Life after the first click

Recently much of my day is consumed not so much with Adwords but with what happens next. Clients are interested in results and we are part of that pipeline so it is perfectly understandable that we would be part of the team trying to solve this challenge. This process shifts my attention from the data in Adwords to Analytics. Analytics is easy to use but there is a fundamental shift from what to why and that is not easy. Visitors arrive at your web site and if you are average, 98% of them leave without taking the action you wanted and we are left with the question of why?
The first concept that we have to struggle with is that marketing data is more clue than fact. Data tells us that the visitor left but does not tell us why they left or if we met their expectations. Different data can paint conflicting messages and the perfect example of this is pages read and time on site. In most case increasing pages read and time on site are positive indicators but what if they go in different directions? Getting mixed signals from your data is common and in reality it is the balance and direction of the data you have to understand.

Businesses have expectations for their traffic and often those expectations are not realistic. We all want results and we want them now but the reality is that the market is going to give us what we earn not what we want. So once we get a visitor to the site how do we earn the goal for the traffic? The simple answer is we earn the result by providing a web experience that takes the visitor from hello to thank you. In between those two is a conversation with the prospect and many web sites fail in managing that conversation.

Just like any conversation, the web experience has to build on the prior interactions and meet the needs of the visitor. Deviate from the interests of the prospect and they will leave. This builds from what you know and this is where many web sites are challenged because visitors arrive from different keywords and with different interests in your business. The classic mistake in this process is the searcher that looks for Italian Shoes, who clicks on an ad for Italian Shoes, only to land on the home page of a department store 9 clicks away from the Italian Shoes. In most cases every time you give people a choice you will lose 50% of your traffic so it will take 256 visitors to get one person to the Italian Shoes page. This is a huge mistake and it happens every day. Even if you get a 90% success rate on those 9 clicks you still only get 38 people out of the 100 you paid for to that page and you still have to convert them. The other side of this problem is that creating a landing page for every keyword group could become very expensive and the return on this investment could be minimized.

The next challenge is that not all visitors react to your message in the same way. It is very easy to have multiple sales attributes that move different people in different ways. The classic example of this is the balance of cost and quality and this varies by many different factors. If your product is sold based on the highest quality then offering a sales price can actually hurt you. How many sales do you think they have on a Ferrari or Bentley? On the other hand if your product is sold on price and all you do is push the quality of the product you also have a classic audience to message mismatch.

There is no perfect answer to any of this and the challenge is to find the right balance for your business.

Adwords Webinar - April 10, 2009

We will be conducting a Webinar on April 10, 2009 from 10:00am to 11:30am in partnership with the Economic Vitality Corporation of San Luis Obispo County and the law firm of Sinsheimer Juhnke Lebens & McIvor

Register online

It takes a team to run a Web Site

The reality is that running a professional web site takes a team of professionals across a number of specialties. A single person trying to run a professional web site is a flawed strategy because no one person can possibly have all the skills you need. Some of the team members may be outsourced and some may be internal staff but they all serve very specific needs. Let's look at the common roles that need to be filled;

Common Roles in a Web Site Team

Marketing Manager: This position is the top of the pyramid and is responsible for the overall messaging, brand control, and strategy development. They need to have an in-depth understanding of the business' strategies, messaging, branding, and objectives and the ability to articulate that to the other team members. When this role is outsourced it is commonly to a full service Advertising or Marketing Agency. This person needs to have their hands on the pulse of the market place and should be an industry expert.

Web Master: This position is a general management function that includes keeping the web site up to date with new content, product updates, and other general maintenance. This is separate from the Web Programmer because of the cost of the labor. Using a Web Programmer for Web Site Administration and Maintenance is like swatting flies with a shotgun. A web site that requires a programmer to make changes is an indicator of a poorly engineered site.

Customer Service: Including customer service in this discussion might seem improper to some but in reality this is where live interactions with prospects and clients happen so feedback from this area to the web marketing team is incredibly important. Customer Service is the ears of your web site. These people can be a rich source of new keyword information and missing web site information. Customer service also has the ability to monitor the quality of traffic.

Web Programmer/Data Architect: This position is a highly skilled technician that is responsible for the detailed back end programming of the web site. They design the database, business logic, and other highly technical challenges.
Graphic Artist: This position is charged with all the visual elements of the site including color themes, visual branding elements, and the look and feel of the web site. Simply stated they make the web site visually entertaining.

