Consumers now rely on their tablets more than ever before to gain instant access to local business information, product details and reviews, coupons, and competitors. The way tablets are used by consumers has resulted in a seismic shift in thinking from Google.

Image from Google Enhanced Campaigns microsite

In an effort to simplify the management of paid search campaigns while redefining the way search marketers think about and engage their audience, Google upgraded AdWords with enhanced campaigns in early February.

According to Google and its data, the line between desktops and tablets is blurring — search behavior and engagement on the two devices are aligning; and location, time of day, and the capabilities of these devices have become increasingly important signals in showing the right ads to users.

For search marketers, is acknowledging Google’s data and embracing enhanced campaigns the only thing left to do?

As previously covered by Greg Sterling, our mobile advertising supports Google’s claim that consumer behavior on tablets and desktops share increasing similarities. However, it also validates the understanding that desktops and tablets are inherently different and perform accordingly so.

Regardless, remaining successful in a multi-device world means accepting Google’s new combined targeting settings and understanding what it means for search marketers in the age of enhanced campaigns.

The Study & Its Findings

Over the last two years, tablets have proven to be a device segment that search marketers can’t ignore. In fact, the share of overall paid-search clicks served by Google on tablets increased from 6% to 10.7% in 2012; and by the end of 2013, we project that the share of tablet clicks will nearly double, accounting for 20% of Google’s US paid search ads clicks.

The reason is that consumers are increasingly turning to tablet devices to research and make purchases on-the-go, and, more importantly, in the comfort of their homes where desktop devices have traditionally reigned.

Conversion rates on search clicks originating from tablets increased by 31% in 2012, while smartphone and desktop conversion rates increased by 9% and 7%, respectively. By December 2013, we estimate that conversion rates for clicks originating from tablet ads will surpass those of desktop ads. Coupled with rising conversion rates, we also found that tablet ads are continuing to perform better than desktop ads.

Click-through rates (CTR) for search ads on tablets were 37% higher than ads delivered on desktops, with the average cost-per-click (CPC) on tablets 17% lower than on desktops. To capitalize on this opportunity, advertisers increased paid-search spend on tablets; and by the end of 2012, the share of spend on these devices had increased to 10%, eclipsing the share of spend on smartphones for the first time ever.

What Does This Mean?

Prior to enhanced campaigns, search marketers could’ve taken these tablet and desktop trends and optimized their programs accordingly — segmenting campaigns, reallocating budgets, and expanding keywords, all by device.

However, Google’s shift to combine desktop and tablet targeting has resulted in a significant loss of control and transparency that many sophisticated marketers crave for optimizing their programs.

Tablets will undoubtedly play a crucial role in the future of search, but whether the line between desktops and tablets will continue to converge and blur as Google has predicted, or intersect and separate over time, has yet to be seen.

All we know is that enhanced campaigns are here to stay, and desktop and tablet devices must now be treated as equals. But, we also know that the two devices are not the same, nor are their user experiences equal — desktops with their large screens, mouses, and primarily fixed locations versus tablets and their touchscreens, smaller search real-estate, and portability.

The mobile report certainly supports the current notion that different user experiences result in varying ad performance. Google’s gamble on the blurring of consumer behavior hinges on incomplete data about the future. As a result, we expect enhanced campaigns to evolve as market demand becomes evident.

Finding Success In The Future

With the migration to enhanced campaigns currently underway, search marketers must now prepare for a desktop-and-tablet-combined world. Gone are the days of separating campaigns to target these devices individually and provide a device-optimized user experience.

Search marketers must now optimize their campaigns and landing pages with the desktop and tablet user in-mind. Limiting the amount of Flash integrated into a website (iPads do not support Adobe Flash) or integrating finger-friendly buttons and links are two common strategies that marketers are implementing to address the paid-search challenges ahead.

Needless to say, enhanced campaigns have made today’s already highly-competitive search landscape even more treacherous. Marketers will need to continue investing in technology and new best practices to successfully drive media and acquire revenue in a redefined multi-device world.

However, since the transition, PLA campaigns have performed with a great deal of success. In fact, by the end of December 2012, the share of spend on PLA campaigns had increased 600% compared to January. More importantly, during the fourth quarter of 2012, as holiday shoppers searched and purchased products and gifts, some online retailers allocated as much as 30% of their search spend toward PLAs.

The richer and more engaging search experience that PLAs provide for users has produced a seemingly exponential surge in PLA adoption and spend.

However, compared to traditional paid search campaigns, PLAs are still in their infancy. Managing and optimizing the Merchant Center product feed, ad group promotions, and product targets remain relatively foreign concepts for search marketers.

In simplifying their approach to optimizing PLA campaigns, many retailers fail to deliver a relevant and rich ad experience that maximizes available revenue opportunities. By implementing the following six strategies, search marketers can refine their approach to managing and optimizing PLA campaigns and improve their revenue outcomes in 2013.

1.  Fresh, Accurate & Comprehensive

PLAs aren’t “set it and forget it” campaigns. The effectiveness of any PLA campaign starts with the quality of the product data that’s fed into Google Merchant Center. This quality is based on three factors: freshness, accuracy and comprehensiveness.

