A few months ago, we tested YouTube promote videos for one of our clients through their Google Adwords campaign. Promoted video is a good medium to test for them because they have published video content and maintain a branded YouTube channel.

To evaluate the impact of promoted videos,  there is  some  information we can pull directly from the Adwords interface, including how many clicks to the  YouTube channel our ads receive, total clicks and potential conversions ( if the videos are using the call to action overlay)

Beyond these metrics, YouTube Insight provides additional useful information that are not available in the Adwords interface.  The information from YouTube Insight can definitely supplement our Adwords data and help us see the value our promoted videos campaign is providing beyond just conversions

Below is how to get started with YouTube Insights:

1. Login to your YouTube account
2. Click “My Videos” from the drop down
3. Click on “YouTube Insight”

Once you are in YouTube Insight, you will see the summary page of our videos.  There are 4 major metrics: Views, My videos, Demographics and Popularity.  You can select the desired time frame and location.

1. General reports (for all videos).These reports are at the top level, a summary for all of the videos.

a.Views report. By clicking on the “Views” link, you can look at the number of views your videos received.

You can choose different time frames to look at the video views (daily basis, monthly basis, etc.) by scrolling the bar below the graph

This information can be helpful to understand the trend of our video views and make a decision accordingly. For instance, this client has a limited test budget and based on your observation views drop on the weekends.  Thus, we can set up ad scheduling for this test campaign.

b.Popularity Report. We can see on the chart which states/countries view our video the most. You can simply download the report and see top traffic driving states.

I did a little experiment by comparing the results of YouTube Views Report by state vs. Adwords Geographic Report. For the YouTube Report, I sorted the information by Views and Unique users and as for Adwords Geo report; I sorted out by impressions and clicks. Below is the result:

As we can see, the top 3 states are identical. However, for rank 4- 10, we can see a slight discrepancy. Like I said earlier, these reports can supplement each other and help us make a decision to set geo targeting for our campaign.

c.On the demographics section, we can see our viewers by gender and age group.  I pulled two reports and this is what my report comparisons look like:

Male viewers proved to be more dominant than female viewers based on both reports. As for the Demographic reports, the results are not the same but both reports did include 18-24 age groups as the top 2 viewers.  Keeping in mind that these results are at the summary level not at the individual video.  Although this information is not identical, we can still use it to evaluate our target market and revisit our marketing efforts and PPC strategy.

The difference here may attributed to the fact that YouTube users tend to be younger than the average Google Searcher.  This information is helpful to know if your client is looking to hit a younger demographic YouTube Promoted Videos may be a great supplement to your current Adwords campaign.

2.Individual reports (for each video). The first reports help us to look at a general feel of all of our videos.  However, to further analyze, we need to dig deeper by looking at each video.  We can do that by clicking on Video A under the “My Video” section on the summary page.

a.Using the discovery tab, we can see how viewers get to our video.  There are many sources that can bring viewers to our video. You can check out YouTube overview on Insight  Discovery Tab.

i.Viral: This means that 45% of your video was shared with friends via email or IM.  With this information, we can select other places to post our videos, such as Facebook,  etc.

ii.Embedded player: It means that 30% of your video was discovered through embedded player that was not in YouTube.com.  We can look further by clicking on the link and see  different sources.  If the sources listed are not on your placement list (if you have managed placement and if they are available for targeting as placement), you may want to review the site and see whether it is appropriate for your campaign.

iii.Mobile Devices. This means that 3.5% of traffic came from a mobile device. Although the percentage in this example is low. This may be something to consider for our PPC campaign as we can expand to other search mediums.

iv.External Links:  Sites that are bringing viewers to see your video.  Just like the Embedded Player, these potential sites can be added to your placement list (again, if you have managed placement and they are available for targeting as Placements).

v.YouTube search.  We can look keywords that trigger our Video Ads by clicking on “YouTube Search”.  This may be a good source for KW expansion.

b.Hot spots.   According to YouTube help, Hot spots helps you evaluate which scenes in your videos are the “hottest” and keep your audience interested.  On the other hand, a cold spots is when viewers are fast forwarding to another part of the video or discarding the video entirely.

This insightful information can definitely be passed on to our client with the goal to optimize current video ads or as a guideline to create new video ads.

c.Call-to-Action. This metrics lets us know the impressions and clicks for this particular video ad for a given period of time.  We can use this information to evaluate our ad copy effectiveness.  To learn more about call-to-action, check out this blog: Use Call-to-Action to drive traffic to off-YouTube web pages.  It gives you a nice info on the feature and step-by-step on how to add this to your video.

