I did an interview with Philip Shaw of Clever Clicks for their Marketing Secrets podcast.

The podcast is focused around AdWords beginners; and some top mistakes – but there’s good takeaways for intermediate users as well (it is 44 minutes long).

As Philip is based in Australia; if you are from that area – it’s a good show to listen to so you get some regional info and not just US based info.

You can listen to the podcast at the Online Marketing Secrets site or read the entire transcript.

If you are looking for Australian PPC management, I’d recommend talking to Clever Clicks about their online marketing programs as they definitely know what they’re doing.

This is a guest post by Chris Thunder, the founder of TenScores.com.

Advertising is very much like a dance.

Two people (a business and a prospect) moving rhythmically towards a conversion. Ask any woman experienced in paired dancing and she’ll tell you there’s nothing worse than a bad partner. To listen is the way to lead.

How good of a dance partner are you with your customers?

The following is a concept I learned from Brad Geddes which has helped me increase conversions for my clients and myself. I put my own ‘twist’ to it and it goes something like this:

There are a series of steps a buyer goes through before deciding to purchase a product from a specific website. Some call it the sales funnel, the buying funnel, the sales process… let’s call it the Disco Dance: Discovery, Interest, Study, Comparison, Order.

Understanding each step of the Disco Dance and finding where a prospect is in the process – judging by the keyword they used or the web page they came from – helps tremendously in crafting the message that resonates most with him or her.

It helps decide whether to write a benefits driven ad, a features driven ad or one that combines both so you can lead your prospects seamlessly towards the conversion you both want.

Let’s dance!

Maggie is our stick figure and we’ll use her to explain the different steps in the dance so you can lead her to the sale.

DISCOVERY

Maggie becomes aware of her problem. At this stage she might not know much about the problem nor the solutions that are available, she uses very general terms to see what’s out there.

Your Ad – A benefit driven ad will most likely appeal to her. Tell her how you will solve her problem and make her life so much better. Do not confuse her with specialized terms she might not be familiar with.

Your Landing Page – Showcase benefits on your landing page and provide information about features leading her to the order. Since this is the earliest stage of the dance, you might want to simply ask for her contact information so you can slowly inform her through other means of communication. Most visitors from the display network (formely known as content network) are at this stage of the dance.

INTEREST & STUDY

Once she has found the solution you propose and has grown a little (or a lot) of interest from the benefits she now knows about, she studies the offer and the offerer. She starts digging in and gathering more information to help her decide.

In this stage of research, she might use more specific keywords.

Showing her features is a great choice since she already knows a little about the benefits… but she’s still early in the Disco Dance so it’s important to remind her about the benefits as well.

Your Ad – An ad showcasing both features and benefits should do well.

Your landing page – At this point you should move quickly into showing the best features of your product and move her to comparing your offer to your competition (if necessary) since this is the next probable step she will take.

COMPARISON

At this stage into the dance she knows quite a lot about the benefits and has decided to buy. It’s now a matter of who she will buy from. She’ll compare product features, prices, etc… She uses more specific keywords including comparison terms and product names.

Your Ad – An ad showcasing features and facts about your product will guide her better to the next step which is ordering your product. This is where you need to show what differentiates you from your competition, better prices maybe, a discount, free shipping, etc.

Your Landing Page - Provide details about what your product features are so she has everything she needs to compare you with others. Don’t leave anything out. A feature table can be great thing to do. Even better, you could have a comparison chart that highlights main differences between your product and those from the other guys… you know, the competitors (yes, those ones!).

ORDER

She’s made her choice, she knows what she wants and gets it. Congratulations, you’re a great dancer!

At this point, Maggie could keep the product, talk about it to her friends or… ask for a refund.

Preventing that refund to happen and encouraging her to talk about you to her friends is a more advanced dance class. See you when you graduate.

Conclusion

When you know where a prospect is in the Disco Dance, your ad and landing page can quickly lead them through all the remaining steps until the order. It can happen fast or it can take a little more time… but as long as you lead them by listening, they will come back for another dance.

About The Author: Chris Thunder is a Disco Dancer himself. If you liked the content of this post, you can read more in the Ten Scores book available free at Tenscores.com. You will also have access to free tools in beta testing such as the Adwords Quality Score Monitor and the Bid Optimizer Tool.

My latest Search Engine Land column is out titled: How To Navigate Google’s New AdWords Reports And Avoid Losing Valuable Data.

I made a video for SEL and had SEL upload it to YouTube. However, the quality of the video isn’t great (think it has to do with the YouTube upload process). Since it’s an 11 minute video I wanted to make it available in a higher resolution so you can see everything in a bit more detail.

