Bidding Best Practices (Part 2): Improving Results with Location Bid Adjustments

Today’s post about improving results with location bid adjustments is the second in a bidding best practices series. The series began with prioritizing and iterating on your bid adjustments.

Your advertising performance almost always varies by location, no matter what kind of business you run. The good news is that if you optimize your bids for different locations, you can increase your sales and ROI.

Optimizing bids for better performance by location
With enhanced campaigns, it’s now much easier to boost bids in locations where your performance is stronger and reduce bids where performance is weaker. Before enhanced campaigns, you’d have to set up and manage an identical campaign for every location where you wanted unique bids. Since this was hard, the most common approach to location optimization has been to cut out underperforming locations using targeting exclusions. But in the long run, this approach can limit your growth and reduce your business competitiveness. So we recommend using bid adjustments rather than location exclusions.

Calculating location bid adjustments
Start by downloading a location performance report. Here’s how, using the AdWords interface:

1. Set the date range to the past 30 days (longer if your campaign is on the smaller side).
2. Click on the “Location details” button and select “What triggered your ad.”
3. Click the View button and select Region.
4. Click Download.

To maximize orders or leads at a particular CPA or ROI level, a common best practice for setting bid adjustments is to equalize your target metrics across all locations. As a math formula, it looks like this:

Location bid adjustment = 100% * ( ( Campaign goal ÷ Actual performance ) - 1 )

Here’s an example from a campaign with a cost-per-action goal.

Example of calculating your location bid adjustment

Location	Conversions	Cost	CPA	CPA Goal	Location bid adjustment
Florida	100	$800	$8	$10	100% * [(10÷8) - 1] = +25%
New York	120	$1080	$9	$10	100% * [(10÷9) - 1] = +11%
Ohio	70	$1050	$15	$10	100% * [(10÷15) - 1] = -33%
Pennsylvania	85	$850	$10	$10	100% * [(10÷10) - 1] = 0%

You can implement your bid adjustments in the AdWords interface (directions) or using the AdWords Editor (directions).

Businesses with local stores or service areas
Closer customers are often more likely to buy from you and less costly to serve. So if your business has local stores or service areas, you should consider optimizing your bids based on customer proximity. For example, you can easily set one location target for customers within 2 miles of your business locations, and a second target for customers within 20 miles of your business locations (directions). Then use the approach described above to calculate your optimum bid adjustment for your two location extension targets.

Tips and reminders

• Maintain a broad location target to cover your entire potential market. Targeting too narrowly can limit your reach, clicks and conversions.
  
  
• It’s OK to set overlapping location targets with bid adjustments. We’ll only apply the most specific location bid adjustment. For example, say you have a +10% bid adjustment for Canada and a +20% bid adjustment for Montreal. When someone searches in Montreal, your bid will be increased by 20%. And you’ll see distinct performance stats for Montreal and all of Canada except Montreal on the Locations subtab on the campaign Settings main tab.
  
  
• Be careful when you don’t have much data. Otherwise your calculated bid adjustments could end up being too high or too low, and you could end up with worse results instead of better. If you don’t have statistical expertise on hand, we recommend not adjusting bids in locations with fewer than 1000 clicks and 30 conversions, as a general rule of thumb. Lengthening the date range for your reports to the past 90 days or more can help.
  
  
• Periodically check performance and increment your bid adjustments. From time to time, check your performance for each location target on the Locations subtab. Incrementally raise your bid adjustment where your performance is above your goal, and lower your bid adjustment where your performance is below your goal. This will allow you to optimize your bids over time and adjust to changing consumer behavior.
  

Posted by John Sullivan, Global Search Solutions

$#*! Bankers Say

This week, I had the privilege to, once again, conduct a customer experience analysis for a client.  This is one of my favorite activities as a consultant.  I get to walk into bank and credit union branches from all over the country and see the very best ... and, unfortunately, the very worst in what our industry has to offer.

