Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Sure you can manage Google AdWords yourself, but do really want to? Do you have the time to really manage all of your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns as closely and as carefully as you would like to? Are you content with how they are performing and not really looking to save both your time and advertising dollars? If you answered “yes” to that last question, please just send me a check for $10,000 since you don’t mind just throwing money away.

The confidentiality of our clients is important so I am not revealing any names here, but I would like to share some actual numbers that we have seen here at JumpFly as a result of our efforts. I looked at some PPC advertising data samples from the first quarter of 2008 and compared them to the first quarter of 2009. Sure, I can make these numbers up, but it’s just much easier to show you the real numbers as they truthfully exist.

JumpFly Client #1

1st Quarter 2008 – 139 conversions at $351.55 each with a total spend of approx. $49,000.
1st Quarter 2009 – 295 conversions at $125.51 each with a total spend of approx. $37,000.

Yes, they spent about $12,000 dollars LESS but more than DOUBLED their number of conversions. True story.

JumpFly Client #2

1st Quarter 2008 – 205 conversions at $62.82 each with a total spend of approx. $21,000.
1st Quarter 2009 – 301 conversions at $32.47 each with a total spend of approx. $10,000.

Yes, they spent about $11,000 dollars LESS but increased conversions by nearly 100 more. True story.

JumpFly Client #3

1st Quarter 2008 – 252 conversions at $9.87 each with a total spend of approx. $2,500.
1st Quarter 2009 – 1,859 conversions at $5.91 each with a total spend of approx. $11,000.

Yes, the spend is greatly increased as we took their business to a whole new level, while bringing their conversion costs down. Huge sales growth with conversions growing over 1,500 compared to the same time period a year earlier. True story.

JumpFly Client #4

1st Quarter 2008 – 4,027 conversions at $9.04 each with a total spend of approx. $36,000.
1st Quarter 2009 – 5,204 conversions at $6.36 each with a total spend of approx. $33,000.

Yes, they spent about $3,000 LESS while growing conversions over 1,000 at a lower cost. True story.

And the numbers above don’t take into the account the time and worry these business owners took off their shoulders by outsourcing their PPC management.

I’m not saying that professional PPC management will produce the same results for every company, but very positive results certainly can come from having a professional pay per click management company like JumpFly assisting you along the way. During these tight economic times, can you afford not to?

More about Jack

The Google AdWords Traffic Estimator has been around for awhile, but no one I talk to seems to know about it.  I use the Google Traffic Estimator all the time and I want to share it with you so you can see its value too.  It is especially valuable for local businesses running Google AdWords campaigns in smaller geographic regions.

We all know about Google’s Keyword Tool which provides traffic information for your terms but a limitation on the Keyword Tool data is that it is either global or country based (the column labeled “local” now, means U.S. or whatever country was selected at the top of the page). 

This traffic data is good if you are running a national campaign – but not as useful for geographically targeted campaigns.  It can be used to determine relative traffic between keywords (i.e., what gets more traffic? Car dealer or Auto dealer?), but it falls short if you are trying to figure out what to expect when you when you are running campaigns in just Dallas or Los Angeles.

So, what I use for local traffic data is the Google Traffic Estimator.  You enter your keywords (however many you want) and a specific region – anywhere from a country, to a state, to a city or even a zip code with a radius.  If you like, you may also enter your desired daily budget and your CPC. 

The results? The traffic you can expect in one day for each keyword in the region you selected!  Now, keep in mind, there are the same limitations to this data as there are with the Google Keyword Tool – I find the traffic data to be more accurate than the estimated CPC. But it’s a good starting point.

The Google AdWords Traffic Estimator provides extremely powerful data for your Google AdWords campaign efforts. You should use this data to decide where to spend the majority of your time.  Any reputable PPC management firm would always suggest the majority of your time should be spent on keywords that can drive the most targeted traffic to your site.  Don’t waste your valuable time on terms that don’t deliver direct benefit (because they just aren’t searched on very often). That doesn’t mean don’t have them in your account, just don’t spend the majority of your time on them. Focus your attention on the top terms.  Yes, you would have seen this data yourself once your campaign was running for awhile, but this gives you the boost to focus on the right terms from the very beginning. 

Lately I’ve been getting asked by Google AdWords clients for help with Google Analytics and the need seems to be increasing rapidly. More and more of my ppc advertising clients are wanting information about their site, bounce rate, exit pages, revenue and more (Google Analytics is a free tracking program offered by Google). I’m not a Google Analytics expert by any means, but I do know the basics of how to create an account, how to implement the code, how to setup goals (which is critical for tracking conversions) and how to analyze results.

Google Analytics provides great information, but one issue that can arise is when Google Analytics transaction numbers and the Google AdWords conversion tracking numbers don’t jive. I know that different packages are not going to track exactly the same, but most of the time, they are close enough that it’s not a big deal. However, a big issue arises when you have an e-commerce site and a decent percentage of people don’t order on their first visit, but come back and order at a later date.

Here’s the problem: Google AdWords tracks “first touch” – if someone searches on a term, clicks on your ad and comes to your site, does not order at that moment, but comes back a week later, AdWords will log the conversion back that first date and attribute the sale to AdWords. Analytics on the other hand tracks “last touch.” In our same scenario, if someone were to search, click an ad, visit the site and leave, then come back a week later, Analytics would attribute that search to organic or other, unless they did a search and clicked on an ad again. Not a big deal if a majority of visitors order on the first visit, but if you have a large amount of people who order at a later date, this can be present a huge problem.

I have two clients who have this issue. For one of them, 40% of visitors don’t order on their first visit, and the other is 50%. And you guessed it, there’s a 40% and 50% difference in AdWords conversions and Analytics transactions. They can’t get a true picture of their PPC ROI with Google Analytics because they only see the revenue for anyone who ordered the first time they visited the site.

The big question is why is that? You would think that, both being Google products, they would track the same way, or at least have an option to track that way, but they don’t. Frustrating for both me and my clients!

But, I’ll explain how to get around this dilemma in my next Blog.

More about Nikki