The average CPC for Online advertisement in a Fashion and Clothing industry would be around $0.09 with an average CTR of 0.15%. The campaign was circulating around Shoes, Clothing, Underwear, Socks both for Men and Women.

The result of the Campaign during these 16 days saw:
CPCs and Clicks Behaviour:

• The CPC was more or less Flat except on DEC 1 when it went extremely high to be US$ 0.29. It was those high value clicks were bought with very few clicks before the Campaign was stopped.
• The clicks went extremely high during the launch approximately spending nearly US$ 3000 per day. The CPC was acceptable between 9 to 10 Cents.

CTRs - Dropped due to more spending:

• Notice CTR fell down which gives a message that fresh Ads were very interesting for the users once the campaign was launched but as period passed by it became stale and it fell around 0.12%.

 Please see below the co-relation between the CPC and CTRs along with the Impression and CTRs.
AS the impression grew the CTR fell and while the fell in CTR was being recorded it saw increase in CPC.

The strategy seems to reflect a very aggressive marketing over few days to capture enough visit to meet the KPI. In general it is better to lose the money within a short span of time and than concentrate over optimizing the effort to target on the products which could be sold and there is demand for the product in the market.


Note: The above information are meant for instructional purpose and it could vary depending on the criteria and type of Ads being served.

Quality Score of a Keyword is related towards the performance of the Keyword participating in an auction and it is a real time calculation when the auction is being conducted and the keyword is eligible to participate. Quality score does is tied with the Adtext, Campaign, Account and Website Performance.

The quality score binds directly with the URL but it has other factors influencing the score.Please be mindful that the Quality score is not influenced by Google Display Network but it soley relaies on Search Network.

Tips Improving Quality Score:

• Always build the Campaign, AdGroup, Adtext and Keyword which are tightly Knitted. A thorough check is vital to be done immediately to see the Quality Score of the keyword.
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion in the Text Ads helps improve the overall Qualty Score of the Keyword.
• It is all about relevancy - Keyword should be relevant with the Adtext, AdGroup and the most important Landing Page URL and its Content.
• Initial Bid should be high enough to accrue higher CTR which would improve Quality Score and the actual CPC which is to be paid.

PPC and Organic Search are two completely different segment of traffic. The traffic which are being bought either CPC, CPA, CPM  etc. are classified in terms of PPC while those traffic which are being pouring as a result of search engine optimization or being referred via search engine are classified under organic search.

SEM professionals are always placed under a radar to a very generic question like -

• Does PPC takes away conversion from Organic Search?

• The answer to this question is:
  No, PPC does not take away conversion from Organic Search. It helps drive additional traffic to the website in the form of organic search. With the help of PPC and a significant improvement on the landing page via web-optimizer tool; an improvement could be made to the overall website.
  
  The improvement in the website and optimizing the page for the keywords is only the first step. Next step would be the SEO efforts like keyword analysis, keyword density analysis, keyword proximity analysis, link building, Social network awareness, Press release, Article publication etc. Finally, PPC activity is a must to uplift the quality of traffic. Once enough traffic is seen coming and the SEO effects comes into play the organic traffic received by the page is increased.
  
  It is seen that the PPC traffic can help us optimize the keywords which are to be targeted for SEO purpose. Not all the keywords which generates tons of clicks always convert. Hence to decide the keywords which are difficult to rank and it is worth testing the goal of the website using PPC. Once the myth is proved with the help of PPC it can next be passed to SEO team to optimize the keyword for Organic search.

It is seen that there is 6% to 8% increment in traffic while the both organic and PPC are running simultaneously. This stat might vary based on the size of the website and total traffic the site is receiving. Moreover also note seasonality and category of website would influence the the traffic numbers.  