The freshness of data is based on how well the attributes defined in your product feed align with the information provided on your website. For instance, if a user lands your website via a PLA, the price shown within the ad should match the price on your website. If product details don’t match, items within Google Shopping results may be suspended. To address this issue, submit an updated product feed to Google at the same time your website is updated with new product information.

Data accuracy, like freshness, affects the shopping experience and is enforced with a high standard. To prevent products from being suspended from Google Shopping, in some cases up to one week, search marketers need to ensure that product attributes are accurate in that images match the product title and description, tax and shipping costs are correct, and other product attributes are defined to meet the Google Shopping policies.

In order to present users with highly relevant PLAs for their specific product searches, search marketers need to provide comprehensive product information within their product feed. The more information, or defined attributes, Google has about your products, the better they can serve users with relevant PLAs and send them to your website. For more information on basic and advanced product feed attributes, click here.

2.  A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Clicks

For the most part, PLAs are image-based ads. A relevant image is critical for engaging shoppers, and utilizing a stock photo fails to differentiate your products from your competitors.

If a user searches for a particular product brand and model, you’ll want to deliver an ad that shows that exact brand and model; but, to engage the shopper and promote a higher click-through rate for your products, use unique images that are not only high in quality and detail, but also represent the products accurately.

In the example below, only two of the five PLAs use an image that differentiates the ad from the competitors.

3.  Be Competitively Priced

Listing price becomes much more of a factor with PLAs than standard text ads — shoppers are able to compare prices directly within the search results page, making PLA clicks much more qualified than a standard text ad. Retailers need to ensure that the price listed for their products remain competitive, as well as accurate, compared to the PLAs from other retailers.

In the shopping results below, the wide range of prices will undoubtedly influence which PLAs will be clicked.

4.  You’ve Got A Friend In Paid Search

With increasing competition among retailers to maximize product visibility, search marketers that deliver standard text ads in addition to PLAs are positioned to claim more real estate across the search engine results page (SERP).

In fact, with a sound search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, retailers can show up to four times above the fold on product-related searches: standard text ad, PLA, natural search result and image search. This level of visibility is difficult to achieve, but like the example below, most brands are able to show for three of the four.

Retailers that align their promotions and product messaging across text ads and PLAs (“Free Shipping Over $100” in the example below) will succeed in creating a consistent shopping experience and maximize product visibility for their customers.

5.  Make Like A Keyword & Get Granular

PLAs leverage product targets, rather than keywords, to determine which items appear for product related search queries.

Since each product target is defined using the product attributes set within AdWords and Merchant Center, bids can be assigned to represent individual products or groups of products. As a result, search marketers can leverage the “id” attribute to create granular product targets that target individual products or more general product targets that target items from specific “brands.”

These levels of granularity allow retailers to align product targets with business goals, enabling them to calculate bids that maximize revenue across products as well as product categories. Keep in mind that search marketers that leverage automated bidding solutions will have more freedom in their product target granularity.

To further improve relevance and PLA performance, implement negative keywords to limit the searches for which your ads will show and set product filters to define which products can appear for your PLAs.

6.  Test Into The Great Unknown

As with all new ad formats, testing is the key to long-term success. For PLAs, be sure to test promotional text, images, and product target granularity.

With the success online retailers experienced with PLA campaigns during Q4 of last year, there is only room for improvement. Search marketers that begin testing early in 2013 will not only be able to optimize their PLA campaigns, but be in a position to acquire more revenue during the busy holiday season.

In 2012, we saw the introduction of Product Listing Ads as Google shifted to a pay-to-play model for shopping. Facebook began testing every ad format under the sun, with Sponsored Stories and mobile placement targeting gaining immediate traction. And who can ignore the advancements made across the Google Display Network (GDN), as more granular targeting options are paving the way for remarketing?

With 2012 behind us, it’s time to look forward into 2013 and make four predictions about where digital advertising is going next.

1.  Integrated User Feedback

Integrated user feedback will be adopted across more ad formats. One thing we learned in 2012 is that there’s revenue to be acquired in every facet of online activity. As a result, advertisers have started to creep into nearly every aspect of a user’s online experience. Maintaining a positive relationship between advertisers and users has become a greater challenge now more than ever before.

Learning from user feedback and utilizing it to improve the overall ad experience will be a focus in 2013. Both Google, which allows users to “mute” ads across the GDN, and Facebook, which allows users to “X” ads, are currently leveraging this concept in a limited capacity to improve the advertiser and user experience.

Muting

This data will undoubtedly make its way into ranking algorithms and publisher reports. The ability for online marketers to optimize their programs based on this aggregated data will add a new dimension to digital advertising, enabling communication between advertisers and users to create a richer, more engaging ad experience.

2.  The Individual User Experience

The individual user experience will become the new audience targeting. With so much investment in audience targeting in 2012 — as evidenced by Google’s investment in the GDN and Facebook’s introduction of custom audiences — 2013 will feature optimization of the ad experience for individual users.

Leveraging cookie-based tracking and importing contact lists have taken online marketers to the doorstep of online users. To get through, publishers will need to work with advertisers in leveraging the always-on profile. Google has the capacity today, with a growing number of searches occurring while users are logged into Gmail or Google+. And, as Facebook continues to integrate the concept of a single sign-on (SSO) across mobile applications and websites, publishers will have a vast amount of user data for advertisers to leverage for optimization.

