Paid media dashboards are a critical tool to utilize in your marketing efforts if you aren’t already. Dashboards help you make quicker decisions, increase sales, reduce costs per acquisition (CPA), improve conversions, create engagement, and increase brand value. But not all dashboards are created equal. In fact, the wrong visualization or KPIs can do more harm than good when trying to communicate to others or identify trends.
Continue reading below to discover the most effective paid media dashboards for your campaigns.
There are hundreds of data points to consider when managing a business. Each team has its own list, and evaluating success can have different meanings depending on their goals. Paid media KPIs (key performance indicators) measure the effectiveness of how your paid or advertising campaign is performing, and there are ways to get the most out of using KPIs to improve your results.
Sound challenging? You bet.
Undoubtedly, there should be little disagreement on the importance of the following 5 to track in your next B2B campaign when it comes to paid media KPIs. Let’s take a look.
The world of search is rapidly changing. As the largest stakeholder, Google is leading this movement by changing the behavior of search tactics. There is a power shift as they push for more and more automation. As these changes happen, it is more important than ever to understand what tools are available and how their behavior can impact reaching your business goals. In the following example, we tested Google Ads maximize clicks automated bid strategy and evaluated the outcome. But first, let’s review some of the changes and how you can take control back through the use of campaign experiments.
Setting the stage: The changing world of paid search
Earlier this year, Google eliminated broad modified match type. This is small but impactful step toward a keyword less world. More settings in your Google Ads accounts default to automation. And those Google Account Strategists? Always pushing ‘Smart’ campaign options. As big brands continue to pour millions of ad spend dollars into campaigns daily, automations power grasp will continue.
But what about those of us who need to hit performance targets and understand how we get there? If giving in to the world of automation makes you uneasy, you are not alone. Simply configuring a few campaign settings, loading some ad creative, and letting Google do the rest is simply not good enough for small to medium sizes businesses. But how do you know? Google gives the ability to test automation using experiments.
Take control: Google Ads campaign experiments
If you are unfamiliar with campaign experiments, they are a copy of a campaign where campaign managers can test changes without impacting the original, or control campaign. Budgets and traffic can be split evenly creative a true split test environment.
Curious how a new landing page might perform? Set up an experiment. What about bid modifiers? Or maybe a unique ad copy idea that is too good to pass up but you are unsure how it will perform? Set up experiments. Advertisers can test any number of campaign tactics while avoiding the headaches of skewed data and sequential testing. More importantly, it gives the advertiser control over what works best for their account and business versus handing the keys over to Google.
Testing Google Ads automated bid strategies
In the following example, we had a lead generation client new to paid search. With a limited monthly budget in a very niche B2B industry, understanding how their money was spent was crucial. In our quest to prove more campaign power is better, it was a perfect time to test automated bid strategies with the help of experiments
The Set Up
Our campaigns were segmented into two groups: segmented and aggregated campaigns. Within these groups, we targeted category, subcategory, and individual product offerings. Aggregated campaigns gave Google as much control as possible while segmented campaigns retained as much control as possible. Since the client was brand new to paid search, we decided to test maximize clicks. The tests ran for 60 days.
Aggregated Campaigns
Bidding: Maximize clicks
Ads: Responsive
Match types: Aggregated
Segmented Campaigns
Bidding: Enhanced
Ads: Expanded
Match types: Segmented
The Results
In our Category test, Google determined only impressions were statistically significant. While overall volume was low, we had seen enough. Predictably, the aggregated campaign CPC was much higher. Google will work hard to generate clicks but will spare no expense doing so.
In our Sub Category test, Google determined all data points were statistically significant. These results surprised us. Excluding the one conversion, the aggregated campaign outperformed segmented. It generated higher engagement at a lower cost. This seems to be the perfect recipe: low cost, traffic driving keywords. This was a win. Google validated the value of these keywords by keeping costs low.
In our last test, Google determined all data points were statistically significant for our individual campaigns. Search volume was the highest and results were mixed. Although our segmented campaign generated a higher amount of clicks, engagement was not much different. Our aggregated campaign CPC was higher in this test.
Takeaways: When to Use Maximize Clicks
You often hear use maximize clicks to drive traffic as this is a common use case. It our tests, however, our enhanced bids generated 43% more clicks. Budget played a role here. Google was limited in the clicks it could generate due to a small budget. As we expected, maximize clicks spent more to achieve the desired outcome as was the result in 2 out of 3 tests.
