Optimize by Business Objective
| Learn about: | Generating Sales | Generating Leads | Generating Traffic | Generating Local Business | Related Resources |
Generating Sales
The first step in improving results is defining your business goal. If you sell products on your site to everyone, your business goals may include generating sales. The following links below may assist you with tips and techniques that can help you improve your Sponsored Search results:- Setting Up a Campaign
- Selecting Keywords
- Writing Effective Ads
- Setting the Right Bid
- Optimizing Your Landing Pages
- Tracking Your Results
- What is the account structure?
- Top 5 things to consider when creating a campaign
- How to create a campaign
- What is the Advanced match type?
- What is Content Match?
- What is Geo-targeting?
What is the account structure?
Keywords
A keyword is a single word or multi-word phrase that relates to the products and/or services you wish to advertise. When potential customers are looking for information related to your keywords, your ads may be displayed.
Ads
Your ads are the marketing messages that your potential customers will see. An ad is comprised of the title, description and URL.
Ad Groups
An ad group contains your ads (the marketing messages you created) and your targeting criteria (such as keywords). Your ads are rotated against your targeting criteria and are displayed to your potential customers. You can create multiple ad groups within a campaign.
Campaigns
A campaign is made up of one or more ad groups that share the same budget, schedule and geo-targeting criteria. Typically, campaigns are created to achieve a marketing goal (for example, a summer clearance campaign, a new product launch campaign, or a campaign that targets customers in a specific geographic location).
Account
Your account contains all the elements you need to advertise in one market (i.e., the United States and English-speaking Canada). An account generally represents a business, or a portion of a business, that has a particular budget as well as marketing objectives.
Top 5 things to consider when creating a campaign
- Group your keywords by a certain attribute, i.e. by product, product category, offer or geographic region.
- Decide on your bid for each group of keywords.
- Think about the core message you want to communicate to customers, and create specific ads for each group of keywords. This can help improve the relevancy of your ads.
- Determine the most effective landing pages in order to help increase conversions (purchases or lead submissions). Learn more about optimizing your landing pages.
- Place tracking tags on your site so you can understand the performance of your campaigns and help optimize your results. Learn how to install tracking tags.
Log in to your account. Click the “Create Campaign” button on the Dashboard tab.
Follow these steps:
- Name your campaign.
- Set up geo-targeting by market, U.S. state, Canadian provinces or city and surrounding areas, also known as DMA1(if this applies to your business objective).
- Select your distribution tactic: Sponsored Search and/or Content Match.
- Create ad groups with keywords, ads and a bid. if you select Sponsored Search, you can choose either Advanced Match or Standard Match Type.
- Set the budget for your campaign.
- Schedule a timeframe for when your ads will be online or offline.
- Review your campaign details before you activate your ads.
What is the Advanced match type?
Your potential customers may search on many variations of your keywords. It would be overwhelming for you to bid on and manage every possible variation. The solution is the Advanced match type, which enables you to leverage your existing ads to appear for a wider range of relevant keywords.
For example, if you activated the Advanced match type on the keywords “hotel,” “flight” and “vacation,” you could receive customers searching on terms like these:
- New York hotel
- California luxury hotels
- flight to Paris
- London flight
- family vacation
- vacation adventure
Content Match complements your Sponsored Search campaign by displaying your existing ads alongside relevant articles, product reviews and more, thereby providing an additional source of targeted leads. The Content Match distribution partner network includes numerous, popular, high-quality content and information sites, such as Yahoo!, Viacom and WallStreetJournal.com.
Content Match can be another source of relevant traffic for your web site, and even includes the option to define a separate bid for your Content Match ads.
Learn more about how to use Content Match.
Geo-targeting allows you to target your ads to potential customers located or interested in particular geographic areas within the market selected for your account. For example, if your business sells real estate within the state of California and you select California as a geo-targeted region, your ads will be shown to potential customers located in California, as well as to search users who may be located outside of California but enter search terms such as “California real estate".
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Learn more about how to use geo-targeting.
1DMA® is a registered service mark of Nielsen Media Research, Inc., and is used pursuant to a license from Nielsen Media Research, Inc., all rights reserved.
- Top 5 guidelines for creating keywords
- Advanced techniques for generating keywords
- Organizing keywords into campaigns and ad groups
Top 5 guidelines for creating keywords
- Try to predict what your customers will type in as a search query when searching for what you sell. (e.g. customers looking for a book might search for “Da Vinci Code” or “paperback special offer”).
- Choose more keywords than less to improve your chances of being found.
- Generate keywords with multiple words (e.g. “buy diamond ring online”).
- Periodically add new keywords and remove the non-performers to keep your account administration at a manageable level.
