Part 9 - Campaign Management - Monitoring Your Success

In Parts 1 – 8 of this series we took a systematic approach to building a successful Sponsored Search Engine Marketing Campaign. In this final article of the series we will review how to monitor and continually improve your campaign.

But before we begin, we would like to take this opportunity to remind you: Even though your campaign is now up and running – always be on the outlook for new keywords!

Metrics to Monitor

In Part 4 of this series we discussed setting campaign goals and defining success metrics. We reviewed the importance of using the power of clear, measurable goals to succeed in Sponsored Search Engine Marketing.

We identified your main sponsored SEM campaign goal (in a clear, measurable and achievable format) and we identified the key site performance metrics (Success Metrics) that you will be using to achieve and monitor your success. If you have not completed Part 4, we recommend you do so before continuing with Part 9.

Your SEM goal assisted you in identifying many of the metrics you will need to track in order to ensure that your campaign is successful. The additional metrics you identified will also assist you in achieving your goal and the baseline values you established will allow you to chart your success.

However you decide to record and track your data – it is essential that you do it in an organized and consistent manner. The use of spreadsheets will make your task easier.

““…always be on the outlook for new keywords!””

Using the Metrics Data

Once you have been gathering campaign data long enough to be able to make some reasonable conclusions (‘long enough’ will depend on how active your keywords are). You will be able to determine if you need to make adjustments in your campaign. Whether you identify your keyword, your ad, your landing page or your click source as the possible problem, your approach to improving your campaign must be consistent, structured, logical and clearly measurable.

As you review your data you might discover such problems as:

• Low CTR (click through rate: number of clicks on ad divided by number of times the ad was shown). Keyword is performing below an acceptable level - you will need to determine if the keyword is in fact relevant, if your keyword competitors have more compelling ads than yours, it your ad is being displayed in the best position, and whether or not your ad is successfully written for your target audience.

• Landing page is not converting at an acceptable level. You will need to determine if the landing page is relevant for the keyword ad(s) that link to it, whether or not it is written to your target audience and if it is suitably compelling.

Before making random, knee-jerk changes to your ads or landing pages, it is essential that you step back and take a measured scientific approach to making changes. Your campaign will benefit most from consistent, careful, controlled testing of all changes.

Ongoing Testing and Improvements

One of the clearest methods of testing SEM changes is the simple A/B test (aka the split test). An A/B test involves testing changes one change at a time, gathering data on the test, and analyzing the results. For example, if you are testing the effectiveness of an ad title you would create a new title and leave everything else about the ad exactly the same:

Keyword: Rare Auto Parts

Existing ad ‘A’:

Best Buy Rare Auto Parts
Free Shipping on Hard to Find and
Out of Stock Rare Auto Parts.
www.dontgothere-autoparts.com

Test ad ‘B’:

Rare Auto Parts Best Buy
Free Shipping on Hard to Find and
Out of Stock Rare Auto Parts.
www.dontgothere-autoparts.com

Fortunately with Google ads such as the examples above, setting up A/B testing is very simple. Simply add the B (test) ad to the AdGroup for the keyword you are testing. We recommend (where possible) to have only one AdGroup per keyword. For some companies this may not be possible. You can check the results of your testing in Google by simply opening up the AdGroup. To determine if you have enough results from your test to determine if the results are statistically significant try http://www.splittester.com – a handy tool to quickly estimate relevance.

For Overture and most other sponsored PPC ads, it can be a bit more difficult to run A/B testing. We recommend running your tests sequentially. Run the A ad for a set period of time and then run the B ad for the same time period (being sure to match the days of the week – if the A test runs from a Monday to a Friday – then the B test needs to run from a Monday to a Friday). This is not as good as parallel testing, but if the test is run for a significant number of impressions (use the http://www.splittester.com tool to evaluate) the results are still valuable.

By consistently testing only one factor at a time you can be certain of what has made the difference. A/B testing can also be used on landing pages, however the use of the multivariable or Taguchi method of testing is often better for landing pages. You may want to take the time to read up on theses excellent forms of testing before you begin testing your landing pages.

Through consistent monitoring and consistent testing you will be able to continually make improvements throughout the lifespan of your SEM campaign.

Summary

In this series we have discussed logical, measured methods of building a successful Sponsored Search Engine Marketing Campaign and how to run and monitor the campaign in such a way that it continues to improve in a structured and logical manner. Along the way we have learned that the most important concept for SEM success is relevancy and the most important concept for continued SEM success is consistency.

**PART 1 - Campaign Goal Building, Focus and Product Identification
**PART 2 - Target Audience – Identification and Understanding
**PART 3 - Online Competition & Your Unique Selling Feature
**PART 4 - Setting Campaign Goals & Success Metrics
**PART 5 - ‘Best’ Keywords for Your Campaign
**PART 6 - Campaign Strategy
**PART 7 - Successful Landing Pages
**PART 8 - Successful Sponsored/PPC Ad Creation
**PART 9 - Campaign Management - Monitoring Your Success