AS per Google "Re-marketing is a feature of interest-based advertisement". Re-marketing in a layman terms could be explained as those visitor who visited your website are being again served with advertisement across various website. Re-marketing or call it Re-targeting it is highly targeted as the end users being targeted are not a new visitors but are visitors who once during their purchase cycle had visited the website. These users might have dropped off during their purchase cycle. Re-targeting these users will allow us to re-offer the inventory which he was interested or in other term Convert Repeat Visitors into Customers.


Having said that re-marketing is targeting the visitors who are not the new visitor but returning it is always very significant to classify these users. These users should be segmented properly. The users segmentation would be based upon the type of page and category the user was browsing. The granular the segmentation higher probability of conversion. The user could be re-targeted and thanks to re-marketing but the strategy of implementing the user categorization is vital. It is also important to consider that the visitor had left off the page because the product was not available to catch the interest a mechanism of serving those products which others were interested could lead towards conversion.

A general information on how re-marketing works:

• It is all about tracking:
• A JavaScript or Pixel Image is placed in the website. The code is activated every time the page loads. The data is transmitted via the code to the server which is responsible for offering remarketing ore re-targeting solution.
• It is all about getting to know your visitor: 
• Cookie is placed for every visitor who visits the website. The cookie has specific information at a granular level which is not only limited to the page the users visited but also the place where he dropped off.
  
• Follow visitor during his purchase cycle:
• The third party offering the solution is than capable of serving the visitor with the same product at a discounted price. Or serving alternative products with a highly targeted message as "Purchase now until the stock lasts - Last 3 items remaining".
• Providing sense of urgency and serving the item along with related product would help ease the visitor to make quick decision.
  

How can Remarketing influence Website Performance?
The answer to this question is very simple. The targeting and re-targeting visitor who are interested in your products in every step of purchase cycle could influence the visitor to purchase. There wouldn't be any company in this world who wouldn't want to appear in the search result or either in the form of MSE, PPC, CPC, CPA, CPM or even email marketing. The presence is utmost when the visitor is looking for you. It would be a crime against marketing if the presence is not marked especially when the user is looking for you or your product. Influence on the performance of the website would be seen as generally there is 2% visitor of the website converts while 98% visitors would abandon the website. To improve the performance a highly targeted campaign should be crafted to capture not only the visitor during the Pre-purchase but also Post-purchase. Based on the segmentation different kind of message is to be delivered.

Is price comparison available on Google? The search query are returning pages with the hotel properties and its review along with an arrow which would display the prices. This could also be a test being conducted over the google search pages. It might possibly being done for a better user experience. It could be the user conducting research might also be interested to purchase the properties.

Google search results for the term "hotel budapest" is displaying price for hotels for the selected date range. The query triggered the hotels with review and and price. These results are being seen only for the organic search result. A small drop down beneath if clicked would display the starting rate in US$ and the website offering the property at that price. It also displayed the rate with tax in small letters.

Price Comparison on Google Search Page - Search Query - "Hotel Budapest"
  

Price Comparison on Google Search Page - Search Query - "Hotel Bangkok"

View Through Conversion - Mostly when the campaign is running in CPM mode or if the Campaign is crafted for display advertisement, it is essential that there are two different metrics being reported. Actual conversion and View through Conversion.

Now, let us understand -  What is View Through Conversion?
Those people who are exposed via an advertisement which they actually saw during their research and purchase cycle. They might not actually click the advertisement but would later at certain period of their purchase cycle would commit their purchase via different advertisement or the same campaign. All those advertisement which they were exposed are in-fact view through conversion. And the advertisement  which they ad influence them to buy was actual conversion.

Advantage of tracking View Through Conversion -

• Justifying those advertisement which have brought traffic and played a minor role in conversion. This metrics would than help re-define the marketing campaign.
• Tracking visitor based on those people who had seen the ads and they who went forward to buy the product via different ad. These metrics wold help enhance the performance of the campaign.
• Higher click through rate doesn't actually means they are ot performing, they might be part of view through conversion (micro-conversion).

