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So Shah’s Cars has campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Its ad copy reads like more digestible Shakespeare and it is live on the web. Job done, right? Wrong, Shah’s Cars’ PPC journey has only just begun.
Using Microsoft’s Advertising tools you can now follow your campaigns, find out how your ads are performing and improve them with amazing results. First, however you need to understand what your key performance indicators (KPIs) are:
There are eight main KPIs in adCenter (however there can be many more depending on your targets):
The first six will be measured for you by adCenter. However, to track conversions and CPAs you will need to place our tracking script into your conversion page. You can find this in any campaign settings page in the adCenter UI.
Just click “show code” and copy and paste the code into your conversion page.
If you do not code your own website, then ask your website designer to do this for you.
Your KPIs will tell you how well your account is doing; however which KPIs you focus on will depend on the purpose of your campaign. For instance, if you are simply looking to make as many sales as possible you will focus on raising the number of clicks. If you want cheap sales you will concentrate on keeping your CPCs low. Sales might not be your primary focus and you might just want to get your brand shown as much as possible in which case you will simply want to increase impressions. Generally customers will be interested in one or more KPIs and must find a balance between them.
You can check your KPIs using the UI either quickly and fluidly on the home screen or you can deep dive into your account using the UI’s 'extensive reporting' tab.
On the home screen the top two widgets on the right side will provide you with up-to-date information on your accounts; you can add or take away KPIs, comparing them if you wish and even change the time scale from hours to month.
The top graph shows KPI changes over a customisable period of time. You can select the timescale at the top, choose whether to look at all or individual campaigns, and select each KPI.
The graphs are really helpful for tracking any changes you make to the account as well as identifying trends.
The bottom table will show you KPI breakdown from each campaign over a set period of time. Choose the time from the top left and select which KPIs you would like to display with the “select column” function, this is fantastic for identifying your top performing campaigns for different KPIs.
Account optimisation makes the difference between accounts that work and ones that don’t 99.999999% of the time and understanding your KPIs and how to interpret them is the key to building a good optimisation.
Charlie
Other blog posts in the 'PPC for SMB series':
The World of Paid Search: A Step by Step Series
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 1 - Paid and Organic Search
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 2 - An Introduction to Bing
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 3 - An Introduction to adCenter
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 4 - An Introduction to adCenter Desktop
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 5: The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 6: How to Set up a New Microsoft Advertising adCenter Account
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 7: How to Find Keywords
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 8 – How to Write Great Ads
Pay per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 9 - Bids and Match Types
Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 10 - Negative Match Types
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Very good idea to put a series of progression post on creating a successful SEM campaign. It's basic but it works for me until I get better as SEM