William Charlwood

If you are looking for an AdWords Consultant there are a few things you need to check beyond his/her basic competence and familiarity with the AdWords system before you hire.

1. Is he/she capable of understanding the business you work in, beyond simply being able to research keywords?
   
2. Can he/she demonstrably show that he/she understands what impact on your sales, profits and cashflow that advertising with Google is going to have?
   
3. Can they explain, (without looking at this page about AdWords ROI) why ROI is NOT the prime measure of an account’s performance? (If they can’t do this, they don’t understand any business let alone yours!)
   
4. Can you get in touch with them easily by email and ‘phone when you want?
   
5. Can they explain why the amount you pay for a broad match keyword click can vary dramatically and why your ad ranking for a broad match keyword may vary dramatically too?
   
6. VERY IMPORTANT: Do they insist that they “own” the contents of your account so that they demand the right to delete everything from your account when you stop using their services? This is underhand practice.
   
7. Do they possess ALL these key skills?

• • • copywriting
    • understanding consumer motivations
    • understanding ad distribution and associated market behaviours
    • understanding account structures - Campaigns and Ad Groups and, specifically, what controls are available at what level
    • statistical analysis capability and an ability to analyse data and decide what is statistically relevant and what’s not
    • keyword research capability- knowledge of research tools, what they do and how to use their results
    • familiarity with the AdWords editor
    • knowledge of conversion tracking - what it is, where it works and where it doesn’t
    • ability to integrate AdWords with Google Analytics - and how to work with different traffic sources
    • ad scheduling - basic and advanced
    • negative keyword utilisation to control which ads your target market sees as well as who doesn’t see them at all
    • the difference between negative phrase and negative exact match keywords
    • geotargeting capabilities and how to exploit them to the full
    • time-dependent account optimisation
    • billing cycles
    • competitor research
    • keyword types
    • content-targeting
    • the AdWords pricing model
    • relationship between AdWords/PPC and SEO and precisely why you don’t need to optimise your AdWords landing pages for SEO.

There are a bunch more too but that’s a quick list. Copywriting alone is a skill that can takes years to develop.

Over and above this list your AdWords consultant needs to understand how businesses work, the lifetime value of a new customer, cashflow issues, impact on margins of operational gearing. They also need the ability to work with you closely so that the goals for the AdWords account you are managing are aligned as closely as possible with those that will maximise profitability. Check out this article on Business Analysis and AdWords optimisation to see how a deep understanding of business puts perspective on the role of an AdWords Consultant.

If you are doing any sort of testing then you need to make sure you have enough data to make rational decisions. I recently ran a split test using my autoresponder. What I did was send out two different emails to a relatively small list (around 400) and measured the response rates.

It was a classic A/B Split Test in other words although the sample size was quite small.

Here’s Version A of my email

Hello Firstname

Recently I mentioned a free ebook that makes me good money.

I didn’t write it. It is free to read. You don’t need to supply
an email address to get access to it.

But if you read it you’ll discover something pretty neat.
The book is quite short and very punchy.

To make it work for you here’s a very simple idea: put your
link to the book as a signature in your emails.

You can copy the example below if you want.

With best wishes

William Charlwood

PS Discover the ultimate online super tip.
http://www.supertips.com/ultimate/x/?id=104

And here is Version B

Hello Firstname

Recently I mentioned a free ebook that makes me good money.

I didn’t write it. It is free to read. You don’t need to supply
an email address to get access to it.

But if you read it you’ll discover something pretty neat.
The book is quite short and very punchy.

To make it work for you here’s a very simple idea: put your
link to the book as a signature in your emails.

You can copy the example below if you want.

With best wishes

William Charlwood

Discover the ultimate online super tip.
http://www.supertips.com/ultimate/x/?id=104

.

Spot the difference!

Actually the only difference was the use of “PS” in version A.

Initially I was intrigued to see that Version A was significantly more successful in terms of click through rates. At one point there was a 91% likelihood that its relative out-performance would be repeatable. In other words, statistically it looked as though a similar exercise done again would show that Version A generated a higher click through rate 91% of the time.But as data dribbled in, the relative response rates got closer and closer. At the moment Version A has generated a click through rate of 23.5% and Version B a click through rate of 22.7%. These click through rates are quite high for emails and often one problem you face is getting people to read them in the first place.

The figures themselves are too close to separate and suggest that the results of this particular split test are neutral which is a shame! I rather enjoyed having made what looked like an interesting discovery, namely that using PS as opposed to not using PS made a difference.

But I was wrong to leap to this conclusion too early.

Just for completeness, the subject line of both emails was the same:

A Quick Suggestion

There’s a key statistic you need to know if you are going to read Harvey Segal’s little ebook called The Ultimate Supertip. It’s what proportion of your buyers are likely to buy the upgrade.

If you know this, you’ll know which version is right for you.

So here’s some current data. It’s not hugely reliable from a purist’s perspective because the sample size is a bit low but I’ve just looked at the last few sales. The results are as follows:

13 sales since 13th July of which 11 were for the upgrade version and just 2 for the normal version. So the higher priced version which pays a bigger commission is outselling the lower priced version.

The book is free to download and you don’t need to provide your name or your email address to check it out.

The Ultimate Supertip