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It’s safe to say that 2020 has been a year like no other in modern times. Every industry has been affected by the events that have unfolded, and search engine marketers have had to be more nimble than ever before in adapting their strategies. While it looks like returning to some degree of normality might be a possibility in the months ahead, there’s no reason to assume SEM will ever go back to business as usual.
Here are nine SEM trends you need to know when planning your program for 2021.
2020 saw a massive decrease in advertising investment as businesses in different industries faced shutdowns and even financial crises due to a lack of customers. Since advertising investment overall has been on an upward trend for years, most people working with Google Ads expect the spending levels to simply bounce back in 2021.
That said, as the pandemic continues and the economic fallout of it is likely to extend for years, it’s hard to really say how ad spend will change in 2021. According to IAB’s latest survey of media buyers, only 9% feel very clear about their ad budget outlook for 2021, while 70% either have ballpark estimates or no clarity at all:
Marketers preparing for 2021 should have their budgets ready, and if investments don’t evolve as expected, then rest easy knowing it will be cheaper and easier to bid for top ad spots in search results.
There have been many changes to YouTube’s advertising options that will make it more valuable to search engine marketers in 2021. Google Ads has recently introduced new metrics to improve ad optimization on YouTube, including engaged-view conversions (EVCs) and view-through conversions (VTCs). They also brought in audio ads for YouTube, designed to connect brands with audiences that listen to music on YouTube.
Advanced contextual targeting is another feature they’re now using to drive mass reach for advertisers in specific contexts. Large brands are already starting to make the most out of YouTube’s reach and relevant content to meet their business goals. New targeting, ad types, and optimization features like these are sure to make YouTube particularly appealing for advertisers in 2021.
Google’s efforts to minimize how much advertisers can access and analyze data through the platform have been trending for a while now, and 2021 is expected to be no different. Google Ads regularly introduces new machine learning-powered features designed to automate insights, which typically presents challenges for advanced advertisers who want to construct their own analyses.
Since the majority of Google advertisers don’t have the experience or expertise to do this, it’s likely the trend towards automating insights will continue as Google rolls out more features. The important thing to remember in 2021 is that machine learning is helpful, and there’s still a lot you can do to customize and guide automated bidding. With so many relevant data points available that can influence bidding decisions, some degree of automation is necessary in order to keep up with it all.
The plethora of challenges advertisers now face managing their campaigns on Google Ads could encourage many to invest more in non-Google SEM options to deliver the results they want. While Google still remains the biggest search engine in the market by a considerable distance, using other options will become more appealing as it continues to control what advertisers can or can’t do on the platform.
This is especially true as other search engines like Bing have made it very easy to import campaigns from Google Ads so marketers don’t need to start from scratch. Investing in non-Google SEM can be extremely worthwhile and empower advertisers with the control they need to reach the right audiences and drive more conversions at a better cost-per-click.
Google recently introduced a new, more intelligent Google Analytics using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and better cross-platform integrations to help brands surface more critical insights into marketing performance. GA can detect data trends like an increase in demand for certain products or even future actions your customers may make. Here’s what a churn probability report looks like in the new GA:
These insights are incredibly useful for optimizing campaigns and bid adjustments to maximize PPC revenue. Smart marketers will use GA to their full advantage to improve SEM in 2021.
Google Shopping Ads are a powerful solution to bring in new customers to your business. According to Smart Insights, Shopping Ads make up 76.4% of retail search ad spend. The massive increase in online shopping in 2020 means Shopping Ads now represent an even bigger opportunity for retailers to drive breakthrough ROI.
This alone is reason enough for the competition to surge as more marketing organizations start investing in this ad type. However, that’s just the first half of the story. In April 2020, Google officially opened up Shopping Ads to all businesses for free. Before this, you had to pay to display this kind of ad. Now, Google is allowing businesses to compete for Shopping Ad space just like they do with other ad campaigns. It’s safe to say, then, that we can expect an intensification of competition for Shopping Ads in 2021.