And there you have it!  YouTube Insight is a great way to see how the users are interacting with your brand and a great supplement to your Adwords reports. The only thing that is lacking is the ability to see the Discovery and Call-to-Action features on the top level.  We have to go to individual video to get this information.  Overall, I really enjoy the experience, I hope you will too.

Here is a simple and quite common example: Let’s say that one of my clients just added product ‘X’ to his inventory, which is a hot new product on the market. X will sell for $35 and the profit margin is 10%. This means that for each individual sale, the client makes only $3.50. If after doing some preliminary research, the average CPC for keywords likely to drive sales is $1.00, chances are that launching a new campaign for this product is going to result in a net loss. Of course, there are lots of different factors that could spin this scenario in the other direction – maybe the client wants to launch the product to acquire new customers, in which case incurring a net loss in the short term may be a viable strategy. Or, maybe the client plans to sell ancillary products in the future to those customers that purchase product X (think cheap printer, expensive ink cartridges) – again, a viable strategy.

The scenario above is pretty cut and dry, so pushing back a bit to understand what the client is trying to accomplish is a no-brainer. If there is no counterargument to support profit potential, the data speaks for itself. Unfortunately, most of the time it’s just not that simple. Consider the episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Charlie develops a new product to pitch to the gang called Kitten Mittons:

For more complicated situations such as the one that arises with Kitten Mittons, Smashing Magazine has written a great article about how to communicate hesitation to clients.

In How to Explain to Clients That They Are Wrong, Smashing gives the following tips:

1. First and foremost, ask yourself if the client really is wrong! Make sure that your reasoning for suggesting against a strategy is rooted in data or experience. In this case, you can present alternate solutions that may have more potential to succeed. Otherwise, it may just be that you disagree from a purely subjective perspective. In situations like this it’s good to remember that your client knows more about their business than you do. End of discussion.
2. Speak the client’s language; that is, relate the strategy back to the bottom line. In the situation above where the client wants to launch a campaign for a low margin product, if the goal is to acquire a new kind of customer, the idea is legit. In this case, you’ll want to develop KPIs to measure the success, given the goal of the campaign (gaining X new customers, for example). This way, assuming the client has a basic understanding of the average lifetime value of a new customer, you’ll know when a net loss becomes too large to sustain.
3. Establish yourself as the expert. If you’ve worked on projects for clients with a high level of brand recognition, mention this to the client in order to establish credibility (in a way that doesn’t come across as being arrogant, of course!). They’ll appreciate your input more if you’ve done similar work for brands they know and respect. If namedropping isn’t an option, simply being professional at all times goes a long way in establishing trust.
4. Back up recommendations with evidence. There is nothing more powerful than data!! If I say to my client “if one of every three visitors (a whopping 75% conversion rate) does not make a purchase, you are going to lose money”, they may be more inclined to rethink launching the campaign.
5. Sometimes, being direct works. In certain scenarios, it may be appropriate to bluntly say no and explain your reasoning. And sometimes you’ll have to suck it up and execute a strategy that you don’t agree with. C’est la vie!
6. Know when and how to accept defeat. If you do end up moving forward with a strategy that does not appear to be solid, recommend implementing an A/B test or monitoring analytics closely for the duration of the project.

Check out the other articles Smashing recommends on effective client communication for more advice on how to drive the best results for clients when you find yourself in a gray area!

Check out this video from Google called Let’s Make the Web Faster, featuring interviews with Google engineering execs about site speed.

SiteSpeed – Impact on SEO & PPC

SearchEngineLand posted an article recently called Site Speed, Google’s Next Ranking Factor which gives more insight into the increasing importance of site speed on SEO & PPC performance. With respect to SEO, adding site speed to Google’s algorithm of ranking factors means that fast loading sites could potentially rank higher than slow loading sites. With respect to PPC, load time is one of the factors that determines Quality Score.

What does this mean for your bottom line? Google’s organic ranking algorithm already contains hundreds of factors, but if site speed is weighed more heavily in the future, it is possible that having a poor performing site could lead to a decrease in rankings, translating into fewer visitors and less revenue. For PPC, a slow loading site can cause Quality Score to drop, meaning that you’ll be paying higher CPCs and narrowing profit margins.

Site Speed – Impact on the Consumer

Every Second Counts: How Website Performance Impacts Shopper Behavior, an article by Get Elastic, summarizes a study conducted recently by Forrester Research about the impact of site speed on the consumer.

