If you’ve ever managed a Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign you probably ran into the situation where your campaigns were tracking to go over budget.  Google, for example, allows up to 20% increase in ad delivery on high traffic days for AdWords campaigns.  If you experience a few of these days during the early part of the month, you could be faced with making decisions on how to stretch out your ad delivery in the month’s final days.  Do you turn off your campaigns altogether and wait for the next month to start?  Do you only run the most profitable keywords; if so, what are they?  Do you change the ad delivery so your ads only run during the day or night, weekday or weekends?  A good way to determine which strategy is best is to analyze your Google Analytics (GA) data (assuming you have a GA account).

You can leverage the data captured in Google Analytics to identify your top producing keywords.  In addition, you can run specific reports in Google Analytics to identify what times of the day your PPC keywords convert the best.  Google Analytics can help you identify the optimum time to run your ads, the best mix of keywords for Return on Investment (ROI), and the geo-targeting areas to deliver those ads.

Next time you need to make decisions about your PPC campaign when targeting a budget, take advantage of the market intelligence Google Analytics can provide.  Here are three reports that can help you make smarter campaign decisions:

1. In the Google Analytics main dashboard, click on Visitors Map Overlay to identify the local, state and or national areas to focus your campaign.  If your budget requires a more narrow focus, this report can help you geo-target your ads.
2. In the Google Analytics main dashboard, click on Traffic Sources Google/cpc choose the Dimension “Keyword” to help identify your top producing keywords.  Whichever metric you feel is most representative of success (E-commerce, lead generation, site usage) can be sorted in descending order for a quick reference of your best keywords.
3. In the Google Analytics main dashboard, click on Goals Total Conversions or Conversion Rate and at the top right of the main graph click on the Clock Icon to see the peak times your campaigns convert.

Once you have the business intelligence from these reports, you can make sharp decisions on which keywords to pause and which to keep running when you are up against a firm budget. In addition, you can focus your ad delivery to specific geo-target locations and dictate the times of day to run your ads.  These campaign changes can help maximize your advertising dollars when you need to find ways to stay within your monthly budget.

Late last week, I was speaking with a client about their campaign performance by using Google Analytics.  Since this client only services one specific part of the country, I was able to show them a state view which indicated how many visitors arrived from each city in the area.  It occurred to me that many advertisers are not getting as deep of a level of information as they could be.

Not only does Google Analytics allow advertisers to track both paid and non-paid search engine marketing efforts, but it also allows insight into user patterns and trends.  For example, by comparing goal conversions to amount of visitors, an advertiser can see which days result in higher conversions.  From this information, it is even possible to then determine which days may require a larger budget than others.

Google Analytics data is also helpful in assessing which countries, states or cities result in goal conversions and sales.  For example, an advertiser who sees that specific states have significantly lower conversions and higher bounce rates compared to other performing states may use this information to exclude the non-performing states or cities.

I always recommend to my clients to use their Google Analytics or at least play around with it.  The level of detailed information available with Google Analytics plays an important role in shaping your online efforts.  There is more to look at than only the Google Analytics dashboard; try clicking around and see what types of campaign information you discover.  Remember, you are not going to break it, so explore the wonderful world of Google Analytics for yourself.

When managing a Pay-per-Click campaign it is important to remember that continual optimization of the campaign is critical to success.  Keywords you thought would be perfect to drive qualified traffic to your site when you first launched a campaign may turn out to be poor performers.  Certain geographic locations that logically would make sense to target your ads may be out performed by locations you didn’t think there would be a big demand for your product or service.  An excellent way to discover what is working with your campaign and learn about new opportunities is by analyzing the data from an analytics program.

Here at MoreVisibility, we leverage the data from Google Analytics to help optimize PPC campaigns and expand our knowledge of how customers interact with our client’s websites.  With this knowledge you can optimize campaigns for greater success.  Here are a few examples of how you can leverage the data from Google Analytics to optimize your PPC campaign:

1. First thing is to set up goals in Google Analytics so you can track specific metrics and compare the data from your paid campaign in relation to the traffic coming to the site organically.
2. Conversions are very important, whether for e-commerce sites or lead generation sites.  Review the keywords that result in conversions both from the organic traffic and from your paid ads.  Remove keywords from your campaigns that are not producing, so you can allocate more of your budget to keywords that have a track record of success.  Create a test campaign where you can experiment with new keywords.  Over time, keep the keywords you see generating conversions and remove the poor performers.
3. Analyze where the traffic is coming from.  Is there a specific geographical location that drives more conversions than other locations you are targeting?  For example, you may have a national campaign, but Google Analytics shows that traffic from Florida converts at a higher rate than the campaign as a whole.  If so, think about creating a separate Geo-Targeted Florida campaign and allocating a specific budget to target the customers in that area.  This can give you additional flexibility when determining the most efficient way to spend your advertising dollars.
4. Lastly, look at the relationship between the keywords you are running in the PPC campaign versus the keywords that drive organic traffic to your site.  You may find there are keywords people search on to find your site that you are not running in your paid campaign.  This is an excellent way to expand your PPC keyword list and discover new keywords you originally didn’t think to include in your campaign.  In this way, you are constantly optimizing the campaign and growing the keyword list based on successful keyword research.

Remember, managing a PPC campaign is an every day task.  Optimizing the campaign is critical to your success and using an analytics tool, like Google Analytics, can bring new insight through real world (real time) data, and help you develop a high performing search engine marketing campaign.