Every time we conduct this exercise, I'm shocked by the stuff that comes our of banker's mouths.  We spend so much time training our staff on operational issues that, when they walk onstage with a customer or prospect, that's all they know to talk about.

Here are some examples of $#*! Bankers Say that we've heard when asking for information on checking accounts:

• "We don't have that phone scanning thing for checks, but I think Chase does."
• "We'll have to run you through Chexsystems.  And, if you qualify, we'll tell you what accounts you qualify for." (Not a great way to make a customer feel welcome)
• "We require two forms of ID." (So what)
• "It will cost you $50 to open an account." (They meant the minimum balance to open the account is $50)
• "We have a checking account for seniors." (To an obviously middle aged customer)
• "The brochures are over there." (They point and the conversation's over)
• "Tell me what you want."
• "We have the (XYZ) account, but the fee is..." (or any "But" statement!  Nothing good ever comes out of an employee's mouth after the word, "but.")
• "Our checking account pays interest, but the rate isn't very good." (See?)
• "They have a good online banking system." or "They can open the account." (Like the person doesn't actually work at the bank)
• "Is the checking account for you?" (No, it's a gift!)
• Any personal introduction after the conversation has ended and the customer is walking away.

And my personal favorite...

• "If you'd like to open an account, you can come back and talk to me. (Why not, right NOW?!?!)

To avoid this type of experience, follow a few simple guidelines:

• Find out what the customer needs before you start spewing information.  Ask: Where they bank now, what kind of account they have, how they use it, what they like and don't like about it.
• Make one or two product recommendations based on the customer's answers.
• Focus on benefits.  How will this account make their life easier based on what they said they want.
• Leave fees for the account opening.  Fee disclosure is a regulation, but doesn't need to be used to "sell" a product.
• Don't read the brochure to the customer ... know your products.  It sounds basic, but too many bankers seem to be learning the product while they read the brochure to sell it.  Better yet, every employee should have an account from your institution.
• "Conduct" operations ... don't "discuss" them.  In a restaurant you never hear, "We'll be happy to bring you that steak, but first someone will have to kill a cow."  

And most importantly...

• Treat every customer as if they are a guest in your home!  Don't point ... walk them over, make formal introductions and for goodness sake ...  SHOW SOME PERSONALITY!!!!

For a blog about our customer experience process and more tips, click here.

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We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

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Lessons From a Hundred Bank Experiences

I’m a career marketer.  Growing up as an ad agency account executive, maturing as a credit union marketing VP and now honing my skills as a marketing consultant for financial institutions.  If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all of my experiences … no matter what industry you are in, no matter what segment you target, no mater what product or service you are peddling … the customer experience is king! 

That’s why, when sizing up our credit union and community bank clients, we often start by “shopping” their branches and those of their competition.  This has allowed me to experience, first hand, how more than a hundred branches hit a home run with members & customers – or completely screw it up.

Here’s what you can learn from a hundred credit union and bank shops.

THE PROCESS

First, you can do this exercise with your competitors yourself.  We simply enter the branches as if we are unhappy with our current bank and are shopping for a new checking account. 

Now here’s the tricky part.  After asking for checking information we simply shut up!  From there, let the shopped employee shine or fail.

What should you measure?

Make sure that you measure the exact same criteria across all shops.  This will keep a subjective exercise as scientifically objective as possible.  We measure on a 1-10 scale across three main areas:

1. Service

• What is the image of the branch?  Is it clean?  Professional? Comfortable or staunchy?
• Are you greeted promptly?  Do they even bother to look up or smile?
• Do they make eye contact during your conversation and are they courteous?

2. Sales

• Do they ask qualifying questions to determine your needs and wants?
• How is the product presentation?  Do they simply read the brochure or do they have a unique way to present their offerings?
• Do they offer a useful cross sell?
• Do they attempt to close the deal and help you leave as a new customer or member?

3. Overall

• Given the total experience, would you open an account with this institution?