The video walks through:

• How to create reports in the new interface
• Limitations of the reports
• Segments and dimensions for the reports
• Saving the new reports
• A workaround for multi-conversion tracking in determining value/click data

Most of your previous data is still available if you know where to look. Some of it is in a new format, or requires you to combine reports to view the data that was previously available. Please see Josh Dreller’s column to learn more about vLookup so you can combine multiple reports together.

If you like this video, there are another many more like it in our Certified Knowledge product.

There was a blog post that circulated around this week about the default bids for the content network changing and Google not letting anyone know about it.

It’s not true. Nothing has changed.

While I don’t think the author meant to imply that Google turned on auto-bidding, that was the interpretation of the 40+ requests for clarification I received about the post.

If you use conversion optimizer or auto-bidding as your campaign bidding strategies, then Google sets bids based around those targets.

If you use enhanced CPC or default bidding then Google uses a hierarchy for choosing the starting bid (and then bid modifiers such as enhanced CPC, demographic, ad scheduling, etc are applied after the default is chosen).

Google looks for the most specific bid, and uses that one if possible, if it doesn’t exist – then they move down the chain:

1. Placements
2. Audience
3. Ad group placement bid (only older accts might see this)
4. Campaign placement bid (only older accts might see this)
5. Ad group display network bid
6. Campaign content bid (only older accts might see this)
7. Auto
8. Default bid

The ‘Auto’ that’s used is not auto-bidding. Google does an average of all the keyword CPCs in that ad group.

If you don’t have keyword level bids, then they use the default bid for the ad group.

So the ‘auto’ is an old naming convention that Google used for this scenario well before auto-bidding was even a feature.

Just to make sure this wasn’t new; I looked at my first AdWords Seminar for Success presentation from October of 2006, and the notes from the presentation are the same as today (except audiences didn’t exist then).

You cannot have keyword level bids on the content network. As the content network is based around themes – not keywords – there’s no bid at that level.

The real takeaway: Set bids at the most granular level. Placements or audiences if you have them; and then always place a display network bid at the ad group level.

As a side note: I reinstalled some software yesterday, and the software published a ‘thank you page’ as a blog post so it went out in the RSS feed. Don’t worry – you will not receive any notifications about the seminars unless you opt-in to receiving them.

This was originally posted at Search Engine Land in in my monthly column. It examines some of the commonly violated privacy policy guidelines at Google and how to fix them.

Every website that uses Google Analytics, AdSense, and remarketing that does not have a privacy policy violates three of Google’s terms of service agreements.

I took a look at a couple hundred sites this week and found some startling statistics:

• More than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies
• More than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies
• More than 40% were breaking at least three of Google’s policies

How many of these policies are you breaking?

When conducting this survey, I only included sites that needed to follow at least one of Google’s policies. If a site didn’t need to follow any, then I excluded it from the results.

I also focused on privacy policies, and not every single policy for all of the services; the total number of total policies broken would be a higher number.

This was an unofficial survey of a couple hundred sites and I excluded most larger and authoritative domains from my research – although some sites in Google’s Top 1k List were breaking at least two policies.

What happens if you break Google’s TOS? Technically, you could be sued; but more likely you’ll get warned or lose access to the Google program.

Losing access to your Google analytics data, ability to drive traffic with AdWords, or your website’s monetization efforts with AdSense can have a significant impact on a business.

In this column, we will examine common ways businesses unintentionally break Google’s privacy policies and review the requirements needed for any website to be in compliance.

Note: This column is not intended to be legal advice. I’m not a lawyer nor do I pretend to be. The purpose of this column is to increase your awareness of Google’s policies so that you do not suddenly lose access to Google’s programs such as AdWords, Analytics, or AdSense.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is used on more than 28% of all websites. When you signup for analytics you agree to their TOS, section 7 of the TOS needs to be read carefully:

7. PRIVACY . You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track or collect personally identifiable information of Internet users, nor will You (or will You allow any third party to) associate any data gathered from Your website(s) (or such third parties’ website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of Your use (or such third parties’ use) of the Service. You will have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy and will comply with all applicable laws relating to the collection of information from visitors to Your websites. You must post a privacy policy and that policy must provide notice of your use of a cookie that collects anonymous traffic data.

Source: Google Analytics TOS

If you use Google Analytics you must have a privacy policy. Considering many small websites do not have a privacy policy, those sites are automatically breaking Google’s TOS.

Another reason to have a privacy policy is that ‘transparency to the user’ is one of Google’s guidelines for making high quality landing pages when Google determines your landing page quality score.

