When our sister agency MadeByPi told us they were working with the Childrens Heart Surgery Fund we immediately began thinking of ways in which we could help out.

They had previously explored Facebook advertising as a means of getting their message out, and inspiring donations. However, working to a very limited budget they had not yet explored the opportunities within paid search.

Given the budget constraints we were delighted to be able to help them access free promotion and free traffic on Google Adwords, whilst donating our time for free as part of our commitment to local charities.

We introduced them to the Google Ad Grants programme – an opportunity for non-profits to access free advertising budget on Google Adwords. Working within a fairly broad framework registered non-profits can access up to $10,000 per month in free Adwords traffic, with no spend commitment required.

We worked closely with Andy at CHSF to help submit the non-profit and ad grants applications. This included building an Adwords account to highlight their award-winning work in support of the Leeds Congenital Heart Unit. Keywords and ad copy were created in collaboration with Andy, all whilst helping develop his understanding of the Adwords set-up process.

Once live we provided a training session to help Andy understand the requirements for continually developing and improving the activity, as well as reporting on it, updating copy, and creating new campaigns. Ongoing we are delighted to be available as a constant support partner for any questions or issues. Ultimately we want to ensure they get as much free traffic as they possibly can to help drive the amazing work they are doing.

“We’re really grateful to Fusion Unlimited for giving their time and expertise for nothing to help us take advantage of Google Ad Grants, and teaching us how to use Google Adwords.

Matt at Fusion has been supremely patient and professional in showing us how everything works and building us an introductory suite of campaigns.
Google Adwords will be invaluable in helping build our online presence to bring in more traffic to our website and spread awareness to potential new supporters.”

Andy McNally
Marketing and Communications Manager
Children’s Heart Surgery Fund

In simple terms, a PPC landing page is a web page which a user ‘lands’ on subsequent to clicking a paid ad. Essentially, there are two broad types of landing pages; click through pages and lead generation pages. Click through pages are more often than not used in ecommerce with the intention of moving a user further down the purchasing funnel. They use a CTA such as ‘add to cart’ to achieve this. Lead generation pages usually include a form designed to collect personal information about a user in order to market a product or service to that user at a later date.

The Faster, The Better

It takes someone just seconds to make a strong first impression and the same can be said when considering landing pages. This is just one reason why it is important to provide a fast loading time when navigating a user to your landing page, not to mention the fact that it improves your Google Quality Score, effectively increasing your ad position for a lower cost. Providing a fast loading time keeps the user engaged and reduces your bounce rate.

Keep it Simple

Avoid making your landing page look ‘busy’ with distracting videos and pictures because that is exactly what they will do; distract the user. Living in such a fast paced society, it’s important not to bog the user down with excessive amounts of text and jargon, they must be able to understand the message you’re trying to convey in a relatively short space of time. Besides, lots of images and videos will only slow your load time down anyway.

Relevancy is Key

It’s very unlikely that you’d walk to an aisle in a supermarket marked ‘bacon’ only to find boxes of eggs there instead. It would be pretty disappointing too. Don’t make the same mistake with your landing page. Keep it relevant to what your ad has proposed and re-emphasise its message; do not disappoint. Don’t send the user to the homepage, instead, take them to the purchase page and provide them with more information about your product or service. By keeping your ad relevant, you’ll lower your CPC, increase conversions and ultimately, improve ROI.

Provide a Clear and Simple CTA

Don’t hide it below the fold or with mouseover effects. Champion it. It’s important that the user knows what to do next and it’s your job to guide them to the action you want them to take. This being said, what you don’t want is for the user to feel too ‘pushed’ or committed. Use a ‘soft’ CTA, for example, ‘add to cart’ rather than a CTA such as ‘submit’ which may discourage the user.

And Finally, Test, Test, Test!

Your landing page is an important element to your campaign so it’s important to test it as often as is necessary. This can be achieved in two ways; A/B testing and multivariate testing;

A/B testing allows you to test two entirely different pages against each other to determine which one is more effective in terms of performance.

Multivariate testing lets you test a number of components within a landing page at one time to determine which combination of components are most effective. Anything can be tested from CTA variations and navigation to headlines and copy. Testing your landing page is vital in determining what works well, what doesn’t, what to use and what to avoid.

