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TAG | search marketing
If you’re not familiar with Engine Ready’s free software suite, Conversion Critic, you may want to take a moment to utilize some handy online marketing tools. Conversion Critic can be used to evaluate your landing pages, check for broken destination URLs in your pay per click campaigns, and to forecast the performance of your PPC marketing efforts.
The calculator is perfect for computing expectations for a new campaign. Many marketers and business owners want to calculate the risk associated with a new campaign. Accurately forecasting return on ad spend is a challenge shared by all marketers, which the PPC Calculator attempts to relieve.
The free tool will also illustrate how slight changes in the conversion rate or cost per click can significantly impact your bottom line. In the example below we can see that a 0.5% increase in conversion rate (everything else being equal) equates to thousands of more dollars in revenue.
Example:
Slide the button, or manually input your ad spend.
Forecast snapshot of performance.
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Adwords First Page Bid Estimates & Average Position
0 Comments | Posted by Brittany in Google, Google AdWords
Does this look familiar?
Google First Page Bid Estimate and Actual Position
This inspiring sight is almost inevitable to anyone working in AdWords. Google takes care to inform you, in no uncertain terms, that your bid isn’t high enough to make the first page, and yet, when you look closer, your average position is still pretty good. Usually third or fourth. Definitely not on the second page.
Which just leaves all of us, search marketer and client alike, perplexed. What gives?
Anyone working in AdWords also figured out pretty quickly that it’s a mercurial creature, and often contradictory. Just because Google says something doesn’t necessarily mean that it means it, and the “below first page bid” situation is a prime example. In this case, a first page bid estimate does not equal the cost per click.
So just because Google says your bid is below the first page doesn’t mean that it actually is, and there are a few reasons why. Besides AdWords deciding to be contrary.
One, the first page bid estimate is just an estimate. That’s all. It’s an indication of how much you might have to pay to get on the first page, and not how much you actually will pay. In fact, you’ll often find that you pay less per click than your maximum CPC gives you room for. This is due to AdWord’s quality-based price system, which is a whole new beast of burden in and of itself.
Second, first page bid estimates only really work when a search query exactly matches the keywords that first page bid estimate is for. So if you’re using a broad or phrase match keyword, then forget about it; variations that trigger your exact keyword don’t make any difference in determining a first page bid estimate.
Third, Google search and the Google Search Network use different factors in determining pricing, ad position, and all that fun stuff. So that first page bid estimate you’re seeing? Only comes from Google search, not the Search Network, which is why you might be scratching your head at the huge disparity between the first page bid estimate that applies just to Google and the average CPC that applies to Google and the entire Search Network.
Finally, if you’re throwing your campaign around in more than one country, then the first page bid estimate comes from data from the country with the highest search volume for that specific keyword. Google does much better when you’re only targeting one country, so campaigns spanning multiple ones produce much less accurate first page bid estimates.
So the next time Google informs you that you’re below the first page bid in spite of all evidence on the contrary, that’s what gives.
Or AdWords just decided to be contrary.
If you have every used Yahoo for search marketing, you will already be familiar with its lack of features. With many rants and raves from search marketers, I think Yahoo has finally got a clue… With that said, let’s get into what Yahoo is changing and how it will affect us.
1) Day Parting – Yahoo is finally stepping their game up and including day parting in settings. You will now be able to increase, decrease, or pause bids altogether throughout the day without having to go in manually. This has been a huge hassle for many when it comes to Yahoo. Many accounts that are in Yahoo need to be turned on and off throughout the day and until now, you would have had to do it manually.
2) Demographic Settings – You will now be able to adjust bid percentages by certain demographics like gender and age. This feature is possible due to the registration process of Yahoo, where you are asked these questions as you sign up. Although this will not be 100% accurate, it will be useful in many situations.
3) Zip Code Targeting – Along with demographic bidding, Yahoo is now allowing you to control your bids for certain zip codes. If you find more actions resulting from certain zip codes, you can now focus and bump up the bid percentage to advertise more aggressively in that certain area. This will be certainly useful for businesses that want to focus on certain cities.
4) Updated Content Network – From experience, the Yahoo content network has been horrible. We have noticed that most of the Ads show up on very poor quality sites, mainly from other countries. Yahoo is now saying that they have increased their control over which websites your Ads show on. Their goal is to show your Ads on sites that are relevant to your keywords, which should have been the objective starting out. Also Yahoo will be decreasing their minimum content bid for $0.10 to $0.05 to try to persuade advertisers with past negative experiences to give the content network another try.
These are the changes that have been promised by Yahoo. Hopefully these changes will start a trend that will result in better results and ease of use. Unfortunately we are still waiting on a desktop editor from them.
What do you think of these additions and what else do you think should be added/changed?
Many marketers establish a cost per acquisition (or cost per order) metric as a key performance indicator, and use that as one of the measurements to gauge the effectiveness of their search campaign. Computing a target CPA involves understanding what your average lead or order value is (from a search campaign), less the cost of fulfilling that order.
How many marketers though, factor in the life time value of a new customer when computing their target CPA?
Most companies cannot rely only on existing customers for sustainable revenue and profit growth. Even with an unrealistic assumption of zero customer attrition, a company’s growth potential in that scenario is drastically limited compared to his competition that is growing his new customer base while minimizing the attrition rate.
Additionally, new customers tend to generally have a higher lifetime value than returning customers.
So it’s a fair bet that most companies must rely on a continuous stream of new customers. And if it follows that a new customer has a higher life time value and will ultimately bring more sales and profits than a returning customer, companies should then be willing to pay more for a new customer.
In light of this, to effectively manage your search campaigns, you should:
1. Compute a “new” versus “returning customer” CPA by factoring in the life time value of a new customer, and;
2. Have the ability to segregate your search generated sales by new versus returning customer and tie that data back to the source keyword phrase.
If for example, your target CPA was $50, and you had a keyword that performed at $60, you’d probably be tempted to reduce your bidding in an attempt to lower the cost per click and CPA.
However, your data may show 90% of the sales this keyword generates are new customers, and that you can absorb a $65 CPA for new customers. Now, based on this information, there’s room to be more aggressive with your bidding, instead of backing down.
Not necessarily an easy assignment, but most likely worth the effort to get the most of out of your search campaigns.