To follow this section of the TOS:

• Create a privacy policy
• State the usage of 3rd party tracking
• State the usage of cookies to track anonymous data

By following these simple steps, your site will now be in compliance with the most commonly broken rule of the Google Analytics privacy policy. However, Google Analytics TOS does contain more details about how the service should be used, such as not using it to collect personally identifiable information. You can read the entire Analytics TOS here.

AdWords Conversion Tracking

When AdWords first launched conversion tracking you had to put a script on the page that would show a graphic to someone who converted (and had the AdWords cookie on their browser). Google made a change where you could opt not to show a script and inform users on your own.

This is the most ambiguous of Google’s policies as there are no guidelines to follow; therefore, a simple statement that you use 3rd party cookies to track data is all that is required to follow this TOS. If you have amended your privacy policy to follow the Google Analytics TOS, then you should be in compliance with this policy. If you are not using Google Analytics, then follow those same steps to comply with this guideline.

AdWords Remarketing

Remarketing is powerful as you can serve ads across the content network to people who were on your website. These ads  have the ability to be creepy as you can follow someone around the web making very explicit statements in your ads.

Because it is easy to abuse remarketing, and cause uneasy feelings in some consumers that can push them away from ads, Google has some policies you must follow if you use Google’s remarketing feature. Here is an excerpt from Google’s policies on remarketing:

If you’re using the remarketing feature, you must have an appropriate description of your use of remarketing in online advertising. The description must be included in the privacy policies of all sites that include the remarketing tag.

The privacy policies should include the following information:

• Third party vendors, including Google, show your ads on sites on the internet.
• Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to your website.
• Users may opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page. (Alternatively you can point users to opt out of a third party vendor’s use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page.)

If you’re using DoubleClick’s remarketing pixels, your privacy policy may instead tell users to opt out of DoubleClick’s use of cookies by visiting the DoubleClick opt-out page or the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

Because advertiser sites and laws across countries/territories vary, we’re unable to suggest specific privacy policy language. However, you may wish to review resources such as the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) for guidance on drafting a privacy policy.

Source: Google Help Files

That is a lot of information. Google’s FAQ is old and the DoubleClick and Google advertising opt-out page are now the same. So you can link to a single opt out page if you are using AdWords, DoubleClick, or both for remarketing.

• Create a privacy policy
• Briefly describe remarketing (bullet points 1 & 2)
• Tell users they can opt out at the Google advertising opt-out page.
• If you want users to be able to op
  t out of anything, or you are using multiple remarketing systems, linking to the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page is a good idea.

However, there is much more than just a privacy policy update when using remarketing. Google has specific terms by industry as well.

Remarketing Policies By Industry

Several industries have specific policies which you can view here. Most of these policies fall into one of three categories:

• Don’t use sensitive information in ads
• Don’t imply you know more about someone than you do
• Follow the laws – don’t market to children under 13

We will examine the highlights of a few common industries.

Financial:

Financial sites are not just credit card companies, they are also banks, and affiliates who promote products and services in this industry.

Here’s a quote from Google’s remarketing restriction page:

• Sites which solicit or store information about the user’s financial status or situation cannot use that sensitive information to create remarketing lists.
• Ads which imply to know the user’s financial status or information should not be run with remarketing.

This means you cannot have a remarketing list that was only compiled when someone visited the ‘bad credit’ section of your website and then serve ads that say, ‘We know your credit is bad. We’ll give you a credit card anyway’. Financial sites have many laws they need to follow; but Google’s remarketing TOS is a must read for any financial site.

Children

More from Google:

Because of numerous laws around marketing to children, in the US and elsewhere, we want to ensure we do not allow advertisers to remarket to children under 13 using remarketing. Sites which store or solicit information about users that indicates their age is below 13 may not create remarketing lists using that data.

Ads which are directly marketed toward users under 13 OR ads which are primarily appealing to those under 13 are not allowed to run in conjunction with remarketing. Ad texts which appear to target children are not permitted to run in conjunction with remarketing:

This is a grey area. If you ads appear like they will appeal to children, you can be outside of the TOS. If you offer services for children or families, you need to make sure your ads are speaking to the parents and not to the minors.

Sensitive Information

Your lists and ads can never be segmented by:

• Race
• Ethnic background
• Sexual orientation
• Sensitive or private information
• etc..

While this might seem obvious for privacy reasons; there are times you might naturally segment this way for marketing purposes and you need to be careful. Let’s say you own a dating site, and that site has a Latino and Catholic section. You cannot cookie just people in the Latino section with one list and people in the Catholic section with another list and then target those individuals with ‘Latino Dating Service ads’.