In recent years, platforms like Google and Facebook have made massive walled gardens of data, making it difficult for marketers to access and utilize the audience data they need. This has led to an increased interest in gathering and managing data independently. While this wasn’t easy to do before, it’s become even more complicated now that global privacy policies are restricting third-party cookies across browsers.
There are no longer any easy solutions to help businesses capture and manage their own audience data. Forward-thinking marketers that focus on developing their own data strategy will be setting themselves up for success in 2021 and beyond. While the cookie is dead, there are other ways to monitor how your audience interacts with your business online, such as device fingerprinting.
In today’s advertising world, it’s not just targeting and bidding that you can optimize using artificial intelligence, but also your ads themselves. Responsive search ads (RSAs) are a type of ad that allows Google AI to optimize your headlines, ad description, and call-to-action to make them more relevant to the search query and audience. While this feature has been around since 2019, enough businesses have now tried RSAs to confirm they work very well at improving cost per click, cost per conversion, and conversion rates across the board.
Google Ads has introduced many automation features that the majority of marketers dislike, but RSAs are certainly not one of them. Their ability to craft and deliver effective messaging to searchers at exactly the right time will make them a staple ad-type for campaigns in 2021 and beyond.
It has long been an important strategy in PPC advertising to choose keywords and create ads that speak to the original intent of your audience. People interested in different products or services, or who are at different stages of the sales funnel, shouldn’t be targeted with the same message. While smart marketers are constantly working on segmenting to achieve this goal, it’s about to get much easier in 2021.
That’s because Google recently launched a new custom audiences solution. This brings custom affinity and custom intent audiences together for better segmentation and targeting. When creating custom audiences, you can now easily set targeting to:
This makes it much easier to target and optimize your ads for people in the awareness, interest, decision, and action stages of the sales funnel.
It’s difficult to know for sure what’s going to happen in 2021, especially after such a strange year in 2020. Businesses investing in SEM need to pay close attention to how changes in the economy, their communities, and industries can impact their success. That said, there are some trends in new technologies and marketing strategies that businesses can expect to be important moving forward. Be sure to take advantage of the things you know for certain and keep an eye out for new changes in a year that’s bound to be much better than the last.
While few brands remain untouched by the impacts of COVID, healthcare marketers have been uniquely challenged to repeatedly adapt their digital strategies over the course of 2020.
At Basis, we’ve tapped into our years of experience in the healthcare vertical to support our clients through strategic shifts in messaging, campaign goals, and investment strategies. No two initiatives are the same, but a few key channels and ad variations can position any brand as a trusted voice in the healthcare conversation.
If you’re working with a budget that can support multiple channels, be discerning about maximizing that channel’s key offering, and play to its strengths. Here are a few ideas:
Maintain an evergreen brand presence with paid search. If any channel should be keeping the lights on all year round, it’s this one. Ensure that anyone searching for the brand or related services will be able to find yours.
Search learnings can also be invaluable. Keyword volume can tell you when people are most likely to be looking for certain content. For example—is January really the best time to run a weight loss campaign, or do people start looking for dieting tips in December? Spoiler Alert: Start that campaign in December!
Search traffic can also be a valuable tool for audience insights, showing you the age, gender, and interests of your most engaged audience(s).
Consider social—specifically Facebook—to increase your scale with lookalike audiences. CRM data and lookalike modeling can be especially difficult to maneuver in the healthcare space, where privacy is even more paramount. Facebook can be an incredible asset in that sense, allowing you to easily create lookalike audiences based on engagement with the landing page or ad variants.
Bolster your social learnings by including at least 3-5 variants of each creative. This doesn’t have to mean a significantly higher lift in creative production – instead, consider one image with a few different headlines, or a single headline with a few different images.
Once you’ve got a strong set of ads, let Facebook test them in every nook and cranny of their network – Instagram, Messenger, Stories, Marketplace – to find out which part of the platform your audience is most engaged.