The study proposes an acceptable threshold for acceptable web page response times of 2 seconds. Some repercussions for slow rendering websites include:

How to Improve Your Site’s Speed

YSlow

If you would like to test your site’s load time, try Yahoo!’s YSlow, which analyzes web pages and determines why they are slow, based on Yahoo!’s rules for high performance websites. YSlow is integrated with the Firebug web development tool, so you’ll need to install Firebug before getting started.

Here is a sneak peek of what kind of information YSlow provides, using Virgin America’s Virgin Unite website as an example

Closure Tools

Google also recently added Closure Tools to Google Code Labs (a collection of developer products that are still in their formative stages). Closure Tools help developers build rich web applications with JavaScript that is powerful and efficient. Closure tools include:

A JavaScript optimizer that compiles JavaScript into compact, high performance code

A comprehensive JavaScript library

An easy templating system for Java & JavaScript

WebPageTest

WebPagTest.org is another tool that allows you easily to measure and analyze web page performance. Here is a peek at the kind of results this open source tool generates, using the same Virgin Unite homepage for the test:

Let’s Make The Web Faster!

Visit http://code.google.com/speed/ to access a variety of resources for improving site performance including:

Have any tools/resources you have used to determine/improve site speed? Post them here!

When a customer completes a transaction using Paypal, their payment information is collected in Paypal’s domain, which means that they leave your store and don’t return when their purchase is completed. Since they are not sent to your order confirmation page where your conversion tracking code is installed when the purchase is completed, the cookie the customer received when they clicked on your PPC ad is never passed back to the Google server and therefore the conversion isn’t reported in the AdWords interface.

Here is an example of how the process works: Let’s say that I am searching for flights and I click on a PPC ad for Southwest Airlines and I decide to pay using Paypal. Check out what happens:

To illustrate how missing out on Paypal conversion & revenue data can result in lack of transparency leaving you unable to make well informed optimization decisions, check out the scenario below:

Let’s say that on average, 20% of your total purchases are processed through Paypal. Here is a look at the revenue you’ll see in your reports with standard Google conversion tracking enabled (assuming you’re using a dynamic variable to track revenue):

Since we’re assuming in this example that Google is only capturing 80% of conversions and revenue (the remaining 20% being processed through Paypal), below is a look at the account with Paypal orders included:

Actual revenue is $37,871. Without knowing that $7,574 is missing and which campaigns were generating this missing revenue, you would not have all of the data necessary to make solid optimization decisions, potentially pulling back or even pausing campaigns that don’t appear to be doing well but actually are.

Installing Paypal Tracking in 5 simple steps

In order to track conversions generated through Paypal, you’ll need to have Buy Now buttons enabled. Setting them up is simple. Here’s how:

1. From your Paypal account, Click the “Merchant Tools” tab and select “Buy Now Buttons” under “Website Payments”

2. Complete the fields then click “Add More Options”

3. In the “Customize your Buyer’s Experience” section, enter the URL of your order confirmation page** in the “Successful Payment URL” field.

**You will need to create a separate order confirmation page for Paypal order confirmations. This is where you will install the Google conversion tracking script.

4. Click “Create Button Now”

5. Copy the code in the “HTML Code for Websites” text box and paste it into the code of your website.

Viola!

Edit Existing Buy Now Buttons

If you already have Buy Now buttons enabled, you’ll just need to modify the code on the page where the button is installed.

In the source of the page where you display a Buy it Now button, install the following code between the exiting form tags:

**Make sure that you install the Google conversion tracking script on the new order confirmation page you’ve created.

Tracking Revenue with Paypal

The steps above will allow you to record conversions using a static variable. If you would like to generate revenue data using a dynamic variable, you’ll need to take a few extra steps. You’ll also need to have knowledge of CGI (or hire someone who does) which will enable you to generate a dynamic webpage.

Each time a purchase is made on your site using Paypal, data about that purchase is automatically sent to the order confirmation page you specify to Paypal. This data (such as total order value) is sent in a CGI POST and in order to be able to capture this information, your order confirmation page URL needs to be dynamic.

First, create a new Google Purchase/Sale conversion tracking script using “totalValue” instead of the dynamic shopping cart variable you would normally use to capture an order subtotal/total value.

If you’ve never generated or installed a code using a dynamic variable, Google has a great video tutorial that explains the process step by step.

Once the Google conversion code is created, you’ll need to create another code for dynamically generating your conversion confirmation page. The page must be able to do the following:

* Extract the amount parameter from the CGI POST

* Set the JavaScript variable totalValue (that you entered into the Value field when generating the Google conversion code) equal to the amount parameter from the CGI POST

* Include the JavaScript code snippet generated in the AdWords interface between the body tags

Google has a great whitepaper on conversion tracking with detailed instructions on setting up conversion tracking for third party shopping carts including Paypal, eBay & More. Check it out here.