SSO

But, the future will consist of more than simply ad targeting based on a user profile; in 2013, we will see advertisers learning from a user to improve his or her individual ad experience. The concept is grounded in individual click-through rate (CTR) rather than audience CTR. For example, if Joe doesn’t click on specific types of ads or engage with particular brands, publishers as well as advertisers will begin to adapt to this behavior and display ads that have a higher propensity to be clicked on by that individual user. It’s a win-win-win situation.

3.  “One-Click” Shopping

One-click shopping is the new reality that all online retailers should embrace in 2013. Every year, over the last half decade, the adoption of mobile devices has grown at an incredible pace. With more transactions occurring via smartphones and tablets, there will be a growing demand to simplify the way customers make online purchases.

Purchases made in the cloud require a wallet that’s accessible in the cloud. Amazon patented the “1-Click” purchase and other retailers will increasingly look for ways to deliver a similar experience.

On smaller screens and virtual or tiny keyboards, you’d be hard pressed to find a customer who enjoys filling out credit card, shipping and billing information each time they make an online purchase. Google Wallet and PayPal have created a simplified purchase experience, but retailers have yet to universally adopt these services to the benefit of their customers. This will change in 2013.

Google Wallet

As these services mature, virtual wallets will “learn” about the purchase behavior of customers across retailers. If online marketers were somehow allowed access to this data, there could be a significant change to the way they approach the retail landscape. However, due to existing privacy laws, we’ll keep this prediction in our back pocket for now.

4.  Siri Will Make A Breakthrough

Siri will cash in on digital advertising. The idea has already begun to take shape (here and here). In fact, if 2012 has taught online marketers anything, it’s that companies will learn from their users, invest time and resources, and adapt their services to monetize their business.

Consider Twitter’s sponsored tweets and Facebook’s extensive array of ad types. With a growing percentage of searches occurring through Siri, Apple will look for ways to monetize it, and advertisers will capitalize on the opportunity. Google Voice, which is used on most Android smartphones, accomplishes this today as spoken words are translated into Web searches that include ads.

Considering that many of the Siri queries are local, there’s an incredible opportunity for Apple to place local ads in front of users as they search for information. Though a spoken search query requires a different ad experience than a typed one, getting advertisers into this market will prove rewarding.

Whether it’s highlighting businesses on a map for a voice search on auto repair shops or sponsoring an answer for generic information with a particular brand, Apple’s technology must evolve to capitalize on this revenue opportunity. Though the concept appears farfetched, if executed with the user in mind, online marketers and their budgets are sure to follow Apple into this uncharted terrain.

Sponsor a movie on opening weekend

Looking forward into 2013, it’s clear that two things will occur in the digital advertising landscape. The technology for pairing online marketers and their ads with engaged users will continue to advance, and online marketers will continue allocating more discretionary spend towards these new forms of digital advertising.

Regardless of whether or not these four predictions come to fruition, online marketers must be agile and embrace new strategies and technology for driving more media and acquiring more revenue in 2013.

Until these budgets can be expanded, your campaigns will be limited. Optimizing a campaign that’s limited by budget is one of the toughest tasks for a search marketer. A limited budget not only eliminates opportunities to expand on keywords and campaigns, but can hinder the execution of other crucial optimization strategies.

To help solve this challenge, we’ll discuss seven strategies that will help you get the most out of your budget-capped campaigns. As you’ll notice, these strategies carry a common theme—removing areas of your campaign’s traffic that perform worse than others.

1.  Adjust Your Ad Scheduling

Not all hours of your business day are created equal. In other words, some hours of the day may convert better than others or bring in more revenue-per-click (RPC). You don’t have much to lose by reducing your bids or even pausing your campaigns during non-converting hours. Enterprise-class search solutions provide recommendations as to when you should increase or decrease your daily and hourly bids.

To manually ad schedule your campaigns, make sure that you’re using the appropriate performance metrics. Search marketers should leverage a date-of-click conversion rate or RPC metric to accurately measure the likelihood of keywords to convert or drive revenue based on when the click is initiated.

2.  Add Negatives To Block Irrelevant Or Unwanted Traffic

Some of the keywords in your account are triggering ads for irrelevant search queries. This results in unwanted impressions and clicks, as well as wasted ad spend.

Adding the appropriate negative keywords is an effective way to shift additional ad spend toward relevant and converting clicks. Dig through your search query reports and add any queries responsible for wasted ad spend as negative keywords in your account.

3.  Shift Your Campaign Budgets Around

Some campaigns, groups and keywords simply perform better than others. Rather than stretching your budget across poorer performing campaigns, prioritize your top performing ones.

As an example, a sports equipment retailer has noticed that two of their campaigns are currently budget capped. Unfortunately their quarterly budget is set and can’t allocate more ad spend toward paid search. Their Running Shoes campaign is capped at $400 daily and performs at a 260% return-on-investment (ROI). Their Running Shorts campaign is capped at $600 daily and performs at a 140% ROI.

