The past months we’ve worked hard rolling-out Google AdWords campaign management with the first group of about twenty clients. There are a number of you who have asked about participating so I wanted to do a broad update on the status of the program. If you’re already signed-up to participate you’ll get a second email with some particulars.

 At Pronto we always ask the question; will it scale? There are lots of things that a little duct tape will make work for a one-off but we can’t afford pieced-together solutions. It won’t serve either of us well for the future. We’ve taken this approach with developing the AdWords campaigns strategy, creative and management.

 In retrospect the foundation work for managing and scaling AdWords campaigns was extensive. This should have been done before we rolled things out – in a perfect world anyway. But often the start-up reality is you just need to get the tiger by the tail and let that drive action. We’ve done a lot of hard work – keyword research, landing page development, testing, working with Google to build what we feel is a scalable foundation. There’s been some good learning and we feel quite pleased with the results.

Our Priorities and Process

• Get the fundamentals in place on a scalable foundation - Do the core keyword research and have the data systems to expand our knowledge. Be able to build and iterate on landing pages. Have the goal conversion analytics in place. And so much more…
• Make Quality Score rock solid - This is a under-appreciated element to AdWords – and very often when we first hear from a client who’s doing their own campaign it’s because of Google Quality Score issues. We have very solid 7/10 scores on active campaigns and we intend to keep and build on this.
• Grow Impressions - We can always bid up on keywords and drive impressions – but if we’d do this wrong each click is going to cost you a lot of money, and potentially not produce results. We’ve taken a deliberate approach of being conservative and proving each low bid level doesn’t work, before we move up – rather than the opposite. We’re starting to bid up now – but carefully and methodically.
• Build CTR - Once you have Impressions, Click-Through-Rate is the beginning of success. But again you need GOOD clicks. We can have “get a free vacation” clicks – or clicks from true prospects. Today our Impressions are low, but so far CTR is respectable, but lacking enough meaningful data.
• Drive Conversion - Conversion is when a prospect clicks through the process and gives you the permission to contact them – via email, web or phone. When you have enough clicks you can start to study conversion factors anywhere along the campaign.

Each layer builds on the other. You can’t optimize CTR if you’re not getting Impressions, and you can’t optimize Conversion if you don’t have CTR. It’s devilish simple, but in the details.

Campaign Billing Logistics and Double Serving

One of Google’s big concerns is “double-serving”. This is the practice of one company having two active, parallel campaigns – their ads compete for clicks but they double-up on impressions, blocking-out other ads. Google’s people and systems are always on the lookout for indicators of double-serving such as different campaigns having websites on the same IP address and other similarities. They are very sophisticated about this – and very decisive in shutting down non-compliant campaigns.

As it turns out our campaigns could look to Google at first glance as double-serving. The campaigns are similar, going to websites on the same IP address – the fact that they have a local element could just be, in Google’s view, a way to game the system. We’ve worked very hard, including calls and email with our Google account managers to make sure our campaigns are understood and white-listed. We haven’t waited for issues to arise; we’ve been proactive and methodical on this.

To stay ahead of potential issues one change we need to make is the billing arrangement. Currently all campaigns are set up with our Pronto company credit card and we in turn bill our client. There are several issues with this;

It adds one more double-serving indicator for Google, and in fact they’ve been pausing our campaigns across the board recently on this issue. Each time it’s more delay, email and phone calls to straighten-out.

In the lean machine we’re trying to build Google billing Pronto and Pronto billing you just creates an extra credit card transaction cost without value.

For active AdWords campaigns clients we will use the subscription credit card we have on file for AdWords campaign. As referenced in my mail on billings updates on May 7, once we make this change we will not hold your credit card information any more. We’ll give you access to your campaign account and going forward any changes to your billing information you’ll need to make, and we won’t have visibility to your credit card data. Participation in Google AdWords campaigns will require a client credit card.

We will manage client campaign accounts as part of our MCC (My Client Center) master account. We will manage all campaigns within you set budget and accept the accountability to ensure this.

If you’re interested the program has a minimum budget of $500 per month with a 3 month commitment. Pronto’s fees are 20% for the first $500 and 15% thereafter. We manage both the clicks and fees within your budget. This is all inclusive, end-to-end; strategy, planning, creative, landing pages, campaign and bid management and analytics. If you’re interested let me know.

While this program isn’t pay for performance, Pronto only bills you when there’s a click. All the work before that is our time, our dime. Believe me I’m as invested and anxious as anyone to drive clicks. But I want good clicks because that’s the sustaining business relationship we want to build.

Thanks,

Derek