1. Newsletter Archives: Even if you don’t have any, there’s still value at the end of this for you.

Check the PR & backlinks coming into old newsletters. Newsletters could be several years old and are waiting for internal linking. Find some decent anchor text in them and links into the pages you’re targeting now. The four readers a 2004 newsletter attracts each year will not mind. Are there links you can strip out of them to lower the amount of links on the page? Check that too.

Oh you don’t have a newsletter archive? While it may take some time, why not see if there is some adspace available on old newsletters. I’m sure there’s plenty of companies out there that would gladly pimp out their old newsletters for a few extra bucks.

2. Webmaster Tools:

The Not Found section, pictured below, shows all of the pages that Google can no longer find. It also shows the number of links pointing to each page. Are there any pages that can be redirected to an updated page that’s currently being targeted? Are there any pages that could be 301 redirected to the homepage? Webmaster tools is one of the few places where Google truly tells you what’s up.

3. Press Release Services

There are dozens of press release services available for when you want to spread you big news. While these aren’t internal links as the post says, these are entirely under your control….unless you’re unaware.

Answer the following questions before using an unfamiliar or new service:

- Does the release level you’re selecting allow for links?

- Does it allow for custom anchor text or only absolute links?

- Is there a certain text threshold required before the release qualifies for links?

- Are there different character limit levels that could allow more links in the release? (eg: under 500 allows 1 link, 501 – 1000 allows 2 links)

- Are links not allowed in the opening paragraph? This is important when other sites pick up the release and only list the first 250 characters or so.

- Are any weird redirects placed on links?

When you’re paying for a release, you want to make the most of your linking opportunity within it. Don’t be misled by the stipulations some release sites have listed above.

4. Unused Websites:

Whether they were purchased for a contest that is now over, purchased for the common site misspelling or whatever reason, there are often stagnant links that aren’t being used to their fullest potential. As Laura mentioned in a previous post about Starbucks, they STILL have not linked over an old contest page that has hundreds of external links. While Starbucks probably doesn’t need the links from this contest to rank, 99% of other companies do. So…

- Find old websites

- 301 redirect any misspelling or duplicate content sites not being used to your original site.

- 301 redirect old contest sites to a related page or back to your homepage.

- Benefit from corking your link juice.

5. Old Press Releases:

We covered new press releases, but what if you have an internal press release section that’s dated back for years?

- Find releases with value (backlinks, PR, still cached somewhat frequently)

- Search for anchor text you can use & link it up to currently targeted pages

- Strip out old unnecessary links

- Reward yourself by reading about awkward office conversations.

6. Duplicate pages splitting link value:

Again, this is something that can be solved by digging into WMTools. Google lists out in the HTML Suggestions tab under Diagnostics where your site has duplicate title tags. If the engines don’t like duplicate content and they are reporting on the pages that have duplicate title tags, checking out the pages could lead you to find duplicates caused by capitalization in the urls (eg: examplesite.com/Bananarama vs examplesite.com/bananarama)

Link value could be split, especially if your url structure isn’t consistent across the site.

7. Secure pages & Non WWW vs WWW:

The last one is less involved than all the others, but seven is such a nice number. Make sure https pages aren’t showing up and that the non-www version is being 301 redirect to the www version or vice versa.

There are dozens of ways to get the most out of your existing links. Drop some favorites as comments if so moved.

There are three primary ways in which programming can be used to improve a business:

• Business Process Automation
• Business Process Improvement
• Business Process Re-Engineering

While a developer without domain knowledge can improve a business in some of these ways, only a developer with solid domain knowledge can effectively use all three methods.

Business Process Automation

Business Process Automation (BPA) takes an existing business process with a human component and either eliminates or reduces the amount of human involvement necessary. The benefit to a company comes from the reduced amount of labor necessary to complete the task. This is the method that requires the least amount of domain knowledge to be an effective developer. While this method is incredibly useful and can save a business large amounts of time it is only one way in which programming can improve a company.

Recently SEER has been working with the Google Analytics API to further automate its reporting process. This automation has allowed SEER employees to focus on higher level strategies, instead of performing this recurring task every month.

Business Process Improvement

Business Process Improvement (BPI) takes an existing process, which may or may not have a human component, and improves upon it. The benefit to the company can vary significantly depending on the process that is being improved. Some examples include, gathering additional information for employees to make decisions on, or creating reminders instead of having to remember to check something on a regular basis. A programmer without domain knowledge should be able to implement these improvements. However a programmer with domain knowledge should not only be able to implement these improvements, but has the ability to design improvements of their own, making them significantly more useful.