A simple yet effective strategy is to reallocate budget from the Running Shorts campaign to the Running Shoes campaign. If the Running Shoes campaign’s ROI remains the same with the increase in spend, this new campaign budget allocation should become a long term solution for driving incremental revenue without increasing overall ad spend.

4.  Confirm A Standard Campaign Delivery Method

Ensuring that your ads are delivered throughout the day allows you to consider ad scheduling recommendations as well as reach a larger geographic audience. The alternative to Standard is to set your ad delivery to Accelerated, which means the publisher will not throttle your ads. This may result in depleted campaign budgets early on in the day. We recommend setting your budget to Standard to ensure your ads run throughout the day.

5.  Utilize Device Targeting

Device targeting is highly effective for refining your audience and increasing the performance of a campaign that’s limited by budget. Performance across devices differs greatly depending on the business. Local businesses will approach their mobile strategy differently than e-tailers, and therefore, will allocate their budgets accordingly based on performance. Analyze the conversion rate of customers across devices.

For instance, if your website is mobile unfriendly, customers might be clicking on ads, but are deciding to bounce due to a bad user experience. Stop displaying ads on non-converting and underperforming devices, or break out campaigns by device to successfully monitor and optimize them for performance. 

6.  Leverage Location Targeting

Location targeting is a great way to get more out of a budget-capped campaign. Not only does it allow you to focus your ads in the areas where you’ll find your target audience, but it helps prevent unwanted clicks in areas where your products or services are unavailable or unpopular.

Find the conversion rates of your campaigns by geography and remove the poor performing cities or states from your geo-targeting settings. For example, our sports equipment retailer may find that their campaigns don’t convert well in New Mexico and Maine, choosing to prevent ads from being delivered in those states.

7.  Adjust Your Network Settings

This is a great strategy when all your other options have been exhausted. Network settings determine where your ads appear and allow you to control which networks your campaigns are opted into.

Do your campaigns perform better on Google than they do on AOL?  It’s possible that Google’s search network traffic is less qualified or engaging than the traffic coming from Google.com. Analyzing your traffic sources can reveal a difference in conversion rate between the two networks. You can disable the partner networks in your campaign settings in order to drive your entire daily budget through the better performing network.

Though not all of these strategies will be appropriate for your paid search program, they are all highly effective in freeing up additional campaign budget. Each strategy works to trim the fat off your account — removing inefficiencies and leaving you with more revenue-generating meat to work with. To maximize your revenue outcomes, reallocate additional budget toward these areas of your account.

The original creative that was generated to match [running shoes] queries would be less relevant to the newly expanded keywords and, as a result, the overall click-through rate (CTR) of this group would decline.

This decline in group CTR, as keyword count increases, exposes a useful metric that should be considered when optimizing creative and keywords per group.

CTRs & Quality Scores

Groups with a large number of keywords often have lower CTRs and lower Quality Scores than groups with a concise and focused set of keywords. This is because the creative within densely populated groups can only leverage a subset of the group’s keyword tokens for maintaining relevance.

In our example above, the creative leverages the tokens [running] and [shoes] to remain highly relevant for [running shoes] queries. However, the creative lacks the tokens [womens], [jogging] and [black], so it would be less relevant for [womens running shoes], [jogging shoes] and [black running shoes] queries. This could potentially lead to lower CTRs and Quality Scores for these three keywords.

The best way to identify and prioritize groups for creative optimization is to generate a data table containing the number of keywords, the CTR and the cost of each group in the account:

Then, create a bubble chart to plot the relationship between these three metrics:

Creative Optimization

Take note of the larger circles inside the box in the lower right hand corner of this sample bubble chart. This is a good example of groups that should be prioritized for creative optimization.

To do so, you would need to isolate less-relevant keywords within these groups and break them out into new groups that contain more relevant creative. In our example above, [jogging shoes] would be split out into a [Jogging Shoes] group with creative that utilize the token [jogging] rather than [running]. Executing on this optimization strategy would lead to improvements in CTR and Quality Score.

Quality Score

Be aware that Quality Score will reset for keywords that are split out into new groups. Prior to evaluating performance, allow an initial learning period for these new keywords to establish a meaningful Quality Score. As a best practice, check the status of each keyword and ensure that its bid is set above the first-page minimum.

During the learning period, it’s also a good idea to give these keywords an initial bid boost to increase ad position. A higher ad position promotes a higher CTR, which remains a significant factor in improving Quality Score.

Finally, don’t forget to optimize the newly created groups; setting appropriate keyword bids, generating relevant creative and researching negative keywords are just a few strategies to keep in mind.

Note: To help generate the data table and bubble chart above, current Marin Software users can leverage the Active Keywords metric under the Advanced Group Column category. Be sure to tag the split keywords and affected groups with Marin Dimensions to monitor and report on performance.

To help prioritize paid search strategies for the upcoming season, we evaluated five best practices across Marin’s client base and highlighted them below:

1.  Prepare & Schedule Campaigns

Once the holiday season begins, search marketers are often consumed by data analysis, granular reporting, and continuous campaign optimization based on recent performance. This leaves little time to launch new campaigns with targeted keywords and relevant creative that are carefully tuned to key promotions.

