[Search Engine Marketing] 04. Metrics

1. METRICS AND CAMPAIGN EVALUATION

• Translate your Marketing Objective into your top KPI. Depending on what action (conversion) you want your potential customers to perform, this is the Cost per Acquisition (CPA), Cost per Subscriber or Lead (CPL) or if you ‘just’ want traffic, you could go for Cost per Click (CPC) 
• Your campaign ultimately is successful if you achieve your Marketing Objective at a cost below what you can afford to pay while keeping your desired level of profitability (ROI) 
• The price per conversion (CPA/CPL) is driven by the conversion rate and the CPC 
• The conversion rate can be optimized by improving and testing the quality of your landing page and aligning it with your ads 
• The CPC can be optimized by improving the quality and relevance of your ads and landing page (Quality Score), which should, in turn, improve the CTR 
• You can also lower the CPC by bidding for relevant keywords with less competition 
• The number of impressions and the average position your ads receive are indicators of your Ad Rank relative to the competition

2. KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION STRATEGY

• Be specific and go long-tail (i.e. more specific and detailed keywords)
• Pause keywords with low CTR 
• Use Match Types 
• Add Negative Keywords 
• Bundle closely related keywords in one Ad Group 

3. STEPS TO CREATE AN A/B TEST

• Define one goal metric 
• Identify one element of the ad that you want to test [Headline, Description, Call to Action, the promoted offer, Landing Page, URL Path, Ad Extensions, Ad Group Keywords, Location targeting, Time of the week/day (Advanced settings)] 
• Create the different versions of your ads/ad groups (Run A/B test)
• Analyze your results 
• Pause the lower performing version or continue testing by changing the next element