Measuring what matters for your small business

Editor's Note: The SMB Blog team wants to wish everyone a Happy National Small Business Week! To kick off the week, we're continuing a new series we're calling Measurement Mondays. Stay tuned to the hashtag #MeasurementMondays on Google+ for ongoing tips and thoughts to help businesses measure the things that matter.

As a business owner, there are many different metrics that are important to you - like what were my sales this month, and how many new employees can I hire this year? Similarly, there are important things that you should be measuring for your online marketing efforts which can help you improve your customer experience and potentially drive more sales.

Here are five things that every business should consider:

• Start by identifying the right goals for you: Think about the business objectives of your website and marketing efforts, and identify specific customer actions that represent success. For instance, maybe your goal is to drive foot traffic to your store or to boost requests for an online quote. Other goals like signing up for a newsletter, viewing an important page on your site, or filling out an inquiry form can also be important indicators. Just as every business is unique, the metrics that signal success will vary. But it’s crucial for every business to know what matters to you so that you can make the most of your marketing efforts.
• Understand how to measure ad effectiveness: Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to create ads that drive people to your store or site to achieve those goals. The most basic measure of your online ad effectiveness is your clickthrough rate (or CTR) which is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown (called impressions). CTR shows you how often the people who see your ad end up clicking on it, and a high CTR signals that users find your ads helpful and relevant.
• See whether clicks are leading to conversions: It can also be important to see whether those ad clicks actually led someone to buy from you. To do this, you can use tools like AdWords Conversion Tracking, which is a free tool in AdWords that shows you what happens after a customer clicks on your ad. Did they ultimately buy something from your site or sign up for an email newsletter? By looking at how your ads impact conversions on your site, you’ll learn which keywords and ads are effective at bringing valuable customers which can help you invest more wisely.
• Examine how online efforts are driving offline customers: For some businesses, driving traffic or calls to your brick and mortar store can be more valuable than a website visit. When people search for local products and services on their mobile phones, like a nearby hardware store or a local restaurant, they often prefer to call the business directly. With click-to-call ads, mobile shoppers can easily call your business directly from an ad that they see. Within your ad reports you can see the number of calls that were driven by your ad campaigns. Asking your customers at checkout how they heard about your company can also be an easy way to keep track of what is really bringing them through your door.
• Keep measuring, keep experimenting: Businesses these days have no shortage of data available to them, and I know that it can sometimes feel overwhelming. The important thing about measurement for every business is to just get started and keep experimenting. Your customers and your business are constantly evolving, so remember not to set it and forget it. There often isn’t a right or wrong answer, but the data can reveal insights that help you win the moments that matter with your customers.

I hope these tips have given you some food for thought about how measurement can help you reach more customers and drive more sales. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on how you can take your website measurement to the next level. Happy measuring!

Posted by Francoise Brougher, Vice President of SMB Sales and Operations

Help Desk Hangouts: Display Network Advertising with Google AdWords

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.

In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we discussed advertising on the Google Display Network with Googlers Dori Storbeck, Courtney Pannell, Joanna Kim, Neil Mendelowitz, and two Top Contributors from the AdWords Community — Kim Clinkunbroomer and Theresa Zook. The group shared tips and tricks for the Display Network, and the TCs shared some of their personal experiences. If you missed it, you can watch the full hour-long Hangout on the Google Business YouTube channel (check out the video description for a minute-by-minute breakdown):

Here are a few of the questions you asked us to answer during the Hangout:

Can independent consultants take advantage of the Display Network? 
Yes, anyone can utilize the Display Network for advertising their products and services; however, whether it is right for you may depend on your specific business and your advertising goals.

Where is the Display Network available?
The Display Network is available in all countries that AdWords serves.

Which clicks are more likely to become conversions search or display?
Search and display perform very differently, depending on your overall campaign goals.

What’s more effective: automatic placements or manual?
If you’re trying to reach a specific audience or target users who demonstrate a particular interest and you have an idea of some Display Network websites where you want your ads to appear, managed placements are probably the best bet for you. If you’re just starting out with Display, we would suggest opting into automatic placements at first and then reviewing the domains you show on to further refine and optimize.

If in your industry search approximate cpc is = to display approximate cpc why would you do display?(Besides the obvious increase in potential traffic.)
The Display Network is a great way to find customers that may not be actively searching for your product. Other than potentially increasing traffic to your website, you can potentially grow your customer base and get more conversions.

Tips on how to get JPEG ads approved quickly?
Our ad review turn around time is usually 1-3 business days. If your ads are under review for more than 3 business days, please get in touch with us or submit your ads directly to our review team.

For remarketing, how do I set the ad up to show people the products they viewed but not purchased?
You can create different audience lists so that you create an audience for users who visited your product pages and users who completed a purchase. You can then create a “custom combination” list to subtract those who purchased from those who visited your pages and did not purchase.

What is the difference between topics and interest categories? How are these compiled?
Topic targeting allows you to place ads on pages directly related to the topic you've selected, whereas interest categories allow you to reach users across the Display Network who have shown specific interests, regardless of the page they're currently on.

For remarketing, would you suggest using just one method per ad group, i.e., contextual, topic, interest, managed placements, or is it OK to mix them?
Remarketing operates by showing your ads to users on your audience list, so within your ad group, the audience list should be the only targeting you have set up.

If you could only choose between search and display and the approximate cpc was the same. Which would you chose and why?
This question really depends on your business and your advertising goals. In general, we tend to see advertisers looking for more direct response focus on the Search Network, while those who are interested in branding and remarketing might want to focus on the Display Network.

Of course, if you’re interested in both, we’d recommend creating a specific campaign to target each network individually.