This simple process, when compared with an honest evaluation of your own institution’s branches will show you where you are better, where you are weak and most importantly where you can leverage differentiation against the competition.

WHAT WE’VE EXPERIENCED

After more than a hundred branch experiences, I can sum up what we typically find in one of three categories: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  Which would your branches fall into?

The Ugly: “The brochure handoff.”  These are the quickest shops as the staff simply handoff a checking brochure without even a conversation.  In one instance, I was handed the bank’s “product Bible” – a 50 page book – where I was expected to leaf through and find the page on checking myself.  This happens more often than any of us would like to believe.

The Bad: “The crutch.”  This is the most common type of shop, where the staff literally reads the product brochure to the potential member or customer.  I’ve even had tellers tell me all about their 50+ Senior Checking.  As a 40 year-old man with the heart of a 20-something, I take particular offense to these institutions!  The lesson here is to think about the “tools” that you are giving your frontline staff and how they may actually be used in real life in your branches.

The Good: These are the best shops, where staff asks relevant questions, recommends products based on the conversation and shares personal experiences of how they use the products.  The best-of-the-best treat you as if you are a guest in their home – offering you refreshments and walking you to the door when you leave.

TIPS

Each market has it’s own flare and each institution can learn something different from this exercise, but here are a few tips that we can all take away.

1. Get ‘em talking

Ask basic questions designed to generate meaningful conversation.

•       About their family

•       About their work

•       Where they bank now

•       Why they want to change

•       How they plan to use the account

2. Listen before you talk

It’s not a test! When a prospect asks about your checking account, they don’t want you to prove that you know all of the products that your institution offers.  They only want to hear about what’s relevant to them.

3. They came in for a reason

They got off their couch and drove past several other banks to get to your branch.  They walked into your branch for a reason.  Ask to open the account now!

4. Don’t give up

I’m sorry marketers, but your brochures are not THAT dazzling!  You can’t simply let a prospect walk out the door with a brochure and expect them to ever come back.  Put a follow-up process in place.

5. Don’t be afraid to get personal

Too often banks and credit unions forget that we are the gatekeepers to our customer’s money.  What could possibly be more personal than that?  If something is important to a customer, we can somehow affect it.  Here are some ways to get more personal with your front-line conversations:

Personal product use
“I love our online banking … it’s soooo easy!”  This is a much more powerful phrase than, “Would you like online banking?”

Personal experience
“Congratulations on your new baby!  When my first child was born, I found these products really helpful.”  You can’t use this with every interaction, but when you can, it’s gold.

Case history
“I had a customer who went through that once … here’s how we helped…” Every day, we affect people’s lives.  It will comfort a customer to know that you have helped out others in their situation and will build valuable trust.

Above all, Marketing is the art of communication, not simply in 30-second or 1-page snippets, but in all interactions.  Just as Marketing is responsible for driving traffic into the branches, it should be equally responsible for managing the communication processes that fulfill the advertising promises.  By learning from other institution’s successes and missteps, we can all provide a better experience.

Learn more about Experience Shops in our FREE WEBINAR on Friday, May 18 from 1:00 - 2:00 est.  Click here to sign up - hear from a credit union CEO who has seen positive change from the process.

If this article looks familiar, it ran on CUinsight on March 30, 2012

5 Simple Ways to Improve Your AdWords Performance

With the recent international launches of the Ad Innovations site, we want to take a minute to call out a few simple things you can do to quickly improve the performance of your AdWords ads. Give the tips below a try and see how our Ad Innovations can improve your performance.