If you run a review site of several industries, it would be nice to make a list by each industry for remarketing purposes. However, what you cannot do is make a ‘drug rehab’ list and serve ads based upon needing a drug rehabilitation center. That is too just too personal.

If you are engaged in remarketing, you should take a look at the Google remarketing policy page.

Interest Based Ads

Interest based ads are still in beta; however, beta users should be following Google policies as well. 

The policies for Interest Based Ads are very similar to the remarketing policies. If you are in the interest based ads beta, even though you might not be using remarketing, you should pay close attention to the terms as you need to inform users of your lists and opt-out methods.

Because this policy is so close to remarketing, there is no need to cover it in-depth; but you can read more on the interest-based advertising policy page.

Google AdWords TOS

What we covered in this column with regards to Google’s TOS mostly concerns the privacy policy. However, you should be aware of the AdWords TOS to make sure you are following all of the practices. The entire policy can be found here.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is so prevalent across the web; and so easy to install, I don’t believe most publishers (especially the small ones with instant blogging plug-ins) understand there is a TOS that all AdSense publisher must agree to.

The AdSense policy (this is for the US, you can see the terms by county here) clearly states:

You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website.  Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.

This is a very similar policy to Google Analytics. There are many more policies with regards to AdSense about not encouraging people to click ads and so forth. If you use AdSense, you need to read the TOS. However, you also need to have a privacy policy that lets people know about your cookie usage.

About Privacy Policies

Laws concerning privacy policies vary by country. In the United States you do not have to have one – it is optional. However, if you have one you need to follow it.

In other countries, privacy policies are mandatory.

In some tests I’ve run, the simple act of adding a privacy policy to a page has increased conversion rates as well. Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy online, and if your site does not tell a consumer what you will do with their data, they may decide to abandon your website and move on to one where they feel more secure with their information.

Creating a privacy policy should be a business decision as it may affect how you collect and use data.

However, if you use several of Google’s services – privacy policies are mandatory if you follow their TOS.

If you would like to learn more about privacy online, here are some good resources:

• Network Advertising Initiative

FTC: Fair Information Practice Principles (Not linked as the FTC broke all their links again)

From a marketer’s perspective, you need to make consumers feel secure in your website and your honesty. A privacy policy that tells someone exactly what you are doing often works well; but of course that effectiveness does vary by market. You can see our privacy policy which is very blunt in what we collect, and yet not a single person has clicked on the opt out links in our policy.

My rule (and like all rules there are exceptions) is that if your quality score is 6 or below; stop raising bids and start working on quality score.

However, I keep receiving the question: Outside of cost and position; why is quality score so important?

Here’s the answer.

First, take a look at this list of what quality score actually affects in your account:

• If your ad is eligible to be shown in the auction
• What position your ad will be displayed on the search page
• The price you pay for the click
• If products extensions will be displayed with your ad
• If sitelinks will be displayed with your ad
• If location extensions will be displayed with your ad
• If your ad is eligible to be displayed in the top spot above the natural results
• If dynamic keyword insertion will work

Not working on quality score can put a keyword into a negative spiral.

Ad rank (where your ad is displayed in the search results) is a simple formula: ad rank = QS X Max CPC.
Ads are shown in descending order of ad rank (the highest ad rank is position 1, the second highest ad rank is position 2, etc)

Let’s say your paying $2 per click with a quality score of 4. This means your ad rank is 8.

Now let’s say that your competition is bidding $1 with a quality score of 7. This means their ad rank is a 7.

At this point in time your ad appears higher in the search results.

However, with a 4 quality score your ad does not show DKI, it does not show product extension ads, in fact the ad displayed on the SERP is identical to what you see inside your account as none of the ad ‘add-ons’ will be displayed with your ad.

Your competition’s ad, with a 7 quality score, is showing extensions (this could be product or location extensions) and looks nicer on the SERP than your ad. So what happens? Your CTR goes down and theirs goes up.

This causes your quality score to drop even more.
And their quality score to rise.

Over time, their ad starts showing above your ad even through their bid is half of yours.

Then the next advertiser below you has a 7 quality score and their ad is showing product extensions….

The cycle repeats itself until your ad just stops showing because of low quality score reasons.

Spending a little time working with quality score each week might not always result in increasing all of your quality scores; but it will help keep you from falling into a downward spiral.

If you need quality score help; our new training site will have tutorials on quality score as well as a tool where you can quickly see where inside your account you should spend your time optimizing your quality scores.

Google remarketing campaigns allow you to serve custom ads to users who have visited your website.

