Do more with less -- Part 3 of 3

In last week's post we discussed how to use Conversion Optimizer to get more conversions from your existing AdWords campaigns and keywords. This week, in the final installment of this series on doing more with less, we'll show you how you can tightly focus your AdWords campaigns on the areas that are converting the best, uncover the hidden traffic gems you're missing out on, and expand on what you already know is working.

If you want to refocus your existing budget on your highest performing product areas, or reach potential customers that you are missing, the secret is in the keywords. The Search-based Keyword Tool, a new, free tool from Google, looks at the content of your website and matches it against Google search queries (entered by Google users) providing you with a list of extremely relevant, actively searched keywords. The list of suggestions is then filtered to remove any keywords that you're already advertising on, so every single keyword you see is a new one.

Helping your bottom line
Other than giving you new relevant keywords, how does this help your bottom line? Say you sell two product lines - widgets and gizmos - and you know that your widgets product line is selling much better than your gizmos product line. You can use the tool to identify high-potential widget search terms that you're missing and expand that campaign, applying more of your budget on the campaigns that are most effective.

Focusing your campaigns
The Search-based Keyword Tool is equipped with a number of powerful filters and features to make it easy to find keywords for the parts of your website and business that provide you with the greatest ROI.

• Looking for bargain terms? In the 'more filters' section, sort by 'low-competition' or pick a bid you're willing to pay and sort by 'suggested bid'.
• Only looking for keywords in a particular product area? The tool automatically groups keywords by categories, so simply select the category you want on the left-hand side of the results.
• Can't find the category you're looking for, or want to find terms for a specific page on your website? Click on 'more filters' and enter a term into the 'url contains' field.

The tool also offers additional information on each keyword so that you can choose the best ones for your campaigns. Each suggestion shows the average monthly searches for that term, how competitive placement on that term is, the estimated bid to place your ad in the top three positions, your Ad/Search share for the term, and the page on your site the term is most related to, which you might chose to select as the landing page (destination url) for that keyword.

Getting started
Get started with the Search-based Keyword tool in 4 easy steps:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/sktool
   
2. Sign-in to your AdWords account
3. Enter the url of your website
4. Click 'Find Keywords'

For more information on the tool, please visit our support site. And remember, you can find other helpful Google tools at www.google.com/domorewithless.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Brand Essence In Just Six Words

“Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in.”                                                                                    - J. Walter Thompson

It's hard to write a story in six words.  But Ernest Hemingway did.                                                       “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”

It’s a powerful statement.  It instantly creates a myriad of images and emotions in our mind.  If I say, “Maiden voyage…Iceberg…Not enough lifeboats,” the Titanic comes right to mind.  The six-word story has become a bit of a phenomenon with Smith and Wired magazines, encouraging people to write their six-word life story and share it.

Why don't we apply the same principles to brands?  Can you write your brand story in six words or less?  It's a good test of how clear and unique the positioning really is against the background noise.

Can you name this brand from just six words:  Mint With A Hole. Fresh Breath.

Here are some examples in six words or less:

-       “We bring good things to life.” (General Electric

-       “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” (Allstate Insurance)

-       “The World’s Local Bank.”(HSBC)

-       “Bank of Opportunity” (Bank of America)

-       “The Power to Sell” (Richardson)

-       “The Ultimate Driving Machine” (BMW)

-   "Focus. Momemtum. Results" (MarketMatch)

Try writing the essence of your brand in six words or less.  See if the results surprise you.  Might your competitor say the same?  Would customers recognize you, and you alone?

Every brand has a six-word story?  What's yours?  

Please feel free to respond to this blog with your six-word brand story.

Remember to have a great day (six words),

Nick Vaglio, CFMP

Advanced Segments & E-Commerce

Imagine that you are the online marketing manager for a successful E-Commerce business. It is Friday afternoon and your CEO phones with a request. "I've seen our sales numbers, but I need more data. How many of our website visits and sales relate to men's products versus women's products?"

"Sure, I'll have it for you next week," you reply cheerily.

Your CEO almost sounds apologetic and explains that she needs the information tomorrow. "Of course," you reply, and hang up the phone wondering how you are going to pull this off.