1. Enable Ad Sitelinks

Ad Sitelinks allow you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your site. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to four additional destination URLs for users to choose from. On average, advertisers see a 30% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) for the same ads with Ad Sitelinks.
2. Optimize your ad text for longer headlines

We recently made a change to top ads that allows you to display more information where it’s most likely to be noticed--in the headline. By taking information from the first description line and moving it to the headline, we found that we’re able to create a better user experience and improve advertiser performance. In fact, ads with longer headlines receive a 6% average increase in CTR compared to the same ads with a standard headline and description. To increase the chances that your ad will appear with the longer headline, make sure that description line 1 is a complete phrase or sentence and ends in punctuation (e.g., a period or question mark).
Before: After:
3. Link a Google Places account to a campaign to show location extensions

Location extensions allow you to extend your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. In addition to the description lines and URL that appear in your ad text, your ad can also display your business name, address, and phone number. This helps promote your business brand, products, and services and associates your business with a specific location of interest to the user.

By linking a Google Places account to your AdWords ads, you can quickly and easily make sure all your location information is available when it’s most relevant.
4. Get reviewed to show Seller Rating Extensions

Seller rating extensions make it easier for potential customers to identify highly-rated merchants when they're searching on Google.com by attaching your merchant star rating from Google Product Search to your AdWords ads. These star ratings, aggregated from review sites all around the web, allow people to find merchants that are highly recommended by online shoppers like them. On average, ads with Seller Ratings get a 17% higher CTR than the same ads without ratings.

If your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have four or more stars, and you have at least thirty reviews, you'll automatically get seller ratings with your ads. If you have high customer satisfaction, then make sure we know about it:
• Regularly ask your users for reviews (e.g., in confirmation emails after purchases)
• Make it easy for users to review you--include links to your site's page on the third-party review sites used by Seller Rating Extensions.

5. Link a Merchant Center account to a campaign to show product extensions

Product extensions are a way for you to enrich your existing AdWords ads with more relevant and specific information about your retail merchandise. Product extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads.

With product extensions, you're charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) whether a user clicks on your main text ad or any of the offers within the product extensions plusbox.

Of course, you can always learn about the many additional AdWords innovations by visiting the Ad Innovations website and subscribing for the latest updates.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Join other AdWords users as they share their tips on the Help Forum

Are you a part of the Google AdWords Help Forum community yet? If not, you’re missing out! It’s a great place to get help and advice from AdWords experts, Top Contributors, and Google employees.

Recently, we held a "Share Your Best Practices Week" from March 28, 2011, to April 1, 2011, to encourage users to exchange AdWords tips and learnings that have worked well for them. Over five days, we chose five different topics on which we gathered expert knowledge from our users:

• Tips and best practices on optimizing AdWords ad text
• Tips on how to build an effective keyword list
• How to deal with keywords that are "rarely shown due to low quality score"
• Display ad optimization tips
• Best practices for choosing managed placements

We were excited to see the level of enthusiasm from around the world. A good number of AdWords experts provided great contributions, and some spent a considerable amount of time sharing their tips via detailed posts!

We’ve selected the best of the best practices, and we're proud to share the results with all of you.

So hearty congratulations to Calin, Dave, Katie, Kim, and Shweta for their excellent contributions and knowledge of AdWords! Here are some excerpts from what they shared:

• “If the keyword is really important, a special landing page gets built. Importance = potential for good ROI, and a high search volume.” (Calin)
• “Use AdWords and keyword data in Google Analytics to 'weighted sort' your keywords to find the top performing keywords.” (Dave)
• “I always find I get the highest CTR when the ad text is highly focused on the keywords in question.” (Katie)
• “If you identify a site that has major potential, evaluate the site of interest and you may find yourself creating image ads specific to certain placements.” (Kim)
• "Set up Conversion Tracking before you set the campaign live.” (Shweta)

Does this make you compelled to learn more about ad text optimization, keyword lists, keyword statuses, the Display Network, and managed placements? If the answer is yes, your time would be well spent on the AdWords Help Forum!

By the way, we're planning another event for May 2011, so if you want a chance to showcase your AdWords expertise, stay tuned!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing the AdWords Small Business Corner, a new forum discussion category for SMBs

We’ve heard from many of you that you’d like to be able to easily share tips for developing a successful AdWords strategy with others like you. To help you do that, we’ve created a new category in the AdWords Help Forum: the Small Business Corner. The Small Business Corner is designed to give those of you who are running your own AdWords accounts the opportunity to share best practices in discussions with your peers so that you can make sure your AdWords account is doing all it can to support your business goals.

