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Mobile Paid Search

Nicholas Pirlis Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Did you know that search is one of the top mobile activities? In today’s Deep Dive Week article, Integrated Media Supervisor Nick Pirlis gives you an introduction to mobile paid search and how you can use it to leverage this important channel for your brand or business. If you’ve found this useful we invite you to share it with your friends or join the conversation on twitter via the hashtag #DeepDiveWeek. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

We’ve all seen the statistics from rising adoption rates of smart phones to the increases in mobile advertising. Some of this information was covered in one of our last deep dive week articles titled “Mobile Search – Are We There Yet?” By now it might be time to assess your current paid search efforts and make some changes. Find out how to make your PPC campaigns mobile-friendly.

Is mobile paid search for you?

If your campaigns are already enabled for ‘iPhones and other mobile devices’ take a look at the percentage of traffic coming through mobile. If 10-20% of traffic is coming from mobile devices you may want to consider segmenting your paid search campaign.
- To figure this out, go to the campaigns tab in AdWords and select ‘Segment’ then by ‘Device’.
Generally mobile paid search works well with lower price point/low-consideration products. Consumers are typically looking for information quickly. Advertising for immediate actions like downloading apps or music, or finding places to eat/drink works well.
You may want to consider the cost vs. benefits if your products are of a higher consideration or longer conversion process. That’s not to say that businesses with these product sets don’t do mobile paid search, you just need to have the proper goals built in.
- Whether the goal is an actual monetary transaction or folded into your current local search strategy, mobile PPC can be an integral and successful component in your overall paid search program.

Setup and Structure

The first step is to create mobile-only campaigns. Take the desired campaigns (or all of them) and make copies denoting these with ‘-mobile’. Then under campaign settings, change the device targeting to ‘iPhone and other mobile devices.’
Now uncheck this setting in your non-mobile versions of the campaigns.
- This will split out campaigns for non-mobile and mobile giving you more options to customize ads as well as tailor landing page experiences.

Opportunities

Now that your campaigns are setup to address mobile specifically, there are a few options to provide searchers with a better user experience. Some of these opportunities synch up directly with items discussed in an article during our last deep dive week around local search.

Click to Call (left)

Phone extensions allow you to place your business phone number as a clickable link within text ads. This is useful when driving consumers to a particular retail store or place of business.

Local Search and Extensions

Since a high volume of mobile search queries are location focused, use extensions to easily show the location of your place of business.
Link to your Google Places page or a Google Maps listing to give searchers easy access to the most pertinent business information.

Mobile Site

Similar to the rationale for segmenting campaigns for mobile specifically, if you’ve noticed a fair amount of site traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s time to make some adjustments for a mobile friendly experience.
Simplify the site, cut down on copy and image clutter. Focus on the most important information a customer might be interested in.
Avoid heavy imagery for faster load times. This goes for flash as well, especially considering flash and iPhones don’t play well together.
Provide clear navigation to things like lead forms and store locators.
If your site has an elaborate lead form, try shortening or cutting down on form requirements to promote completion on mobile devices.

Considerations

Take a look at Google Analytics data to get a good sense of your mobile browsing audience. Use this information when segmenting/targeting your mobile campaigns in AdWords. Google gives you the option to segment by devices and carriers.
- Don’t forget that a user’s mobile experience may differ if they are using a mobile phone or a tablet.
Spend some time optimizing keyword selections.
- Desktop search queries vs. mobile queries vary. Mobile queries also skew high for local results. Along with your own research and organic keyword traffic check out Google’s mobile selection tool for assistance
If you have multiple locations, consider segmenting campaigns to mobile and leveraging geo-targeting. This will provide a super customized experience for mobile searchers.
Ad positioning. If you’ve just let campaigns run on mobile devices without segmentation or optimizing ad positioning, you might be losing out. Bid up and test performance lift. Smaller screen sizes make search real estate even more valuable. You may find that bidding to the top one or two spots can provide considerable performance improvements.
For local businesses think about how local searchers might be finding your place(s) of business as well as your competition
- Take into account the number of competitor listings a search might come across, and how you can differentiate ad copy and the user’s mobile search experience to maximize conversion.
- For example a local pizza shop could display a special, or a bar could show their happy hour specials. Then direct them to your mobile friendly site, places page, or Google maps listing to get directions!

Conclusion

Regardless if we’re actually in the ‘Year of Mobile’ or not, it’s clear that smartphone adoption is on the rise as well as mobile search usage. With a small amount of effort you can easily segment and tailor your target audience’s mobile experience.

Mobile paid search can certainly prove positive for specific KPIs and objectives, but be sure to test and optimize accordingly. Make it easy for searchers to get the information they desire, and test messaging as well as bidding strategies.

