By Dave Laney, Search Analyst
Google AdWords is a great way to get your website noticed, but the challenge is doing it at a price and ROI that works for you. A well-planned campaign needs clearly defined, measurable goals and objectives right from the start. But what do you do when you can’t measure the impact of your campaign directly? How do you measure the unmeasurable?
The secret is your keyword strategy. Let’s say the objective of your paid search program is to increase foot traffic in your physical stores, thus ultimately increasing revenue. How do you make a direct connection between your AdWords clicks and your physical store transaction?
Here’s how we did it. We started by running some modest geo-targeted campaigns to get a better idea of the search market. With the help of Google Analytics, we tracked all of the standard measurables such as average time on site, pages per visit, bounce rate, percent of new visits, etc. We also tracked all possible elements of the site to try to understand the intent of our users. We focused primarily on coupon clicks, requests for driving directions and "contact us" form submissions. From this information, we developed a baseline cost per action (CPA) that was agreeable to everyone.
The power of negative keywords
Almost immediately we uncovered some general broad-matched keywords driving huge amounts of traffic. More important—we noticed that most of this traffic came from users who didn’t stay on the site or give any indication that they’d be inclined to actually visit a store. After trying different keyword matching options without success, we deleted those keywords and added them as negative keywords to ensure they didn’t show up for any other broad or phrase matched keywords.
As the campaign ran and gained some history, our client began to see increases in both foot traffic in their physical stores and revenue. We worked with them to develop an acceptable CPA based on actions (e.g., coupon clicks, requests for driving directions) that indicated user intent to visit a physical store. We were then able to reduce the CPA while increasing click through rate, quality score and impression share. How? Many ad copy tests, keyword bid adjustments and by building targeted ad groups.
The biggest payoff: We were able to identify more keywords that drove high volume among users who showed little intent to visit a store. By trying different matching options or eliminating these keywords altogether, we have been able to run a highly efficient, highly successful campaign that directly linked search to revenue. Sometimes it’s the clicks you don’t buy that make all the difference.