This new category is not about troubleshooting specific account issues, but rather about sharing and learning from the experiences of others. To give you a preview of the kinds of topics that we hope to discuss, here are a few conversation starters that we had in mind:

• Choosing the right tools to measure results
• How to write great ads
• Finding the right frequency to sign in to AdWords

Of course, this category is about your interests and needs, so we hope you’ll suggest the small business-related topics that you’d like to cover. For any other topics, please consider the other existing forum categories available to you.

Getting started

To join the conversation now, just visit the Small Business Corner. If you’re new to the AdWords Help Forum, you may want to create a Google Profile (while signed in to your AdWords account), introducing yourself and your business before jumping in. In the meantime, you can check out the introductory discussion thread here.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

13 Ways to Watch Your Budget on Summer Vacation

As community-sized financial institutions, we're all about saving our customers/members money, right? Beyond providing great rates, we need to show that we care about every aspect of their finances.

Show that you understand how important it is to stretch every dollar during these long, hot summer months. Here are a few tips to share that will save on your customers/members Summer Vacation:

1) Save for summer all year long with a dedicated Savings Account. By putting aside $100 per month, you can have $1,200 for vacation in one year.

2) Create a budget for vacation. Break it into categories for each anticipated expense like hotel, food, entertainment and gas.

3) Review each budget category and find ways to trim it.

4) Try to make your own meals whenever possible. Eating out gets expensive and family picnics may be the most memorable part of your summer.

5) Stay with friends and family when possible. You’ll save on the hotel cost and sharing with friends and family adds to the fun.

6) Instead of an expensive vacation this year, why not try a “staycation.” A trip to the local zoo or amusement park is infinitely less expensive than a Florida sunburn.

7) Even if you travel, find free entertainment like museums, beaches and hiking.

8) Find free or low-cost activities for your kids. Start with the schools, rec. center, local parks or the YMCA. There are tons of fun and educational activities for the kids right here in town.

9) Split vacation costs with another family. Rent a condo or vacation home and spilt gas money.

10) Do your research. There are many online coupons and discounts.

11) Switch to a credit card with a lower interest rate. There’s no sense collecting air miles or other such perks with a high interest card if you can’t pay off your balance each month. Transfer it to a lower interest credit card at your institution.

12) If you and your friends have young kids, consider setting up a babysitting co-operative with another family. You look after their kids for an evening in exchange for a night out at a later date.

13) Cancel your gym membership. As the weather gets warmer, go for a walk or run around your neighborhood instead. You don’t need to spend $50-$150 a month to stay active.

I'd love to see some interactivity with this blog, folks ... and I know y'all are creative! If you have any ideas to add to this list, jot them down in the "comments" section.

Take care, Eric

New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network

Over the past year, we've focused on building new solutions on the Google Content Network for campaigns focused on branding. Last year we introduced frequency capping to help you manage how often your Content Network campaigns reach the right people. We then launched an “above the fold” filter to allow you to show ads only in places that appear on potential customers’ screens when the page loads. We also developed innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns.

Today, in response to feedback from many of you who run branding campaigns, we're announcing a new filter that allows you to show your ads only on AdSense sites among the 1000 largest on the web, as defined by DoubleClick Ad Planner. This new feature will ensure that your ads reach a large number of users, but only on well-known sites best suited for branding goals.

To activate the new filter, select ‘non Ad Planner 1000’ within the ‘category filters’ section of your AdWords account. Keep in mind that not all sites in the Ad Planner 1000 are in the Google Content Network and that your ads will only show on those sites that are.

It's important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products. Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals.

We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

New best practices to find more customers on the Google Content Network

Our previous post in the Content Network Optimization University series covered the basics of setting up and launching a good campaign on the Content Network.

