AdWords – The Web Authority

March 18, 2015March 13, 2015

AdWords Auction Insights – Daily Budget

Man Scratching Head — Not getting the performance you want out of AdWords?

Not only is your maximum cost per click a factor in deciding if you are in the Google AdWords auction, but your daily budget may be a factor keeping you out of the auction too!

It is important to understand a few things first about how the AdWords auction works.

AdWords account managers will talk about your 30 day budget spend; it needs to be high enough to support your accounts daily budget based on your maximum cost per click. Not your average cost per click, but your maximum cost per click.

Here is a fine example of a client who by having a low 30 day click spend has effectively kept Google AdWords from being able to serve his account for best performance.

30 day click spend $150
Daily budget $5
Typical max. CPC for other clients in the same industry $6.50 His top maximum CPC based on his daily budget $5

As his maximum CPC is constrained by his daily budget, his account can never be set at a level to truly be in the auction, he gets spotty click results and sometimes Google cannot even spend his $150 in a 30 day period.

In scenarios like this, what we see happening is that an account manager gets desperate and starts adding broad match keywords to an account in an effort to get low cost traffic.

Here are some of the results we then see when that happens:

30 day number of impressions 11,930
Clicks in 30 days 36
CTR in 30 days .30%
Average position 6.8

It looks like the account is performing, but look at the impressions. They are high and the CTR is low. This account is getting clicks, but they are typically poor quality and untargeted clicks because the client has set the daily budget too low and so can never raise the maximum cost per click to get in the keyword auction. Google may even be delivering clicks at off hours setting the account up for even lower levels of success.

This is just one example of problematic account performance. In some cases as you monitor clients such as this you will even see Google saving up money to try to serve their program by even going a day or three without any clicks at all and then getting a few clicks a day or so later.

If you are looking for a savvy AdWords manager I invite you to read our client reviews. We resolve AdWords problems all the time and do work in some cases on an hourly basis to help re-mediate AdWords problems.

December 10, 2014December 6, 2014

AdWords Conversions Move to the Mobile Space

Beautiful young woman talking on mobile phone — Smartphones are no longer a luxury but a necessity.

I manage a large number of AdWords accounts for clients in a wide and diverse sector of businesses. In the last two months I have seen very marked trend – that is the importance of mobile for lead conversions.

Of specific note is that for some clients, mobile has become their sole avenue for lead generation. For some, no longer do people take time to complete the contact form on their website, it is all click to call and with nearly all leads coming in via mobile activity.

Specifically, I see this activity on accounts that have a very strong location specificity; such as accounts for doctors, dentists, lawyers, and heating and air conditioning service providers. If the product you sell is relatively expensive, typically the desktop and tablet arena is still where most of your leads will come from, but for many mobile is REALLY ramping up.

What I’ve found is by installing website call tracking from AdWords on a website, we are getting a fuller view of how clients are using AdWords and how the client is getting lead conversions. I am finding that AdWords is driving a huge amount of call traffic for clients that we previously could not track. With this information, we are also finding out that a call versus an email conversion is now your consumers action preference.

I find that the way people use AdWords, perform research, and how leads are now generated has changed, and significantly so. Make sure that your website and your AdWords account is set up properly to take advantage of this strong emerging trend that is mobile driven. This is the future for AdWords not just a short term trend.

If you need a savvy AdWords account manager, who just also happens to be a Google Partner to help you ramp up your conversion activity, you’ll want to look over our service offerings today.

October 22, 2014October 18, 2014

Google AdWords’ First Page Bid Strategy

Google Partner Badge — McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

Using a bid strategy in Google AdWords to automatically place bids to move your ads to the first page of ad results seems like a good suggestion, but be careful, in the accounts we have tested this bid strategy on, clicks have fallen to more than half when compared to auto-bid and no bid strategy settings.

In fact monitoring numerous client accounts, I have personally found that not only have clicks nearly dropped to half, but that clicks were sometimes as much as 30% more without an increase in lead conversions.

When you enact a bid strategy in Google AdWords, it is very important to closely monitor and be ready to roll back if you don’t get the results you were expecting.

For one client we did see a strong increase in lead conversions in the first 15 days of use, but by the end of a 30 period we saw a 50% drop in clicks and no substantial increase in conversions. Rolling back the account to remove first page bid strategy and using auto-bidding with a bid cap to boost clicks to appear on the typical average first page bid has provided much better results for the clients we manage.

It is always important to test new features in AdWords, but not to take a set it and forget it strategy. If you need a proactive, smart, and knowledgeable Google AdWords account manager, I invite you to find out more about the services my firm offers for Google AdWords account set up, optimization, and routine management.

October 1, 2014September 26, 2014

AdWords Account Management Has a Difficulty Level of 95 Out of 100

You don’t need a junior person managing your Google AdWords account or for that matter your secretary or high school or college intern. You need a skilled professional to manage your AdWords account with the high degree of complexity and myriad of settings, hidden bid adjustments, and hidden areas for settings AdWords has a difficulty level of 95 out of 100!

Case in point, I just reviewed a potential customer’s AdWords account. The owner thought that maybe it had been hacked as he had normally been spending $3,000 a month for clicks and all the sudden got a bill for $12,000 from Google AdWords.

I took a look and could see that the person managing his account was not skilled to react to problems and changes as they occurred. Although with the previous settings, possibly all had been fine, but in July and August when many businesses we work with struggled for lead conversions, and new advertisers moved into the auction in large numbers driving up prices, this account got totally nailed as the manager had not put a bid cap in settings for Google’s auto bidding. As a result, there were clicks that had been delivered at a shocking amount of over $250 per click – and not just one.

A savvy account manager should be on your AdWords account much more than once a month. For many of our clients, we work their accounts three times a week or more depending on what is happening in the marketplace and their ad spend.

Don’t let your AdWords account run without an experienced manager, to do so is letting Google take all the money out of your wallet with no recourse to recoup click costs. You can’t whine to Google to give you back money when your account manager did not know what they were doing and rung up a bill for you.

My comment to this client was, “Are you sitting down? You will have to pay Google the $12,000 you owe, your account was not hacked, just not managed well.”

Find out what our customers say about their experience with us as their Google AdWords account manager and then contact us to chat about what we can do for you.