When setting out to manage and optimize bids in paid search, looking at all the campaigns, adgroups and keywords at once can be overwhelming. I like using the impression share report as a starting point for focusing optimization strategies and managing bids.

In AdWords make the following report: 1. Report Type: Click Campaign Performance. 2. Settings: Set Weekly visits, set the date range for a few months and select all campaigns. 3. Advanced Settigns: Add the following Columns: Impression Share, Lost IS (Rank), Lost IS (Budget), Conversions, Conv. Rate, Cost/Conv.
That’s it – once the report is made export it into Excel. In Excel sort by Campaign so that you can see the increase or decrease in impression share week to week for each campaign. Now we can cover the what, why and how.

What:
Start off by looking for campaigns with low impression share and then look across at the Cost/Conv column. If Cost/Conv is within your accepted range for these low impression share campaigns, then you are leaving money on the table by not maximizing your impression share. Likewise, if impression share is high for certain campaigns and their Cost/Conv is high, you might consider decreasing impression share.

Why:
With these initial insights look at the Lost IS (rank) column and Lost IS (budget) column. These two columns will tell you why you have low impression share. If Lost IS (budget) is high, this means your ads are not showing as often as they could because your campaign budget is being tapped. If your Lost IS (rank) is high, this means your keyword bids are so low to the point that your ads aren’t appearing.

How:
The campaigns with low Cost/Conv and high Conv. Rate are you hero campaigns. These should have as much impression share as possible. Give them unlimited budget (why limit it? As long as the ROI is worth it you should push these campaigns as far as they’ll go) and give their keywords higher bids. Google has a bid simulator built in for giving you an idea of how much traffic will result in your bid, but don’t worry too much about it, set a bid that seems right and then test how it performs. You can adjust it once you see the results.
The campaigns that are in-between need a little more time and effort. This is where you’ll dive into individual adgroups and keywords to discover which ones are causing the bad Cost/Conv and low Conversion Rate. Decrease bids on the losers and increase bids on the winners. Click through your ads to see if the keywords you are bidding on match the landing pages you are giving your visitor. Try different keyword match types.

This PPC bid optimization strategy allows you to prioritize your efforts so that you increase the biggest winners and get rid of the biggest losers first. Once done, go back the next week and see your results. I like to make my changes all in one day and then leave it alone for a week instead of making little changes day to day which makes it harder to recognize causation.

I think this screen shot from insights for search tells the story all by itself. The age of hiring a “consultant” are coming to an end. Why would you hire someone with all this so-called experience when your own business, with it’s specific problems and issues, has all the data it needs to figure out what to do? What you really need is a skilled analyst to figure out what all that data is saying.

In a post by Stephen Few,

The problems that we face today, both big ones in society like the current health care debate and smaller ones like strategic business decisions, do not exist because we lack information, but because we don’t understand it. They can be solved only by developing skills and tools to make sense of information that is often complex. In other words, the major obstacle to solving modern problems isn’t the lack of information, solved by acquiring it, but the lack of understanding, solved by analytics.

Sometimes while looking at all your web analytics data it’s difficult to figure out where to focus. This dashboard allows you to take a very maco look at where your site is at, define where you want to be in terms of revenue and then set some high up goals.

This dashboard uses the following metrics: visits, conversions, conversion rate, average order value and total revenue. With some simple formulas you can see what effect a percent increase in conversion rate or average order value will have on revenue in a visual way.

So if you set your revenue goal first you can mess with the other metrics and then focus on which other metrics you want to divide and conquer. So let’s say you decide that if you could get 1,000 more visits while maintaining the same conversion rate you can reach your revenue goal. Then you can make your tactical plan to get those 1,000 more visits like working at SEO, expand your PPC keyword coverage or push your affiliates. If you see that a $3 increase in average order value will get you there, then maybe you’ll start merchandising your site differently or include more up sells – you get the idea.

Download: Web Analytics Planning Dashboard In Excel

Long Tail keywords individually might not make the biggest difference to your overall PPC account. But in aggregate these long tail keywords can sometimes mean huge amounts of traffic and lots of money. Setting up you PPC account with your most popular, or “head”, keywords set to broad match is not an effective strategy to capture all of your long tail traffic and have a positive PPC campaign. Here’s why:

1. You will hurt you click through rate due to less targeted ad copy. look at these two examples for the query “Gibson Acoustic Guitar”.

Where one is only bidding on the broad match of Gibson Guitar, the other is bidding on the longer phrase Gibson Acoustic Guitar. Not only is the former ad more targeted and therfore more likely to get my click, its quality score will be better due to keywords in the ad text which will save money and give it a higher ad position.

2. Conversion rate will improve. Take a look at the landing pages for both of the previous ads.

One is showing me exactly what I was looking for, Acoustic Guitars, and the other shows me both electric and acoustic which means it is not inline with my intent so I will most likely bounce.
3. Better bid management. Let’s say that you have your adwords accounts set up so that each one of these long tail products are organized by category and theme. This way if there is a seasonality element or if something goes on sale you can easily increase your bids for just that product segment and keep all the rest of your campaigns running at the same cost. This means you can be more nimble and cost effective with your inventory.

So that’s the why long tail keyword management is better than just using broad match head terms, here’s the how:

1. First start by running a Search Query Report in AdWords and find all the keywords that are trigging your ads that you arn’t currently bidding on that make sense. Orgainze these keywords into themes that you can build campaigns around. In this example’s case, one campain set up for general acoustic guitars, another around Gibson guitars and another around Gibson acoustic guitars.

2. Expand on that list with this long tail key word tool to figure out all the permutations of those keywords.

3. Also use modular ad text. Meaning don’t make the second line flow over into the third line on the adtext, make them seperate sentences. This will help you mix and match adtext on the fly so that if acoustic guitars go on sale you can easily swap out one of the lines and replace it with something like, “Now 20% Off, Buy Now!”

Monitoring these keywords takes more time and more effort to set up, but in the long run means a much more effective PPC marketing effort.

• Enhance memory with fun product centered quizzes and facts
• Add to credibility with customer testimonials or industry wards.
• Reveal hidden attributes by asking the customer how they use the product and then share that with the community.
• Hold your customer’s attention with stories of your product in action written by those who use it day to day.
• Influence preferences by making the product more interactive and vivid.

2. Conversation centered on what the interests of your customers.

• To do this, brainstorm 3 main interests that your customers are into that doesn’t have to do with your product. Maybe its gardening, traveling and raising kids. Put yourself in the head of your customers and find interesting content done by gardening blogs, talk about it and link to it. Invite your fans to submit their summer vacation plans. Write tips on best ways to keep kids safe at playgrounds. Remember, you’re not trying to write about these things and then secretly inject your brand name in the background somewhere or mention how your product is great when you’re gardening, traveling and raising kids. You’re just starting a conversation with your like-minded fans on subjects you are mutually interested in.

• One on one dialogs with customers about their questions and needs, open up their questions for the community to answer and discuss.
• Make customers famous by featuring their posts about your product and highlight their images submitted to you.
• Shout-outs and props given to fans who do something cool or note-worthy.

Any more ideas on conversation starters for brands? Leave em’ in the comments.