SEER has recently revised its keyword tracking systems. Not only has the process been automated, but it has been significantly improved in two ways. First, the new system is pulling several additional metrics giving SEER employees much more information to make decisions about keywords. Second, due to the automation of the system the process can be run four times more often. This allows SEER employees to track keywords much more often, and therefore detect movement and trends much sooner.

Business Process Re-Engineering

Business Process Re-Engineering (BPrE) is the creation of a completely new process. As with BPI the benefit to the company varies with the process that is created. BPrE can have a massive impact on a company as it often creates entirely new opportunities. A developer with no domain knowledge will most likely be unable to apply this method. On the other hand, a developer with domain knowledge will has the opportunity to create these processes which may have otherwise not been discovered by the company.

SEER has been working with the Google Analytics API and the Adwords API to enhance our SEO / PPC integration. By combining information from both of these APIs both our SEO and PPC teams have new tools for research and analysis. Without having a developer with domain knowledge, it would have been very difficult to understand how these APIs could be combined to generate useful information.

Why Developers Are Key to BPrE

The reason developers are seldom included in the design and evolution of a business process is they are often viewed simply as developers of an already existing business. Developers are not normally hired to re-design the business, but to perform BPA and BPI services. There are two fundamental reasons why a developer is essential to re-designing a process:

• The Developer knows what programming/they can do!
• Developers have a different way of thinking than most!

As simple as these two statements are they are more often than not overlooked. If designer of the project or of the business does not have a development background, it is difficult for them to fully understand how a system is going to work. Things which may be very simple to develop may appear to be impossible to a non-developer, or vice-versa. This can lead to unpractical expectations or missed opportunities which may have been very simple to include in the process. It is important to understand that simply having a programmer on hand to sign off on requirements and time-lines is not including them in the BPrE process. SEER interactive however, includes the development point of view from the ground up when designing new processes and tools, making for a far more accurate time-line and expectations.

Developers are used to thinking in terms of if statements, loops, arrays, functions, classes, object orientation, databases, recursion, and any number of problem solving techniques. Anyone without a development background most likely does not think in this manner. In fact, I’ve yet to meet a non-developer who understands recursion, never-mind has the ability to apply it as a potential business process solution. This gives developers a different viewpoint and a very different problem solving tool set.

By applying these problem solving methods to business practices developers can be very good completely redesigning a system or a business. By viewing developers as problem solvers, and not just programmers, a company can significantly increase the chance of developing a new system which may be able to revolutionize the company. However in order to take advantage of BPrE, the developer must have domain knowledge!

Just how much do landing pages matter for PPC success? Here are some examples of the impact the SEER PPC team has seen on clients PPC metrics as a result of landing page testing:

Client #1: Geographic Information System Software

We recommended that this client feature a click-to-play video tutorial highlighting the main features of their software rather than the static image featured on the page at the time. The primary concern was that the landing page wasn’t communicating all of the advanced features and usability of the product since it was a free standing page, with all key points appearing above the fold. Here are the results:

• 35% increase in conversions
• 47% increase in conversion rate
• 43% decrease in CPA

Client #2: Cable Provider

This client was looking for a way to increase the conversion rate of lead form fill-outs, so they worked with a landing page testing company to launch a multivariate test using Google’s Website optimizer using 4 variations:

1. Control page
2. Variation of control page with a cleaner design and longer page. The CTA being tested was “Free Quote”
3. Mirror image of the variation above, with the CTA “Order Now”
4. Different design than all other pages (colors, page length, etc.) with the CTA “Free Quote”

Variation #4 ended up winning with 99.4% confidence. Here is a summary of the cumulative impact of the test:

• 52% decrease in CPA
• 140% increase in conversion rate
• 100% increase in conversions

Often times, clients ask us for feedback on their websites and PPC landing pages. We’re not designers or usability experts, but we’re happy to recommend designers and usability experts we’ve worked with and trust. We’re also happy to share what we do know on these topics with our clients. There are oodles of great blogs and articles out there on Landing Page and design best practices that we often pass along to our clients so I decided to dig into some of our team’s Delicious accounts and share some of my personal favorites.

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

Informative Product Pages Help You Stand Out
“Provide detailed information about your products, but don’t fall into the trap of bombarding users with too much text. Make the information easy to digest. Make the page scannable by breaking up the text into smaller segments and using plenty of sub-headings. Add plenty of images for your products, and use the right language: don’t use jargon that your visitors might not understand.”

Apple does a great job explaining the advanced functionality of the new Magic Mouse. The three product features Apple wants the visitor to be aware of are in bold, making them scannable. They text is broken up with clean, sharp images making the page visually informative as well.