Copywriter: This position is responsible for the words that engage the audience and it is one skill that is commonly assigned improperly. Advertising Agencies separated the visual from the textual generations ago because they realize they are entirely different skill sets. Artists are NOT Authors. Copywriters can be subdivided into many different skill sets depending on the task. For example the copywriter that you use for your web site might be very different than the copywriter you engage to write a book, and the divisions go much deeper. A copywriter for a web site might be very different than a copywriter for a landing page. The web site text will tend to be more factual with a mission of conveying information while the landing page is more sales copy where the mission is to engage the reader and move them to action. A common mistake is to think that a writer is a writer because there are many variations of writers.

Response Designer/User Interface Designer: This position is responsible for examining and designing how the user interacts with the web site and this is entirely different than what the Graphic Artist and Web Programmer do although both of those need to interact with this facet of the design. Response design becomes even more critical when the web design work is a landing page instead of an informational page.
PPC (Pay Per Click) Manager: This role provides the management of the paid advertising placement and overall traffic management. The goal of this position is to provide the maximum value to the business with the least cost. This is a delicate balance between quantity and quality and requires the person understands the value of the traffic they are buying. This person needs to understand the complex text model used to deliver the advertising and how to focus this model on the marketing strategy from the Marketing Manager. PPC's primary role is to attract prospects to the business.

SEO (Search Engine Optimizer): The role of the SEO Expert is to give your business the best possible position in the search engines on the most profitable search terms. SEO work covers both on-page and off-page strategies and work. With the on-page side the SEO examines keyword uses, positions, and must understand how the search engines use this data to produce the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). The off-page side of this speciality includes work in creation of back-links and other elements that the search engine uses to create the SERP. While nobody knows for sure we estimate that off-page optimization is as much as 90% of the factors used in producing many SERPs.

To outsource or not to outsource, that is the Question

Once we understand the primary roles within the team we need to examine the internal versus outsource issues. It would be an extremely rare company that would have enough work internally to justify all these positions on a full time basis. Outsourcing parts of this is extremely common, but it does vary by company. Many companies outsource all these positions and the first position that is internal is the marketing manager. Those positions that are project related are typically the ones that are most likely to be outsourced. Web Programmers, Graphic Artists, Copywriters, and Response Designers are commonly outsourced because they are project type positions. Once the project is done most businesses will turn off the expense until the next generation of web site needs to be developed. Positions like the Marketing Manager and Web Master are less likely to be outsourced.

Web site marketing team relationships

While ultimately all positions have some degree of relationship to all the other positions some have much stronger requirements to effectively communicate with certain positions. We will skip the discussion of the Marketing Manager relationships because that position is the hub of the communications and the source of the strategy.

Web Master and Customer Service - The Operations Team

These positions are the most common that are sourced internally within the business with full time staff. This staff has a customer interface and deals with on-going changes within the business. Communicating this to an outsourced resource is difficult although not impossible. We have seen many cases of outsourcing the Web Master but very few that outsource Customer Service. In this team Customer Service owns the customer interface so they know what the issues with the site are and how important they are. The Web Master role is to make the changes as needed.

PPC and SEO - The traffic team

This is a critical relationship because they are like the relationship between your fingers and your opposing thumb. You cannot run a football team with just the defense or just the offense - it takes both to be competitive. Since PPC owns 50% of the SERP and SEO owns the other 50%, this relationship is critical. Part of the problem is that specialists tend to be strong advocates for their specialty. No surprise here that SEOs think that PPC is horribly expensive and not nearly as responsive as organic traffic and PPC types think that SEO is poorly documented and cannot prove their claims. There are huge synergies that a business needs to leverage between PPC and SEO so getting these areas to freely communicate is important to the business.

Web Programmer, Graphic Artist, and Copywriter - The Development Team

This team needs to communicate closely when development is under way. These people are very differently skilled so it is a very rare person that can fill more than one of these slots on the team. This team is also very project orientated so these are commonly outsourced. The key to this outsource strategy is that they have to leave a web site behind that the Web Master can maintain. It is a big mistake to have to go back to this team for routine web site maintenance.

Operations Team and the Traffic Team

These two teams need to have an active relationship with a free exchange of information and ideas. The traffic team will see opportunities in traffic and the operations team will see the results and hear the feedback from the audience they are serving. The audience expertise in the operations team is critical to being able to target the right traffic.

