How to

The latest version of Google Analytics have been live for some time now and the main advantage is speed! The graphs load fastr and the new menu is a lot more user friendly. Something that changed last week and I personally think is a great new addition is the Map Overlay. You can now see region level maps of over 170 countries! In order to access the map go to Visitors > Demographics > Location report. You can then see the regions for the country you are interested.

To go a level deeper to cities, just click “City”.  Another great feature that Google Analytics rolled out recently — a magnifying glass that appears when cities are clustered closely together. Great addition as in the old interface it was very hard to differentiate areas. For example when looking into London it was almost impossible to see the different areas.

As iPhone gets more popular we start seeing more apps for search marketers. Below we list 3 apps that the team here at Stellar Search has been using. Although there are a lot of iPhone apps for search marketing unfortunately most of the them are not user friendly. Hopefully the following list will grow over time.

1. Analytics Agent

A great app with a free version and premium version. We have been using the lite version and we can access the following stats:

2. SEM Calculator

A great and handy calculator for working out some stats quickly. You can do the following:

• CPM calculator
• CPM to CPA conversion
• Banner/Email campaign CPA
• CPC to CPM
• Max CPC for PPC

3. Coremetrics iPhone App

The Coremetrics app is pretty advanced and one of the first in the market. You can check the following:

• Analyze dashboards and conversion funnels in real time
• Leverage benchmark metrics to compare performance against competitors
• Take corrective action to optimize the performance of all marketing campaigns.

Also available for Android/Blackberry/Windows.

*. PPC Editor for iPhone

PPC Editor targets those who want to manager their ad campaigns in Google AdWords on the road we haven’t tried this iPhone App but it has some positive reviews.

What is the Google content network?

The Google content network reaches 80% of global internet users — making it the world’s #1 ad network. Thousands of advertisers use Google to reach users on hundreds of thousands of web sites across all industries, from large, well-known sites to niche sites and audiences. With an audience larger than any other ad network or single web property (even Google.com), on the Google content network your message will reach more of your target audience, in more places, more often.

The content network is a great tool and if used properly could generate some great results. Nowadays Adwords is very transparent on the network and the sites your ads are appearing. For the first few years there was a misconception among advertisers that content network could harm your campaigns because of the high number of impressions. This is definitely not true, there is a higher number of impressions but this is normal.

We always recommend to set up separate campaigns for you content campaigns and with very close theme adgroups. Also its advisable to run separate campaigns for image ads and text ads. This will make it easier to manage the banner ads, and the budget.

When to use content network?

1. Create awareness, of a collection/model/new website
2. Special offers, used with codes/fathers day/Christmas
3. Competition, trying to get users to sign up to your competition etc.
4. New products launch, great for start ups/new products in the marker

A few useful things

The content network offers  three ad formats, Text Ads/Video Ads/Image ads.

For image ads Google accepts eight different sizes, you can see them all here.

The following are the most popular sizes:

Leaderboard (728 x 90)

Banner (468 x 60)

Skyscraper (120 x 600)

Animated Image Ads

Animated ads in .gif and Flash format are accepted but remember they need to be 50k or under and stop any animation after 30 seconds.

Design

1. Add call to actions on the banners, such as shop now/sign up
2. Add your unique selling points
3. Don’t forget to mention special offers
4. Add any media mentions/quotes/reviews

Other solutions

If you don’t have the resources or the creativity to create image ads Google has a tool called Display Ad builder. You can create banners within minutes using some template or by uploading your images.

There is was a lot of talk about Google’s View Through conversions.  View-through conversion reporting measures the number of conversions that occurred within 30 days of your display ad appearing for which there was no ad click generated. (It is only available on Google content network.)

A lot of advertisers and agencies started reporting on those metrics but the obvious question was how accurate this data was? Adwords announced yesterday that now you can actually “de-dupe” view through from normal conversions and also now you can extend the conversion window from the standard 30 days.

If you want to “de-dupe” the conversions go to Reporting>Conversions>Click on the action name>then Settings and choose Enable as shown below.

What you will notice is that the number of conversions over the next few days will down but it will not affect the past data. What we recommend is that if you are using any Re-marketing campaigns then do not activate this option. By keeping the  View Through conversion option it will enable you to see how the re-marketing campaigns are performing.

Facebook launched their PPC advertising a few years ago and since then it has evolved a lot. After working on variety of PPC campaigns on Facebook we have listed 13 tips that will help you get the most of your Facebook ads. Always keep in mind the user and that Facebook is not like Google Adwords.

1. Run a variety of different ads highlighting different aspects of your value proposition.

2. Specify the post-click action in the creative; unlike with search, the user may not yet
have a clear post-click plan.

3. Experiment with copy, image, and targeting, testing different combinations of all three.

4. Use images not logos. Blur the lines between content and advertising. Images of people
work well.

5. Avoid fatigue by refreshing your ad creative.

6. Be relevant by targeting specific audiences with ads and landing pages that speak to
them. Target ‘lots of little.’

7. Be concise. Try 5 words or less.

8. Ask questions.

9. Emphasize scarcity, exclusivity, and time limitations.

10. Promote the attractive pricing you are offering.

11. Use images proportionate to allotted image space.

12. Appeal to users. Higher CTR will yield lower CPCs for you.

13. Play around with a wide variety of bids to get a feel for inventory levels at each CPM.