Quality of design is an indicator of credibility
“One interesting finding of these studies is that users really do judge a book by its cover… or rather, a website by its design. Elements such as layout, consistency, typography, color and style all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project. Your website should project not only a good image but also the right one for your audience.”

Most users do not scroll
“Jakob Nielsen’s study on how much users scroll (in Prioritizing Web Usability) revealed that only 23% of visitors scroll on their first visit to a website. This means that 77% of visitors won’t scroll; they’ll just view the content above the fold.”

31 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages

Compare your landing pages to your competitors
“Go out there, sign up for their email lists, click on their ads, revel in the glory that your click just cost them $3. See what online marketing strategy they have in place — and determine how you can do it better.”

Have a clear value proposition
“To win conversions in online marketing, landing pages need to focus on a distinct and compelling value proposition—preferably the same one that prompted the click—and communicate it in the simplest language possible: ‘Lowest price.’ ‘Biggest selection.’ ‘Best technology.’ You get the idea.”

Have a clear, defined Call to Action
“An effectual CTA will be the cohesive next step for the respondent to take. Don’t confuse your respondent with too many actions they can take. Keep it simple! A strong CTA tells the respondent what to do, why they should and when to do it.”

CommercialIQ is a great example of a well executed CTA. When the visitor arrives at the page, they are encouraged to “Find Commercial Property”. The “Search Now” button directly below the CTA makes the path to conversion seamless.

7 Form Tactics that Drive Users Crazy

Insisting that passwords have certain characteristics
“While your goal – keeping your users safe – is noble, going about it in this way serves only to annoy and frustrate them as they try to join your website.”

Requiring information that has no business being required
“Given the choice, most users wont fill in information they don’t want to give out”

The screencap of Tumblr’s homepage above is a great example of a well executed form. It is above the fold, featured prominently, and requires a minimum amount of information from the visitor.

Having to re-enter all your data just because you messed one thing up
“It’s bad enough to complete an entire form and have to go back because you left something out. “

7 Tips To Increase Landing Page Conversions

Digestible Content
“Good content on your landing pages are a must, but make this content easily scannable.”

Minimize Choice
“If you can’t summarize the purpose of your landing page in 5 words, then your visitors will never be able to figure it out. Give users one option, the conversion option.”

Evoke Trust
“Use logos that convey credibility like awards your company has won, professional association memberships and accreditations. There are a lot of choices on the internet and you want to assure your users that they are making the right one.”

Basecamp uses both client lists and a shout-out from BusinessWeek.com on their Pricing & Signup page. Featuring brands like Addidas, The World Bank and BusinessWeek help Basecamp to establish credibility on this page.

5 Copywriting Keys to Landing Page Credibility

Scent
“They’re called landing pages because they’re where you plan for visitors to “land” after clicking through on PPC and targeted search terms. So before you do anything else, convince those visitors they’ve come to the right place by prominently featuring their “trigger” or search terms on the page.”

ArtRiver’s ad above is a simple, but great reminder of the importance of scent. The ad above was triggered by the query “Francesco Clemente prints” and directs to a page with only Clemente prints. It seems like a no-brainer, but there are plenty of product specific PPC ads that direct to home pages rather than product pages. Imagine if the ArtRiver ad had directed to the homepage (below) instead of the Clemente page. Would the visitor bother looking through the left navigation? Maybe, maybe not. But why take the chance?

Transparency
“People are rightfully cynical. They want to know all the angles. Provide that to them through a transparent explanation. Once they believe your explanation, they’ll have gained a world of confidence in your offer.”

Readability
“Use short paragraphs not to exceed 5 stacked lines. Use headlines, sub-heads, bullets, and bolding. Make sure your page is skimmable and scanable and that your key or trigger words are featured within your headlines, bolded text, and hyperlinks.”

Have a favorite article on landing page best practices? Post it here!

PPC Hero wrote a nice overview of the new interface back in April. Their post describes all the new changes of the interface.

One new feature I want to discuss in more detail is the “See Search Terms” button under the keyword tab, which is an incredibly powerful tool to enable search marketers to take Keyword optimization beyond just tweaking and editing bids.

Below is a step by step guide on how I use the new “See Search Term” button to hit my CPA goal without sacrificing volume (for the example below lets assume my CPA goal is $30)

Step 1: Click on the Keyword Tab and Sort Keywords by Spend

Step 2: Look for Keyword above your CPA target:

In the example above if we were targeting a $30 CPA, the top spender is far over metric at $72. Before the new interface, I would have lowered the bid on this term to cut the bleeding. I may have also pulled a Search Query report at the ad group level to add negatives, but I would have not been able to easily see what terms the phrase was being matched to without having special filters set up in Google Analytics.

