If you don’t already have conversion tracking implemented correctly, you’ll need to resolve that to make use of Search Funnels.

You can find Search Funnels for your account on the Reports tab on the Conversions page in the left navigation.

This is a pretty simple premise, but scratch the surface and there’s a rich seam of data. Here’s the low-down:

By default, you’ll be shown the last 30 days’ data, but you can change the date range as you might expect. If yours is a longer sales cycle, looking at the most recent data might skew your results and analysis, so factor that in.

Aside from the number of conversions, there are three interesting figures here; average ad impressions to conversion, average ad clicks to conversion and most importantly, average days to conversion. This last one surprised us when we first got access to this data, which will vary depending on your product or service, the market competition, the cost/value and of course the keywords that you bid on and the overall performance of your campaigns.

Knowing that visitors typically click more than one ad also puts some context to the performance of specific keywords. We’re often asked, “why not bid only on those keywords that convert most effectively?” This data helps to demonstrate that the conversion is often achieved through more than just one keyword and one click.

The conversion is only allocated to the last click – take away those search terms that position your offer through the search funnel and your offer loses some of its impact. Take away the frequency of your ad being seen for every relevant search and your CTR and conversion rates go down and the cost per conversion more likely to rise rather than decrease as you might expect.

In short, if your ad appears consistently for each of four relevant searches, and your competitor only appears once or twice, it is more likely that you’ll get the click AND the conversion rather than your competitor. It’s the cumulation of seeing your ad multiple times that wins the game, not one search, one ad one click (wouldn’t that be so much simpler?).

The knowledge that customers take a number of days to convert also helps to build a strategy to address that conversion rate. In this example, an average 5-day funnel suggests that remarketing should influence the rate at which visitors return and also position your site more firmly in their memory when they make that decision to buy or enquire.

There really is enough science and psychology to write a book, but to summarise:

• Conversion tracking is required to use Search Funnels
• Analyse a date range that ends before your average days to conversion to avoid mis-diagnosis
• Investigate paths to understand what visitors search for before they convert
• Build this knowledge in to your strategy using the other tools at your disposal such as remarketing and Content Network campaigns.

It can be done, but you can’t rely on AdWords or organic placement alone – a web site and more specifically the pages you land a visitor on need to work hard to convert that visitor in to a sale or an enquiry.

We use Google Website Optimiser to test landing page variations to improve conversion rates. This is a free Google tool that does the hard work for you.

You’ll need the ability to add some code and make page changes on your site. Your friendly developer or coder should find it easy enough.

How To Implement a Website Optimiser Experiment

Firstly, you need to create and upload at least one variation of your original landing page to your server (we’d recommend 2-3 variations for the best results). Try different headlines, or different copy, or different images, or even a different layout. We’d recommend testing just one element at a time though, otherwise it might be difficult to isolate the reason why one variation performed better than another.

Next, create an experiment specifying the original landing page, the URL of the variants and the conversion page. Website Optimiser then provides the codes that need to be installed on each page. Once added and verified, start the experiment.

How it Works

When a visitor lands on your original page, the code will redirect them to one of the variations, spreading the traffic evenly amongst them during the experiment. The source of this traffic isn’t important, whether it’s from AdWords, Facebook, Yahoo!, Bing, organic placement or your email marketing.

It takes some time. Depending on how much traffic visits the landing page you’re testing, it could take days, weeks, or in some cases, months, particularly if you’re testing minor variations. Wait until enough data has passed through the experiment to pick a clear winner or a clear loser.

A graph illustrates the conversion rate of each page as the experiment proceeds. This is annotated with the percentage chance of that page beating your original. Eventually, you will find out which page performs the best and produces the best conversion rate.

Once you have the data, knowing which page performs best is great, but it is more important to understand the reason why, so take care when creating page variations. Finally, make this page your original and you can start testing new variations to improve performance further.

Website Optimiser: The Point

The point of the Website Optimiser is to test and measure variations of web pages to see which produce the best results. You can experiment with different fonts, images, text, videos and more. The aim is to increase your conversion rate, thereby decreasing your cost per acquisition.