Today, we'll cover more advanced optimization strategies. We've compiled these by observing best practices from the most successful advertisers on the network. Whether you're new to the Content Network or have been using it for a while, you can get better results from your campaigns by employing some of these strategies.

Build effective campaigns

Taking time up front to set up your campaign correctly goes a long way in getting higher quality traffic to your site. Let’s recap the top strategies:

• Separate Search and Content Network campaigns: Setting up a separate campaign just for the Content Network will give you more control over daily budgets, ad groups, keywords and bids. Watch this demo on campaign setup.
• Create many, tightly themed ad groups: AdWords can target your ads more precisely if you build multiple ad groups, each with a small tightly-themed set of 5 to 20 keywords. Watch this demo on ad group setup and this demo on keyword selection.
• Copy your best performing text ads from Search campaigns: For initial setup, it's best to use the text ads with the highest click-through rates from your search campaigns. Watch this demo on ad text best practices.
• Setup the same starting CPC bid as your Search campaigns: We recommend starting with the same maximum CPC bid as your Search campaign ad groups. Once AdWords has collected enough data, our smart pricing technology will automatically optimize your bids on the Content Network to give you more profitable clicks. Watch this demo on bidding tactics.
• Set up AdWords Conversion Tracking on your website: Install Conversion Tracking on your website to measure the sales and leads (conversions) you get from each ad group and placement. Watch this demo to learn how conversion tracking works on the Content Network.

Optimize for better results

It's important to monitor your campaign’s performance and consistently optimize individual elements. Before making significant changes (e.g. changing bids, excluding high volume sites, pausing ad groups), wait until enough click or conversion data has accrued. We recommend having at least 5 conversions or 100 clicks per site.

• Exclude poor-performing sites: Get more qualified traffic and boost conversions by excluding sites that perform poorly for your campaign, based on the number of clicks, the average CPC and the number of conversions.
• Focus your keywords and exclude less relevant keywords: Add more keywords that describe your product and ad group theme in greater detail. Also, add negative keywords to refine your targeting and prevent impressions on irrelevant sites. Watch this demo on refining your campaigns.
• Adjust your bids to manage your costs: Change your bids for ad groups or individual sites based on conversion rate, average CPC and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) to meet your performance goals. You should bid higher for better performing sites to get more traffic, and lower for poorly performing sites.
• Use Conversion Optimizer to manage your CPA: Google Conversion Optimizer is a free tool that automatically manages bids at the site level to reach a maximum CPA bid, which is the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion (such as a purchase or sign-up). Watch this video on how to use Conversion Optimizer.

Expand your campaign for more traffic

To get additional traffic and boost sales from your campaign, we recommend creating a keyword expansion strategy for the Content Network.

• Use the Wonder Wheel tool for ad group ideas: You can use Wonder Wheel on Google Search to brainstorm new ad group themes and keyword ideas. When you search for any topic on Google.com, Wonder Wheel will generate up to eight related topics for you to consider.
• Create new ad groups to reach additional parts of the network: Each topic in Wonder Wheel represents a possible ad group theme for your campaign. Simply click on any of the topics to see other searches and themes related to it. Any closely related topics that are less relevant to your product are great candidates for your negative keyword list. Watch this demo to learn how to use this strategy.
• Expand your keyword list to get more traffic: Once you have finalized your ad group themes, use the AdWords Keyword Tool to get keyword ideas. Enter ad group theme descriptions or keywords under the 'Descriptive words or phrases' tab. Select the 5 to 10 most frequently searched keywords and save them to your ad group This will help to ensure that your list stays highly relevant to your ad group theme.

You can find all the latest videos and updates on our YouTube channel. We hope these tips help you get even better results from your Content network campaigns!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Go Mobile! Series: A case study in optimizing mobile campaigns

More and more people are accessing the internet on their mobile devices. Take advantage of this trend by making sure that your ad campaigns are opted in to show on mobile devices with full internet browsers. If you’d like to take things to the next level, create separate mobile-focused campaigns so that you can optimize your keywords, ad text and landing pages for people using mobile devices.