Posted in deep dive week, mobile, ppc, search | No Comments »

Google Product Extensions

Mark Barletta Monday, April 18th, 2011

This week we’re kicking off Deep Dive Week – a new monthly blog series where we choose a topic and post about it the entire week. We’re starting the series with Specialty Search and topics will include Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Local Search, Mobile Search and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We’ve created a twitter hashtag as well – #DeepDiveWeek – and will be following up next week with a downloadable PDF of the entire week.

We’re very excited to bring this to you and hope you all agree.

Here’s Mark Barletta, Search Marketing Manager, to kick it off with a discussion on Google Product Extensions.

Bob Dylan once sang about how “The Times They Are A-Changin” in 1964. Of course, he was talking about issues such as poverty and social change, but in our marketing industry the title of that song always applies. Things change around us marketers every day, some for the better some for the worse. The one thing constant I’ve found is that when a big change comes Google is almost always behind it, and with that I would like to introduce to you the Google Merchant Center.

What is Google Merchant Center?

Google Merchant Center is a tool which helps you upload your product listings for Google Product Search, Google Product Ads and Google Commerce Search. The advantages of this type of search are to:

Attract more buyers as they can quickly and easily reach your product listings
Submit listings of your products free of charge
Control your product information. With Google Product Search, you can maintain the accuracy and freshness of your product information so your customers find the relevant, current items they’re looking for.

Now what everyone wants to know is how they can make their products or their client’s products stand out in the search market by using the Google Merchant Center.

One way to do this is by using the Google Product Extensions, which is a new feature of Google AdWords that allows you to leverage your existing Google Merchant Center feed to integrate your products directly in your search ads! Google Product Extensions can:

Increase your return on your investment of your current search ads
Work with your already existing ads

Product Extensions give the searchers more information before they click your ad, making them better informed and more prepared to complete a transaction once they get to your site/landing page. It is very important to have a landing page that is relevant to the visitor. The efficiency or quality of your landing page can be measured by the conversion rate.

Examples of Product Extensions Formats

Remember, to make things easier for yourself you can leverage your existing product feed. Product Extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center product feed to enhance your search ads

No need to add a new feed or manage product listings in two separate places
Accompany the free listings you get from Product Search
Participating in AdWords Product Extensions will not conflict with the free leads you already get from Google Product Search

How do you implement?

You can start out with Product Extensions with only a few clicks. There is no need to create additional campaign/ad groups within your Google AdWords account. Also, you will not have to update your keywords or refresh your ad copy text.

Go to the Ad Extensions tab in the Campaign you want to activate
- Select View Product Extensions
- Click on the create a new extension button
- Connect your Merchant Center account to the campaign and save

Now AdWords will AUTOMATICALLY display products from your product feeds when they are relevant to the search query of the person searching!

Key Takeaways

This new improvement to your Google experience is available to all advertisers
Expect Google to run tests and change formatting to determine what works best for them and for us advertisers
Recommendation: As Google will do, all advertisers should always test!

Tune in tomorrow when Jody Pirrello, VP Technology, talks about structured data, rich snippets and microformats.

If you enjoyed this article and want to stay on top of future Deep Dive Weeks, sign up for our mailing list for more great articles, PDF downloads and other happenings in digital marketing.

Posted in deep dive week, ppc, search | No Comments »

Thanks Google, but no thanks…

Stephen Donlin Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Last week Google announced that they will be standardizing all AdWords display URLs to display in lowercase characters. By standardizing all of the display URLs on within sponsored ads Google is able to improve user metrics, including clickthrough rates. We may not question that standardizing all of the URLs on a page improves click-through rates; however, the question is whose clickthrough rates are improved?

Is Google standardizing URLs so that paid links receive a greater amount of clicks? The answer to that is unclear at this time. In making this change, Google has failed to provide it’s advertisers with the supporting data. From a purely financial standpoint, this makes perfect sense. The more people click on paid links, the more money Google makes. Given Google’s advocacy for being more open sourced, they are very selective on what they are open with.

I believe it should be up to individual advertisers, not Google, to act in the best interest of their brand. Testing the various aspects of your ad copy to improve overall click through rates and conversions is the advertisers job. Google should reward advertisers who test and optimize, rather than implementing blanket changes without divulging supporting data.

Posted in digital marketing, ppc, search | 1 Comment »

Will Qwiki Really Rule The World?

Cathy Burke Monday, January 24th, 2011

The buzz surrounding the new enhanced search engine, Qwiki, sets it up as a game changer. I have even heard it referred to as the possible “Google Killer” by some enthusiasts. Hmmm. It sounds cutting edge and cool, but I wonder if the typical user is really looking for that much of an enhancement to their everyday search queries? What made Google and Yahoo so life-changing was the ability to ask a question and then have the answer delivered quickly and directly. It simplified life in a revolutionary way. The enhancements of real-time search and local search have built upon that concept without creating any delayed gratification. However, I am not so sure that Qwiki will do the same. Its proclaimed bells and whistles seem as though they may be complicating a very functional concept. While it seems like a researcher’s dream, a real encyclopedia on steroids, how many of the millions of searches a day are looking for that much information?