My latest Search Engine Land article covers the basics of setting up a remarketing campaign and gives some examples for setting up remarketing ad groups for an ecommerce site. If you are new to remarketing, you might want to take a quick look through that article and learn the basics of how to set up a remarketing campaign as in this article we’re going to make the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of remarketing.

In this article, we will show you how we are setting them up for our new product, Certified Knowledge (note: the site is not fully live yet, but we’re planning out our marketing campaigns now so this is what it will look like once everything is publicly launched).

The Marketing Campaign’s Objectives

Certified Knowledge is a subscription based AdWords learning, PPC tool, and community site. With many subscription products it takes a few visits for someone to finally convert. Therefore, remarketing is a perfect way to serve custom ads to those who have been on the site once, but have not yet bought a subscription.

There are three main benefits of Certified Knowledge (tutorials, tools, and community); therefore, we want to make custom ads based upon what sections someone has visited within the site.

If someone entered the cart but did not buy, we want a very custom message.  For example, if a user started the purchase process but did not complete the transaction; we want to display a custom message or offer specific to the fact that they didn’t finish the purchase process.  This group of cart abandoners still have a better chance of converting than someone who has never been to our website before or looked around the site and didn’t enter the cart, so our bids for this list will be higher than for any other audience.

If someone has subscribed we don’t want to serve then an ad for the membership.

Lastly, the further into the conversion process that someone was, the longer the cookie will last based upon our settings (remarketing ads are displayed based upon a browser having a cookie that corresponds to your lists).

The Remarketing Lists

Google offers the ability to create a straightforward list (a cookie on the computer means they are in a list), or a custom combination which uses Boolean strings to combine audiences into a single list. With some of these lists, I think we could use custom combinations instead of straight lists. However, I’ve not been able to test Google’s Boolean strings yet to be confident in their use. What I’d like to do is add someone to list 1. Then, if they also make it to list 2, remove them from list 2. However, that is not currently possible.

In addition, what I don’t know is if someone is on two different lists; and you use one list as a negative list, it appears that the ad will not be displayed to that person at all. (i.e. if someone is on list a and on list b, and list a is your positive list and list b is your negative list – will the user see the ad?)

Therefore, for the initial setup of our remarketing campaigns (this may change in the future); I’m setting up several lists; and then I’ll use negative lists at the ad group level and CPC manipulation to determine which shows (i.e. if a basic list is worth $0.25 and a more advanced list is worth $1, even if someone is on both, the should see the $1 CPC ad copy for that list).

Here is a list of the remarketing lists that we created and where we put the codes across our website:

List Name	Purpose	Placed	Cookie Duration
All visitors	Reach everyone who examined in the offer	Global Footer	30 days
PPC Tools	Reach those who examined the Tools section	PPC Tools pages	60 days
AdWords Tutorials	Reach those who entered the tutorial section	AdWords Video page	60 days
PPC Community	Reach those looking for community engagement	PPC community page	60 days
Pricing	Reach price conscious shoppers	Visited price page	60 days
Shopping cart abandonment	Reach consumers who showed intent to buy but did not finish	All pages except confirmation of cart	90 days
Converted: Free email training	Free 5 email training message for sneak peak. Reach these consumers who showed high interest in system.	Thank you for subscribing email confirmation page	90 days
Converted: Subscription	If someone subscribed, want to make sure we don’t serve them ads	Thank you for subscribing page after billing info entered	360 days

 

Once the lists are created and the scripts placed on the appropriate pages, then it’s time to create the Ad Groups that reach the various audiences.

Remarketing Ad Groups

We are creating an entirely new campaign for our remarketing lists for four reasons:

• Budget. We have a much higher budget than for our placement and discovery campaigns.
• Blocked domains. We don’t want our usual blocked domain list to affect remarketing ads (at least to start)
• Geography: As this product has international appeal (and we’ll do international billing); we are going to start with a few different countries in our campaign list (and refine from there).
• Reach & Frequency: We want a different frequency caps for the ads than our other content campaigns.

Once a new campaign is setup, it’s time to map out the ad groups. The reason to create various remarketing ad groups is when you want to show different ads to different audience lists. At an ad group level, you can add both positive and negative audiences and set a different bid by audience. Therefore, we’re going to build our ad groups from the ads that we’re going to be showing.

In addition, it will be common for some users to be on multiple lists. Therefore, we’re going to use a lot of negative lists to ensure the most relevant ad is being displayed. In cases where someone is on multiple lists, we will also u
se bids to ensure the more specific ad is being shown (so our bids will be the lowest on general ads and highest on close-to-converting individuals).