Last click attribution model has always been debated. In a natural buying cycle an end user would tend to research for the products over various networks. The user is than exposed to various campaign across Search Engines, Meta Search Engines, Content Network, Email Campaign, Re-marketing Campaign etc.

Now once the user is being exposed to various stages of product research till product purchase life cycle, he is exposed to different Campaign. The million dollar question would be Who should be credited for the Purchase made?

There are two different approach -

• Last click attribution method.
• Measure Micro Conversion.

 Usually in a natural buying cycle while research is being made often keywords search funnel could help track Keywords during buying cycle. Similar approach is to be used for tracking micro conversion. Tracking which campaign assisted in executing the conversion.

Advantage of Measuring Micro Conversion -

• Justice towards the campaign which is exposing the user during the purchase cycle. Mostly the probable consumer conducting research once exposed to the Ads would tend to return back and the probability of user returning via Brand Campaign is higher.
• Higher Click Trough Rate and Lower Conversion rate isn't an impression that Campaign is under performing.
• Not optimizing the Campaign based on the last click attribution method would lead towards increase in conversion.

How to Major effectiveness of Micro Conversion -
To measure the micro conversion a simple approach would be by measuring the impact of the traffic being send across in one particular domain via a channel should to be monitored.

For instance, several  Campaign are running across various channel like CPC, PPC, MSE, SMM etc. These should be all tracked and time stamp should be placed on the user which was first exposed to towards the campaign. Next there should also be a provision of stamping the user every-time he actually lands on the website. This will easily allow one to track the performance on the campaign which was actually responsible for the conversion. Hence the justice is given to the campaign and both micro-conversion and macro-conversion.

Practically it is ideal to attribute the campaign based on the micro-conversion and macro-conversion. A value could be assigned to the type of conversion. And based on the conversion the total value attributed by the conversion could be measured. Now, when everything looks good there is always a hurdle and this hurdle is known as View through Conversion. Let us discuss the View through Conversion and its importance in next blog.

Is it a myth or a proven fact that Keyword Insertion has a positive Impact on Quality Score? The answer to this question revolves around the Quality Score itself.

What is Quality Score?
For every query that is eligible to participate in an auction has a capability to triggers an ad. A Quality Score is than updated frequently and is a performance based. Quality Score is determined by following three criteria:

• Click Through Rate
• Relevance
• Landing Page Quality

Now, coming back to our question earlier, does Keyword Insertion has a positive impact over the quality score. In-fact yes the quality score could have positive impact due to keyword insertion. The reason for this would be the Ad triggered by the keyword would enhance the Ad making it more relevant to the user hence probability of Ad receiving Click would be higher.

The two major criteria Click Through Rate and Ad relevancy is both met due to Keyword insertion. There are other external factor which shouldn't be ignored such as Landing page Quality, the bid and average position.

Brand, Brand, Brand everyone is trying to build their brand. Be either offline or online. In this era online presence is a must. Building a website and developing a logo alone are not the only work. Having an online presence, investing on offline advertisement, affiliate marketing, email marketing, online marketing, media presence etc. are all the channel which is needed to build a brand. Building brand is a constant process.

On numerous occasion it is mentioned to advertisers - "Why do we need to do PPC on our Brand terms? We have our website and organic link would appear if people are looking for the brand terms".

It is always good to have your website present if the brand term is being searched. There isn't any guarantee that the searches being made is only the brand term but it could be combination of brand terms and competitors brand term. It could also be that the searches are being conducted as a long tail which would than result the organic search not to appear for long tail keywords. No visibility means lost of opportunity. Being in the market it is always necessary to mark the presence when the searches are being made. It is a must to be mark the presence when people are looking for you. This could be tackled easily with the help of PPC.