- Use the Find Keywords panel in the Choose Keywords page.
Advanced techniques for generating keywords
Use the buying cycle: Customers perform searches while they are at every stage of the buying cycle (from researching to shopping to purchasing). Think about keywords that will attract customers at each stage (from “car” to “sports car” to “German sports car”).
Select niche keywords:Strike a balance between popular (frequently searched) keywords and niche keywords. Niche keywords with little or no competition generate a small amount of traffic, but the traffic can be targeted and may come at a very low price. (e.g. ”8 megapixel digital camera”) or “12x zoom digital camera”.
Analyze your site:One of the best places to look for ideas is your own web site.
- Look through all the pages of your site and identify the words that are most relevant and interesting to your customers.
- Review your product names and descriptions for ideas.
- Check your web server logs to identify the keywords that are leading visitors to your site.
- If you want to sell products online the destination for your ad should be the online shopping area of your web site—even better would be the deep link to the product the user was searching for.
Organizing keywords into ad groups and campaigns
To keep your account organized, you can pool your keywords into ad groups and your ad groups into campaigns. An ad group contains a set of keywords that apply to a single ad (title, description and URL).
Example: How to organize keywords into ad groups and campaigns.
| Keywords | Ad Group | Campaign |
|---|---|---|
| DVD recorder HD DVD recorder |
DVD recorder | DVD devices |
| DVD player Portable DVD Pocket DVD |
DVD player | |
| SLR Digital SRL Affordable SLR |
SLR | Digital Cameras |
| Digital Camera Digicam 8 Megapixel |
Digicams |
Example: How to associate keywords with ads (title, description and URL)
| Keywords | Ad |
|---|---|
| DVD player Portable DVD Pocket DVD |
5% Discount on DVD Players Portable and stationary players. 5% discount when you order online. www.electronics-planet.com |
| SLR Digital SRL Affordable SLR |
5% Discount on Digital SLRs Digital SLRs from 5 to 10 megapixels. 5% discount when you order online. www.electronics-planet.com |
Ad groups help improve efficiency by enabling you to manage one ad for multiple keywords. You can even start testing multiple ads within an ad group to determine which message attracts the most leads and/or converts at the highest rate. Learn more about ad testing.
Determining how many campaigns and ad groups you need depends on the size and complexity of your business. Consider the following divisions when organizing your account:
- Product variations (DVD player, DVD recorder, DVD HD recorder).
- Product class or family (books, hardcover, soft cover, thriller, sci-fi).
- Products (shoes) vs. services (shoe repair).
- Products that have one attribute in common (shipping region, price, discount).
- Buying cycle for a particular product.
- Trials of new keywords.
- Seasonal keywords.(Christmas, summer clearance)
- Include your keywords in your ads
- Include pricing information
- Stand out from the competition
- Match the tone to the product
- Top five things to avoid
- Ad testing
Include your keywords in your ads
To make this easy for you, Yahoo! Search Marketing offers the Insert Keyword feature. This feature can enable you to save time and help increase the relevance and click-through rate of your ads by using the keyword token to dynamically insert the keyword that matches a searcher's query into your ad's title and/or description when it is displayed. Learn more about 'Insert Keyword'.
Example listing for keyword: diamond ring
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Buy Diamond Rings Online - 5% Discount Quality diamond rings starting at $299. 5% discount for online orders. www.url.com |
Buy Jewelry Online Diamonds, necklaces and bracelets. Check out our huge selection today. www.url.com |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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Example listing for keyword: cell phone
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Cell Phones Starting at One Dollar New and used cellular phones. We’ll match competitors’ prices. www.url.com |
Buy Cell Phones Online Best prices on cell phones. Check out our selection and order today. www.url.com |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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Stand out from the competition
Example listing for keyword: books
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Buy Your Book Today – Read it Tomorrow 24-hour delivery on all books in stock from bestsellers to classics. www.url.com |
Online Book Store Science fiction, romance and more books in hard cover and paperback. www.url.com |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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Example listing for keyword: perfume
| Keyword: Perfume | Keyword: 21 inch rims |
|---|---|
| Enchant with a 25% Savings Perfume Indulge your senses with exotic scents. 25% less than boutique prices. www.url.com |
Ride in Style with Custom Rims Stylish 19-24 inch aluminum rims from. Multi-part and spinners are available. www.url.com |
These ads are effective because:
- The tone of the ad matches the product category.
- Word choice enhances the impact of the ad.
- Superlatives (“best,” “lowest,” “hottest”) and exaggerated language. It comes across as less trustworthy than clear, factual language.
- Inaccurate claims.If you get users to your site under false pretenses, they will be annoyed and will lose confidence in your business.