In a recent project, we’ve seen a 20.9% improvement in overall conversion rates after two experiments on a single landing page.

What it Means for Profitability

Getting a higher conversion rate means a lower cost per conversion, which means more sales or enquiries for your budget.

It also means that you can afford to bid more per click than your competitors because you know that your cost per conversion will still be lower. Your ads will be in higher positions where there are more clicks and more sales and enquiries.

With a predictable conversion rate, you can afford to increase your budget to buy more quality traffic and you’re on your way to dominating your chosen market.

We’ve been working on Facebook pay-per-click campaigns for a number of our clients. It is really easy to get started and target your intended demographic audience and /or groups they might belong to.

If you’re a recruitment company, you might target an industry group, or a large employer (careful though!). Or if you sell bouncy castles or kid’s party planning, you might target Mums’ groups in a particular location, or a ticket sales company might target groups of fans of particular artists. University students could be targeted for backpacking holidays, or fishermen targeted for rods and tackle.

The Facebook opportunity is pretty endless.

Facebook pay per click advertising became a much more viable option for us once conversion tracking was available, and provides an effective method of monitoring your results and tracking sales and enquiries from your Facebook spend. Provided the tracking code is implemented correctly, you’ll now be able to see how effective your campaign is.

A Facebook campaign will not only drive more traffic to your site, but also increase brand awareness which will assist your Google, Yahoo! and Bing search campaign(s) too. Whilst we’re not currently spoiled with the view through conversion tracking to really measure the additional influence, hopefully that will come as Facebook’s advertising platform matures.

Facebook Pay per Click Advertising Basics

1. Create a new profile for your business, just like you would for an individual
2. At the bottom of your new profile page click “Advertising”
3. Create an ad with compelling ad copy and an attention-grabbing image
4. Select your audience by demographic – age range, gender, location and so forth
5. Narrow that audience by selecting relevant groups they belong to
6. Generate the conversion tracking code for sales and enquiries and add it to the ”Thank You” page on your site, just like AdWords.
7. Complete your billing information
8. Set it live once your ad is approved by the Facebook team

We’d recommend starting small, a little toe in the water,  perhaps £5 – £10 per day and scale up after a week if it starts to work effectively.

Ask a question about this:

What is Remarketing?

Remarketing is a new weapon in the Google Adwords advertiser’s arsenal and one that you really should consider using.

The premise is that if a visitor comes to your site, but doesn’t purchase, sign up or perform whatever is considered a conversion, then Google will start to re-show them your ads, wherever they are on the Google network, until they convert.

How does it work?

First of all, you need to create set of Javascript remarketing tags in your AdWords account. One tag goes on every page, for example, and the other goes on your conversion pages. Every time a customer visits one of your pages they will be tagged, whether they came through Adwords or not.

In this example, you’ll now have two audiences; ‘visitors’ and ‘converters’. You can now show ads across the Content Network to a specific audience or create a custom combination – a group of visitors that includes everyone who visited the site, but excludes those that contacted you or bought something, for example.

This group becomes your market for an audience targeted content campaign. Upload a mixture of text and display ads to keep your brand front-of-mind, positioning you firmly when the buying decision is made.

Important point though – ads in your campaign will target the audience, not the content they are reading. This also means that you can understand where your audience lives on the web and use that data in a separate Content campaign to raise the profile of your brand and drive new visitors to your site.

What’s the thinking behind it?

The reasoning here is that, especially if you are selling items or services with a longer buying cycle, you’ll benefit from reminding them of your brand, product or service. For instance, if you are selling a high ticket product or service or a long term commitment, they may take a while to actually decide. Remarketing ads help to positively influence the choice between you and your competitors.

Does It Work?

Yes. We’ve been running remarketing campaigns for a number of our clients’ campaigns with some great display ads. Early stats show the cost per conversion to be 35% less than the account average and conversion rates 100% higher.

Ask a Google AdWords Professional about this

There’s a lot more science and sales psychology behind visitor behaviour, but here are the most common visitors turn-offs that you should be able to address.