A common mistake which is seen widely in the company while a promotional campaign is being executed. All the efforts are than places in an offline arena completely ignoring the online market. This would result into not tapping those people which see the brand offline and conduct their research online. Having offline campaign on and no supportive online campaign would lead towards loss of opportunity or even worse allowing the affiliate to cash onto the efforts made offline. It is equally important to conduct both offline and online advertisement simultaneously. Although the offline conversion could be a macro conversion, other sources could be considered as micro conversion. Classifying the conversion into micro and macro conversion could overall change the picture the way a brand is perceived.

Brand strength is a long term investment. It is equally necessary to build the brand first and then protect the strong brand which you have. The brand equity is just like financial equity. The longer the brand is existing in the market the more it is able to leave the mark in the mind of audience. It may also start to blend with the culture as people trust the brand and love it as they grow with the brand. Building a new brand is difficult but not tapping the market when the searches are being made is worse. It is more or less of a crime against the fundamentals of brand building cycle.

How can one build the brand Online? The following areas are specifically available for online marketing

• Online Search
• Content Network
• Image Searches
• Re-marketing
• Email Marketing

How can one utilize the data gathered from Brand? The metrics which would play a role in identifying the performance of how the brand is moving.

• Impression on the Exact brand Term
• Increment in Visitors
• Visitors Loyalty  (Repeat Visitor)
• Time spent on the site
• Bounce Rate
• Total Page Views

If we see tons of traffic pouring in and not enough visitors are seen over the website. A common question pops in mind why the Click Through Rate is down? This drop in Click Through Rate could be brought about by following reasons:

• Adtext is not appealing.
• Lower average position resulting less clicks and reduce in CTR.
• New/Existing player bidding aggressively in the market.
• Lower Quality Score.

All these above scenario could be improved by improving the Adtext by improving the message being delivered. Increasing the CPC could result into better average position and resulting into more Clicks. The quality score could be improved by tightly targeting the adtext and keywords and also tweaking the landing page. New player keeps coming in market and existing player would become aggressive at times this could be difficult but google adwords automated rule could help overcome this. To improve the CTR please follow the tips mentioned below:

• Continous A/B testing to improve the AdCopy.
• Ensure the CPC bid would leave towards Top 3 spots where the click density is high.
• Include Sitelinks this would improve the presence of Adtext and resulting in improved CTR..
• A proper call to action.
• The message in the AdCopy should match the content of he landing page.

Example of AdCopy -

The above AdCopy could be improved. But before the new AdCopy is placesd it is recommended to do A/B testing over the AdCopy.


An example on the way ti would be displayed for short headline.

Longer Headline in AdCopy - 
Google recently started providing the Headline which is longer than 25 Characters. The longer Headline is more appealing providing To qualify for this longer Headline certain criteria should be met. Now having said that I would lie to rephrase that it is in fact not a longer Headline, but it is more of less of presentation of the AdCopy. Will this help? Yes, study shows that having longer headline improves the chances of CTR. It stands out and is more appealing than the Short Headline.

Minimum Requirements to meet longer Headlines requirment -

• Description Line 1 should end with proper punctuation.Example - Period, Question mark and Exclamation mark.
• Enough traffic for the search term which allows the ads to appear on the left side of top 3 spots.

Example -

It is seen that having a longer headline text would improve the CTR between 3% to 25%. On average a 7% improve in CTR could be seen across both non-brand and brand terms. This improvement in CTR could be assumed to be as a result of better user experience and visibility of the PPC advertisement over Organic result. The key take away from the combination of headline should be that the description Line1 and the headline should provide enough information for the people to click on the Ads. The Line 2 would serve as secondary information which AdCopy is trying to deliver.


Longer headline, it is the combination of Headline plus the description in Line 1.



Beside the longer headline which is the combination of headline and Line 1, it seems there are some results seen which infact has headline longer than 25 characters. It won't be surprising if it comes into picture sooner or later.

A common question that every advertiser has, I would like to improve my conversion while lowering my cost and improving my ROI. Having sitelinks provides advertiser with more option to inform their audience about products. These sitelinks are available at Campaign level at Ad extensions tab. Upto 10 sitelinks are available for advertisers. If the search term is applicable to appear in the top 3 spots on the left side of the Google search, these sitelinks are displayed just below the description. Google Adwords system however only displays minimum 2 site-links and maximum 4 site-links.