Reach niche audiences at scale with Programmatic Display and Native. By partnering with leading healthcare data partners like Crossix, Adstra, and Pulsepoint, Basis can implement behavioral targeting for your most niche audiences with Basis DSP. We’re talking segments for people with “grass allergies” or “osteoporosis of the knee”–incredible specificity!
All of Basis' data partners are entirely CCPA and HIPAA compliant, and trusted leaders in the audience data ecosystem. Learn more about our partnership with Adstra here!
Access to a wide range of audiences means you can more confidently test out-of-the-box audiences, and pivot quickly based on performance. For example:
Oh, and remember that lookalike audience targeting we mentioned before? That can also be done programmatically, using your landing page!
Now that you’ve got a few channels in the mix, make sure they’re working together. Ask your media strategist to download a list of top-performing keywords from your Search campaign and use them to identify relevant content for your programmatic buy. If a specific behavioral segment is delivering the best performance on your Display campaign, consider testing similar interests on Facebook.
Our most successful clients don’t have the magic touch when it comes to finding the right words—they test and learn! There are so many cost-efficient and low-risk ways to test copy and imagery without going all the way back to the drawing board. Start by running a few versions of your headline or sub-copy and go from there.
Once you’ve started to gain an understanding of which ad formats resonate most with your audience, become an active participant in the conversation by swapping content regularly.
Many brands positioned themselves as thought-leaders in April, May, and June, informing their audiences of COVID regulations and news. Over the summer, they pivoted that messaging to begin encouraging patients to keep their regular appointments, advertising the health and safety precautions they’d instated to inspire confidence in the minds of patients and families.
Again, the best brands don’t get lucky by writing one headline that works all year long – they pay attention and promote consistently relevant, trustworthy content.
Want to learn more about how Basis can help take your healthcare initiative to the next level? Get in touch!
Personalization has long been a valuable aspect of marketing, particularly in the digital age. It can help marketers resonate with - and target - their audiences more effectively, improve user experience, and ultimately deliver better customer service. New advancements in artificial intelligence and automation have further made it possible to personalize the customer experience in real-time to help marketers drive more sales and grow revenue.
As personalization capabilities develop in sophistication, utilizing such a powerful weapon across different channels becomes more of a necessity. Here’s how prioritizing personalization through the use of marketing intelligence platforms is the best way to approach this challenge.
Personalization shouldn’t be a marketing tactic that’s part of your arsenal. It should be the driving force behind how you interact with each potential customer at every touchpoint.
Especially among the younger generations, there is an expectation of brands to deliver a personalized experience. Consumers won’t pay attention to inbound marketing messages that fail to cater to their unique interests, needs, and preferences. They’re also easily frustrated when their experience with a brand isn’t personalized. Once consumers understand the various ways businesses can serve their unique needs, they expect nothing less than that all the time.
While consumers today are worried about data collection and their privacy, they also greatly appreciate how personalization improves their experience as shoppers. According to Gartner’s Maximize the Impact of Personalization report, here’s how consumers say personalization helps them:
Businesses are smart to do everything they can to meet consumer expectations. The benefits go both ways. Research by McKinsey outlines that personalization can help brands:
There are already numerous basic things marketers can do to personalize their initiatives using their existing systems and data. For example, a clothing store (eCommerce or brick-and-mortar) can utilize a shopper’s past purchase history to send them customized emails featuring clothing with similar styles, colors, and price ranges. They can even create special discount offers for individual customers to encourage them to purchase again.
Even the most elementary personalization strategies are powerful, but the potential goes far beyond this. Through technologies built on automation and artificial intelligence, it’s possible to swiftly respond to consumer behavior with personalization. Rather than segmenting audiences and creating customized marketing content for them after the fact, your strategy can change dynamically. This is a valuable tool for targeting the countless online shoppers who make quick decisions after expressing initial interest.
