Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of interesting organizations operating at many different budgets. We’ve managed AdWords accounts for smaller companies, large corporations, and everything in between.
But the most interesting, white-knuckled experiences have always been the high volume AdWords campaigns, especially companies in narrow industries enjoying healthy profit margins.
In accounts like these, everything happens at light speed, from the number of ads that generated, to the respective metrics around conversions and costs. Annual budgets are often in the millions and single clicks can run north of a hundred dollars.
For the AdWords manager, it’s like moving from a Fiat to a Ferrari. The world of PPC comes at you at a much faster pace, requiring skillful and confident handling and reaction times.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Broad Wolf?
Most high volume, high profit margin accounts contain the entire arsenal of keyword match types, from exact match, where keywords are tightly defined, to phrase and broad match modified, where ad distribution can be controlled to some extent.
But to truly play effectively in this high stakes game, broad match keywords are put to work extensively. This keyword match type is notoriously unpredictable in what search queries it matches upon (see Fishing with Dynamite).
Vigilance is key. An active hands-on approach to management is needed to identify what is and isn’t converting. Many Adwords budgets have been obliterated due to broad match keywords gone wild. A ball and chain approach is definitely required.
Mind Your Metrics
For high volume, high margin accounts, it is imperative that the account is not only tracking conversions from click to sale, but the company also understands its cost of marketing throughout the funnel. This typically extends from AdWords into a CRM (like Salesforce) through conversion tracking on forms and phone calls.
Everything needs to be measured, from the cost per click (CPC), cost per lead (CPL) and the cost of the sale, commonly referred to as cost per acquisition (CPA). This is especially important in high volume accounts where the ad investment is much higher for a wide variety of keywords and ad groups.
Any deviations in cost or conversions through the various stages of the marketing funnel should trigger an immediate evaluation of performance. The ability to track the results for all match types and keywords allows a manager to properly optimize what’s working and to deactivate what isn’t.
Other important metrics like Return of Ad Spend (ROAS) and ROI should also be monitored carefully. ROAS is defined as gross revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, while ROI measures the profit generated by ads relative to the cost of those ads, and includes other costs like physical goods or anything tied to providing a service. By monitoring metrics like ROAS on a per ad group basis, a smart manager can make proper adjustments to keep the account operating at top performance.
Top of Funnel Metrics
High volume, high margin businesses often sell products and services that have a longer buy cycle than transactional business like e-commerce. Sales might not close for weeks or months, making it harder to gauge daily PPC performance for distinct campaigns, ad groups, and keywords. For this reason, key metrics are often found higher up in the funnel, with a watchful eye on cost per lead (CPL), or cost per opportunity (CPO) if sales are being tracked within a CRM like Salesforce.
Fast and Furious AdWords Management
High volume AdWords accounts contain high spend budgets that need to be monitored with daily, or even hourly observation and optimization. As an example, we worked with a client where spend was monitored every two hours, and budget was shifted away from under-performing campaigns at that particular time, directing spend to other ad groups showing higher conversions.
When Being Negative is a Good Thing
Managers overseeing high volume PPC accounts need to watch Google’s Search Terms Report carefully. Wasteful, irrelevant search terms need to be added quickly as negative keywords to avoid driving up conversion costs and wasting ad budget.
In one account we managed, airport codes like “LAX’ ad “ATL” were triggering ads for a service that had nothing to do with flying commercially. By intercepting the problem and addressing this right away through the addition of all airport codes as negatives, the account returned to top performance.
Time is on Your Side? Perhaps The Rolling Stones Were on to Something
Under normal AdWords account management, keywords are monitored for proper conversions within a set period of time. If they fail to produce, or the cost exceeds revenue, the keywords are cut.
For high volume accounts with high margins and price points, the game totally changes. A keyword could show zero conversions for many months and look dead on arrival, only to result in a lucrative sale a short time later. Boom! From dud to stud. Every high volume account is different and must be managed accordingly.
Low Quality Scores Don’t Matter When You “Pay to Play “
Quality Score was created by Google to ensure a more effective search experience for its users and includes factors like the keyword’s CTR and relevance in ad text, keyword, and landing page. Google then displays ads by rank by multiplying the advertiser’s CPC bid with their Quality Score.
Because of this, Quality Score is a major factor that AdWords managers monitor and strive to improve, as they can make a huge difference in the cost per click (CPC). But in high volume, high margin accounts, the rules change completely, especially in campaigns that capture customers through a large number of broad match keywords.
Because
Here’s an example to illustrate the point.
Note that in the top ad grouping, Company D has a dismal Quality Score of 3, but has the freedom of profit margin and budget to set max CPC high enough to outbid the competition. In this example, they have a max bid of $60 a click, resulting in a Google Ad Rank of 180.
Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score
This places Company D in the first position, even with the lower Quality Score. However, the actual cost per click (CPC) is much higher as Google penalizes advertisers for poor quality and non-relevancy.
CPC = (Ad Rank of Next Highest Bidder / Your Quality Score) + $0.01
While $60 a click is often too pricey for most advertisers, high volume companies operating with high profits and margins can easily justify the expense if clicks are converting into sales.
As an interesting side note, look what happens in the bottom grouping when Company D improves their Quality Score from 3 to 6. This resulted in a CPC reduction of 50%. For a high volume AdWords account utilizing broad match, there might be opportunities here to look for specific search terms that could be broken out of broad match into ad groups where the ads and landing page can be better tailored to the user’s search query.
At this level, the stakes are high. Once again, it goes back to vigilance and active management, making sure that all campaigns, ad groups, and keyword are operating at peak performance.
In Conclusion
High volume AdWords accounts are a special breed of PPC that require highly skilled experts to configure the account correctly across all match types, from exact to broad match.
Once launched, diligent care and active vigilance are required to measure and optimize performance in a “fast and furious” environment. This is accomplished by watching ad groups and keywords carefully, rewarding high performing ads as needed while controlling waste through the proper use of negative keywords.
Did you need help managing a high volume AdWords account? I have the skills and experience, managing multi-million dollar accounts with an average ROAS of nearly 700% Contact me for a free 30-minute consultation.
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