Ever wish you could “like” a Google ad? No, me either, but pretty soon you can!

In the coming weeks, search results and ads on Google will include a +1 button, which users can click to recommend your ads. You don’t need to make any changes to your AdWords account in order to take advantage of them. The final landing page URL of your ads can also appear on the Google profile of any user who +1’s your ad.

Here’s how the +1 button works:

Let’s say you own a hotel in Madrid. Brian had a lovely stay at your hotel last summer. When Brian starts researching accommodations for his next trip to Spain, he searches on Google while signed into his Google account, and sees your ad. He clicks the +1 button on the ad to recommend it to his contacts.

When Brian’s friend Ann plans her trip to Spain, she signs in to her Google account, searches, and also sees your ad – plus the personalized annotation that Brian +1’d it. Knowing that Brian recommends your hotel helps Ann decide where to stay during her travels.

Think of the +1 button as a way for fans of your business to recommend what you offer, for all their friends and contacts to see. By helping searchers see more personal, relevant ads, we believe you’ll see more qualified traffic. You can also add the +1 button to your site to give your customers the opportunity to +1 your site after visiting it.

One of the great things about using AdWords is that Google gives you so many ways to target your ads with pinpoint accuracy. Managed correctly, even a small budget can go a long way towards improving your profitability. The key is to take advantage of all the tools that Google gives you to make sure that only good prospects see your ads. Below is an illustration of 10 different filters that you can employ to make sure you are not paying for worthless traffic and that your budget is concentrated on the Google users that are most likely to want your services.

Several of the above filters are pretty straight forward while others have many possible implementations limited only by your imagination. If you are not taking advantage of all the ways Google gives you to target your ads then your campaign is leaking valuable marketing dollars.

Perhaps you know that Google AdWords gives users the ability to target a particular city or state, but did you know that you can also target any combination of custom defined areas? For example, you can target the Maryland suburbs of DC, Northern California, or that area of your county that is between the railroad tracks and the river. This feature is an absolute must for anyone whose target customers are not neatly defined by government borders. Here’s how it works:

Custom geographic targeting is only available on a campaign level. On your campaign settings page, click the edit link in the “location” section. A window like the one below will pop-up. Click on the custom tab and follow the instructions.

In the example above, I’ve targeted the Maryland suburbs of DC to illustrate the type of custom shaped areas that you can create. You are not limited to one custom area. If you have a chain of retail outlets throughout the Mid-West, you can create a custom area for each store. There are also a lot of creative ways you could use this feature. For example, if you sell allergy remedies then you could target only areas of the country where the pollen count is currently high!

Google determines the location of its users by IP address, which is not a super precise method. So, I would advise against trying to target a very small area and would recommend drawing your areas a little larger than what you actually want. Like everything else in AdWords, you will need to do some trial and error to get the optimal custom geographic area for your campaign.

The most important step you can take with your AdWords account is to make sure that your ads only appear to those that are likely to use your services. Minimizing your costs is the key to having AdWords success. Unfortunately, many people miss out on a big opportunity when they give up on AdWords because they fail to adequately target their campaigns and expenses run wild. If your products or services are targeted to a specific geographic location then make absolutely sure your AdWords campaigns are targeted correctly.

I’ll get right to the point. If you aren’t tracking the return on your marketing investment in great detail, then you are almost certainly losing money through wasteful spending and missed opportunities. Return on investment (ROI) is the only metric that should matter for a company that is seeking to maximize profits. Refining ROI one step further, what you really want to track is contribution margin which will provide the final word on whether a campaign is profitable.

Feel Good Metrics
Simply put, “feel good” metrics are all the other metrics that aren’t contribution margin. Click through rate, conversion rate, page views, unique visitors, time on site, etc. are all “feel good” metrics because they make us feel good when they increase. All too often, site owners will brag about how many visitors they have and how many convert while at the same time their site is losing money. If your business aims to make money, then it’s just common sense to optimize the metric that quantifies how much money you are making.

The Role of Feel Good Metrics
Feel good metrics are very valuable. The case I’m making is that you should never make optimizing feel good metrics your PRIMARY goal. Feel good metrics provide a lot of valuable insight into how visitors use your site. This knowledge is critical to making smart decisions that optimize contribution margin. However, it’s important to note that changes that may increase visits, click throughs and conversion rates, can often decrease contribution margin. Keeping a laser-like focus on contribution margin will prevent you from falling into the trap of declaring victory when feel good metrics improve at the expense of the contribution margin.

The Exception to the Rule
Marketing is not the only aspect that determines sales success. Sometimes very strong feel good metrics and a poor or negative contribution margin can indicate that there is a problem with your product or sales process. Lead generation site owners need to pay particularly close attention to the relationship between feel good metrics and contribution margin. If you suspect you have a product or sales problem, it’s best to reach out to your leads. You want to qualify them and ask them why they did not buy from you. If after some research you determine that your marketing efforts are delivering qualified leads, then you will need to focus on improving your product and sales process. You will also want to dial back marketing until you solve your issues. It’s better to keep your powder dry so you have more marketing budget to spend when you have a great product and sales process.

Google AdWords provides a free standard report that will save you thousands of dollars of waste from your account. It’s called the Search Query Performance Report and it will list every search phrase that ever triggered one of your ads. If you manage an AdWords account and you have never run this report, then stop what you are doing and run it now. You will be stunned by what you find.

To access the report, login to your AdWords account and click on “reports” under the reporting tab. Click the “Create a New Report” link and then choose the “Search Query Performance” report type. Pick the settings you want and run the report. It will look something like this:

The search phrases circled above were triggered by the broad match keyword phrase “requirements management”. Notice that none of the search phrases have anything to do with “requirements management”. Once identified, these wasteful searches can be eliminated through the use of negative keywords. In this case, adding “requirements for” as a negative keyword eliminated all of these searches.

Searches that are unrelated to your business cost you in two different ways. Obviously, if users click on your ad you will be charged. However, even if nobody ever clicks on your ads, unrelated searches will kill your click through rate which is an important contributor to your quality score. The lower your quality score, the more Google will charge you compared to other advertisers. The report above was for a one-day period, but left untouched these unrelated searches would have cost the advertiser thousands of dollars.

Are you trying this report for the first time? Please let us know in the comment section what you find.

~Thrifty SEM