Know Your Adspend ROI Every Day with Google Adwords Reporting

Awarded at Toronto "Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium" Nov. 2005.

Successful Google Adword campaigns depends upon monitoring your campaign adspend along with the profit it generates. No other marketing medium allows you such a luxury. Google Adwords is a marketer's dream come true.

The basis for every Google Adwords campaign is ...

Comprehensive initial keyword research

Ongoing keyword research and refinement based upon campaign feedback and other information sources

Efficient keyword list extension

Selection of correct keyword bid amounts down to individual keywords where it makes sense to do this (which it does most of the time)

Incorporation of appropriate keyword type (eg broad match or phrase match) into campaigns and ad groupings

Experience and practice in search engine optimization techniques

Google has incorporated into its PPC system wonderful reporting tools that allows management of campaigns to be done down to a micro level. A typical overall report would include the following and this can be obtained at the Campaign, Group or even Keyword level. If you can appreciate that this information is available in almost real time you will not be surprised to realise that ad agencies dislike PPC and similar Internet marketing breakthroughs. You will also understand why Google has become such a powerful media company so quickly

Current status of campaign (eg active or not) Max CPC ... ie the max bid or cost per click by keyword or group

Clicks over any period of time (days not hours)

Impressions (ie number of times ad displayed) over a period of time

Click Through Rate Average

CPC (cost per click) which is almost always lower than maximum bid CPC with the challenge to get this down to the optimised level

Cost over a period of time

Average position in bidding for the group or keyword over the period of time selected

Conversion rate ... ie percent of clicks converted to a sale (or other action such as a subscription)

Cost per conversion ... ie cost of a sale (this requires input of information on product margin for example)

This is the information skilled companies like ourselves manage and monitor continuously to create ongoing efficiencies and higher ROI's

Compare this level of reporting to placing an expensive ad in any traditional medium such as TV, magazines, radio and the like.

Of course there is no comparison because it is impossible to get the information with any reasonable degree of accuracy within any short period of time.