The downside of just cutting the bid on this term is that, although above metric, it has had 18 conversions in the last 30 days. Immediately lowering the bid on this term, which is already only in 6th position, would undoubtedly sacrifice conversions.

In the new interface, I instead go straight to the “see search terms” as seen in the example below.

This will bring up all the queries being matched to this phrase matched term

Step 4: Sort the Search Query List by conversions or cost and look for terms you want to add to your campaign that are hitting your CPA goals

In the example, let’s assume the term, “buy shoes online”, received 5 conversions at a CPA of $20. If I would have just lower the bid on the phrase match of “buy shoes”, I would have hurt visibility on “buy shoes online”, which is a great term!

Instead of just blindly lowering the bid, I can add “buy shoes online” as a keyword so that I can maintain position on this term, even if I eventually lower the bid on the phrase match “buy shoes”

Step 5: Check off the terms you want to add as Keywords and click on the “Add as Keyword” button

You can edit this Keyword to be the phrase matched or the exact match version. Click Save and the term will be added to the same ad group that it was originally being matched to.

Step 6: Next check off the terms you want to add as negatives and click on the “Add as Negative Keyword” as seen below.

In this example the shoe store does not sell clown shoes, but Google is matching to the term “Buy Shoes Clown”.

Google will default to the exact match negative. You can edit this to add any phrase you want. In this example I would change this to the term “clown” in general so any phrase that includes clown would be excluded.

By eliminating these irrelevant queries you may be able to bring the CPA down for “buy shoes” without lowering the bid. This will help you maintain visibility and maximize your conversions, while hitting your CPA goals.

One thing to be VERY careful about when using this technique…
Make sure you are adding keywords when you want to add keywords and negatives when you want to add negatives. The last thing you would want to do, is to start bidding on the broad completely unrelated term “clown” This would be BAD!!!!

What I love about Google is that they never stop improving. They continue to create ways for more transparency and functionality to help advertisers to cost effectively find consumers ready to take an action.

Extensions can be set up at the Campaign or Ad level. At the Campaign level, the address will populate dynamically based on the user’s location or search query. Read more about setting up Local Extensions at the Campaign level here.

If you want more control over the address that appears with your ad, you’ll want to set up Local Extensions at the Ad level. For example, let’s say that you want test a new product in a smaller market before launching it nationwide. In this case, you’ll want to set the address at the Ad level so that only users in that market will be directed to the landing page featuring the new product, and will be shown only the address where that product is available. Read more about setting up Local Extensions at the Ad level here.

Here is an example of Local Extensions in action:

Google has made some additions to reporting metrics so you can see how users are interacting with your local business ad. Here is a peek at some of the information you can pull from the AdWords Reports tab:

You’ll only pay for clicks through to your website; clicks on the PlusBox, map, or directions are free!

Before getting started with Local Extensions, you’ll want to link your AdWords and Local Business Center accounts. Lots of exciting things have been happening in the local business center, so it’s a great time to sign up. Here’s how:

Google Local Business Center

Google Maps pulls business information from a slew of sources (like Yellow Pages, for example) so in order to ensure that your listing has the most accurate and comprehensive information possible, you’ll want to register your business with Google’s Local Business Center. The process is simple and Google has a great video that will walk you through the steps. If your business already appears on Google Maps, you’ll just need to claim the listing before getting started. If you have more than 10 listings, Google makes it easy to import a bulk feed in a CSV file. The process is a bit different and you can find everything you’ll need to know here.

Next, add some more information about your business:

* Hours of operation
* Payment Options
* Photos & Video
* Additional Details
* Categories

Select up to 5 categories that relate to your business. This will allow potential new customers to find you when they search for businesses in the categories you have specified in your listing. Let’s say I’m planning to do some shoe shopping in Paris. I’ll go to Google and search for “shoes paris” and here are the suggestions generated based on my query:

The Local Business Center Dashboard gives you access to a couple of great features relating to your listing:

* Statistics: ‘View Report’ to see information including impressions, actions, top search queries triggering your listing, and zip codes where driving directions came from.
* Coupons: Click the ‘Coupons’ tab and select ‘Add New Coupon’. The format is pretty simple and you can upload an image to make your coupon pop. Here is an example:

* Reviews: Reviews come from third parties as well as reviews written by Google Maps users. If you feel that a review’s authenticity is dubious, you can flag it as inappropriate and it will be reviewed and possibly removed.