Ad Group 1: Non-Engaged Users

This ad group is for users who visited the site but did not enter a specific section of the site. Therefore, these are the absolutely least qualified of all the visitors. This is the reason the cookie duration for this list is only 30 days, the shortest of all the lists.

The positive list: All visitor

The negative lists: All the other lists. If someone is on any other list; we don’t want them seeing our general ad; we want a more specific ad served to that user.

The ad: Showcasing all benefits.

Bid: Lowest of all the remarketing lists. These visitors went to at least the homepage, and possibly an interior page; but not one of the very specific pages that is useful for tailoring a separate ad for that user.

Ad Group 2: Price Shoppers

This ad group is for users who visited the pricing section.

The positive list: Pricing

The negative lists: All others except non-engaged users list.

The ad: Showcasing that your time is worth money, and then show how Certified Knowledge can save you time.

Bid: Second lowest of all the remarketing lists. Price conscious users can be difficult to convince. In addition, I’d rather the more specific ad (the ad groups below) be shown to consumers instead of this ad. If someone happens to be on both the non-engaged user list and the price shoppers list, they should see this ad because its bid will be higher than the non-engaged user list.

Ad Group 3: PPC Community

This ad group is for people who visited the PPC community page. I expect that most people who visit this page will also visit other pages across the site. Therefore, while this will be an ad we show, we’re going to put less importance on what I expect the stronger benefits to be: Tools & Training. However, if someone did visit this page, we’re willing to show them this ad (in addition to other ads they may see from the more specific ad groups).

The positive list: PPC community

The negative list: All others except Price Shoppers and Non-engaged users.

The ad: Showcasing the benefits of having access to an active forum, email, and news system.

Bid: Third lowest. Higher than Price Shoppers; lower than PPC Tools & AdWords Tutorials.

Ad Group 4: AdWords Tutorials

This ad group is targeting consumers who examined our tutorials. As we’re going to have many pages explaining the tutorials, this might be broken down into two lists over time: main tutorials page, all training subpages. That sectioning will help us identify those who just glanced at the tutorials versus looked at our videos and read more about the AdWords lessons.

The positive list: AdWords Tutorials

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted email training, Shopping cart abandonment. If someone converted, or was closer to converting than just visiting the features pages, then I want them to see the more specific ad.

The ad: Showcasing what Certified Knowledge can teach you about AdWords with more than 50 lessons, and more than 100 coming by the end of the year.

Bid: Higher than PPC Community and lower than the three negative lists.

Ad Group 5: PPC Tools

This ad group is targeting consumers who examined our toolset. As we’re going to have many pages explaining the tools, this might be broken down into two lists over time: main tools page, all tool subpages. That sectioning will help us identify those who just glanced at the tools versus looked at our videos and read more about the tools.

The positive list: PPC Tools

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted email training, Shopping cart abandonment. If someone converted, or was closer to converting than just visiting the features pages, then I want them to see the more specific ad.

The ad: Showcasing the benefits of the PPC tools we have developed which will save you time in creating ad copies, geographic keywords and keywords. They will help you bid, find quality score issues, find broken links, and help you analyze your site. While most of the ad groups will contain two or three image ads to start (by themes, each theme will have different sizes); I expect this ad group will have more test ads to see what message resonates better.

Bid: Same as the AdWords Tutorials. I expect it will become slightly higher than the tutorials over time as tutorials are one to three time views for most consumers, and many repeat views will help refresh your knowledge. The tools will be used daily, weekly, or monthly depending on what you’re trying to accomplish inside your account; and therefore, I think will be more valuable over time.

Ad Group 6: Converted Free Email Training

This ad group is for targeting those who signed up for a ‘free lessons training’ via email. Many people who sign up for free training do not have an intent to buy as they just want the free stuff. Others want a trial of what you are offering and have a high chance of converting. However, email open rates can be sporadic on free training offers. Therefore, these ads will both remind them about Certified Knowledge, but also serve as a reminder about the emails delivered to them.

The positive list: Converted Free Email Training

The negative lists: Converted subscription, Shopping Cart Abandoners

The ad: Showcase the Certified Knowledge tutorials with messages to remind them about their email subscription. I’m not sure if they will be something like: “Did you enjoy your free email training from Certified Knowledge? Learn how you can access all of our training” as that might seem a bit creepy to people that we know they have the email – or if they’ll be images more aligned with the training aspects of Certified Knowledge.

Bid: To start, a bit higher than AdWords tutorials & tools lists as these users were willing to give us a name and email address to receive the information. Overtime, the bidding for this list might change significantly up or down.

Ad Group 7: Shopping Cart Abandoners

This ad group is for targeting those who entered the shopping cart but did not convert.