Today at fusion the PPC team is excited about something which will make our lives that little bit easier – the new AdWords editor update.

What makes this update extra special is one of the 9 new features; the integration of AdWords labels with editor, something we have been hankering after for years since their introduction.

Labels can be applied to ads, keywords, ad groups and campaigns, and have a number of uses. Tagging up similar themes can make bulk edits easier, be used as automation criteria and help with data analysis. But their manual application has hampered this feature reaching its true potential.

So what are you waiting for, upgrade now!

Other features integrated into the new editor upgrade include:
Upgraded URLs
Call-only Ads
New filtering methods and improved search
Mobile App Targeting
Etc.

For the full list see AdWords Editor Help

After whisperings within the industry, which began a few weeks ago, Google finally announced last Monday (April 14th) that they would be removing the query from Adwords referral data, preventing analytics packages from being able to see the specific terms sending you Google PPC traffic.

In many ways this move was inevitable as Google continued to come under fire for their apparent double-standards around user privacy – allowing query information to be passed for paid search activity (which makes Google money), but not for organic search activity (which does not make Google money).

Widespread panic and confusion!

This move was both preceded by and greeted with the usual sensationalism and scare-mongering by many industry sources. This is perhaps not surprising given the impact of Google’s changes last year, which blocked all organic search keyword data and left many SEO practitioners if not totally blind, then certainly partially sighted, whilst they adapted to new ways of working.

The truth is still out there…

The reality and the impact of what has happened are thankfully much less catastrophic. Pretty much all of your data is still there if you know where to look, and how to set up your Adwords account.
As Google are no doubt well aware, completely removing advertiser’s visibility of what is and isn’t working for them would be a fairly rapid route to reduced spend, less confidence and, ultimately, less profit for Google. Last week’s move is a long way from that kind of paid keyword data blackout.

What have we lost?

The critical distinction is that Google no longer passes QUERY data. This is the exact term a user searched for before clicking your ad.

So for example, if you are bidding on the keyword ‘cheap holidays’ on phrase match your ad could be triggered by queries like ‘cheap holidays to France’, ‘buy cheap holidays’ etc.

Previously you could see both keyword data and query data in 3rd party reports, so you could see that it was actually the query ‘buy cheap holidays’ that drove a sale. From now you will only have keyword data, so you will only know that a sale was driven by the phrase match keyword ‘cheap holidays’.

As a result those most impacted by this change will be the accounts which are heavily reliant on small numbers of phrase or broad match terms.

In the above example if you had ‘buy cheap holidays’ created as a keyword in your account, as opposed to simply being triggered by the keyword ‘cheap holidays,’ then you would have full visibility of it within keyword reporting.

What do we still have?

You can still pass KEYWORD data, along with campaign data, ad copy data, match type and more within the URL of your keyword. So whilst you can no longer see the exact search query used in 3rd party systems you can still see the keyword in your account that triggered your ad.

It’s also important to remember nothing is being lost from within Adwords. This change is around security and privacy and as data in Adwords is anonymous and proprietary there are theoretically no issues here.

Getting the most out of what we have

For most advertisers everything they need in terms of queries is still available within Adwords itself. All of your search query data is available through search term reports as before, and if you want to ally this with conversion data you just need to set up Adwords conversion tracking.

Adwords Search Query Report

For any reporting, or use of query data outside the Adwords eco-system, keyword data should be more than sufficient, but to get the most detailed picture you should aim to make your keyword data as close to search query data as possible…

Improving your keyword data

At Fusion Unlimited we have long been advocates of detailed account structures and maximising use of exact match keywords. If everything in your account were set up on exact match then, effectively, your keyword and query would be one and the same thing, and this change would have no impact on your data. The issue with that approach is that you would be limiting your access to the long-tail and opportunities for account expansion.

The best compromise is to use phrase match and even broad match in a controlled manner alongside exact match. You can then use the search query report within Adwords to mine new keywords and add these to your account on exact match, allowing you to pass this data to any third party systems you are using, as well as a host of other benefits that come with more finely-tuned keyword targeting.

The more you grow your exact match keyword portfolio, and reduce the volumes you are driving through phrase and broad match terms, the closer your keyword data will be to the search query data.

Match Types Explained

Image sources:

Shredder – https://www.flickr.com/photos/85638163@N00/

Match types explained – Adwords Help Centre