subject: How To Use Google's Account Performance Reports To Increase Your Pay Per Click Roi [print this page] If you're a pay per click marketer, then you've received the reports Google recently started to send out by email. The subject line in your inbox reads (for October 2009 marketers): AdWords Oct 2009 Account Performance. Customer ID: (Your Customer ID Number)?
While you have always been able to log into your Google pay per click account to see stats, if you're like most busy PPC campaign managers, you may not do so as often as you should. So, getting these reports delivered to your inbox is a timely reminder to look at your stats so you can improve your ROI.
The report is broken down into sections entitled Account Overview; Keywords with the Most Clicks; Ad with the Most Clicks; and Content Sites with the Most Clicks. This makes it easy to digest the information in bite-sized chunks, and zero in on what you need to know.
Following are two ways to use the info in this emailed report to get more bang for your pay per click marketing dollars.
Study PPC Ad Copywriting: In the "Ad with the Most Clicks" section, you'll see the number of clicks your ad(s) got and the clickthrough rate (CTR).
If you have a lot of ads, this is valuable information because you can study them to see what you can glean from them to use in your ineffective ads. Here you'll be looking for specifics like which keywords are used, which landing page it goes to, what offer was made, etc.
By studying your successful ads like this, you may run into patterns that you can repeat in future ads; and use to tweak poorer performing ads.
Keywords: Of course, keywords are the foundation of every successful pay per click campaign. And, the Google AdWords report really provides some extremely valuable information here--it literally gives you the keywords that got the most clicks.
You can use this in a number of ways. Following are two:
i) Write Future Ads: By knowing what your top-performing keywords are, it cuts down on the amount of keyword research you have to do. If you're satisfied with the results existing keywords returned, write future ads using them.
ii) Rewrite Existing Ads: If you have ads that haven't performed as well, perhaps it's due to bad keyword choices. With your list of high-performing keywords at your fingertips, you can tweak existing ads to improve your ROI.
As demonstrated by this info, the Google AdWords Account Performance reports are a wealth of information. Don't gloss over them or delete them. When the report lands in your inbox, take a few minutes to see if you're getting the most out of your pay per click campaigns, for one piece of information gleaned from these reports can make all the difference.
