Making online ads pay - an overview
It is predicted that £750 million will be spent in the UK this year for online advertising. With the vast swathes of website owners flocking to Google Adwords, it's imperative to understand the factors which make your ads stand out; and ultimately pay. A great feature of Adwords is its accessibility - enabling anyone to have a go - but all too often we encounter companies who have tried and failed in this area, consequently concluding that it doesn't work. To run an effective campaign requires focus, experience and discipline - as without any of these factors a campaign will never truly reach its full potential. The key is return on investment.
We inherently believe in ROI for all marketing campaigns and strive to deliver this at all levels.
Quality score
The quality score is intrinsic in determining your position your ad appears in the sponsored listings. With Yahoo or MSN this is ascertained by bid prices - the more you bid per click, the better your position. Google however, uses a different approach, whereby your ad is attributed a quality score. This is based upon several factors, the most important of which is the click through ratio CTR. The CTR is determined by the percentage of people who clicked on your ad, measured against the number of page impressions (eyeballs ) it received. Attaining a high CTR is imperative when deriving a successful campaign; without it, the cost per click (your bid price for a particular keyword or phrase) will remain high. With it, it's possible to drive down bid prices by a significant percentage, enabling you to receive more visitors for the same cost.
Another important factor when judging a campaign’s performance is that of the bounce rate. As previously explained the bounce rate is determined by the number of visitors who arrived at the Adwords landing page ( in this instance, the home page ), and left the site without going anywhere else. To improve performance, it is crucial to bring the bounce rate down.
Campaign set up
Over the last few months, Google have great strides to declutter the Adwords interface with the express aim of delivering their service to more businesses. Whilst this is a step in the right direction, it still requires a decent level of time to familiarise yourself with exactly how it works. Commonly this results in less effort being dedicated to the area which will bring the greatest return; namely the campaign structure. All too often, this is approached in a haphazard fashion and quickly becomes detrimental to the results. Our experience ensures that we get this right from the outset.
Bid management
Every single keyword or phrase has to be 'bid managed' correctly. Like most business concepts, the 80/20 rule applies: 20 of the traffic. To this end, the crucial 20% prove to be extremely competitive to bid on, and in many cases prove to be far less value than more 'niche' phrases. Understanding the value of each bid and managing them correctly is therefore imperative.
Conversion tracking
Gut feeling is not enough. You have to track all user activity to fully appreciate any marketing strategy. The implementation of tracking code throughout the adwords process provides this data and takes the guesswork out of the process.
ROI
Every business is different. We understand that not every product is core business, and ensure that we fully understand those areas which will bring both immediate and long term benefit. The margins for each product can vary enormously, so therefore the best approach can sometimes be that of determining either the cost-per-lead or cost-per-acquisition (customer).
Landing pages
Google loves relevance. If your copy matches your product you're well on the way to achieving 'relevancy'. Great copy and design reduce not only your bounce rate, but also add to your quality score.
What next?
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If you would like to see examples of our work to see if i-KOS are an agency you could work with then please view our portfolio.
To really get a sense of how involved we get with our clients please read the stories in the case study section.
Contact us or dial 01322 277255 and ask to speak to Myles Davidson or Simon Surtees