In our sub-category test, maximize clicks outperformed, including achieving a lower cost. Why? The keywords and the variants we used kept costs low while still driving traffic. Maximize clicks validated this by generating a lower CPC then our enhanced bids.
With a new account and no conversion data, maximize clicks is a great way to drive traffic and gather initial learnings. Be mindful of Google increasing costs to achieve the outcome as maximize clicks will spend daily budgets. Understand how your budget plays a role.
Our test is a good example of how keywords have an influence on automation behavior. Think about the competition and intent of your keywords. Popular, head terms can drive up costs quickly. However, niche keywords can still drive traffic but at a lower cost. You can use maximize clicks to validate keyword performance.
Final Thoughts
As Google continues its push to more automation, it is important to understand the impact of these strategies. We are not against using automated bid strategies. Quite the opposite. We advocate always testing first, to understand the impact these strategies have on your accounts and campaigns. Use these strategies to your advantage. Looking past their goal, automated bid strategies can validate other tactics you use in your account.
For more information on Google Ads, please contact us. We are here to help.
Google Analytics 4 is here, but does that mean you should switch? Not so fast. While these updates will change the future of analytics, the Universal version of Google Analytics is not going away anytime soon. The new version introduces many features formerly only available to Google Analytics 360 users and has combined Google Analytics for Firebase all into one new property type: Google analytics 4 (GA4). It was briefly known as the App + Web property in Universal Analytics. However, Google changed the name to emphasize this brand new property type is for all businesses, not just those with an app or a website. According to Google, GA4 features new benefits to scale your business by providing intelligent business insights to help reach your business goals. To start, let’s look at a brief comparison between Universal and GA4 properties.
Tracking web and mobile app behavior is a cumbersome task. Integrating analytics app tracking is complicated. Mobile app analytics typically lives on its own, resulting in complex integrations and fragmented reporting. Google tried to simplify this with Google Analytics for Firebase, but users bounce back and forth between Firebase projects and Google Analytics to access specific reports. GA4 solves this by using data streams, which unifies both web and app reporting all under one property. Traffic data is in one reporting interface, allowing for easy cross-platform analysis. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions to add a data stream and accompanying SDK when applicable, and you’re all set!
Event Tracking
Users switch devices when interacting with your business resulting in new sessions. This behavior skews out of the box reporting as a single user is duplicated. GA4 deduplicates a single user across devices using events instead of sessions.
If you have used Google Analytics, you are familiar with events. Events are a part of any measurement strategy. Unlike Universal, which uses page views, GA4 uses events. Every single action tracked across data streams will be treated as an event.
Moving to an event-based data model will make GA4 more intelligent. It also enables easier reporting with actionable insights.
Easy Implementation
Correctly implementing analytics can be challenging for a first time user. Thanks to GA4 this process became a lot easier. You can find a setup assistant in admin settings at the top of the property column. This assistant walks you through each step of the process to get the most out of GA4: data collection, property settings, account linking, audience definitions, conversion tracking, and user management. If you are a Universal user implementing GA4 or new to analytics, the new setup assistant makes the process easier for everyone.
Enhanced Measurement and Automatically Collected Events
The new enhanced measurement feature allows you to track events on your website with just one click and without any code requirements. All you need to do is turn it on, and the enhanced measurement feature will track page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site searches, video engagement metrics, and file downloads. You will also have the capability to customize which events you are collecting altogether, but GA4 provides more robust out of the box functionality.
In addition, GA4 will automatically collect a list of events for both IOS and Android apps unless stated otherwise. Similarly, there is no additional code or work needed. You just need to make sure that you are using the SDK or gtag.js. There are also many different events you can add yourself that might be useful for your type of business. Here are some that Google recommends for all properties.
Should You Switch To Google Analytics 4?
Everything outlined can be quite exciting. There’s no need to completely switch over to GA4 just yet. Since its release in October 2020, feature rollout has been slow, and many others are under development. Like other new tools, it will take time for the platform to reach its true potential and be ready as your stand-alone tool for website and app analytics. A fundamental switch from page views to events will also take time to adapt to. With this said, we recommend setting up a GA4 property in parallel to an existing Universal property if you have one. Compare the functionality of both and see the differences. While Universal Analytics is not going away anytime soon, Google Analytics 4 is the future of analytics so the sooner you can start learning the functionality and features, the better.
For more information on analytics, please contact us. We are here to help.
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