1. Navigation. Make it easy and clear for me to find what I’m looking for. Too many options is no option at all, so keep it short and logical and use sub-sections if necessary. If you’ve 1001 products or services, why not let me navigate by problem, not your solution – I may not even know what the solution is yet.
2. Search - if there are lots of products, give me a neat search box so I can type, but give me some sensible results. The search function needs to be intelligent enough to understand that boxes=box and even that 12mm might well mean the same as 12 – if you have no results give me some other method of finding what I need, perhaps a product filter or maybe just get me to pick up the phone and ask.
3. Page loading times. Those pretty images might look great full screen, but squeezing them in to a small frame means my browser will have to download the whole image (5-10secs) and then resize it – 10 images would take over a minute! Resize the images before you put them on your site and include larger versions that I can view if it is important.
4. Broken links. Nothing worse than clicking a link and finding that it’s dead is a surefire way to get visitors to leave or at least begin to mistrust you. Check links on your site regularly, or find a broken link checker online to do it for you.
5. Too many similar products. Giving me too many options will most likely confuse me. If I can’t tell the relative benefits between two or three different products, I’ll probably buy none of them. How about you let me order those products by price, or size or filter according to some criteria?
6. Too little information. I found the product I need and now I’m ready to buy. Is it in stock? When will I get it? And the number one pet hate, “How much is delivery?”. Please don’t hide it away and make me search for it, I’ll tire in my search and leave. Putting it in the checkout process won’t help either, I’ll just feel like you’re trying to cheat me and leave anyway. Be clear about your shipping policy and price and honour your promise.
7. I need some help. How do I contact you? Where’s your phone number? If your primary goal is for me to pick up the phone and talk to you, don’t make me search for your number on a contact page somewhere. If you want me to pick up the phone, make your number big and prominent (top left of the screen and at the end of your content as a call to action are usually the best places). There’s a rule that fits most situations: tell me (succinctly) why I should do something, show me evidence of why and then make it easy to take action.

Ask a Marketing Professional about this

Unlike Search, the Google Content Network gives you the ability to target an audience before they search for your product or service. Depending on your offer, you’ll get some direct sales of course, but that isn’t the main objective behind such a campaign.

Put it this way. If I’m reading about golf, I’m probably a golfer. I might be interested in improving my swing, buying a set of clubs, or a golfing holiday. I might be interested right now, at this minute, and I might click.

That’s a whole lot of might.

However, most importantly, I’ve seen your ads on a number of different sites that I’ve visited and I’m beginning to associate your brand with my passion for golf. To me, you must be a big company with a big presence in the golfing market. That makes you trustworthy and reliable.

Supporting Your Search Campaign

When I do search and click on a bunch of different sites, who do I choose: The cheapest? The best looking site? Both of those things influence me and more, of course – but I also buy on trust. Trust is worth EVERYTHING in a sales transaction.

The basis of the strategy is that you can show your ads to a wider target audience at a low cost to increase awareness of both your brand and your products and services. In marketing speak, referred to as “brand recall”, an important measurement of a marketing campaign’s success.

The first area then, as well as generating some direct sales, is to support the conversion rates on your Search Campaign.

For example, if you are advertising holiday cottages, you might target content such as hiking, water sports, fishing, bird-watching, etc. Your site and brand will then be exposed to an audience that might soon search for a holiday cottage. If and when they do, you can expect greater conversion rates from your search campaign.

Innovation = No Search Traffic

The second area this works well is the introduction of a new product or innovation. There is no search traffic, so how do you sell it on paid search? It’s tough, except perhaps bidding on a problem that it solves, but that’s a whole other article. What you can do though, is stimulate a relevant audience by introducing the idea.

Let’s pick something random. You’ve created a 30-something golfing holiday product where like minded individuals can meet and find love and play a bit of golf (Ahem. I did say random!). There’s no directly relevant search traffic for this at all – you could bid on “golf holidays”, but there’s a big chunk of that spend that isn’t your target audience. It won’t convert too well and you’ll burn your budget pretty quick.

