Campaigns, Keyword Buys and Common Sense

Successful campaigns and keyword buys boil down to one factor - common sense. Compare a common approach to a common sense approach.

Common Approach
Bid on lots of keywords and hope for the best.

Common Sense Approach
1. Analyze Campaigns
2. Find Top Performing Campaigns
3. Fix Under Performing Campaigns
4. Re-anaylzye Campaigns
5. Weed out Non and Under Performing Campaigns
6. Re-analyze Campaigns
7. Congratulate Yourself on Money Well Spent

If your approach to keyword campaign management seems to be more the Common Approach than the Common Sense Approach, don't feel bad. You are not alone.

The good news is that switching to the Common Sense Approach is easier than you think. Let me break it down.

1. Analyze Campaigns - You can't improve what you don't measure. You need analyze your web site traffic to determine which of your campaigns are effective, which campaigns have potential, which campaigns are not performing and which may actually be suffering from the effects of click fraud (look for more information on click fraud in upcoming postings).

Just looking at the report that the Search Engines provide is not enough. You need more detail to effectively analyze the campaigns. You need to analyze your web site traffic.

2. Find Top Performing Campaigns - Your top performing campaigns will be easy to spot. Indicators of top performing campaigns are total revenue by campaign, highest conversion rate by campaign and ROI (total revenue/total cost). You should also look for Campaigns with the Highest Potential. Indicators of high potential campaign are high conversion rate and high average time on site.

3. Fix Campaigns That Can Be Fixed - Once you begin your analysis, you will be able to tell why the top performing campaigns are the top performing campaigns. You need to apply what is working with your successful campaigns to try to improve your lesser and non performing campaigns. This is important not only to improve ROI but also because campaigns that do not maintain an 0.5% CTR will be disabled. Additionally the position that you achieve is based not only on your bid but a combination of your bid and your CTR rate.

The number one key factor in a successful campaign is meeting your visitors expectations. Your visitor has already searched for something on the Search Engine, they don't want to have to start that search all over again when they get to your site. So, unless someone is searching specifically for information about your company, don't send them to your home page.

Also the more descriptive your campaign content is, the more likely it is that your campaign will be successful. Some tips include using the keyword in the headline combined with an action or emotion type word. Also if your products have a unique feature, e.g. luxury sports car, make sure to include a descriptive word in your heading.

4. Reanalyze Campaigns - Now that you've made changes, you need to reanalyze your campaigns to find out if your changes had the positive effects that you expected. Again, don't just look at the report provided to you by the Search Engine. Use your web site analytics.

5. Weed Out Non-Performing Campaigns - Cut your losses! There are few ways to weed out campaigns though. You will find that perhaps some campaigns just were not effective at all. You can turn those campaigns off (unless the Search Engine has already done that for you). There are some campaigns that are okay, that just contain some non-performing keywords.

For this you need to look a little deeper. If those non-performing keywords don't have a good potential (high conversion rate), you may want to just remove those. For those keywords that have potential, you can edit the keyword and lower your bid.

6. Reanalyze Your Campaign - Again. Things should be looking a bit brighter now.

7. Congratulate Yourself - Your Work Has Paid Off!