Just last week, Google introduced Place Pages. According to the Official Google Blog, a Place Page is “a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world.” Just click on the “more info” link in a local listing and you’ll be taken to the place page, where you can find photos, videos, street views, nearby transit, reviews, related websites & more. Here’s a closer look at Boutique Repetto’s Place Page:

With all of the fancy new features the Google Local Business Center has rolled out, now is a great time to get started!

All of this preparation got me thinking about the two big Cancer organizations that I’ve volunteered with: American Cancer Society (ACS) and Susan G. Komen.  They have many events that are promoted throughout the year using different marketing channels including TV ads, radio ads and yes….PPC! In this quick analysis, I will compare how each organization integrates their PPC strategy with their offline strategy.

Let’s start with a little bit of a background.  Based on Wikipedia, ACS was founded in 1913 and Komen was founded in 1982. Just based on longevity, you would think that the ACS brand is more well known than Komen.  In our modern internet era we can actually research which organization has more brand recognition using Google Insights, as seen below.

Over the past year, the term “American Cancer Society” consistently has received higher web search volume.  “Susan G. Komen” had a significant spike in search volume for the month of October because of their annual Pink Ball and the 3-day walk events. There are other factors that might contribute to the volume differences other than longevity, such as the number of events that ACS offers in a year, media involvement, news, etc.  Looking at the search volume for the branded terms alone, ACS seems to be the leader in terms of brand recognition.

Let’s dive into the PPC integrations with other marketing venues.

1.    ACS
Have you seen a TV ad by ACS that says that it is the official sponsor of birthdays? The first time I saw it, I was intrigued (again because I’ve volunteered with them before) and wanted to know more about it. What do they mean by the official sponsor of birthdays? I typed in different terms to search for more information on the “more birthdays” idea in Google. First, I typed in “celebrating more birthday cancer” and “more birthdays” in Google and this is what I saw:

First thing, I see is their organic results in top positions, but I don’t see PPC in this picture.  They don’t have targeted ad copy for this term. Before jumping to conclusions, I searched the term again the next day and now they were showing ads with targeted messaging that integrates with their offline marketing.  To their credit they also have ad copy with a strong call to action to “Download the Free ACS Birthday Kit”.

Based on this, I searched additional variation including, birthdays cancer society, more birthdays American cancer society, more birthdays, morebirthdays.com.  Below are a couple ad variations I found:

A couple of hours later, I did the same thing and I didn’t see the ad copy (and yes I used ad preview tool). Instead, I saw this:

It is possible that ACS is running a test campaign for morebirthdays.com and they only run the campaigns at certain times using ad scheduling (maybe even geo target the campaigns) or they only run their campaign when TV ad airs.  They may not even realize they are going dark, as they may be running out of budget. The good thing is that they have a strong organic presence (top ranked organic results). ACS is doing a  decent job integrating offline media advertising with PPC. They are bidding on related terms and are running a few variations of their ad copy.  However, they are falling short with visibility as their ads are showing up sporadically throughout the day.

I went to YouTube and searched for their official celebrating more birthday commercial. The information section on the right side includes very helpful information about the page but unfortunately no direct link to the homepage (which is important for a curious seeker). Additionally, after paying close attention to the TV ad, it actually shows the URL for MoreBirthday.com at the very end of the commercial which I don’t remember seeing for the first time so unless you do a little bit of research, you probably won’t get any information.

2.    Let’s move on to Komen, I’ve been hearing its “Join 3 day walk” on the radio. When I typed: 3 day, the 3 day and 3 day walk on Google, Komen’s related websites were present in the organic as well as in paid search side.  This is a couple versions of their ad copy:

What’s different between ACS and Komen? Aside from bidding on related terms and running more than 1 version of the ad copy, Komen 3 day walk ad copy runs all day, which is helpful and definitely gives them a stronger presence.
As I initially heard of the 3 day walk on the radio, someone who is driving, may not pay attention to the whole ad. Also, let’s face it, we sometimes can’t distinguish one cancer organization from the other.  After listening to the Radio ad, one might think “was that ACS or Komen?” The only thing that they may remember is the phrase “3 day.”  If the listener is curious enough, they would go to Google and type in that phrase to get more information.

In Conclusion:
The main take away is that in terms of integrating PPC strategy with other marketing tactics, Susan G. Komen has a better SEM presence by running their ad copy all day. ACS’s ad only comes up sporadically throughout the day.  ACS may have other considerations that I am not aware of, such as budget, or integration with TV ad schedule for not running their Morebirthdays PPC campaign all day.  By not having 100% visibility ACS may be missing out opportunity.