To help you understand what mobile optimization looks like, we thought we'd share the approach that Razorfish, a global digital advertising agency, took for one of their retail clients:

• The Razorfish team started by duplicating the existing desktop campaigns and switching the settings to target mobile devices with full internet browsers.
• Since their client had a well-known brand name, they focused on branded keyword terms with enough traffic to help them learn quickly about what was working best for their campaigns.
• To measure performance, they tracked several conversion metrics including whether a mobile user looked up the brick and mortar store location or downloaded a coupon from the website. Right away, they saw a 7.5% lower cost per conversion on mobile devices, encouraging them to test ways to optimize their mobile campaigns.
• Razorfish tested whether variations in the campaign’s landing page would affect conversion rates. The team hypothesized that mobile users might be looking to take a specific action, and by starting the user’s experience closer to that action, the client would see better results. As it turned out, for this client, they saw much higher conversion rates when the user was directed to a landing page that showed nearby store locations.
• Finally, they tested variations in the ad text. Four versions of ad text were tested, including the original copy used in desktop campaigns. Each of the three new versions provided over 9.3% lift in conversion rate over the strongest performing copy in their desktop campaigns.

We hope you can learn from Razorfish's success and apply some of these strategies to your own mobile campaigns.

To learn more about the approach Razorfish took to optimize their client’s mobile ad campaigns, or read about other case studies, check out our Mobile Ads Success Stories.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Search Based Keyword Tool: 1 Minute Guide

As the end of the year approaches, you may be thinking about how to drive more traffic to your AdWords campaigns and in turn, to your website.

Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords. This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure you can ensure that you will reach a greater set of potential customers. To help you do this, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to quickly identify relevant keywords which aren't yet included in your AdWords campaigns.



Our 1 minute guide will show you how the tool works, as well as how it's already helped one AdWords advertiser to increase sales.

Watch the video today, and you'll be ready to start using the Search-based Keyword Tool right away.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords & Analytics Sessions at SES Chicago

Next week on December 7th and 8th, you can catch presentations by the Google AdWords team at SES Chicago. We'll be offering practical tips on how to quickly improve your search and display ads performance in the following sessions:

• What's New and Exciting with Google Analytics: the latest tools and reports from our Analytics platform.

• Getting the Most Out of AdWords Optimization Tools: improve your campaigns with recently added AdWords features like the Opportunities tab, new data segmentation options, and custom alerts.

• The Next Generation of AdWords Bidding: Conversion Optimizer: learn how the Conversion Optimizer tool can help you achieve double digit percentage increases in conversions without increasing the cost per conversion.

Finally, if you want to learn more about AdWords optimization tools, you can also watch a video walkthrough of the improvements we've made to AdWords this year. Ariel Bardin, the lead Product Manager for the AdWords web interface, will take you through the major new features and give you tips on managing your campaigns more efficiently.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Getting started guide for the Google Content Network

Google Content Network campaigns differ from Search campaigns in how they're set up, optimized, and tracked. If you've been interested in advertising on the Content Network but aren't sure how to get started, we now have a step-by-step Getting Started Guide to help you hit the ground running. You can think of it as a do-it-yourself instruction manual for how to best structure, optimize, and track your Content Network campaigns.

Not sure how to create an effective content campaign? You can refer to the campaign, ad group, and ad sections to find tips for optimal account structure.

Not sure what's working well? You can use the optimization section to determine which of your ads are performing well and which you should edit or delete. You can also take further control of your campaigns by learning how to select where your ads are shown and how to exclude certain sites and keywords.

Not sure how much to bid? Use the guide to learn more about how bidding works on the Content Network. You can also get tips to refine your bids and improve your performance.