Advantage of using Sitelinks for advertisers:

• Segmentation of main product in sub product while the main product is being researched.
• Additional message for audience in the form of sitelinks instead of only description line 1 and description line 2.
• An option to serve the target audience to their specific product or service page.
• Sitelinks helps increasing the CTR by 10% to 30% which in-return would boost the conversion rate from 10% to 40%.

How do we improve Sitelinks performance?

Four actionable tips for sitelinks to improve the performance.

• Sitelinks used should be related to the products on a sub category of which the top level category the target audience is researching for.
• If the target product is meant for a City, it is worth capturing the areas as a sitelinks.
• Description of sitelinks should be descriptive & relay the message. The sitelinks with star (★ ) symbol helps itself  standout from the crowd.
• Related best selling products are vital to capture the attention of the audience.

For Instance:
My products are engaged in the business of selling airline ticket for Bangkok. I would than target my campaign Bangkok with four sitelinks which are the name of different adgroup as an areas in Bangkok.


Having related site links in line with the main product would help audience focus on the related product in their initial stage of research and decision making process. For every advertiser it is worth considering the sub products conversion while the main product is being featured such that those on the top radar could be served as site links.

Update: Google doesn't allow usage of special symbols in Sitelinks such that there is no competitive advantage and standard is maintained. Also, please note Google Adwords now supports Sitelink Extension.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) a model revolving around the conversion optimizer. The biggest advantage of this model is that the queries triggered for CPA model are considers origin of users, IP of the user, time the query is being executed, location of the user, browser language setting, historical performance of the campaign etc. Ensure the tracking conversion code is always present in the thank you page. Google Adwords system while opted into CPA model delivers the Ads based on its learning. CPA model is a conversion based optimizer and depends on the Conversion numbers. Although the model is CPA the charge for this model is based on CPC.

It is not recommended to switch CPC to CPA and vice versa. Effect of switching the model usually takes eight  hours to behave normally. It is always good to start the CPA model with slightly higher CPA bid and gradually optimize the CPA bid .While making a switch a default CPA bid is recommended, it is only for a reference purpose and should be updated by the advertiser. The CPA model bid is implemented at Adgroup level. There must be 30 Conversion in a month to have the CPC to CPA model bidding feature automatically enabled. It does get enabled automatically. This would mean at least approximately 7 conversion per week. Moreover it will also depend on total number of adgroups present inside the Campaign. The more conversion before enabling the Campaign to CPA model the merrier it is.


Optimal CPA Bid - Last two weeks Cost Per Acquisition should be used to benchmark the data before applying the CPA bid. Ideally, the CPA bid should be around +/-10% of the real CPA. Revisiting CPA on a weekly or twice per week to ensure the CPA bid is still in acceptable range. Always determine the ROI which you are willing to achieve and  calculate the CPA which you are willing to pay.

• CPA Bid = Total margin per conversion * ROI  you are willing to achieve

OR

• Average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) = Average Cost per Click / Conversion Rate

Remember, seasonality would lead towards price fluctuation and site performance plays a very important role and hence a constant update would be needed while calculating the CPA. Using a factor for adjusting CPA could be done based on learning. At least two weeks are needed to measure the true performance of the CPA model. CPA model is an ideal model and this could be seen as a future for various advertiser. There is no keywords based bidding required but reviewing SQR to improve the Campaign performance. For small advertisers this could be a blessing as they could opt into CPA Campaign and Google would ensure there CPA goal are met without having to worry about the bid for each keyword.