Any suggestions on frequency capping numbers?
When you turn on frequency capping for a campaign, you can set a limit for the number of impressions you allow an individual user to have per day, per week, or per month, and you can choose whether this is applicable to each ad, ad group, or campaign. So ultimately, the frequency capping number you select depends on your goals and the size of your advertising endeavor. Kim and Theresa suggested numbers around 5-15 impressions per day for an individual user.

I know there is a placement tool in AdWords - however it doesn’t seem to show "all" of the websites available in the network. I have found sites displaying relevant ads, but I did not find it in tool. Is there another way to identify these potential sites?
Yes! In addition to our Placement Tool, you can check the DoubleClick Ad Planner for other sites that are in the Display Network.

To learn more about how to get started with the Display Network, visit our Help Center or check out the AdWords Community forum. And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout at 11 a.m. PT Wednesday May 9 — topic to be announced on the Google+ Your Business page early next week!

Posted by Dori Storbeck and Courtney Pannell, Global Online Advertising Associates

Free phone support for AdWords advertisers

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

We’ve worked hard to keep in touch with our AdWords customers and we’re always looking for new ways to support you. Currently we offer email and online support, and today we’re introducing free phone support for all of our U.S.- and Canada-based AdWords customers. When you have a question about your account or advertising campaigns, you can now call an AdWords specialist if you prefer.

We’re adding phone support for a simple reason: you asked for it! You told us that while you appreciate online resources like our AdWords Help Center, you also want the option to get live, expert support when you need it. We heard you, and got to work assembling a team of AdWords experts to answer your calls.

The new phone option is one of many tools that can help you succeed with AdWords—and (most importantly!) find even more customers. You can also email us, or learn from other advertisers in the AdWords Help Forum. Our AdWords Online Classroom offers free online courses on a wide variety of AdWords topics, from the basics to great tips to take your account to the next level.

To speak to one of our specialists, give us a call at 1-866-2Google between Monday-Friday, 9am-8pm Eastern Time. This number is for current AdWords advertisers only, so please make sure you have your customer ID ready. We look forward to speaking to you and learning more about your business.

We'll roll phone support out to advertisers in other countries in the coming months.

Posted by Francoise Brougher, VP, Global Advertising and Product Operations

Enhance your productivity with more applications for Google Apps

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Last month we launched an improvement that makes more than 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. Since the launch, we’ve featured posts from product teams across Google to showcase how you can benefit from the new services.


Our colleagues working on Google Reader, Google Alerts, Google News, and Google Finance described how their products give you new ways to discover content on the web. The Blogger and YouTube teams shared how their services can be used to connect with your customers and communicate information about your products and brand. We also featured posts from the Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, Google Custom Search, and Google Translator Toolkit teams to highligh tools that help your company build and optimize your web property. Posts from Google AdWords and Google Places showed how you can make it easier for potential customers to discover your business when they are searching online, and a post from Google Checkout described how you can let visitors purchase products from your site once they arrive. And if your business isn’t built around an online transaction model, the Google AdSense and DoubleClick for Publishers teams outlined tools that you can use to efficiently monetize traffic to your website. We also featured posts on Picasa Web Albums and Google SketchUp & 3D Warehouse that highlighted use cases for sharing and editing photos and 3D images at your organization. Finally, posts from Google Voice and Google Chrome Sync featured products that leverage the power of the web to allow you to work seamlessly across multiple devices, so you’re not tied to your desk phone or desktop PC to be productive.

This series has highlighted a few ways that you can use these additional Google applications, and we’re confident that you will discover many new and interesting use cases that fit your business. You can explore even more exciting Google services now available with your Google Apps account at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

All of these new services can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). Your domain administrator can grant different groups of users access to different sets of applications, so your company can get up and running today with more than 60 productivity-boosting applications matched to those users that will benefit from them most.


Posted by Jeremiah Dillon, Google Apps team

Note: Some products may not be available in all areas.

Now available with Google Apps: AdWords

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google AdWords
Every business wants to connect with its customers and this is often one of the goals that a business spends the most time on. Now, your business can more easily use the power of Google AdWords to connect with your customers using your Google Apps account.

AdWords gives you the ability to reach more than 80% of Internet users* as they are actively searching for information about products and services on Google and Google’s advertising network. AdWords enables you to connect with your potential customers at the right time with the right message, by letting you select Google search keywords related to your product or services so that users searching for these keywords can see your advertisements.

Setting up an account takes only minutes and controlling costs is easy - you only pay when people click on your ad and land on your site, and you can set a daily budget to limit your total spend. AdWords also offers great flexibility, allowing you to change your budget on the fly. Plus, if your business serves certain geographies, you have the ability to target your ads only to people searching in a particular state, city, or region.



Now that AdWords works with Google Apps, collaborating with other people in your organization to manage campaigns in AdWords is simple as well. You can invite colleagues to access your AdWords account with their existing Google Apps accounts and grant them differing levels of access depending on how much or little control you’d like them to have. Whether your business has one person that handles all of the online marketing or a team that works collaboratively, AdWords can accommodate your needs.



Also, in addition to collaborating in AdWords itself, tight integration with Google Apps lets you export your reports to Google Docs in a single click. This lets you share your campaign data with colleagues and collaborate in real-time in the same way that you already collaborate on other documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs with your Apps account.



Be sure to check out some success stories from businesses of all sizes, including First Crush Restaurant, which was able to increase traffic to its website by 400%, or Happy Hound dog daycare and boarding facility, which gets over 90% of its business through AdWords.

Learn more and get started
Google AdWords can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about AdWords you can visit our information page or you can find the latest news and tips at the AdWords Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google AdWords at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Kit Broussard, AdWords Team

Note: Google AdWords may not be available in all areas.
*Source: comScore Media Metrix (US, May 2009)