Make the most of your Google AdWords reports
One "mistake" that we consistently see when conducting one of our AdWords account audit and strategy sessions or when beginning work with a new client is that the AdWords report center is not used effectively, or maybe even not at all. In order to know what is working, what is not working and how to make your account better you need to make use of this feature.
You can access the report center by clicking the "Reporting" tab found at the top of the AdWords user interface and selecting reports.
Once the next screen loads you will find reports ranging from individual keyword performance to ad performance - even discovering the exact search queries that are being made on Google.com that then show your ad and delivered a visitor to your site.
There are 11 reports in all.
At the very least, we recommend running an Account Performance report for the past few months at a week-by-week basis to spot major trends.
A few of the other reports we recommend utilizing on a regular basis are:
- Placement/Keyword Performance: a favorite. This report will allow you to view performance data for every keyword in your account and discover how often each particular keyword shows your ad, how many clicks a keyword generates, how many conversions a keyword is responsible for and more.
- Search Query Performance: one of our other favorites! This will allow you to see the exact search queries being made on Google.com that then show your ad and generated a visitor to your site by way of your ad being clicked. This is an exceptional report for identifying new keywords to be added and also, new negative keywords.
- Placement Performance: a newer favorite! This will allow you to see specific performance for any website placement you have added to your content network campaigns.
It should be noted that both the Search Query Performance report and the Placement Performance report can be run directly in the AdWords user interface for any date range that you decide to select. For small, quick changes to your account on a frequent basis this is the best way to utilize these reporting features.
However, we prefer to run these two specific reports via the report center for extended date periods and then download the data that is populated into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This way you have a great deal of data at your disposal all at once, allowing for greater sweeping changes, which can be conducted in AdWords Editor for robust optimizations to your AdWords account.
Whichever way you personally choose to utilize Google AdWords reports, it's imperative to take advantage of them (especially the three highlighted above). By doing so you will be able to out perform your competition; and if you use all 11 of them, there will be no stopping your ads.
Make the most of a few more AdWords strategies by checking out our three AdWords secrets video here.
It’s NEVER too late for a comeback
I just returned from Maui Hawaii, 100+ customers from a dozen countries face to face and palm to palm for 3 days. It was immensely energizing to shake everyone's hand and hear war stories and spend time together.
In that conference room you heard every kind of story you can imagine. There were people there who literally made a million dollars last month. There was probably somebody who LOST a million dollars last month. I have no doubt.
One guy was literally down to his last twenty dollars. A trip to a pricey seminar was his last wing and prayer. There were many businesses that grew 400-500% in the last 12 months.
Welcome to the knife fight, to the rough and tumble world of being an entrepreneur. A universe of extremes. Work hard. Play hard. High highs. Low lows. Humiliation. Exhilaration.
When I moved from Nebraska to Chicago 17 years ago, there was a part of me that somehow just needed to flee safety and comfort. In pursuit of action and adventure.
Nebraska is a safe, genteel, polite, unthreatening, mannerly place.
And… it's kinda boring there.
I don't have very many customers from Nebraska. It's just not a "Planet Perry" kind of place.
Here in Chicago we have the Chicago Bulls and Bears. Michigan Avenue and the Gold Coast. The Hancock Building and Navy Pier and yachts and hi-rise condos. O'Hare airport and tollways and commuter systems and Broadway shows and vast urban sprawl.
And gangs and drugs and hour-long commutes and gapers delays and starving artists and the West Side and the South Side and Joliet Federal Prison and crime and poverty and housing projects.
In Chicago, you get it ALL. From the ridiculous to the sublime. That's why I love it here.
My friend, there are some of us who are just BORN to thrive in extremes. You crave the WHOLE enchilada. You want access to the whole box of chocolates. You want the CHOICE to grab that nugget of mystery out of the box and get whatever you get. And reach for another and another.
It's hard, but it's better than the SAFETY of having someone else skim off the gourmet stuff and feed you stale 8-month-old Hershey bars.
150 years ago if you preferred the Wild West to a 3 bedroom condo and 3 square meals everyday, you were surely a little bit INsane.
Today, if you prefer the Wild West to institutional mediocrity, it's probably the best possible assurance that you ARE sane… that the world hasn't yet pounded every last ounce of adventure out of your soul. That you don't want to sit in a cube under buzzing fluorescent lights and follow the car ahead of you to oblivion every day. You don't want to gulp down antidepressants and watch TV from 5pm til bedtime.
If you thirst for greater things, if you dream of accomplishing something really big and daring in your life (and I'm NOT just talking about money by the way) then I'm here to tell you, you're in good company.
If you've failed and failed and failed again…. or if you've achieved modest success only to have a monsoon wipe out what was so promising…. if you're constantly dodging the snakes and arrows…. you're in splendid company.
It's never too late for a comeback.
It may be lonely in your particular corner of cyberspace on a particular Tuesday afternoon, but I'm here to assure you, you're not the only one.
One more thing:
There is no such thing as a great person in history who was a "perfectly reasonable guy." We're all a little bit unreasonable, a little shaky, a little insane. And driven by an inner fire that won't go out.
Passion is the fire that lights itself.
If you have that Passion, give thanks for it, honor it, and press into it. Harder.
Not everybody has it. But you do. And you know it. So write it in blood. Put it in an obvious place so you never let yourself forget it.
The entire history of your life culminates in the present moment, and all the possibilities that it holds. Right now.
Every hour, every day….
…seize the day.
Perry Marshall
P.S.: You're awesomer than you think you are.
(I just added "awesomer" to my spell checker. My declaration: It's a real word now.)
P.P.S: I'll be posting videos from the seminar later this week.
You’ve Gotta Spin Some Plates
This was my all-time best user response email message, reprinted here. Thought you’d like to see it 
==============
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are NO promotional links in this email. You
can’t buy anything from it, no matter how hard you try.