Google instant, has redefined the way we search. As we type along suggestions are made by the system, it is indeed helpful and people would tend to rely on the suggestions being provided in the search box. This lead towards less thinking and influence the query as per the suggestion made by Google instant. The main advantage of Google Instant is that there would be less new query and it would also reduce 30-90 seconds typing and  2 to 5 seconds per search. There are 20% new queries seen coming every month and these new queries are search terms which Google system had never recorded.

Google instant also gives the feeling towards he death of long tail keywords. The death of long tail keywords would mean that more competition in popular terms overall increasing the CPC. The google instant also gives the feeling of death of SEO. Well, it won't be a total death but rather an intense competition over the popular query terms.

As we are moving towards an instant era of search engine, the results are displayed in the search box and the resultant page changes instantly. One important thing to note for Adowrds advertiser is that as the user types, the suggestion are placed in the search box. If the user stops typing for more than 3 seconds those partial query displayed in the search box in grey color are the terms that would appear on the Search Quer Results (SQR).

PPC focus should not be only ROI but also the factor influencing the growth of better performing campaign and optimizing the bad ones to make it profitable. There are various drivers involved in driving the pay per click –

• Click Through Rate (CTR)
• Average Position (Ad Rank)
• Quality Score
• Impression Share
• Bounce Rate
• Conversion Rate

These above metrics play are the most important part in improving campaign and its performance. As holiday season approaches we should expect more traffic. These traffic should be optimize so the overall KPI of the SEM is met. Measuring the success of online advertising is defended by the popularity of the ads being served to public which in return would deliver conversion.

Click Through Rate (CTR): Number of Clicks/Number of Impressions
To measure the performance of the adtext CTR plays the most important role. This metrics helps evaluate the interest of the person willing to buy the product. Having a lower CTR would help understand the importance message being delivered to the audience is not impressive to engage them to visit the website. Hence action should be taken to improve the Adtext.

Average Position (Ad Rank): CPC Bid * Quality Score
The actual position of the Ad being displayed in the search page.The position of the Ad is calculated based on Quality Score and the CPC bid which the advertiser is willing to pay. Total clicks accrued could vary by position. 

Quality Score: Average Position (Ad Rank)/CPC Bid ) + Other Factors
Computation of Quality Score involves various metrics and is a range between 1 to 10 where 1 being the poorest and 10 being the best. Higher the quality score lower the CPC. Factors involved in computing Quality score is mentioned below:

• Historical Performance of CTR and Accounts
• Click Through Rate (CTR)
• URLS of the AdGroup
• Ad Copy Relevance
• Relevancy of the Keywords with the Ad Group
• Relevancy of the Keyword matched with the Ad and the Search Query
• Quality of the Landing Page
• Loading Time of the Landing Page
• Geographical Considerations where the Adwill be shown
• Other Factors

 
Conversion Rate:Total Goals Met/Total Visitors
 An indication for the quality of the clicks being bought. Higher conversion rate indicates that the quality of the clicks are good and the right product is being offered to the visitors. A goal could vary from industry to industry, a registration could  be consider a conversion for one company while purchase could be goal for another. It should always be in the norms of advertisers to improve conversion rate.

Impression Share: Total  Market Impression - Total Impression where Ad participated
It indicates the share of voice in the category the competition where the auction participated. Once the account is set the category of arena to be competed is chosen, the ads are displayed in the same category and impression share indicates the lost of opportunity due to impressions share. These loss of opportunity could be due to budget limitation or could be due to poor quality score.

Bounce Rate: Total Visits on the Page - Total Visitors left without any activity on the Page
It is one of the most important metrics for any online business. It indicates the visitors interest over the page once he landed on it. If the user leaves without any activity or viewing any other pages of the site it would be an indication that the information which he was looking was not found on the page. Lower the bounce rate better the page would be.

All these above metrics are a proper way of evaluating the performance  the Campaign. The success, failure and the improvement of the campaign could be made if the above metrics are measured effectively. To measure the metrics properly it should always be considered with the industry specific benchmark. Nevertheless the trend over the period of time could also indicate the performance of the campaign.