If I am out and about in a particular area of the city and want to know what restaurants are recommended nearby, do I really need a full visual experience at that moment or do I just want “the shortcut answer”? I am hungry and wandering. I want to know where to go quickly to satisfy my appetite, what quality of food I will be getting and how much I can expect to pay for it. This can all be delivered in text form.

While I understand the want and need to bring more enhanced content to the user and I am excited to see the newest, most cutting edge technology; I think that the Qwiki experience may turn out to be “not so Qwiki” after all. There will be times when it will be advantageous and inspiring, but it may not always be needed for a typical search query. Bing, also promoted as a game changer when it launched, struggled on its own and eventually needed to partner with a traditional search engine. This makes perfect sense as Bing is great when there is time to shop, compare and investigate. However, when one is just looking for the short answer, Yahoo or Google do the trick just fine. So, it will be interesting to see where Qwiki lands for the long term in the ever expanding world of search. My guess is that it will be a strong player, but not necessarily ever the new Emperor in town. That said, I look forward to seeing behind the curtain at what Eduardo Saverin and Jawed Karim (no technology startup slouches!) are betting on. There is no arguing with their track records.

Posted in advertising, digital marketing, search, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Understanding Quality Score

Mark Barletta Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Some of the most prevalent questions I come across in Paid Search marketing are, What are the factors that go into Quality Score and What can I do to improve my keyword Quality Score. This question is asked by clients, brand managers, co-workers, and Paid Search marketers themselves. But to understand how to improve Quality Score, you first need to understand what it is.

Quality Score as defined by Google, is a measurement of a keyword’s relevance to its ad text and to a given search query – this influences the keyword’s eligibility to display an ad and the position of that ad. The reason this metric is so important is because this helps ensure that users find what they are looking for through the use of Google AdWords ads, which will provide a better chance for your advertising success.

Quality Score also factors into the way your ads are positioned and how your keywords are priced. The higher the Quality Score of your keyword, the lower you will have to pay per click and it will increase your ads position. Remember, to receive the top position on a Google search, Quality Score is more heavily weighted than your bid!

7 Factors about Quality Score (Not in Order of Importance):

Account History
Historical CTR of the Exact match keyword
Relevance of the keyword & the ad compared to the search query
Quality of the landing page
Relevance of the keyword to the ads in the ad group
Historical CTR of the display URL’s in the ad group
Account performance in the geographical region where the ad is being shown

Some of this we already know, and some of this is probably the first time you are hearing this. But even after building out your campaigns following the above factors, I’m sure we all will still find some keywords with low Quality Scores and ask ourselves Why Is My Quality Score Still Low?

Poor Landing Page Quality – Most of us run into this problem if we do not build the websites on our own, so it can be challenging for Marketing agencies to control this factor. We can advise on some things, but in the end, it is the clients responsibility to handle this one. What we can control is where we land the keyword, making sure the keyword is relevant to the landing page. For example, you would not land someone searching for a football jersey on a page that specializes in football helmets. You should land them on the football jersey page or Google will penalize you.
Low Click Through Rate – Google sets the standard of a “well performing” keyword at ~1% CTR. So to create a higher CTR, you can add negative keywords, alter your ad text, delete the underperfomers, try using exact match, & finally using keyword insertion.
Poor Historical Keyword Performance – The solution to this is…Time! If a strong CTR (1% or better) is maintained over a fair volume of impressions, Google will deem that keyword relevant and will improve your keyword Quality Score
Recent Changes Made – Making changes to your account such as adding keywords, changing your ads, or changing landing pages will prompt the Google system to start over and re-evaluate your Quality Scores based on these changes. Again, when you make changes you will have to give Google sufficient time to evaluate the keywords relevancy and enough time to generate impressions to calculate a CTR.
Not Enough Impressions or Clicks – If the keyword has not been triggered enough over a given time frame, the keyword probably doesn’t have search demand. Even if this keyword has a CTR of 1%, it will be given a low Quality Score. So if it is critical to your campaign, try raising the bid to get better visibility. If not important, I would recommend deleting/pausing the keywords because it will bring down your blended Quality Score of the account.

According to Google (Key Learnings):

Quality Score will heavily influence the price you pay for a click and the position your ad achieves.
CTR is the #1 factor in determining the Quality Score on the Search Network
It can take at least 3-4 weeks for your account to build up significant data, so if you make changes, it’s best to relay this message from the start to eliminate discussions on why things aren’t working after a week.

Posted in analytics, search, SEO | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘search’ Category

Mobile Paid Search

Google Product Extensions

Thanks Google, but no thanks…

Will Qwiki Really Rule The World?

Understanding Quality Score

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