After considering it, you realize that this may not be so hard after all. All you need to do is:

1. Find out if there is a unique URL identifier that distinguishes men's and women's products
   
2. Create two advanced segments based on the unique URL identifier: one for men's products, and one for women's products
3. Apply these segments to the reports to compare metrics/trends for each product category

That's it - it's as easy as 1, 2, 3!

Step 1 - Review your website URL structure

For this website, the men's product section and pages have an identifier called "bysex=1" in the URL, whereas the women's product section and pages have "bysex=2". You might want to double-check with your webmaster and/or web developer to identify all identifiers for each category. For this site, there are two additional identifiers, "CatID=1" and "men" as well as "CatID=2" and "women." Jot all this information down and then get ready to create your advanced segments.

Step 2 - Create Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

Within your Google Analytics report, click on one of the "Advanced Segment" links (see images below) and then click on the "Create a new advanced segment" link. If you need more details on the concept of segments and advanced segments, check out this video or read this post on how to create advanced segments.

In the above image, you'll see what information you need to create the advanced segments. You select the "Page" dimension, set the condition to "Contains" and set the value equal to the identifier you jotted down earlier. Since we had two more identifiers, you would want to include other pages that have these two identifiers, namely "CatID=1" and "men." You save this segment, give it a meaningful name such as MenCategory, and then create another segment for the women products category and use its identifiers, "bysex=2," "CatID=2" and "women," and follow the steps we used for the men's advanced segment.

Step 3 - Apply GA Advanced Segments and Analyze

After creating and saving your advanced segment, apply this new segment to your reports (by clicking on the "apply to report" link), and let the fun begin!

A few tips: apply the segments together so that you can compare (use the "Advanced Segments" dropdown in the top-right corner of your reports to apply segments). Here, we're comparing the All Visits segment (which is always selected by default) with the WomenCategory and MenCategory segments. While the results do not indicate if the visitor is a male or a female, the advanced segmentation provides insight into which clothing line category is currently driving more visits. You're now able to start some deep-dive analysis and provide some actionable insights to the CEO.

A few quick notes about your segments:

• The visits will never add up because the "all visits" segment includes visits to other categories and bounces off of the homepage.
• Similarly, the pageviews will not add up, because you could visit both the men's and women's categories in one visit or even visit neither category.
• You can see that the specific categories seem to be of more interest to the visitor. A much higher pages per visit, much lower bounce rate, and a higher average time on site. You could act on this by directing traffic (paid, banner, e-mail) to a specific category instead of dumping them on the home page.
• Such a large amount of traffic makes the site an excellent candidate for Google Website Optimizer!

Congratulations! You've proven yourself yet again to your CEO (and you'll still keep your Saturday for yourself :))

Additional Resources

• A deeper look at Advanced Segmentation
  
• Introduction to Advanced Segments video
• Content Grouping in Google Analytics (for advanced users)
• Advanced Segmentation help topics
  

Do you run an e-commerce site? Post a comment and tell us how you use Advanced Segments.

Posted by Feras Alhlou of E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Google TV Ads Summit Recap

Last week, we hosted the 2nd annual Google TV Ads Summit in Google's New York offices. This event brought together over 200 industry professionals, thought leaders and executives from the world of TV advertising and media. We've posted a highlight reel and photos to give you an inside look at the event. Exciting conversations and themes that emerged from the event focused on doing more with less, using data to make decisions and utilizing new media to connect with audiences beyond television. Read more about this event on our Traditional Media Blog.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

The Chips are Down --- Time to Cash Out or Go All In?

Greetings:

Okay, here is a challenge for you experienced marketers. I think you might be able to relate to this one.

I have a company that specializes in a niche industry. This target industry in turn is facing some of the most difficult challenges it has seen in decades. Competition is fierce, failures are everywhere, regulators and the news media are shining a spotlight on everyone and meanwhile, my clients are struggling with the day to day challenges of operating in a highly unfavorable environment.

So, with my target market at risk, what do I as a leader need to do to ensure my own company’s survival?

Well, I have a few options, I guess:

1. Hunker down and try to just hang on until it blows over
2. Get out while I can and expand into a different customer base that is not my specialty
3. Go all in and commit to do everything possible to help my clients succeed and save myself at the same time.
   

Option 3 -- that’s where I am.

After twenty years in the bank marketing business, I stand firmly with you in this mess and believe we can pull through it together and come out stronger.