In advance of the holidays, be sure to build campaigns that align with promotional calendars. Leverage proven creative text combined with engaging promotional offers. Aggressively expand to more action oriented keywords (i.e., buy watches online). Finally, avoid manually pushing new campaigns during the holidays and weekends — and ensure a timely launch across all products — by scheduling campaigns to launch automatically.

2.  Boost Bids

During the holiday season, shoppers are more likely to purchase and purchase more per transaction. Creating a boost schedule is a smart way to prepare for shifts in purchase behavior. A boost schedule is a road map that helps determine when and by how much to increase (or boost) bids, enabling search marketers to take advantage of high conversion rates and revenue-per-click (RPC) during the holidays.

To develop a boost schedule, first set a baseline for RPC in early October. Then estimate how much bids should be increased by examining how RPC changed throughout the 2011 holiday season. Create and apply a boost schedule using actual 2011 RPC trends. Fine-tune boost estimates by monitoring RPC changes on a daily basis.

Lastly, remember to set your bids back to the October baseline once the ground shipping cut-off date has been reached. Using sample data, we calculated average bid boosts for several time periods during the holiday season.

Figure 1: Developing a Boost Schedule by mapping changes in RPC (Example)

3.  Use Promotions

Promoting special offers will be a standard throughout the holiday season. Free shipping, discounts and coupons are among the most influential promotions for shoppers.

To reach value-shoppers, highlight special offers like 25% Off, $10 Coupon or Free Shipping within creative text. Introduce shipping cut-off dates and time-sensitive offers to create a sense of urgency and convert shoppers at a higher frequency.

Figure 2: Closeout, Sale, 75% Off and Free Shipping are all effective promotions to use in holiday creative text

4.  Turn To Social Shoppers

With Facebook starting to exhibit search-like holiday seasonality, it becomes crucial that businesses embrace the power of an integrated social marketing program. Shoppers who once turned to search engines for information are increasingly relying on social connections for the latest news, product information, special offers, and brand suggestions.

Ensure that social media initiatives stay focused on measurable, revenue acquiring activities by using techniques like Facebook fan-only specials and coupons. Strengthen relationships and increase the likelihood of a purchase by responding to posts and tweets made by shoppers.

Additionally, combine Facebook Offers with Facebook Sponsored Stories (for targeting friends of fans) to acquire more fans, appeal to deal-seeking social shoppers, and amplify holiday messaging and promotions across a larger, more engaged audience.

Figure 3: Bring shoppers to your business with a Facebook holiday offer they can claim and share with their friends

5.  Leverage Product Listing Ads (PLA)

To capitalize on the dramatic increase in shopping-related queries and engage more shoppers during the holiday season, search marketers should consider implementing PLAs. These highly visible and content rich search ads make it easier for Google shoppers to find and compare different products. PLAs include a product image, price, and business name to better engage and inform shoppers.

As a result, many retailers experience significantly higher click-through-rates for PLAs than standard text ads. To get started, set up a product feed through a Google Merchant Center account and link it into AdWords.

Leverage these and other best practices to help prepare for the upcoming 2012 holiday season. Our final recommendation is for online marketers to record their 2012 holiday results and findings as quickly as possible. Capturing this data sooner rather than later will make the analysis of holiday performance much easier. Furthermore, accurate and insightful reports of holiday campaign performance will become invaluable assets during the planning of the 2013 holiday season.

Understanding who your competitors are and the keywords they’re optimizing for is critical to staying relevant, competitive and profitable in your pursuit to acquire more revenue. In this article, I’ll be walking through several advanced tips for conducting competitive keyword analysis and how to apply your findings to your own optimization strategies.

Seek Out Your Competitors

If you don’t know who your competitors are by now, there are a couple free tools out there you can use to find out who they are. The easiest way is to search in Google or Bing on the keywords that best describe your product or service offering. Both the organic and paid search results will give you an initial list of the visible competitors in your space. You might be surprised as to who shows up.

Another popular tool is SpyFu, shown below. In addition to providing a detailed list of your top paid and organic competitors, SpyFu also provides the domain, top paid and organic keywords, estimated daily budget, average position, and paid and organic click volume of your competitors.

Simply enter a domain or keyword and start spying away. Add any new competitors to your initial list and begin compiling a keyword opportunities list from which we’ll add to and expand on later. Take note of which competitors are appearing more often than others during your analysis and prioritize them.

Know What They Know

Though keyword spy tools are highly effective, you don’t always have access to an explicit list of your competitor’s most effective keywords.

Sometimes, the best keyword opportunities reside within your competitor’s ad text creative. MixRank, shown below, is a useful tool that indexes millions of contextually targeted creative across the display network, and automatically identifies and ranks the most compelling ones.

Search on a domain or keyword and analyze the list of relevant creative. Dissect them for related keywords and add them to your list. Remember, these are keywords that your competitors have tested and decided were effective and performed well enough to use in their ad text creative. Use this knowledge to your advantage.

Explore Their Territory

With your prioritized list of competitors, it’s now time to start learning more about them and the keywords they use to define your space. The best place to start is their website. Go to the homepage and click to view the page source. Search for “<title>”, “meta name=”description”" and “meta name=”keywords”". The content in these lines of source code could give you the best idea as to what keywords your competitors are optimizing for.