Common Combinations

Not every team has a separate person for each position. Combining Graphic Artist and Copywriter is common although this typically results in a compromise on one side or the other. People who are artistic rarely have the language focus needed to write great content and great writers are rarely artists. The most dangerous combination that we see all the time is combining the entire Development team. Programmers by definition are logic driven individuals and rarely do they excel in the creative fields.

Combining the Web Master with the Development Team is a common mistake. The Web Master needs to have great administrative skills to keep the web site it top condition. The other consideration here is salary differences. Web Masters typically do not make the same salary as professionals in the creative or programming fields and the difference is not small.

Combining tasks that require on-going maintenance with positions that are project based can be a huge strategic error. Project based staff like the Development Team are not cheap and so giving them operational duties like a Web Master is simply over powering the requirement and it is a costly mistake. The advantage of outsourcing your project team is that when the job is done you can turn the expense off but if you give them operational duties the expense never stops.

What to outsource and what to staff internally?

This is a tough question and there is no one answer but there are common issues to consider. In general positions that are project related like the Development Team are commonly outsourced because you need highly skilled people that are very expensive but you do not need them all the time. Once the web site is developed the typical site design will live for 3-7 years. Other skills like traffic team are often outsourced because it is rare for a business to have enough of this work to justify a full time position. The skills are very specialized and rapidly changing so it is unlikely that a person doing these tasks as one of their additional duties will be able to stay current. It is also rare that a site needs more than a few hours of these skills during the maintenance phase of the web site.

The Operations Team is rarely outsourced because it is part of the process of running the business and that is normally not something you want controlled outside your business. Businesses should always own the customer relationship because that relationship is a large part of what creates a barrier to entry into their market. Outsourced labor is more expensive than internal staff of the same skill so if you have enough work to fill the Operations Team position then internal staff makes sense. If however your need for a Web Master is only a few hours a month then it’s time to look at outsourcing.

Surprisingly, Marketing Managers are outsourced more often than you would think and it goes to the same issue as the Web Master. If you only need a limited number of hours of a Marketing Manager then you need to do the math to see which strategy makes the most sense. Outsourced Marketing Managers typically come from full-service Advertising or Marketing Agencies. One advantage they bring is they often have the development team your business needs and they already know how to work together. Even when this position is outsourced you still want to have the ultimate control of this within your business because nobody takes care of your business like you do.

There are people that can serve more than one position but they are rare and when they serve the multiple functions they maybe over or under priced. The key is getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats and it is the Marketing Manager that has to orchestrate this team and facilitate communication between the different skills.

Speaking Engagement - SMV Visitor & Convention Bureau

The Santa Maria Valley Visitor & Conference Bureau has invited Bob Dumouchel, CEO, Systems & Marketing Solutions, to talk on Google Adwords and Analytics. The presentation to the group's membership will be held on November 19, 2008 at the Santa Maria Discovery Museum at 10:30am. For more information on attending this meeting please contact Gina Keough at the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau at 805-925-2403 x 814 or email at gina@santamaria.com

Your Questions Answered... Even Though You Didn't Know You Asked Them!

I'm often overheard saying that you should never underestimate the creativity of the general public with an empty search box. If you've ever taken the time to mine through your Analytics account for organic search queries you know what I'm talking about. Here's a random sampling of some of my less than on topic visits: how to clean egg off windows, I want find sms for my girlfriend, is it illegal to sell clean urine, little strange monster brands, monster cures the porn site... And the list goes on. Luckily most of my traffic is a little more on topic but it is fun to see what kind of crazy stuff Google is matching to my site. The exciting thing inside of analytics that you should be watching is the questions. A lot of people search by asking Google a question, are you answering these questions?

I figured I would take a minute and answer some of the questions that I found in my data. The following are real searches.

Can Google ban you from Adwords?
Ultimately Google can pretty much do whatever it feels like. If you're abusing their terms of service they are not shy about shutting down your Adwords account. If you get banned you can open a new account but chances are you're going to need to use a new credit card too. If Adwords is a big piece of where your business comes from don't abuse their system!

Can you have phone numbers in Adwords ads?
Yes you can.

Do keywords with zero impressions hurt your quality score?
I don't think that they do. If they don't have impressions they're kind of quality neutral because they haven't been real world tested yet. The quality score listed beside these zero impression words is a guess based on the historical performance of your account and other relevancy factors. If you have a lot of zero impression keywords take some time to figure out why. Is there no traffic? Are you not bidding enough? Is a higher bid word in your own account getting matched to it faster? Is your geo-targeting too tight? There could be a lot of reasons.

Do you granularize your keywords?
YES!!! If you want a well run Adwords campaign you HAVE to granularize your words. This is targeted advertising, don't waste the opportunity to actually aim!

Does Google budget optimizer work?
Don't do it! I'm sure it works for somebody, but personally I think it's nothing but trouble. Adwords already has a built in ignorance tax, the budget optimizer multiplies your mistakes.

Should I leave poor quality keywords paused or delete them?
It depends. Just because a keyword is listed as poor it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it. Google's quality score can be inconsistent and you just have to roll with it. If you assess your ad group and the keyword fits the ad and the landing page let it ride. If your keyword doesn't match the rest of the group think about deleting it from that ad group and putting it in a new one. A more targeted approach could help you improve your quality score problem.

How to fix Google slap?
Ultimately what you need to do is a keyword autopsy. Some Google slaps are random but a lot of the time you deserved it. When dealing with a Google slap you can either pay up, restructure or quit. If you've built a solid and relevant campaign you might have to just pay up because Google decided to hold your keywords for ransom. If you have a bucket campaign break down your keywords into more targeted groups and see if you have better luck that way. If your keyword was truly irrelevant and a waste of money anyways, delete it. Sometimes when I have some words slapped that I don't think should have been I let them sit for a while. Occasionally a word will have its minimum bid bumped up for a few days or a couple of weeks and then come back down to earth. You can read more about Google slaps here.

How do you get Google Adwords and Yahoo Ambassador Certification?
To become an Adwords certified professional you have to be in good standing with Adwords, manage at least 1 account in a client center for at least 90 days, spend at least $1000 every 90 days in your client center, and you have to pass the Google Advertising Professional Exam.

To become an Adwords Qualified Company you need to have at least 2 qualified individuals and spend at least $100,000 (US threshold, it varies by country) every 90 days.

To become a Yahoo Search Ambassador you basically need to use Yahoo Search Marketing and you need to pass the Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador test. Unfortunately this program is being closed. Existing Ambassadors get to keep their certification but the program is closed to new applicants.

(Systems & Marketing Solutions is both an Adwords Certified Company and Yahoo Search Ambassador.)

If you have questions for us you can send them in to rob@smsrd.com and we'll try and answer some on the blog on a regular basis.

Guidelines for a Great CTR

I love impossible challenges and it's probably what attracts me to Adwords. We are continually researching different areas of Adwords and one of the great challenges is ad copy. You might think that ad copy is simple after all its only 95 letters or spaces on 3 lines of text but you would be so wrong. Ad copy involves the copy, relationship to the keywords, business strategy, and the mindset and perceptions of the person. So it's as simple as language, people, and systems - three of the most complex subjects on the planet.

The purpose of my research is to understand what makes a high performing advertisement and then find ways to apply those findings to our client accounts. Let me start with some basic numbers so you understand the scope of this research. We currently manage 1,365 ads related to 100,236 keywords creating 298,292,714 impressions resulting in 140,511 clicks and 3,241 conversions last month. For those grabbing for a calculator the average CTR is 1.03% with a conversion rate of 2.35%. In reality the CTR ranges from a low of about .5% to an upper end of 15%. The data is from 40 different businesses with a different strategy working for each of those. Some numbers are low and some are high because they are planned to be like that.

As you might guess one of the first things we have to do is get down to more manageable levels of data because at this level we are drowning in data and starved for information. I passed this data through a series of Excel spreadsheets and Access Databases to isolate different data sets. In this process I removed or isolated data because of things I knew about the data set and the business strategy. Some clients track conversions others have branding strategies, some have low commitment conversions, and others have high commitment conversions. Some have ads designed to filter the traffic resulting in very low CTR rates but much higher quality traffic. What we are attempting to do is find some basic guidelines that drive performance. While we call them rules they are very much guidelines because they may or may not apply to your specific situation.

Guideline 1: Keywords are King

This guideline is almost without challenge and it works like this. The more focused the keywords are to the ad copy the higher the response - end of conversation! Small focused keyword lists attached to very specific ads outperform everything. Expand the keyword list and you dilute the keyword focus and your CTR drops. The way to destroy your CTR is go into the keyword tool and pick words without consideration of the mindset of the person doing the search. Keywords that contain intent to act are always a home run.

Guideline2: Simple Direct Copy Wins

In case after case this guideline proved itself over and over. Simple direct ads get more clicks and attempts at being cute, humorous, gimmicky, or creative get crushed. It makes lots of sense if you think about this the person entered a search and is looking for that. Repeating what they just keyed in has more connective strength than anything cute. People do not read ads to be entertained they are information seekers and are not just out for a joy ride. Give them what they want and they will respond.