All marketers today know that personalization is important, though there’s often a struggle to keep up with consumer expectations and competitor strategies. According to a survey conducted by Forbes Insights and Arm Treasure Data, 46% of marketing executives are not where they want to be in terms of delivering personalization. Here’s what respondents say are the top challenges holding them back:
These issues are a massive challenge today because there has been a huge amount of change regarding what kind of data businesses need for personalization and how they employ it. There’s simply too much relevant audience data marketing organizations can use for personalization, namely:
Organic marketing data - Social signals, web traffic, email opens and clicks, mobile app usage, and in-app behavior, etc.
Paid marketing data - Impressions, clicks, conversions, engagement, etc.
Third-party data - Preference information from social media, demographics, interests, and other third-party consumer information.
Offline data - In-store behavior, call center data, location data from mobile devices, intelligence from wearable devices, etc.
If marketers want to get ahead with their personalization strategy as opposed to simply trying to keep up, they need to be ready to harness all this data. It’s no longer enough to focus solely on how consumers interact with your business. You need insights into their full behavioral profile on all channels to truly understand what’s relevant to them.
This is not just so you can market to them better, but also satisfy their expectations as customers. Consumer sentiment is largely against corporations tracking their every move across the web. However, the exception is personalization. People want a customized experience with your brand regardless of what device they’re using. If you can’t deliver this with some amount of immediacy, they’re more than happy to turn to competitors who will.
The key to keeping up with competitor strategies while catering to consumer needs is fully investing in data-driven personalization.
In order to use all relevant audience insights for personalization, having the right data management technologies is critical. All of the data types mentioned above are easily trackable using various tools that are likely already a part of your MarTech stack. However, analyzing different types of audience data in isolation limits its utility for cross-channel personalization.
Using technology on the path to personalization isn’t about monitoring all behavioral metrics across channels and personalizing your strategy for each in isolation. Having a full understanding of the customer journey won’t be very helpful if you’re unable to connect the dots with your messaging.
Marketing intelligence platforms (MIPs) are the solution uniquely positioned to offer a comprehensive perspective of audience behavior across platforms, devices, and channels, all while empowering you with the tools you need to act on these insights.
Here’s how.
Marketing intelligence platforms make it possible to unify all your marketing data in one place, whether it be first or third-party data. MIPs integrate with a vast plethora of data systems, including advertising, marketing cloud, and CRM platforms, eCommerce systems, and call center technologies. They also have the ability to read and process any native offline data you want to provide.
MIPs can piece together your marketing puzzle based on behavioral data from various platforms and empower you to better understand cause and effect. Reporting capabilities also offer unique ways to look at and analyze data, such as calculating cost per acquisition based on creative assets. This makes it possible to understand which types of marketing messages resonate the most with audiences so you can maximize their performance.
Having a comprehensive and integrated perspective can help you see which members of your audience first engaged through Google search then go on to convert on a Facebook ad, for example. With new intelligence capabilities from mobile and/or wearable devices, businesses can now understand how customers begin their shopping journey online and eventually convert in-store. It’s not possible to do this using traditional analytics tools and siloed behavioral data.
One of the most beneficial features of marketing intelligence platforms is customizable dashboards for reporting and visualizations. Your audience data is only valuable if relevant teams can access, analyze, and understand it. MIP dashboards offer at-a-glance analytical summaries that internal organizations throughout the business can easily view. This can include reports, visuals of audience composition, cohorts, competitive intelligence, and more.
Dashboards allow decision-makers to gain performance-enhancing insights from personal data derived from demographics, behavior, and consumer information, as well as account and purchase history.
MIPs can reveal cross-channel audience insights businesses can utilize to optimize their marketing investment and nurture leads effectively throughout the customer journey. However, these insights are only worthwhile if you can act on them.
The best MIPs make this possible by integrating with the marketing automation platforms you use to manage your campaigns. Rather than just collecting performance data, communication is two-way, so you can utilize insights to drive optimization decisions. At the highest level, some MIPs have intelligent automation capabilities that can help you create audiences for segmenting, retargeting, look-alike campaigns, etc. As an alternative to just overwhelming your marketing team with personalization opportunities, a MIP can help you effectively execute them across channels.