So, instead of hunkering down, MarketMatch has made a move to strengthen its offerings and bring our clients the resources to succeed in these trying times. We took advantage of the disruption in the marketplace and invested in growing our business and positioning ourselves for the future by acquiring a regional competitor. The acquisition brings MarketMatch new products and adds key executives to our team with significant experience. For more details, read the announcement. (link to release)

Now, here is the parallel for your business. Your markets are disrupted. You and your competitors are struggling to operate in an unfavorable environment. Who will come through the challenges better off – those that hunker down and wait for things to blow over? Or, will those who take proactive action to better position themselves and their clients for the future come out ahead in the end? Obviously, I advocate the proactive approach.

I challenge you to ask “Are we doing everything we can to take advantage of the disruption in our market? “

Clients are concerned and many are moving or considering moving their money. The trust in bank/customer relationships is being eroded every day by the news media’s sensationalist headlines. Are you taking proactive steps to a) secure your current relationships and b) capitalize on your competitors’ weaknesses?

Comment and tell me what you are doing to proactively move your organization forward in this marketplace. Or, let me know if you need help identifying actions you can take to better position your bank for success.

Cheers,

Bruce Clapp

A new year, a new traffic model for Ad Planner

If you are looking for more site information to help plan your display advertising campaigns and understand audiences on the web, Google Ad Planner can help. Our goal is to provide you with the most accurate site information for better planning and decision-making, and we're excited to kick off the new year with an improved traffic estimation model as well as several other features.

The new traffic estimation model should help reduce some of the confusion that often surrounds tracking the number of unique visitors to your site. When creating campaigns, many advertisers use media planning tools, including Ad Planner, to look at unique visitors based on estimates of real world users. However, publishers typically rely on web server logs or web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to measure unique visitors based on cookie counts. Discrepencies arise when these two types of unique visitors are compared. You can learn more about this topic by reading the IAB guidelines on Audience Measurement.

To address the various ways of measuring site traffic, we:

• Added Unique Visitors (cookies), a new cookie-based metric, to help you cross-check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics.
• Changed Unique Visitors to Unique Visitors (users) so it's clearer that you're reviewing estimated numbers of real world users.
• Placed the Unique Visitors (cookies) and Unique Visitors (users) metrics on a site's profile page so you'll have a more comprehensive view of how a specific site can support your media planning. Learn how to make the most of these two metrics.

In addition, our new model improves our traffic estimates. You'll notice our page view estimates are now more accurate and consistent with web server measurements.

(Click image for a full-size version)

We've also added country demographics for Australia, Brazil, Japan, and Switzerland, which brings our demographics total to ten countries, with more coming in the future. In select countries we've also added a new demographics category, Children in Household, which can be used to research sites.

You've told us that defining an audience to fit your intended customers can be difficult. In response, we've created Pre-defined Audiences that represent commonly used audiences. Now you can experiment with different criteria without having to choose them manually.

This release represents only a fraction of what we're planning for 2009. Stay tuned for more Google Ad Planner announcements soon.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Using _setVar? Here's an update on bounce rate and time on page

In the past we've received a lot of feedback from our users who have implemented the _setVar method requesting that custom visitor segments not affect bounce rates. You've asked for it and we've listened! Today we're modifying this feature so that the _setVar method no longer counts as an interaction hit with the result that you may see higher bounce rates and more accurate time on page metrics in your reports.

As a refresher, Google Analytics calculates bounces and durations based upon interaction hits. Now, interaction hits will only include pageviews, events, transactions and experiments (such as with Google Website Optimizer). Here's more on how this change to the _setVar method could affect your data:

Higher bounce rates in your reports

Let's say that you've used the _setVar method on your landing pages to segment member vs. non-member site visitors. Previously, if a visitor came to your site and triggered the _setVar call, but viewed only one page, this would not be counted as a bounce. With this change the user defined call will not send an interaction hit and overall bounce rates will increase as this single page visit will now be counted as a bounce.

More accurate time on page metrics

Time on page metrics are normally counted by the difference in time stamps which are set by interaction hits. Prior to this change, using _setVar would cause Google Analytics to calculate the time on page metric between the time of the pageview hit and the interaction hit of the user defined variable. Now, as user-defined hits are no longer counted as an interaction hit, time on page metrics should more accurately reflect the time between one pageview and the next.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team