In addition to the homepage, view the page source for each of your competitor’s product or category pages and add them to your list of potential keyword opportunities. Be sure to organize all of your new keywords into buckets as they relate to your product or service offering. This is critical for remaining structured and relevant when you create new paid search campaigns and ad groups around these opportunities.

Expand Your Territory

Though there are plenty of free keyword expansion tools available, we’re going to focus our attention on the Google Keyword Tool. This easy-to-use tool is great for determining potential traffic and competition for your new keyword opportunities.

Take your compiled list of keywords (via SpyFu, MixRank and page source) and paste them in manageable quantities into the Google Keyword Tool. Focus first on the results returned for your “Search terms”. For additional opportunities, review the results under “Keyword ideas”.

Consider the Competition, Monthly Search volumes and Approximate CPC (available when logged into your AdWords account) metrics when exploring new keywords.

Low-volume, low-competition keywords will likely come with lower CPCs, but may not result in many clicks or conversions. High-volume, high-competition keywords will likely achieve the opposite. The ideal would be high-volume, low-competition.

Though you probably won’t discover the holy grail of keywords, you might discover a new set of keywords that perform well at a lower cost-per-click compared to the rest of your keyword list.

Fortify The Margins

Remember when I mentioned that you might be surprised as to who shows up in your search for the keywords that best describe your product or service offering? That’s because many of these businesses compete with you at the margins of your business. That is, they only compete against a subset of your overall product or service offering.

For example, if you’re a sports equipment retailer, these competitors might only sell snowboarding apparel or basketball shoes exclusively. Since they are specialized in what they offer, these competitors can be a good source for unique, inexpensive and long tail keyword opportunities.

Leverage their keywords from SpyFu and page source, as well as their creative from MixRank, to the extent that your product or service inventory allows.

Apply Your Findings

Apply your competitive keyword findings to your own website. Keep in mind that your customers don’t always use the same keywords as you do when searching for your products or services. If you discover a new keyword that performs exceptionally well during your competitive analysis, make it a part of your SEO strategy.

Justify your decision to optimize for these new keywords based on click and conversion data and build them into your website to improve your landing page relevancy and organic search ranking. If you don’t, I know a competitor who will.

Onward To Victory!

Continuously revisit and refine your list of competitors, mine for additional competitive keyword opportunities and apply your findings to your search marketing strategy.

As always, when adding new keywords to your paid search program, remember to optimize—and add negative keywords, setting appropriate keyword bids and generating relevant ad creative are just a few tasks to keep in mind. In the battlefield of search, victory is rarely claimed. But by leveraging these advanced tips, you’ll be well equipped to stay relevant, competitive and profitable in your pursuit to acquire more revenue.

Increasing relevancy results in higher click-through-rates (CTR) and Quality Score, and as a result, lower costs. Furthermore, testing helps marketers discover more compelling creative messaging to increase visitor engagement with the conversion funnel after the click, promoting higher conversion rates and more revenue.

Last month, we looked at leveraging dynamic keyword insertion, prioritizing tests based on return and limiting the number of test elements. Today, in the final installment of this three part series, we’ll review three additional best practices for conducting a successful creative test.

Check Campaign Rotation Settings

Ensuring even creative rotation is one of the most commonly overlooked steps when implementing a creative test. Google offers three creative rotation settings: optimize for clicks, optimize for conversions and rotate evenly. Optimizing for clicks is the default setting, but does not promote a fair test since creative that provide more clicks, are displayed more often.

Opting to rotate evenly results in a fair and more statistically significant test, as each creative receives an even number of impressions. This setting also favors the utilization of key performance indicators (KPI) outside of clicks and conversions, such as conversions per impression or return on ad spend (ROAS), to determine top performing creative.

Keep in mind that Google campaigns set to rotate creative evenly will only do so for 90 days after the last creative was enabled or edited (unless opted-out of this functionality). After this 90-day period, creative will automatically optimize for clicks. This shift in rotation setting occurs regardless of whether or not statistical significance has been reached within the test.

Focusing on higher volume groups will help to reach significance within the rotation period. Pausing poor performing creative and generating new creative for testing will reset this 90-day clock.

Implement Tracking Before Each Test

With larger scale accounts, locating old creative tests can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Once a new test has been launched, it’s critical to take note and track the where and when of each new creative.

Where in the account is the creative being tested? And when was the creative activated?

Reaching statistical significance in a creative test can take days, weeks and sometimes months. Even for high volume groups that reach significance faster, knowing when a new creative was added defines the date range used for reporting and analysis.

In addition, low-volume groups that utilize longer date ranges are more susceptible to Google’s 90-day rotation functionality and thus require more attention. Knowing when the 90-day rotation period is nearing its end means tracking when a creative test started.

Reach Statistical Significance & Stop

Online marketers often end creative tests too early or let them run for too long. Determining a winning creative through statistical significance requires patience, and is one of the most difficult steps in a successful creative test. Achieving statistical significance leaves little doubt that a new creative outperforms the other creative in the group.

Prior to calculating significance, a KPI such as conversions per impression, CTR, conversion rate or ROAS should be selected for evaluating the performance of each creative. By definition, creative performance is statistically significant if it’s unlikely to have occurred by chance.