Consumer data holds all the keys to understanding the needs and preferences of your audience. Failing to utilize these insights to their fullest extent means a lot of potential revenue is left on the table. Comprehensive personalization efforts can help you create more relevant marketing campaigns, improve targeting, optimize customer experience, and cater to audience expectations overall.
Marketing intelligence platforms offer not only a universal view of all relevant consumer interactions but also the tools you need to execute your personalization efforts at scale. There’s simply no other solution out there that overcomes the siloing of insights and efforts when marketers really need to deliver a consistent and customized experience across channels and platforms.
Native advertising allows brands to put themselves in front of their desired audiences while fitting in with the rest of the content on the page. Once you have grasped native advertising, it’s time to understand how it fits into your channel mix. Below are three use cases where native drives performance:
When the campaign goal is to drive traffic to a landing page, native advertising is a great format to include, as it is a strong click driver. Running native display improves CTR by an average of 2.5X compared to a standard display ad. Native is used to complement other traffic-driving tactics within campaigns, usually with the aim to increase website visitors.
B2B audiences respond well to ads that look reputable and fit the look and feel of the site they’re on. Native advertising provides more real estate (i.e. headlines, copy, etc.), to convey your offering and key differentiators. Another implementation strategy is to run native advertising alongside contextually relevant content to reach customers in the research phase.
In a conversion-focused campaign, native advertising is best used as a mid-funnel tactic. Native assets provide key information for users and are used to drive them to the site to learn more. It's recommended to retarget this audience with another asset that includes a strong call to action in order to drive the user to the final purchase or desired action.
This works well for both display and video native advertising assets. Plan to retarget users who click on the native ad with another unit. By implementing this strategy, you will continue to get in front of users who have shown interest in your product or service.
Native advertising as a creative asset drives performance when used correctly. Native ads are best used to reach site traffic goals, B2B brands, and for conversion campaigns.
Learn how Centro can help incorporate native advertising into your campaigns.
Retargeting ads use data to reach customers who leave your website without converting. They're highly effective because the potential leads they target are already engaged. Retargeting ads can help you reach your campaign goals by engaging potential customers with highly-relevant ad content.
It’s best to utilize retargeting ads when you have a well-defined KPI (Key Performance Indicator). Cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), and click-through rate (CTR) are all measurable KPIs that are well-supported by retargeting campaigns. In each of these cases, there is specific user behavior that can be easily tracked in order to measure the success of the campaign.
E-commerce campaigns can also benefit from retargeting ads in cases where online sales are driven by promotional messaging. For instance, Basis DSP can help you reach customers who have abandoned a shopping cart, and might come back to complete the sale if offered a discount.
It can be difficult to determine a reasonable ROI for a retargeting campaign.
For retargeting ads running against a CTR goal, ROI can be expected at between .08% and .12%
For retargeting ads running against a CPA goal, ROI will vary depending on the desired conversion. To maximize ROI on CPA campaigns, it’s best to optimize the website so that the conversion activity requires as little as possible of the customer once they’ve arrived at your website after seeing the ad.
Finally, there is no blanket benchmark that can be universally expected for an e-commerce campaign where return on ad spend is the KPI, as spend levels and product costs can vary widely.
It’s important to keep those factors in mind when planning and evaluating the success of a retargeting campaign. To learn more about retargeting with Centro, click here.
Centro has always focused on the wellness of the people who work here. The energy and resources we apply to our team directly affects the energy our team puts towards Centro’s customer, partners and peers. This is a key reason we’ve been able to grow year-over-year and maintain business momentum.
Investing in employees has been part of Centro’s essence since the onset of our company. And after celebrating our 19th anniversary in October this year, it is clear that Centro’s approach towards employees is also manifesting into gratitude they are showing outwardly for the company.
Most recently, Centro was named by Fortune as the No. 52 Best Medium Workplace nationally in 2020. In the month before that, Fortune named Centro the No. 15 Best Small & Medium Workplace for Women. The lists are part of a series of rankings by Fortune and Great Place to Work, a people analytics and company culture research firm, and are based on employee feedback. Earlier in the year, Great Place to Work named Centro the No. 4 Best Small & Medium Workplace in Chicago.
