Self-checking Brand Campaigns in Search Results Without Ruining Your CTR
Any search marketer who has worked with small, medium or big businesses (but primarily true of SMBs, or enterprises that are still cautious with paid search ads) has experienced that clients do like checking their ads. Most of the time they will run a few brand name searches to check their organic and paid positions, plus they will come up with a few random search terms where they expect to rank well for the advertising budget they are paying you.
You cannot stop it, it will happen. Even when you have had a business relationship going back to several years, they will make sure that they are monitoring their campaigns and let you know about that. This entrepreneurial egosearch or self-check could be put down to distrust, but in all probability, it is just natural curiosity. The web is there, at the tip of your Client’s finger, (s)he just hits such and such terms (core to their business and current marketing efforts), maybe hit the ’search’ button more times in quick succession, and they are there or not there. Is it a familiar scenario? They understand that they should not click on their own ads, but they usually do not see any harm in accruing the number of ad impressions (’Hey, it is CPC guys, we only pay for the clicks’). They see no harm because their agent has not explained them that they are lowering their own quality score. Impressions count too, you know it, and your client should know it. Be preventive if you want to have slightly better proven results.
You need to talk to the clients over and over again, and explain the basic things about regionally targeted campaigns that (s)he won’t see, day parting, personalized search results, Google Toolbar, etc. And let’s not forget about the Ad Preview Tool. It is a very important thing to ask them to check their own ads in preview mode in order to stop generating impressions that do not convert into clicks. (Hopefully, they will believe that they can see the actual results.) So how do you do that?
Step 1,
go to the Google Ad Preview Tool and not to Google.com
the URL is https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool This is a safe place where you can choose your country, state (and even coordinates).
Step 2, For instance, having a look at Louisiana regional results, rather than the general national results, you would like to choose Louisiana.
If your ads are only targeted at Baton Rouge, pick Baton Rouge from the cities of Louisiana to see Baton Rouge paid ads/ sponsored links without generating impressions that lower your CTR (click through rate) and in turn your QS (quality score).
Step 3, You have the geotargeting, let’s choose some search terms. What about ‘affordable camcorder’? Here you go: safe preview, no extra ad impressions! But you can see you rela time geo-targeted ads, positions, competitors, etc. It is also a great tool for ego searching bloggers who wish to see where they are, for which terms, in which country/region/metro.
Step 4,
Don’t forget to ask your clients to restrict ego search and brand name checking (plus current search terms) to this tool. Right from the beginning. They need to understand that multiple brand name checks, or checking seasonal Christmas, New Year terms, or search terms that are very expensive nationwide.
For more advice, you can contact me at annasebestyen at gmail dot com.