The positive list: Shopping cart abandoners

The negative list: Converted subscription, Converted Free email training

I’m making an assumption here that I might change in the future. I’m considering these users more valuable than the converted free email training list as these shoppers were within a submit button of entering their credit card information and becoming customers. I think they will be more valuable than the Converted Free Email Training list – but I might be wrong; therefore, I might test this exact same ad group minus the email training list as a negative list in the future.

The ad: One ad will showcase the Certified Knowledge benefits. One will show a phone number with the benefits that talks about support for any problems. As we start to map out sign-up objections, then we will base the ads around the most common ones.

Bid: The highest of all the lists.

Are all these lists necessary?

Outside of the time to create the actual ads per ad group, setting up one list and one ad group versus seven ad groups and lists is only a few minutes of additional work. We’re using WordPress for this site’s CMS; so adding some custom code to the pages is very simple and will take less than a minute per list. I’m expecting the entire setup (outside of the ad copy creation) to take less than ten minutes. I’ve already set up some remarketing campaigns for the AdWords Seminars and it took less than a minute to setup the list and add the c
ode to the pages for each created list.

The advantage of showing an ad to the consumer based upon their main interests in the site should significantly outweigh the work involved.

The Next Step

Once everything is in place, then remarketing success is all about ad creatives and measurement.

Remarketing has a higher potential of success than almost all other forms of marketing because the user was already involved with your website. Most marketing drives some users to your website based upon a common interest (keyword, placement, email list, etc). Remarketing engages users who have already been on your website and are somewhat familiar with your offerings. This type of campaign can be the final push that someone needs to realize how valuable your service can be to them.

Want to Learn More About Remarketing?

Certified Knowledge Premium members can access more than an hour of lessons about just remarketing. Its just one of the many lesson sections available for members. Not only do members get unlimited access to informative lessons; they also have access to time saving tools.

We never just ask you to trust us blindly; we’ve built our reputation on open and honest data sharing. Therefore, you can take a 7 day free trial to see how a membership can benefit your AdWords knowledge and help you wring more profit from your AdWords campaigns. Start Your Free Trial.

I was lucky enough to be in the beta of modified broad match and have been using this match type for a couple months now to great success. Google lifted the veil of secrecy today about the new match type and let me know that I can now blog about it.

Broad match increases reach. Phrase match increases relevancy. The new modified broad match gives you the flexibility of broad match with the control of phrase match.

Broad match is useful because: “20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all?” – source.

While the fact that so many queries are unique often led people to using broad match – the returns often aren’t there. This new match type gives you some control over how a broad matched word can be matched.

To use this match type, go to your account and add a + (plus) symbol in front of one or more words in your keyword phrase. Then, the word/s with the +sign must either be in the query or a close variant must be in the query. A close variant is a misspelling (flor instead of floor), plural (flowers instead of flower), or stemmed version (running instead of run).

Keyword	Possible Matches	Notes
running +shoes	running shoes running shoe tennis shoes	The word +shoes or it’s variant ‘shoe’ is in every query
+running +shoe	running shoes running shoe run shoe shoes for running	Both +shoe and +running must be in the query or have a variant in the query
+extra +wide running +shoes	Extra wide running shoes Extra wide exercise shoes Extra wide walking shoes	All the words are matched or closely matched except for ‘running’

The use of the new modified broad match will help expand your possible matches while still keeping those same matches under control. Broad match and negative keywords do work well  together, and this new match type will open up some new possibilities for broad and negative match combinations. Just remember that these new matches will still not convert higher than your exact match keywords.

If you wish to try this out, I’d suggest picking a few select ad groups where you are having problems gaining the exposure you desire, and then following these steps:

• Create a new ad group using those same keywords with the new plus modifiers
• If the old ad group has all broad match, then set a higher CPC for these new match types
• If the old ad group has all exact and phrase match, then set a lower CPC for these new match types
• Let the ad group run and collect some data
• Run the search query report examining these two ad groups and their variations
• Set appropriate bids based upon conversions

The reason to create a new ad group in this example is that you can only see search query data at the ad group level. While you can see the match type; you cannot see the keyword and match type combination that triggered a query. Over time, you might get rid of one of these ad groups and combine the keywords back into a single ad group. However, this is a new match type and there are bound to be some odd combinations that you will be shown for.

When trying out a brand new function with AdWords, it can be useful to look at the new features in isolation from other variables.

Learn More About AdWords

Knowing about modified broad match is just the beginning. The way you structure your match types is crucial in ensuring you are controlling budgets and that Google is showing the correct keyword for any query.

