AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 5

This is the fifth in a series of interviews we’re conducting with AdWords advertisers who got unusually high scores using our AdWords Performance Grader. We’re reaching out to high scorers to find out what strategies contribute to their strong AdWords performance. For more in this series, see:

• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 1
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 2
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 3
• AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 4

This week’s AdWords expert interview is with Glendon Llewellyn Lloyd, the e-commerce director at Tszuji, an online home storage store specializing in shoe storage and clothes storage solutions for the home. Glendon manages Tszuji’s SEO and SEM, ensuring these efforts are both optimized and profitable..

Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agency or an Advertiser? What is your primary goal for AdWords marketing?

Tszuji is a pure-play Internet business that operates in the niche home storage area. We have been using AdWords since we launched in September 2008. All AdWords management has been undertaken in-house from the outset – the rationale behind this being that no one knows our business as well as we do. Our primary goal has been to drive traffic and the resulting conversions of visitors to purchase.

There are tons of metrics in AdWords – What are your top 3 key performance metrics in AdWords and why?

Our top 3 KPM’s are Quality Score, click-through rate (CTR) and CPA/ROI:

• Quality Score because this is one of the key determinants of cost per click (CPC) and position.
• CTR as this again is a key factor in CPC and QS.
• And finally CPA as this dictates the level of profitability we derive from our campaign.

Can you describe your AdWords management strategy? How do you set your campaign objectives, and how do you know what’s realistic or not?

Our strategy can loosely be defined as the effective management of conversions and costs relative to visits. Objectives are set based on ROI/gross contribution – the only reality in business is profitable execution, so campaign objectives are centered around profit objectives and expectations. Our belief is that only the very largest of organizations can afford the luxury of branding marketing – our objectives are dictated by gross contribution to the business from all our marketing initiatives.

Describe your AdWords management workflow. When you’re doing your account optimization work, how do you decide what to do next in your account? How do you prioritize your work?

The management workflow depends at which point one is at with a campaign or ad group. Keyword management is the key to AdWords irrespective of which stage one is at and this is a number one priority. Optimization of keywords is critical to any success – from keyword identification to keyword bidding to negative keyword additions. This in turn impacts creation and management of landing pages and ad creative to ensure optimized relevance and subsequent Quality Score, CPC and CPA improvements and achievements.

Any advice or tips for AdWords marketers that didn’t score as well as you?

Ensure your Quality Score is a focus – achieving improved QS results in lower costs per visit and acquisition. Always be mindful of your primary business objective – to create increased wealth. In order to achieve this any, and all, marketing undertaken must enjoy a positive ROI.

What did you think about the categories we included in the AdWords Grader (Quality Score, CTR, Use of Negative Keywords, Account Activity, Landing Page Optimization, Ad Text Optimization, Long Tail Keyword Optimization, Impression Share, adherence to best practices) were they fair? Anything missing?

I think these are all important aspects of any campaign although I have to admit being less fixated on IS than the other facets of AdWords management. The one aspect missing for me is bounce rates – these have the ability to illustrate either poor relevance of creative/landing page or, as importantly, missing product choices. The latter offers an opportunity to investigate the sourcing of additional products to appeal to those “bouncers.”