I just really want you to understand this message.
Here’s the thing, you are NOT going to want to
read what’s in this email. It’s probably a mistake for me
to broadcast it, because it’s the polar opposite of what
sells to the IM crowd, and I’ll probably drive my numbers way down
this month by sending it.
Worse yet, a lot of people will unsubscribe, because it’s
not even really such a profound or new point. But it’s
critically important, especially at this time on the
internet, and I’d rather have a list full of people who
accept this message, and let the rest go.
* MAIN POINT:
If you want to succeed online or off, life is the same
as it’s always been … “You’ve got to spin some plates”
I heard this last month while masterminding with a
pretty powerful crew. (I’m amazed they invited me)
Every single one of these people knows that entrepreneurs,
… particularly INTERNET entrepreneurs, are caught up
in a fantasy of having computers do all their work for them
while money electronically piles into their account.
While there ARE aspects of internet life which are like this,
the truth is, every successful internet entrepreneur I’ve
ever met (including, and perhaps especially everyone in
that room) was “spinning lots of plates”.
They were doing research, developing products, managing
customer service teams, preparing for seminars, writing
articles, working on business plans, testing markets,
tracking split tests, getting coached, writing autoresponders,
working on salesletters, dealing with merchant accounts,
managing programmers, recruiting employees, running affiliate
programs, managing their PPC accounts, driving traffic
with SEO, social media, blogs, and videos, sourcing
products, recording audios, writing their books, doing
press releases, building a compensation plan for their
company, meeting with vendors, negotiating, getting joint
ventures, dealing with partners, attending to legal issues,
managing telesales teams, teaching live chat operators how
to do their jobs, running coaching groups, developing next
year’s goals, studying spreadsheets, optimizing their
landing pages, learning how to write better copy, and on
and on and on.
Now, it sounds overwhelming, but I have to tell you I found
it incredibly relieving, because up until that point I think
I felt like there was something wrong with me.
Sure, I’ve had a great deal of success. And while yes, good money
does really flow into my account separate and apart from the
direct hours I work, and I CAN take off anytime I want to for
a day or even a few weeks and come back with more money in
my account, … I’m definitely NOT hanging out in Fiji
getting paid to eat Cheese Doodles, and won’t be any time
soon.
And I’ll bet, unless you’re already making EIGHT figures,
you’re not either.
And you see, there’s nothing wrong with that … unless you
THINK there’s something wrong with it and start panicking,
and continually question and change your focus.
I really don’t mind spinning a lot of plates.
They’re MY plates.
No one assigns them to me.
No one tells me how long I have to spin them for, or which
ones to spin at which time.
No one makes me do an unproductive dance while I spin them.
No one pretends to know what they’re doing and stands
over me taking pot shots while I do all the work.
They’re MINE, and I LOVE them.
So if you find yourself spinning a lot of plates just take
a deep breath and relax. That’s the way it’s supposed to
be. The question isn’t why you have so many plates to spin …
the only real question is whether they’re the RIGHT plates.
And here are two things to keep in mind in that regards.
First (I got this from Perry), … to make an internet
business humm you only need ONE way of driving traffic
and ONE way of converting it. (Mine are PPC + Research).
Once you’ve got a great system in place, you can just
pay other people commissions to do all the rest.
Second, … the internet is a CATALYST to help supercharge
the value you deliver to the market. The internet is not
your business. (Got this one from Bryan).
Listen, when we’re 95 years old, maybe we’ll meet in Fiji for
a Cheese Doodle eating fundraiser. Until then,
I’ll be the guy with the plates in the air.
All my best,
Glenn
Stand Out From Your Competitors with Competitive Research!
Stay abreast of what your competitors are up to on a weekly basis through regular research. This research should include searching on key terms, checking out your competitor's ad text, and visiting competitor sites regularly.
Questions you should ask yourself:
Are their ads more compelling? Do they have a sale going on or a new product that is a better version of yours? Does their headline standout more? If you want your company to be able to compete online, regular competitive research is essential.
Benefits of regular competitive research:
- You'll be happily surprised when you see your traffic and sales increasing, if you regularly pay attention to these details to set yourself apart.
- You may also be surprised how little most of your competitors update their own ad text---this will give you the advantage.
- Plus, you will immediately notice when new competitors enter your market---something a company should always know.
Knowing your competition's position and pitch will allow you to give potential clients a better offer so that they will come to your business instead! For more ideas on how to make your company stand out, check out Caitlin Cook's article on creating a unique selling proposition for your company.
Also, a great system for keeping up with your competitive research is to keep a spreadsheet with a tab detailing information on each key competitor. Make note of major ad text changes or ad position changes, with dates, of course, and then look back at the reports for your own account and see how the data correlates.
In summary, staying on top of your competitors through research to make your company stand out can only help grow your business online!
Post-Click Conversion Optimization For Long Sales Cycles
My latest Search Engine Land article is out titled: Post-Click Conversion Optimization For Long Sales Cycles.
In this article, I describe a low-tech approach to tracking clicks to conversions when your sales cycle is something like:
- Buy click to website
- User downloads whitepaper after giving you name & email address
- Those who download the whitepaper are sent an email invite to attend a product webinar (where you also collect phone number, company name, etc)
- Those who attend the webinar are then called by the sales force
- Sales force tries to sell the product
Few systems have a nice approach for tracking these disparate systems. However, you can use simple spreadsheets to build a conversion funnel so you can not only optimize each step of the conversion process, but you can see what a click is actually worth to your business.
I think it’s an excellent read not only those involved in long sales cycle, but for anyone who wants to think critically about merging data sets and how simple it can easily be. I hope you enjoy Post-Click Conversion Optimization For Long Sales Cycles.