Guideline 3: Phone Books kick!

Google has become the phone book and with every client we run a phone book campaign. This includes keywords that are tightly related to the business including things like the business name. These ad groups are always the stars of the account in both CTR and conversion. It makes complete sense that traffic would be very responsive if they are looking for you and know who you are. This throws some clients and they feel that they should not have to pay for this traffic after all they come up first for their name. That might be true today but there is no guarantee that will be true tomorrow. It's very easy to be first one day and on page 500 the next. Since the searcher is clearly looking for your business it is worth the few pennies to make sure they find you. Experience has taught us that even when the client is number one on the page that the ads still get great response rates. In many cases as much as 40% of this traffic will come through the ad even with a number one organic position.

Guideline 4: Strong Brands Rock

If you have a strong brand by all means flaunt it! Ads that match branded keywords to branded ads pull like nothing else. If you are like the other 99% of businesses and your brand lacks pull then create a plan and change that. Make your brand mean something and it will pay you back over and over. Branding works for businesses of all sizes and today is the day to start the process of making your brand stronger than it was yesterday.

Guideline 5: Competitors make you stronger

Competitive names and brands are like explosives - very powerful but also very dangerous. If you put these in your campaign you need to be prepared for the day that you get a "Cease and desist" letter from your competitor's lawyer. We are NOT LAWYERS so if you chose to do this talk to your lawyer. The rumor on the street with this is that there are generally no grounds for a Cease & Desist but most clients are not prepared to pay the cost of defending their rights, if they have any. Some clients have a strategy of dealing with it when they get it and most back down from the use. The other argument is that since the searcher cannot see the name or brand then it's impossible to cause "Marketplace confusion". Again talk to your lawyer.

Guideline 6: Leave your ego at home

Putting your business name in the headline of an ad is almost always a mistake. The exception to this is a phone book ad or a very strong brand name. Simply put Guideline 1 overrides this guideline. I cannot tell you how many times we have replaced a business name in an ad and have seen improvements of 2-300% in response. The purpose of the ad is to get them to your web site. It is then the web sites mission to introduce them to your name. Unless your name qualifies as a strong brand do not, I repeat, do not waste valuable ad space with your name.

Guideline 7: Never, Never, Never mislead your searcher

Violate this guideline and the searcher will create pain in so many ways. Remember the click takes them to your site so if you do not quickly meet the expectation they will leave with a bad impression of your business. Remember that people tell others about bad experiences at a ratio of about 12:1. For every disappointed visitor they will on average tell 12 others. Actually in the internet it might actually be more because if that person is active in a social network they might tell thousands about a bad experience.

Guideline 8: Appeal to the instant gratification society

Ad copy that ties to the keyword and delivers on the intent of the searcher are always a home run. For that reason when you have a buying indicator in the keyword and you go after the fast attribute it normally works. People want what they want and they want it now. Promising and delivering speed can make a big difference in your ad performance and your business.

Guideline 9: Localize your Ad

People like doing business with locals so if you are local flaunt it. An ad headline of "SF Restaurant Reviews" will pull much better in San Francisco than more generic "Restaurant Reviews". The difficulty with this is you end up with a lot more ads and much tighter keyword groups. It's possible that the effect of localization is driven by the guideline 1 but we believe that going local is a special category and it includes using the campaign geo-targeting to really drive this home.

Guideline 10: The more primitive the emotion of the word the better the response

We are dealing with people and there is no doubt that the deeper the emotion that you tap the better your response. At the top of the emotion stack are food, shelter, and protection of children followed by things like getting rich, losing weight, or being beautiful. Not every product or service can tap a primitive emotion but if you can do it, because it works. Make sure that your web site delivers on your promise or this guideline will absolutely fail on the next stage.

Guideline 11: Use lower commitment words

This Guideline cuts both ways in that lower commitment words like "Free Information" will increase your CTR but they can also lower your conversion levels. This guideline depends on your business strategy for the traffic. If your objective is direct sales then avoid these words but if the objective is to start a multi-stage sales pipeline then by all means use them.

Summary

Ad copy is more art than science and you need to continue to test your copy continually. Ad copy can age and lose performance but make sure that you change ad copy because of performance not because you are tired of it. You will become bored with the old ads way before your prospects and they are the one you are writing for.