With no exceptions that I am aware of, Google AdWords campaigns are not as successful at the beginning as they can be. This implies that success comes via iteration. With your feedback mechanism in place as I’ve suggested earlier in this chapter, you can take even a relatively poorly performing AdWords campaign and tweak it to make it much better. To use successful iteration, you need to be tracking your AdWords campaigns, and you need multiple ad variations. It’s amazing how much impact even a small change in wording in an ad can have!
Basically, for each ad variation you should be tracking impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversions.
As shown in Figure 12-1, iteration is basically a simple process. You start with two related ads, run them a lot of times, and compare the results. Drop the poorer performing of the two ads and create another variation. Repeat the performance.
Note
Before doing your comparisons, make sure you have enough ad impressions so that the results are statistically significant.
There’s also an issue if all your metrics don’t agree. Suppose Ad A gets you a higher CTR than Ad B, but Ad B does better in terms of conversions (always assuming you have enough data on which to base conclusions). In this situation—which does come up in the real world—it can be tricky to know which ad you should choose.
To make this determination, you’ll need to know more about the metrics of the business that is being advertised. Generally, businesses that have a high profit margin per unit sold should go for the higher CTR because they can afford to absorb the cost of the excess clicks. Lower-profit-margin businesses should most likely select conversions as the key metric because they need to make sure not to waste any CPC funds.
Although the specifics of metric comparison will vary depending on the business and campaign, the idea of iteration, and of succeeding by applying metrics to iteration, will not change.