To calculate this, many creative testing tools utilize a Student’s T-Test with a user-defined confidence level. This test determines the likelihood that the difference between a single creative and the average of all creative in the group, has not occurred by chance.

A confidence level between 80% and 99% is standard, but keep in mind that low-volume groups do not support high-confidence levels and are not likely to achieve statistical significance as fast as high-volume groups.

Rinse & Repeat

Search marketers are constantly searching for ways to find and engage their target audience. No optimization strategy is more central to accomplishing this goal than creative testing. Continuously testing to find more relevant and more compelling creative serves to not only increase CTR and Quality Score, but decrease costs and drive more revenue.

When implementing creative tests, search marketers must remain disciplined at every step. New creative must remain focused and relevant. Tests must be prioritized, tracked and statistically significant. Adhering to best practices and avoiding common pitfalls will help ensure that new iterations of creative will incrementally improve account performance.

Though search marketers cannot guarantee that all creative tests will be successful, they can guarantee that all creative tests have been set up for success.

For paid search programs, for enterprise (as well as smaller) accounts, creative optimization remains one of the single most impactful strategies for increasing traffic, lowering costs and acquiring more revenue.

To optimize creative, search marketers rely on testing. Continuously generating, analyzing and iterating on new creative delivers incremental improvements in keyword-to-creative relevancy.

Furthermore, testing helps marketers discover more compelling creative messaging to increase visitor engagement with the conversion funnel after the click. Increasing relevancy results in higher click-through-rates (CTR) and Quality Score, and as a result, lower costs.

But more importantly, compelling creative promotes higher conversion rates and more revenue.

Last month, we looked at selecting an appropriate creative test, limiting opportunity cost and testing keyword tokens. Today, in part two of a three part series, we’ll review three additional best practices for conducting a successful creative test.

Leverage Dynamic Keyword Insertion

One of the easiest ways to incorporate keyword tokens within creative is through the use of dynamic keyword insertion. Inserting {keyword:default text} into the headline, description line or display URL dynamically populates the creative to include the keyword that triggered the creative.

In Google, modifying the keyword insertion parameter controls which tokens in the keyword are capitalized. For both publishers, if the inserted keyword causes the creative to exceed the character limitations, the default text is used instead.

Creative:

Inside Character Limit: Keyword: [red hiking boots]

Outside Character Limit: Keyword: [mountain hiking boots]

Using dynamic keyword insertion multiple times in a single creative is a quick and effective way to increase relevancy. However, keep in mind that not all keywords make grammatical sense when inserted into a creative. Take the headline “Shop {KeyWord: Hiking Boots}” for example.

If the keyword triggering the creative was “hiking boot”, the headline would read “Shop Hiking Boot”. Even a simple keyword variation such as this can result in an awkward-sounding creative.

Granular and organized groups with well-written creative will benefit most from dynamic keyword insertion—resulting in increasing CTRs and Quality Scores.

Prioritize Tests Based On Return

As paid search programs grow, it becomes increasingly challenging to implement and manage creative tests across all groups within an account.

To optimize creative at scale, prioritize tests to focus on groups with the most potential to shift overall account performance. These groups are characterized by a high share impressions, clicks or conversions within an account.

Due to limited resources, our fictional retailer, PowPow Sports, decided to only test creative in two of the groups within their account. Group A received 10,000 impressions per week, while group B received 1,000. Each test resulted in equal improvements in performance within its respective group.

The table below highlights the improvements in group performance after creative testing and highlights the potential performance of another, untested, Other group.

This example simplifies a common challenge where groups with little to no volume are prioritized over Other, higher volume, groups. Though both groups benefited from a creative test, group A experienced a greater increase in clicks and conversions. Each test took the same amount of time to implement, but one resulted in a greater revenue return on time investment.

Prioritizing creative tests for high volume groups has the greatest potential for incremental improvements in overall account performance.

Limit Test Elements

A new creative might be subject to one or many test elements. It can be triggered by a single set or multiple sets of keyword tokens. And it might share impressions with another or many other creative within the group.

Without controlling these variables, it becomes difficult to reach statistical significance and to determine what factors contributed towards a successful or unsuccessful creative test.

Limiting the number of elements within a creative test makes it easier to identify why one creative performed better than another.

For example, assume that PowPow Sports tests new creative that includes both a free shipping offer as well as a special product price point.Even with improved performance on the new creative, it would be unclear as to which test element contributed to its success. Testing each element one at a time will better determine its individual impact on creative performance.

To promote an optimal creative testing environment, keep keyword lists concise when building out new campaigns and groups. Groups that contain a small set of highly granular keywords allow the creative within that group to focus on a small set of tokens.

Rather than having to test tokens to improve relevancy, creative within these groups can test compelling offers and calls-to-action that drive greater increases in CTR and conversion rate.

Good (Tests a single element in Description Line 2):

A                                                        B

Bad (Tests too many elements across the entire creative):

A                                                        B

The rate at which a creative test reaches statistical significance is associated with the number of creative within the group.

Testing a large number of creative requires a large number of impressions. With smaller, low volume groups, this requirement becomes an issue. For a group that receives only 1,000 total monthly impressions, testing ten creative variations might take several months to reach statistical significance.