- Language and product presentation that are too “salesy.”
- Ampersands (&) and numbers in place of words (“buy 2 get 1 free”). They look junky.
- Titles and descriptions that are too generic. Even if it’s tempting to have one creative per thousand keywords, the listing will:
- be perceived as less relevant
- experience a lower click-through rate
- yield fewer conversions
Within an ad group, you can test multiple versions of your ad to determine which message works best. The various versions of your ad will be randomly displayed in the Sponsored Search results for the keywords in the ad group. The test will generate a quality index score that reveals which ad generates the highest response.
The example below shows three ads to test for one ad group, which contains several related keywords.
Version 1: Shows price advantage based on discount
Ad Group: 'DigiCams'
Keywords:
- Digital Camera
- Digicam
- Digital SLR
- Digi SLR
- SLR 8 MegaPixel
| Ad Copy to be Tested | Point of Differentiation |
|---|---|
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5% Discount on Online Digicam Purchase Electronics-planet offers great prices for the top brands and models. www.electronics-planet.com |
Focus on price advantage, based on discount |
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Buy a Digital SLR and Become a Pro With a digital SLR camera, your photos will look professional. www.electronics-planet.com |
Focuses on quality and product advantage |
| Digital SLRs Starting at $479 6 Megapixel for $699, 8 Megapixel for $999. Great deals on top models. www.electronics-planet.com |
Focuses on the price advantage by stating actual prices per specific product |
It’s important to make sure the ads you test remain relevant to all the keywords in an ad group. Therefore, we suggest you set up ad groups that share key similarities, such as product type and shipping options.
Learn more about ad groups and ad testing.- Budget-based bidding vs. position-based bidding
- Optimize your bid on the ad group level
- Control your budget with the Account Daily Spending Limit
Budget-based bidding vs. position-based bidding
While it can be tempting to study the search results and try to bid to specific positions in the listings, this is not generally the most effective way to achieve profitable sales. Bidding this way might even put you into a bidding war with your competitors. Furthermore, margins and marketing budgets are not the same for each advertiser.
Instead, we suggest budget-based bidding. Your goal should be to allocate your budget to the ads that deliver the most profitable sales for your business.
The following key metrics are required to calculate the most effective bid per keyword or ad group:
- Maximum marketing budget per sale
- Maximum impressions (how often your ad is displayed in a search result) for keyword or ad group (based on the information in your account or the Find Keywords wizard)
- Average click-through rate (3.5% could be used as a standard in case no historical data is available from testing)
- Conversion rate (number of sales divided by the number of visitors to your site).
To decrease the time required to manage your account, we suggest setting bid at the ad group level. Managing bids at the keyword level requires a significant amount of time and may not necessarily lead to the most profitable results.
Optimize your bid at the ad group level
When creating a new ad group or managing your account at the ad group level, you will be able to define your bid for an ad group. When doing this, you may want to take advantage of our helpful tool that calculates estimated average clicks for your proposed bid. The tool also provides you with information on the estimated average position of your ads and share of available impressions.1
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Control your budget with the Account Daily Spending Limit
If you would like to set budget limits independent of your bid, you have the option to set an Account Daily Spending Limit. By using this feature, you simply cap the budget on a daily basis and your estimated monthly spend limit will be automatically smoothed over a period of 30 days.2
This feature benefits you by:
- Helping to ensure you do not exceed your monthly maximum budget.
- Helping to make sure you do not go offline too early in the month, which can happen if your keywords get a lot of traffic and generate a high amount of click costs.
Learn more about the Account Daily Spending Limit.
1The numbers are calculated using your bids and historical data. Remember that this is an estimate only and not a guarantee of click volume.
2Your daily spend caps are targets only. You may see fluctuations in your actual daily click charges due to changes in search volume, but your total monthly click charges should be close to your target monthly budget (target monthly budget is calculated as 30 times your daily spend cap, for a rolling 30 days).
How to improve landing pages and increase conversion rates
- What is a landing page?
- Top 5 tips to optimize a landing page
- The first impression
- Geographical limitations
- Navigation
- Shopping Cart
A landing page is the first web page a user will see after clicking your ad. This could be your homepage, a dedicated page for a product or service or a deep link to a specific product in your online store.
Top 5 tips to optimize a landing page
The following optimization tips for landing pages and web site navigation can help make your Sponsored Search campaign more effective.
- Offer transparent and easy-to-understand navigation, and create deep links that go directly to the advertised product or service.
- Use landing pages that show multiple ways to get in contact with you and additional information that might bind the customer to your offer.
- Make sure users will have a positive experience on the landing page.
- Ensure that your online shopping engine and shopping cart are safe and easy to use (if applicable).