On the Content Network, we can target golfers based on what they’re reading about: GOLF.

In some instances, we can even target the demographic; male, female, age range. The ads introduce the idea and those that are curious or interested will click and might enquire, request a brochure or sign up for your newsletter. Hell, you might even get some bookings. But the real value here is reaching your target audience to generate interest in something they didn’t even know existed. Over time, this will generate search traffic for your brand and what you do.

Having generated a good chunk of profit for our clients this way, we’d strongly recommend considering a Content Network campaign.

8 tips for creating a sound Content Network Campaign

1. Always create separate campaigns for Search and for Content. The structure, strategies and ads are very different and you’ll want to measure performance and ROI separately too.
2. In each ad group, pick 6-10 relevant, tightly-themed keywords to target content pages your audience would be reading.
3. Create attention-grabbing ads that will stand out from the page and help your audience remember your brand, even if they don’t click.
4. Image ads work far better than text ads – use the Ad Builder for the first pass and invest in professionally designed ads as performance warrants it.
5. We wouldn’t recommend the Content Network without Conversion Tracking. Although we won’t necessarily expect many direct conversions from Content ads, measuring View Through Conversions is critical.
6. Expect a much lower CTR from Content, but monitor which sites are generating traffic carefully. Increase your bids on sites that work well and add poor sites as negatives to stop your ads showing there.
7. Be patient. Search data can be analysed for yesterday, but data from 30 days ago is more relevant for Content, depending on how long your buying cycle is.
8. Create a small Search Campaign, perhaps even just bidding on your site name, brand or the name of your product. You’ll pick up the cheap clicks as the search volume increases.

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The headlines:

• 43% of iPhone owners earn salaries in excess of £65,000
• 200 million Internet enabled phones shipped in 2009 with 22% growth projected for 2010.
• 38% of mobile phones worldwide will be smartphones by 2013
• UK mobile searches increased by 260% for commercial keywords from 2008 to 2009

Whether your business is suited to mobile browsing or not, mobile should be on your agenda.

Mobile Advertising

As a method for reaching your audience at the right time, mobile is growing faster that any other existing marketing medium. The latest advances in mobile technology have developed significantly and mobile advertising has come a long way.

No longer limited to SMS messaging, the mobile opportunity has evolved into a highly-targeted platform for advertising to an audience ready to buy, find or engage. Mobile advertising is mainly aimed at users on iPhones and other similar mobile devices with full internet access.

How Mobile Works

6 things to consider

1. Is your site usable on a mobile?
2. Is your target audience likely to search for or browse your product or service on a mobile device?
3. How quickly does your content load on a mobile device?
4. Can you engage a visitor on a mobile device and generate an action quickly (more quickly that a desktop device, for example)?
5. Examples of what works well; find your nearest location, opt-in for some information, find your phone number; browse your products or even buy.
6. Examples of what doesn’t necessarily work well; lengthy, technical content. Lengthy data capture forms. Large image files.

The Benefits

Right now, the mobile market is less competitive than desktop, with reported conversion costs being lower than desktop devices – the time to position your site as a market leader is now.

Creating separate campaigns with different targeting, you can segment and measure the response and ROI independently for mobile, or even for specific types of devices.

Mobile Marketing Plan

1. If your target audience never (ever) searches for what you do using a mobile, or you’re not ready to exploit it, turn it off – but remember to come back to it later.
2. Check your site’s statistics to see how many visitors use mobile browsers.
3. Segment your campaign(s), creating a dedicated mobile campaign with it’s own budget and performance data so that you can measure the response and ROI.
4. Targeting is the same as desktop devices and the same best practice applies; segment Google Search and Search Partner networks and the Content Network.
5. Depending on traffic volume and performance, consider a dedicated mobile version of your site. You can detect the browser type and size when a visitor lands on your site and redirect to the right version automatically – a desktop visitor gets the desktop site, a mobile visitor gets the mobile site.

Ask a Google AdWords Professional about this

In recent months, Google has been adding new functions to the Google AdWords system. In particular, in many ads, you might have seen “ad extensions” appearing.

