AdWords by the Hour – The Web Authority

April 1, 2019March 28, 2019

How We Bill For AdWords Services

In my industry – professional pay per click account management the typical way to charge clients is 10% of their scheduled 30 day ad spend in the Google Ads control panel.

If a client has a setting of $150 a day for clicks, this translates into a 30 day budget of $4,500 to be paid to Google for clicks.

The typical account manager will bill $450 for the month for their management fee.

We operate differently – we bill by the running ad group number or ad spend and bill based on a service grid we post on our website. Our fee for this same client would be not $450 but rather $260 for 2.8 hours of service. That is more than a 42% lower fee than what is charged by the typical agency or manager.

We have priced our services to be small to medium sized business-friendly and know that your investment in our services will be repaid by increased leads and phone calls.

In our case, a lower price does not mean less quality or less skill – it is just our way of billing and doing account architecture that works for us and helps clients to have professional service without significantly adding to their overhead.

You can view all our pricing online at http://www.mccordweb.com/search-engine-marketing/google-ads-quick-start.php

April 19, 2017April 15, 2017

AdWords Conversion Attribution Models – Which Should You Use

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

As part of my preparing to take my second AdWords certification exam for the year, I am studying all of Google’s AdWords documentation. I came across information on attribution models that I thought might be interesting to review.

There are 6 attribution models you can select in the AdWords control panel under Tools and in Conversions. See if your current model should be changed.

Last Click
This one is pretty self explanatory. AdWords attributes the conversion in your reporting to the keyword that generates the last click in the conversion path.

First Click
This one is pretty self explanatory. AdWords attributes the conversion in your reporting to the keyword that generates the first click in the conversion path.

Linear
In this attribution model, Google spreads the credit for the conversion equally across all keywords clicked in the conversion path. For newly running AdWords accounts this is my preferred attribution model.

Time Decay
In this attribution model, Google weights credit to the click closest in time to the conversion over a 7-day half life. So a click 8 days before conversion will get 50% of the credit versus a click 1 day before conversion.

Position Based
In this attribution model, 40% of the credit for the conversion goes to both the first and last clicks with the remaining 20% spread over the other clicks in the conversion path.

Data-Driven
If your AdWords program has been running for a while, Google has data on your conversion activity by keyword and will credit the keywords clicked in the conversion page based on your own historical data. This is my preferred model for mature accounts.

Most advertisers will choose by default the last click conversion model. But, when you change your conversion model in your conversion actions to data-driven or time decay, you will start to see that keywords that were not the last click start to see conversion data.

Knowing what is driving conversions is particularly important as inadvertently pausing keywords that you did not know were important to the conversion path may lower your own conversion numbers expectantly.

September 21, 2016September 8, 2016

How to Determine Your Initial AdWords Click Budget

One of the most difficult things for a new AdWords account manager is to determine the best initial budget for an account. Here are a few of my tips that will help get you thinking.

1. Start with the highest budget initially that you can. It is easier to ramp down than to ramp up in a brand new AdWords account due to the way that Google AdWords will serve a brand new account in the first week.

2. Use the AdWords Keyword Planner. This tool is found in your account in the drop down under tools. Typically I will sit at my computer with this tool open and run numbers for a brand new client before we even go to contract for management services to help set an appropriate budget. There is nothing worse than taking on a new client only to find that you cannot get performance for them due to an unrealistic expectation of what they need to pay to get into the AdWords auction.

3. Know that the AdWords Keyword Planner dollar figures for keywords are estimates only. In the real auction you will typically pay about 20%. The tool estimates are on the low side.

4. A good rule of thumb is to remember that the higher the final sale the higher the click cost will be and so the budget should be higher. For example if a client is selling $10 widgets, you will want to have your click cost be low. It the sale is a $50,000 software platform, your click cost will be high. Surprisingly you will find many who do not understand this and will expect to pay $1 or so for clicks when their cost of sale is high.

5. Once you have roughed in a typical high/low click cost using sample keywords using the Keyword Planner with the client, then work backwards to ascertain how high the daily budget should be. If the Keyword Planner says the typical click cost is $2.50 to $3.50 know that you will most likely be using a maximum cost per click setting of $4.00 to $4.50 in the control panel on set up. Make sure that you and the client set a high enough daily budget to accommodate the ability for Google to serve the ad during the day. At this click cost the best daily budget would be $30 and up or a 30 day ad spend of $912, to start.