10 Basic Tips for Adwords and Analytics

  1. Lists for retargeting.  This is like the holy grail and you should be creating lots of them!  An ad is to drive new visitors to your website.  Once there, you can track what they do and add them to remarketing lists based on their behaviour. 
  2. Personalised messages. Have display ads ready to go for each group to nudge them along.  An example could be those who visited the homepage but left; those who started filling out a form but didn’t submit; those who clicked on your mission but didn’t donate; those who clicked on membership but didn’t join.  You can also have a list of successes eg people who did buy, donate or join so you can target them on your next campaign.  Each action allows for different messaging via text, banner or display when you appear on their radar.
  3. Split testing: Digital allows you to test multiple messages on different audiences, so do it.   Whether social media ads, google adwords or electronic direct mail (edm’s), there is no harm in trying out various messages on your database.  If you have a campaign coming up and want to know what resonates, ads or edms are a great way to test the response and then create copy accordingly. Toss out what doesn’t work and build on what does.
  4. Monitoring website call conversions: Adword campaigns allows you to monitor phone calls. You are given a special number that tracks the calls generated from your ad.  This number forwards the call to your existing contact number but records it’s origin.  You can allocate a different number to each landing page and record the insights from a variety of messages. 
  5. Adwords is an auction.  Most people don’t know that adwords is an auction and your cost per click (CPC) is dependant on a quality score given by google.  The score is based on a number of factors but main ones are relevance of the ad and landing page in regards to the enquiry. These contribute to a good overall  ad performance because the clickers are happy with the result. By making good quality ads and landing pages, you should be able to reduce your cost per click. 
  6. Adwords can help create the ideal content.  By setting up landing pages specifically for testing content effectiveness, you can fine tune your campaign messaging, services, headings and calls to action. Then, using a variety of ads to drive traffic to these pages, you can measure clicks, page views and engagement, then base your copy around those keywords. 
  7. Conversion tracking: Conversion tracking measures your success rate in getting people to arrive on a particular page, and perform a specific action.  Usually to make a purchase, fill out a form, call a number or possibly donate.  There can be several steps in a conversion and each step is uniquely recorded.  This means if someone only gets half way, you change the messaging and remarket. 
  8. Event tracking:  A bit different to conversion tracking,  this records the small actions of visitors to your website –  did they download that pdf, how many times did they watch that video, share that link or click on that button? All of this data can be analysed to improve user experience on your website. 
  9. You can remarket via social channels:  Most people have had the experience of Googling something and then it appears on their facebook timeline or YouTube via sponsored posts. Adwords target audience is based on keywords, social channels ads are based around interests.  Social and Google ads have double the impact and research shows people will remember your brand. 
  10. Digital marketing is just part of your media spend: When doing your marketing budget, digital marketing should integrate with traditional channels such as print, tv and radio.  The ROI is much easier to monitor and more accurate when campaigns and goals, factor in all touchpoints.