For larger, high volume groups, reaching statistical significance is less of a concern. However, the opportunity cost of running on underperforming creative must be monitored much more closely.

Under-performing creative within these groups accrue a high volume of impressions that are better served on top performing creative, and should be paused once statistical significance is reached.

To Be Continued

Search marketers are constantly exploring ways to find and engage their target audience. No optimization strategy is more central to accomplishing this goal than creative testing. Continuously testing to find more relevant and more compelling creative serves to not only increase CTR and Quality Score, but decrease costs and drive more revenue.

Adhering to best practices and avoiding common pitfalls will help ensure that new iterations of creative will incrementally improve account performance. Though search marketers cannot guarantee that all creative tests will be successful, they can guarantee that all creative tests have been set up for success.

In part three of this three part series, we’ll review our final three best practices for conducting a successful creative test.

For paid search programs both big and small, creative optimization remains one of the single most impactful strategies for increasing traffic, lowering costs and acquiring more revenue.

To optimize creative, search marketers rely on testing. Continuously generating, analyzing and iterating on new creative delivers incremental improvements in keyword-to-creative relevancy. Furthermore, testing helps marketers discover more compelling creative messaging to increase visitor engagement with the conversion funnel after the click. Increasing relevancy results in higher click-through-rates (CTR) and Quality Score, and as a result, lower costs.

But more importantly, compelling creative promotes higher conversion rates and more revenue. Today, in part one of a three part series, we’ll review three best practices for conducting a successful creative test.

Select An Appropriate Test

All creative tests begin with a choice, and marketers are subject to a plethora of test elements to choose from. Even at a basic level, creative can be characterized by and tested with functional, emotional or promotional qualities. Functional creative focus on the product or service and provides information such as pricing or features. Emotional creative pull at metaphoric heart strings and attempt to form a connection between the customer and the product or service. Promotional creative highlights discounts and evoke a sense of urgency.

The table below lists common elements that helps define how a creative is characterized. Before engaging in creative testing, it’s important to identify these elements and understand the benefits each one provides.

Limit Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of forgoing the next best alternative. To better understand this, let’s assume that a fictional sporting-goods retailer, PowPow Sports, has decided to generate and test three creative: A, B and C.

The table below compares the performance of each creative, at statistical significance.

Let’s assume PowPow Sports decides to pause creative B, and continue testing creative A and C. Assuming that performance remains consistent, the opportunity cost of this activity, as well as testing creative B against creative C, is highlighted in the table below.

In continuing to test creative A, even after achieving statistical significance, PowPow Sports has lost out on 100 clicks, five conversions and $375 in revenue. This is because half the available impressions were allocated to the under-performing creative A, rather than all the available impressions being allocated to just creative C.

When testing creative, the adverse effects of opportunity cost are twofold. One, if you don’t test at all, you obviously forgo the benefits of running on better performing creative. But marketers also make a common mistake when testing – continuing to test after statistical significance has been reached.  This results in the missed opportunity to simply run on the better performing creative.

In our example, PowPow Sports should have paused creative A and B, leaving 100% of the impression share to creative C.

Test Keyword Tokens

Keyword tokens within a creative will appear in bold whenever they match or closely match a user’s search query. Tokens are the individual terms that make up a keyword. For example, the keyword “mens hiking backpacks” contains three tokens: “mens”, “hiking” and “backpacks”. Improve the relevancy of your creative to your keywords by testing tokens. Discovering the most relevant tokens promotes higher Quality Scores by increasing CTR.

A highly granular group might only contain keyword variations using the three tokens “mens”, “hiking” and “backpacks”. Generating creative that includes these tokens is rather trivial. Conversely, a very general group might support more tokens and additional keyword variations.

Consider the search results below, where each creative utilizes a different set of the search query’s tokens. A group might contain keyword variations of “mens hiking backpacks”, “mens rucksacks” and “mens bags”.

Though all three keywords share similarities, generating a relevant creative for this group proves to be a difficult task. Opting to include “rucksacks” rather than “backpacks” makes the creative less relevant to consumers searching for backpacks. Not including “mens” makes the creative less relevant to male consumers. Without splitting these keyword variations out into individual groups, deciding which tokens to include will require thorough testing.

To prioritize your test variables, pay close attention to the impression share of each token within the group.

For instance, assume keywords that contain the token “backpacks” account for 90% of the total group impressions and keywords that contain the token “packs” account for 20% of the total group impressions. Because searchers are more likely to include “backpacks” in their query, generating a creative that includes “backpacks” will likely results in a greater overall CTR than a creative that includes “packs”.

To Be Continued

Search marketers are constantly exploring ways to find and engage their target audience. No optimization strategy is more central to accomplishing this goal than creative testing. Continuously testing to find more relevant and more compelling creative serves to not only increase CTR and Quality Score, but decrease costs and drive more revenue.

Adhering to best practices and avoiding common pitfalls will help ensure that new iterations of creative will incrementally improve account performance. Though search marketers cannot guarantee that all creative tests will be successful, they can guarantee that all creative tests have been set up for success. In part two of this three part series, we’ll review three additional best practices for conducting a successful creative test.