Despite the numerous business challenges we faced in 2020, Centro was bestowed by other organizations with recognition for our workplace. These include:
Centro is prescriptive in supplying our team with resources they need to grow and develop. As we look towards 2021 to envision the future Centro ‘workplace,’ we recognize that the many factors that contributed to positive employee experiences (team engagement, benefits, office perks, etc.) are changing. Continuing to build energy and enthusiasm from our team will require imaginative adjustments while we all stay physically apart. Our challenge is to deliver on the new requirements that professionals are calling for.
Nevertheless, Centro is more than workplace awards and recognition—there are humans behind our technology, and we wouldn’t be able to function without them. We offer flexible digital advertising solutions built on our technology, Basis, that unifies planning and buying across programmatic, direct, search, CTV and social.
We’re hiring! Learn more about our culture and current open positions here.
As you may know, social media platforms are some of the most popular websites and apps people use online today. With 3.6 billion people worldwide logging into social media networks currently, and an estimated increase to 4.4 billion by 2025, it’s safe to say that social media isn’t going away anytime soon.
Paid social advertising consists of any advertising across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, and more. When placing an ad on these social networks, you can optimize your campaign toward media goals that align with your business objective, such as:
Social media ads are effective and efficient in allowing advertisers to reach current and potential customers with engaging messaging. With over 3 billion users engaging and sharing via social channels, you can imagine the level of audience data and insight available for advertisers to tap into with just a press of a button.
The meteoric rise in social media usage has also increased the level of sophistication these advertising platforms offer advertisers by way of more in-depth conversion tracking, detailed targeting segments, and integrations with 3rd party data providers.
Leveraging experience with over 350 brands to date, Centro’s Social team is comprised of subject matter experts across the country who are well-versed in advertising across any and all social media platforms.
In addition to being certified through programs like Facebook Blueprint and Twitter Flight School, Centro’s Social team has premium agency partnerships with some of the largest social media companies. Through those partnerships, Centro has access to dedicated platform account managers, premium alpha/beta opportunities, and early access to product updates and consultations.
To learn more about social media advertising with Centro, take a look at our managed service solutions.
4A's (American Association of Advertising Agencies) and 614 Group, a digital advertising consultancy, recently assembled forward-thinking industry leaders via a Think Tank to tackle the most pressing challenges in advertising and marketing—automation solutions and identity management. The guidance from the group was published as white papers (download here). This is the second phase of a large-scale initiative by The 4A's to understand and shape the future of programmatic and automation.
Participants in the Think Tank included Sony Entertainment, RPA, Horizon, Cramer-Krasselt, Fitzco, Starcom, and Geometry, Matterkind, UM Worldwide, Canvas Worldwide, AKQA, Hearts and Science, 451 Degrees. The work of the group is underwritten by Centro, Media.net, Facebook and IBM Watson.
The first phase of this project started in 2019, resulting in an in-depth examination of programmatic advertising and agency automation. Centro also showcased the work in our Future of Automation webinar.
The recent white papers help brands and agencies with media teams navigate two important issues that they are facing now and will likely face throughout in the next 12 months. Noted below, are important points and main takeaways from these companion papers:
‘Moving to Simplicity and High Value: A Call to Action for Workflow Automation and People Augmentation’ gives guidance on what aspects of an organization could be automated. From the report: “The Think Tank determined that one of its priorities is the development of guidance on how best to achieve workflow automation. Lack of automation hinders speed and efficiency on the part of marketers, agencies and publishers. Automating workflow will permit simplicity, speed and efficiency in how digital media and audiences are planned, activated, measured, analyzed, optimized, post-analyzed and billed.”
This paper notes that,
‘The State of Identity Management: How Did We Get Here and What Comes Next?’ provides an update of industry efforts to manage user identities for targeted advertising amid the loss of third-party cookies. The report states, “Identity management lies at the heart of digital advertising. Accurate and reliable identification enables relevant, one-to-one communication based on a host of recipient attributes and actions. Conversely, an inability to correctly identify ad recipients in many cases leads to a poor user experience and wasted ad dollars. …by initiating an honest discussion about the pros and cons of identity management, we will be able to create a more positive and beneficial environment for advertisers, publishers, and consumers alike.”