- Maintain good server availability and remove any broken links from your site.
As you develop and refine your web site, keep this simple principle in mind: make sure your landing pages are about the customer, not about your company. Providing users with the information they are seeking enhances the customer experience and improves conversion rates. For best results, include the following on your landing pages:
- Keywords in a prominent location
- Unique product photos
- Product reviews and comparisons
- Offers (such as free shipping), discounts and rebates
- Consumer testimonials or case studies
- Buyer’s guides
- Method of contacting you directly (email or phone number)
If you are a local store, local or regional service provider, or even an online store that only ships within a certain region, your landing page should contain this information. It would be best to provide this crucial information in the title and description of your ads.
- Try to see your web site through the eyes of a potential customer.
- Make an obvious pathway to the product/service the customer was looking for.
- Avoid too many navigation layers between the customer and what they are looking for—2 clicks maximum.
- Deep links that lead directly to the offer and relate to the search query and ad are ideal.
- If a sale is your primary objective, move noncommercial related content/information below the fold.
- Make sure that your shopping engine works with commonly used browser types.
- Incorporate easy navigation.
- Provide appropriate information and photos in case a customer decides to look at additional products.
- Ensure that customers do not lose information or selected products on their way to check-out.
- Make cross sales easy, but try to keep the focus on what the customer actually wants to purchase.
- Don’t collect too much information on the first purchase; try to create a customer profile bit by bit.
- Incorporate one-click shopping for returning customers.
- Use SSL and secure payment to make your customers feel safe when offering payment details.
- Why tracking is important
- Getting started
- Using conversion only tracking
- Calculating your ROAS
- Tracking and analyzing your traffic
Tracking the performance of your online marketing enables you to effectively analyze your results, adjust bids and revise ads to make your account more successful. Tracking is essential to help you spend effectively so that you are getting the most out of your advertising investment.
Tracking measures the rate of conversion, which is a completed transaction event on your web site. What constitutes a conversion varies from business to business. The most common conversions are:
- Purchase
- Site registration
- Newsletter sign-up
- Request for price quote
- Other lead-generating activity
If you’re ready to start tracking your results, the first thing you must do is determine your desired CPA (cost-per-acquisition), which is the amount of money you’re willing to spend acquiring a new customer.
If you keep your quality index score high, you may achieve a higher position at lower cost: We suggest that you conduct a trial period during which your ads can receive enough clicks to provide you with the data you need. You can achieve that by attempting to obtain a high average position as the business objective for your campaign. Learn more about quality index.
As soon as you have gathered enough information (determining which keywords perform best, and how much you have to spend to win a certain number of customers), you can start optimizing your account: add, remove and modify keywords, improve your ads and adjust your bid.
Using conversion only tracking
Yahoo! Search Marketing offers free, easy-to-use [span]conversion only tracking method (basic tagging) that can help you optimize your marketing budget. You simply place a tag on your web site’s confirmation page, and then you can view conversion information in your account.
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Landing Page
The landing page is the destination of the URL you are using in your ad. It’s the first page a customer gets to see. It is where they start the conversion process (e.g. shopping, submitting information, signing up for a newsletter, etc.).
E-commerce or Sign Up
During this part of the conversion process, the customer is using the e-commerce or the part of the web site where they can submit their address or sign up for a newsletter. The confirmation page will be the last page of this process confirming the purchase or the submission of information.
Confirmation Page
The conversion tag is a short piece of code that is part of the confirmation page’s metadata. Each time the confirmation page is viewed at the end of the shopping process, the page view is counted as one conversion.
Learn more about conversion only tracking.
When your goal is to acquire traffic, your ROAS is calculated as:Value of Traffic Sold (e.g. your ad revenue)
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Amount Paid for Sponsored Search Traffic (i.e. total click cost)
Tracking and analyzing your traffic
In order to track and analyze the traffic on your web site, you will need to acquire specific software tools or learn how to analyze your web log files (see example below). Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may provide these tools, or you can buy them from a third party (ask your ISP for a recommendation).
| Regular URL | http://www.electronics-planet.com/television |
| Tracking URL | http://www.electronics-planet.com/television?OVRAW=buy%20plasma %20television&OVKEY=plasma%20television&OVMTC=advanced |
Yahoo! Search Marketing provides you with the ability to use [span]tracking URLs, one of the most common techniques that associates where visitors came from with what they do on your site.
With tracking URLs, you will be able to learn:
- Which keyword brought the user to your site
- What the customer was searching for before clicking your ad
- Which search engine referred the customer to your site
Learn more about Tracking URLs.
Based on this information, you can start optimizing your account. For example, you can determine which keywords generated the most traffic, and then bid those keywords aggressively to help generate even more sales.