Ad Extensions refers to a number of ways in which you can add more to your AdWords ad. Some of these extensions are available now in your account and others are in beta, being tested by a limited number of advertisers.

The one you might be eligible for already is called “Site Links”.

Google AdWords ad with Site Links

The site links option allows you to show additional deep links in to your site to help the searcher find exactly what they are looking for. For example, you might want to show “special offers” or “clearance stock” or a subset of information or products on your site, for example – but you can show whatever you feel helps the searcher.

Firstly, the searcher gets to go straight to the correct page which improves the visitor experience.

Secondly, your ad will be much more prominent which increases CTR and in time should lower your cost per click.

How to add site links to your Google ads

If your account qualifies for it, the option is available in the campaign settings tab:

1. List up to ten links within your site, starting with the highest priority first.
2. Google will use up to four of the links in your ads in addition to the existing Display URL.

What you should be aware of

1. Site links will only show where your ad provides the “best answer”. A little cryptic, but in our experience, this essentially means you have a MUCH higher CTR than everyone else bidding on that keyword. Typically, this is going work well if you bid on your own brand, for example.
2. Site links will also only be shown in ads in top position with a high quality score.
3. The site links option is set at campaign level, so you can’t set different site links for each ad, or for ads in a particular ad group.
   

There is no data on whether a particular ad displayed site links or not – you’ll have to just check it online. It will therefore be difficult to measure any improvement in performance once you added this function. However, we’d still recommend implementing it – it sure can’t do any harm to your CTR.

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AdWords Analyst, Antony Potts explains how this helps you.

A “View Through Conversion” occurs on the Content Network when your ad is shown, but not clicked, and that person then returns to your site through a Google Search/Search Partner campaign and converts within a 30-day period.

Think of it this way. There’s an old adage, “we waste 50% of our marketing budget. If only we knew which 50%”. This arises because there is a lack of ability to measure how some advertising media influence your customer’s decision to buy. Let’s say you place an ad on the side of a bus, sponsor Coronation Street or your local football team – very difficult to accurately measure the impact this has on your sales and enquiries.

View Through Conversion Tracking delivers more accurate measurement of the customer’s journey across the web (only for Google ads, remember!) to demonstrate where your ads have displayed and perhaps should be credited with ‘an assist’ in generating that order or enquiry.

View Through Conversion Tracking

This measurement may help to indicate that your Content Network account is performing well, but it unfortunately can not be as accurate an indicator as we’d all hope. Remember that although your ad may have been rendered on a web page that person is viewing, it may be in a position off-screen and they may not have physically seen it.

However, the trends it illustrates are more important than the numbers – even if it accurately measures only 50% of the traffic, improvement trends would still prove valuable data. You can now measure the benefit of Google Display Ads on the Content Network with more confidence, knowing that you’ll have some method of calculating the return on effort and the budget you spend.

This is a valuable metric to analyse and understand, but like View Through Conversions, use it to influence your decisions rather than build your entire business strategy around it.

Much better than not knowing which 50% you’re wasting, but won’t get that waste to 0% just yet.

Want more from your campaign?

Call our AdWords team free on 08000 474714.

On the one hand, searchers already want to buy from you and might well find you in organic links where the clicks are free, so why pay for the click?

On the other, there may be competitors bidding on your brand and stealing your profit from right under your nose if you don’t.

There isn’t a right or wrong answer, but there some factors you may want to consider;

Google knows that this is your domain name and/or your brand, so it’s very easy for you to achieve top paid position.

Clicks on your own brand keywords tend to cost pennies – we’ve often seen clicks at £0.05 for position one.

CTR, as critical as ever, is typically awesome – 25-50% CTR, which won’t do your overall campaign CTR any harm at all.

In one of our most advanced campaigns, our client makes over 100 sales every month on one single competitor keyword for less than £0.20 a click.

Whether you like the ethics or not, there’s profit waiting on the table.

Learn more advanced techniques in Google AdWords Masterclasses.