This paper notes that,
Centro has already taken action to address these challenges. Our Basis platform automates all the major aspects of an agency’s business or media team’s functions—we’ve also been exploring alternatives to cookie-less targeting with customers. As we near the end of a tumultuous year and prepare to enter a new one with plenty of uncertainty, our customers can be rest assured knowing that Centro is actively collaborating with the industry to keep a pulse on the needs in this space.
Optimizing campaigns is considerably more than just setting the right bid on your keywords. It’s about making sure that you have the right ads, the right campaign and ad group structure, and landing pages that convert well and match up nicely to your ads and keywords. Core to all of this is the process of verifying and corroborating you have all the right keywords in the first place. That’s where a lot of time is spent when it comes to optimizing campaigns and extracting the most out of your marketing dollars. Here, we explore three ways you can find the terms that are not working for you and explain how you can utilize smart reporting to make the task infinitely easier.
Let’s first talk about high CPA keywords. These are terms that are driving traffic and conversions, but at too high a cost according to your goals. Identifying these terms, and then acting on them, is the purpose of this dynamic dashboard component. The chart itself is a simple one, whereby you generate a keyword report and filter for any active keyword that is above a certain CPA, ROAS, or similar goal. This assumes that you already have a CPA/ROAS target in mind, of course.
It’s best to start at the top, and either lower bids or pause the terms that are doing the most damage. You can download the data and then immediately upload it into Adwords Editor for a quick fix. The filters in this chart are for active keywords, above a CPA target. Note that cost and conversions are included as they help to provide more context around the keywords. For example, partial conversion (such as the 0.33 above) may make the CPA look inflated, or perhaps the keywords you’re reviewing are just low volume. Campaign name and Ad Group name are also visible to make it easier to upload into Adwords Editor, but also to offer extra perspective.
Additional Considerations
These are the terms that are getting traffic but not converting at all. They are usually a low hanging fruit for optimization, but automating the reports helps to make this task more regular, and catch terms more quickly. This chart filters active keywords for zero conversions, sorting the cost highest to lowest. Generally, these are great terms to plainly pause out as they can immediately save quite a bit of money.
Additional Considerations
It’s a general, albeit old, rule that you let a keyword garner a certain threshold of spend or clicks before deciding if a term is working or not (I’ve generally seen this number at as little as 100 clicks). However, there are a lot of search terms that are rarely searched on, and may take a long time to collect enough data or statistical significance. These can still cost you money, but slowly bleed your campaign of funds over time, negatively impacting your performance.
This chart looks at keywords that have no conversions, but also low spend. In this case, we’re filtering for active keywords with zero conversions, but also less than about $30 of total spend. There can sometimes be thousands of terms that fit in this category, and this report makes finding these terms effortless. Plus, the simple act of downloading the data and then uploading it into Adwords Editor makes fixing this incredibly easy.
Additional Considerations
In addition to looking at just keywords, it’s also recommended to review search terms. It’s easy to recreate or duplicate your charts to look at search terms instead of keywords. Doing this could provide some more terms that are irrelevant or poor performers to add as negatives. It’s also possible to set up your filters to focus on particular campaign sets. For example, looking at Non-Brand versus Brand, or International versus Domestic campaigns.
By tweaking the filters on search terms, you could further create charts that find search terms that could be added to campaigns. And all of this is automatic, without the need to download those pesky CSV files.
The possibilities really are endless here, but carefully set up reports are going to be more essential as marketing continues to become more complex.
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If you’re looking to replicate any of the analytical tools you see here, our universal reporting technology can take your data and recreate these views in a matter of minutes. As with any report, though, be wary of blindly following the data. With each of these charts, and intended uses, there are also some cautions, or additional considerations to keep in mind.