If you’d like step-by-step lessons in how to create, structure, and manage your account, then consider joining Certified Knowledge. The easy-to-follow lessons, videos, and time-saving tools will help you learn how AdWords functions so you can attain the most profit from advertising with Google AdWords.

Our goal is to empower you with the best resources available, and to make sure you feel these are the best resources, we will let you take a free one week peak at our tools and lessons. Just signup for a 7 day free trial and start improving your AdWords performance today. Start Your Free Trial.

Google has been doing some serious thinking about the GAP (Google Advertising Professional) program for at least three years.

A while ago they redid the entire learning center. No one seems to completely understand this change as all their nice videos are gone replace by text and a fewer number of lessons.

Then AdWords launched Agency Land.

And today they launch their new certification program.

Here are the main differences:

Individual Qualification

Old Days: One test and spend requirement.

Now: Two tests (one basic and any one of the advanced tests) and no spend requirement.

This seems that the individual qualification is more a resume bullet point than a way of attracting business.

Certified Partner

Old Days: This was a qualified company. Qualified companies required 3 GAPs and a nice spend requirement.

Now: Need one Individual Qualification and spend $10k/quarter. This is a much lower threshold to become a partner than the old ‘qualified company’ logo.

Others

While Google still offers logos for analytics, website optimizer, etc – the AdWords Reseller and AdWords Company qualified logos showed both a combination of size (more than 1 employee) and spend.

AdWords Reseller

There is so much speculation around the reseller programs demise or massive change that I won’t even speculate here. It is the only section of the Advanced AdWords Book that Google legal & Google marketing asked me to alter.

Free API  Credits

Here’s the really good news. Agencies will now get API credits based upon client spend. In the old days, an individual advertiser or reseller could get free quote points, but agencies had to pay for it. Now, just like individual advertisers; agencies can be eligible for credits if they have an agency page (a free listing page on Google’s site that you can create once you’re a partner).

You get 250 units per $1 spent. This is an excellent ratio of free API units. Few companies are going to need to buy additional API units (and if they do – they might need to examine their their usage first).

[update]Google called me to make sure people realized that you didn’t just get API credits by having a profile page. You still need to apply for the credits[/update]

What’s Next

Individual qualification has become a bullet point. Certified partners are just old GAPs with one good client ($10/quarter). The reseller program is going under major restructuring. It seems the only logical step is to make the old AdWords Resellers a program for large agencies.

There’s definitely a few tiers that is not well recognized here:

• The large agency: $1 million month or quarter. These agencies handle big accounts and are splitting the spend between multiple channels.
• The medium agency: $1 million / year, with 100 clients and 3-5 GAPs. If this agency gets 1 or 2 big clients, they might be 2-3 million/year in spend, but most of their clients are small.
• The small personal big client agency: This agency has 1-3 GAPs, but has one or two huge clients and spends $100k/month or more
• The small personal small spend agency: This agency has 1-3 GAPs, 10-40 clients per GAP, and manages roughly $50k-$250k of spend per month.

Google does not need this many tiers of logos. That I wouldn’t claim. However, having the above 4 agencies using the same Certified Partner logo that having one client who spend $3.5k/month will earn you doesn’t seem right either.

Expect to see a lot of posts about the new tests. The toughness of the new advanced tests (I haven’t taken any yet – I’m hoping they are *hard* and fair). And speculation about how to recognize those larger agencies.

Google has finally updated their Display URL policy so that if you use a shared domain (such as blogspot), then you need to be more accurate in your portrayal of the destination URL.

For instance, if your URL was: mybusiness.blogspot.com, all you had to do was use blogspot.com in your destination URL and you would meet the policy. In fact, you could have even used YourCompetitor.blogspot.com as the display URL and taken them to your page.

While blogspot is an easy one to pick one, I think that this ruling occurred (and will be modified one more time) because of the sudden influx of Google.com URLs.

Legitimately Use Google.com as Your Display URL

If you use Google Apps or Google Pages, then you can have a site hosted at:

sites.google.com/a/Customize

If site.google.com/a/Customize is the destination URL, you can use Google.com as the display URL.

With Blogspot, every site has a subdomain and therefore this is an easy ruling to apply.

With Google pages and Google sites, the URL is a folder and not a subdomain and therefore makes it difficult to pick a URL that accurately describes where the user is going.

In fact, you may see destination URLs that are: Google.com/AdWords or Google.com/Coupons that actually go to sites.google.com/a/SpammyOffer.

This is a good move from Google, it just needs to go further to clarify how to handle folders within a subdomain or what constitutes ‘additional information’ that is actually relevant to the consumer.