Don't forget to check out our Content Network microsite for even more information on Content Network campaigns, including details on available ad formats and a list of some of the websites we partner with to show your ads.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Welcome to our Think2010 Series

In a mere few days, the 4th quarter will be upon us. Seems like just yesterday we were running our Do More with Less series to arm you with tools and tactics to show the 2009 recession who's boss.

As we start wrapping up 2009 and start thinking about what 2010 might hold, we're feeling optimistic. We're hoping we can transition from being your partner through the recession to being your partner through a recovery. That's why we're launching the Think2010: Getting Ahead of the Recovery series. For the next few months, we'll be devoting a weekly post to looking forward. The series will highlight wisdom from Googlers and outsiders alike, and offer opportunities for deeper learning. Over the course of the series you'll see posts on innovation, experimentation, speed, and deeper customer connections -- themes we believe will be critical to 2010 success.

In 2010 you'll likely have products to promote, news to share, and promotions to tout, so you'll need a targeting strategy that is as effective as those messages you have to get out the door. Precision and relevance will be as important as ever as you aim to (re)connect with customers and direct them your way. That's why we're focusing our first webinar of our Think 2010 series precisely on this topic.

Next Tuesday, Oct 6th, we'll be hosting a Think2010 webinar on “Using Data to Better Connect with Your Customers." If you haven't registered, take a look! Our very own Avinash Kaushik will set you out on the right foot for really (truly) making data actionable for decision-making next year -- and right now. He'll discuss core data sources to have in your 2010 targeting toolkit and show you how to capitalize on these tools for refining your targeting approach and honing in on your most relevant and valuable audiences. The webinar will also highlight how free tools like Google Trends for Websites, Insights for Search, and Ad Planner can help you be more efficient and help you confidently make decisions to maximize your return-on-investment.

As you scope your strategy and tailor your tactics for next year, we hope the Think2010: Getting Ahead of the Recovery series will be a good resource to help you charge ahead feeling informed and inspired.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Stay Connected with your Google Industry Team on Twitter

Did you know that searches for "coupons" are up by as much as 95% year-over-year? Or that Google.com is highlighting TV and movie previews with our Video Plus Box product in the search results? Or even that "things to do" searches hit an all time high this summer?

The Google Auto, Media and Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Tech, and Travel teams are excited to announce the launch of our Twitter profiles.

Through the profiles, our teams will share:

• The latest industry trends and information
• Google insights and news
• Relevant product information and updates

To follow us, please click your industry: Auto, Media and Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Tech, and Travel

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Get on the (Google) Map!

As an AdWords advertiser, you're likely focused on making sure your paid advertising campaigns are performing well and delivering positive results - but have you also thought about taking advantage of the free ways you can promote your physical business location on Google and Google Maps as well? In this post, we'll show you how to ensure your business locations can be found on Google, and then we'll show you how to go a step further by promoting your locations with AdWords location extensions.

Free promotion

If your business already appears as a search result on Google.com and Google Maps, you can use Local Business Center to claim your listing and add additional information, such as photos, videos, business hours and more. It's completely free. If your business doesn't currently show at all, you can create a new listing, which is also free. Local Business Center recently launched a dashboard that lets you see how many users saw your listing, how many clicked on various links in your listing, and which search queries caused your listing to appear. To get you started with Local Business Center, we've put together some helpful tips on the kind of information you can and should include in your listing.

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Drive even more sales with paid promotion

In addition to ensuring your organic listings are up-to-date, you can use AdWords ads for additional promotion. Both location-targeted text ads and location extensions can appear on Google Search and Google Maps result pages. When you create location extensions, you'll be able to show your business addresses within your text ads. If you're a primary business owner, you can link your Local Business Center account with AdWords to ensure the most up-to-date information about your business is appearing within your ad. When you use extensions, you'll also be able to upload a custom icon that will appear when your ads show on Google Maps. This allows you to take a more active role in ensuring your business locations stand out when users look for businesses like yours in your area.

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So what are you waiting for? Take the first step and get yourself on the (Google) map by claiming or listing your business in Local Business Center.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew