots of adgroups, it can get a little mind-numbing, but you’ll get through it, I promise.
I like Bing so far and really hope their market share increases. It could be a good thing for a lot of people.
Posted in Bing | No Comments »
Post By: Janine Stevens | May 27th, 2011
Online Banner Display Advertising and ROI Calculations.
If you are thinking about creating an online marketing campaign or you currently have one running, you’ll want to know the ROI for those efforts. If that’s the case, then this post is for you.
Most online display advertising networks are priced on a CPM basis (cost per thousand impressions). And a lot of times those CPM’s are high. So how do you know if you are getting your money’s worth?
If you’re looking for branding and exposure, then things are difficult to measure. You are putting yourself out there and hoping it works. You hope revenues increase. Sure, you can measure clicks, but what if your goal is not clicks? What if you have a banner ad campaign for a new movie release. The goal is not getting people to go to the website, the goal is to get people to go to the movies!
However, if you do have an action you want to happen, a product to sell, an action you want to measure, then I can tell you how to calculate the ROI on a banner advertising campaign. Tell you if it’s worth it.
Let’s look at a typical example. You sell Ryan Howard Phillies Jerseys. You sell each jersey for $85 on your website. You have a few banner ads and you’re looking for the best websites to promote your products. You think PhilliesTalk.com would be perfect. You contact the website and they tell you the CPM is $10 and you can have 1,000,000 impressions for the month of June. Should you do it? Let’s find out.
First we will calculate the cost. Since the cost is on a per 1,000 impression basis, you need to divide your total 1,000,000 impressions 1,000 which equals 1,000. Multiply that by the CPM $10 and your cost for the month of June is $10,000. You are going to spend $10,000 in advertising in June. Let’s hope this works.
(Impressions / 1,000) x $CPM= spend
If you are going to spend $10,000 and you make $85 per jersey, you are going to have to sell 118 jerseys to break even on revenues (not counting costs and profits).
$Spend / $Revenue or $Profit = Breakeven
Now, here is where you have to estimate figures based on historical data. When people come to your website, how many purchase a jersey? In other words, how many people convert (make a purchase).
This conversion rate may vary from search engine conversions to display advertising conversions. For example, a person who types “Ryan Howard jersey” or “Phillies Jersey” into a search browser has a better chance of buying a jersey from you than someone seeing your ad on a random baseball website. Search engine customers are specifically looking for your product. Banner advertising just gets your product in front of someone who might want to buy a jersey. The point here is that the conversion rate will be lower.
Let’s say your conversion rate is around 10% for search engine traffic. You could probably feel somewhat comfortable with a 5% conversion rate for display advertising. However, the best way to get an accurate rate is to test websites before committing to $10,000 ad spends. Maybe test sites on the Google content network or start with smaller websites first. Once you have some data, you can use the conversion rate for future decisions.
However, for this example we will use 5%. Safe for now. So, you are going to sell a jersey to 1 out of every 20 people who come to your site. If you need to sell 118 jerseys to break even, that means you need 2,360 people to come to your site. (20 x 118).
So, out of your 1,000,000 impressions, you will need 2,360 to click on the ad and come to your online store. Now you can calculate the CTR (click through rate). 2,360 / 1,000,000. You need .236% to click on your ad. Please note the decimal point. This is about .25% or a quarter of 1%.
Do the ads on that particular site get that type of click through rate? Do your ads get any where near that type of click through rate on other sites? In other ad networks? On a search engine content match program? Again, historical data will really help tell you how many people click on your ad when they see it.
So the answer to this question is, you need a .25% click through rate and a 5% conversion rate to break even. If you think this is attainable, then a $10 CPM works. If not, it doesn’t.
Maybe you think a 5% conversion rate is too high. Maybe it’s more like 1%. Let’s see if that works. You need 1 out of every 100 to buy a jersey, so you need 11,800 people to come to your site (118 x 100). That means you are going to need a click through rate of 1.18% (11,800 divided by 1,000,000). If you don’t get this click through rate, you can’t make this media buy.
Again, historical data for click through rates and conversion rates will really help with these decisions.
Let’s take this one more step and then we’ll wrap it up. I know this is a long post, but it’s VERY important. So, let’s say you know your conversion rate is 1% from past data. And your click through rate is usually .25%. Can you pay $10 CPM for this buy? No. We’ve figured that much out. But, what can you pay CPM for advertising on this website?
Well, out of the 1,000,000 impressions .25% are going to click through to your site. That means 2,500 people are coming to visit. And out of those 2,500 you are going to sell jerseys to 1% of them or 25 of them. If you sell your jerseys to 25 people you are going to make $2,125. So for 1,000,000 impressions, you can only afford to pay $2,125 at most. Therefore the best CPM you can pay is $2.13 CPM.
Do you sell a product that goes for more than $85? Then change the Revenue Per Action (RPA) to your revenue per item and re-calculate the numbers. Do you sell a product for less? Use that number. Remember, the above numbers are just examples.
In summary…
• The CPM is given by the website
• The Revenue per product is determine by you
• The CTR will have to be based on past data or estimated
• The Conversion rate will be based on past data or estimated
1. Take the CPM and calculate the Total cost = (Impressions / 1,000) / $CPM
2. Calculate the break even. Total Cost / revenue per item.
3. Take your Conversion rate to determine how many visitors needed = (Break Even items / Conversion rate)
4. Calculate needed CTR = Visitors / impressions.
So what have we learned besides the facts that CPM’s are high? Before you EVER make a CPM purchase for an ROI campaign (selling a product, or needing an action), you need to crunch numbers. You need to know (or have a very good estimate) of your conversion rate and a CTR. Once you have these figures you can calculate the desired CPM of any online display advertising spend.
If you want to know what kind of CPM you can pay for web site advertising campaigns, which we’ve discussed, here is a summary of the steps.
• Impressions x CTR = visitors to site
• Conversion rate x visitors to site = number of sales
• Number of sales x Revenue per sale = total break even cost to advertise.
• B/E cost x (Impressions available / 1000) = B/E CPM
Good luck with your banner display advertising decisions. And please, this can get confusing and complex, so feel free to ask questions in the comments section. It well help other readers as well. Or if you’d rather, contact us with questions.
Tags: banner advertising, display advertising, google content match, internet advertising, online marketing, roi
Posted in Display Advertising | 1 Comment »
Post By: Janine Stevens | May 27th, 2011
We respect the search engines, and the search engines respect us.
Why?
Because we understand what they’re looking for.
Check back for tips and our thoughts on everything search. We do PPC, we do SEO, and we have something to say about it. Most importantly: We actually do the work. We don’t just talk about it.
Stay tuned.
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