Performance, Profitability, and Growth

Question 1

Scaling budget by performance

With this combination of measurability and control, many businesses may opt for a

Answer 1

a flexible marketing budget that scales upward with good performance.

Question 2

Best Practice: Even for campaigns that are scalable by performance, we recommend setting your AdWords daily budget at a

Answer 2

at a level low enough to limit your spending if something unexpected happens, like a sudden shift in traffic quality of one of your keywords due to a news event.

Question 3

A campaign that scales by performance can work for many advertising goals, including:

Answer 3

Selling goods or services directly via an e-commerce site
Generating leads for a sales team
Driving signups for a monthly subscription service

Question 4

If you can estimate the value of a conversion for your business, a

Answer 4

a scalable budget is worth exploring.

Question 5

If you can estimate the value of a conversion for your business, a scalable budget is worth exploring.

Campaigns that scale with performance usually meet the following conditions:

Answer 5

You can estimate your conversion value (e.g., you make an average of $50 profit per sale)
You understand how much time is needed before profits will be available to reinvest (e.g., you know that sales leads convert to deals in 3-5 weeks)
Your costs of servicing new customers remain stable or decrease as you grow (e.g., the more customers you gain, the lower the costs of supporting each new customer)

Question 6

Here are some conditions that can make it more difficult for a campaign to scale with performance:

Answer 6

You have high fixed costs that make it difficult to estimate the profit value of a conversion (e.g. significant manufacturing costs)
You have supply or customer service limitations (e.g., you can’t serve additional customers if you grow)
You have cash flow limitations (e.g., you have a $100 CPA for new signups worth $500 over 5 years)
You have sales tracking limitations (e.g., most of your sales are difficult to track because they’re offline)

Performance, Profitability, and Growth

Understand budget impact on profit
Scaling budget by performance
Growing a profitable campaign
Growth in Practice
Improve performance when daily budget is depleted
Learning the basics of online budget st

Question 7

Growing a profitable campaign

To achieve success with AdWords, it’s important to understand when a campaign is profitable and how to help it grow. ROI-driven campaigns generally follow three stages of

Answer 7

growth: testing, growth, and maturity.

Question 8

Growth in Practice

You can often grow profit more rapidly by identifying

Answer 8

smaller parts of a campaign that are profitable and giving them a separate budget before you’re able to confirm the success of the entire campaign.

Question 9

When your AdWords daily budget is depleted, it’s often a sign you can

Answer 9

you can improve performance.

Question 10

Your business objectives will determine the

Answer 10

the best approach to take.

Question 11

Improve performance when daily budget is depleted

Campaigns that focus on profit

Example: You run a bicycle e-commerce website that measures profitability by using Conversion Tracking.

If your campaign is already profitable, depleting your AdWords budget prevents you from getting

Answer 11

getting additional profitable conversions. You can improve performance by gradually increasing your budget while making sure your campaign remains profitable.

Question 12

Improve performance when daily budget is depleted

Campaigns that focus on exposure

Example: You own a restaurant, and you’re using AdWords to increase your website’s impressions and visitors.

if you prioritize improving your ad’s position over getting more clicks, depleting your budget is

Answer 12

is normal.

Question 13

Improve performance when daily budget is depleted

Campaigns that focus on exposure

Example: You own a restaurant, and you’re using AdWords to increase your website’s impressions and visitors.

If you prioritize increasing your clicks over improving your ad’s position, and you find that you’re consistently meeting your daily budget, then this frequently indicates that some of your CPC bids may be

Answer 13

be too high. Testing lower CPC bids may increase clicks while allowing you to stay within your budget.

Question 14

How to budget strategically by business goal

If your business objectives include maximizing both profit and exposure, you can budget strategically by creating

Answer 14

creating different campaigns for each goal.

Question 15

Learn the basics of performance-based bidding

When your campaign is focused on performance, it’s important to understand how adjusting your bids impacts each

Answer 15

each performance metric.

Question 16

Bidding to balance sales volume and profitability

Given that conversion rates don’t vary much with ad position, the following trends are important to remember:

Increasing bids generally results in more conversions at a

Answer 16

a higher average cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

Question 17

Bidding to balance sales volume and profitability

Given that conversion rates don’t vary much with ad position, the following trends are important to remember:

Decreasing bids generally results in

Answer 17

in fewer conversions at a lower average CPA.

Question 18

Increasing bids while limited by daily budget generally results in

Answer 18

in fewer conversions at a higher average CPA.

Question 19

Prioritizing business objectives

In order to achieve your goals most effectively, it’s helpful to prioritize your business objectives. You can optimize your AdWords campaigns to achieve many different goals, but tradeoffs are often necessary.

For example, consider managing a campaign with the following objectives:

Answer 19

Aim for ad positions 1-3
Maximize profit
Maximize conversions
Maximize clicks

Question 20

Value-per-Conversion
Value-per-conversion is the amount of expected profit or value you gain from each conversion. If you can estimate value-per-conversion for a given product or service, it’s a

Answer 20

a useful benchmark to define the upper limit that you can invest in advertising per conversion before becoming unprofitable.

Question 21

CPA Targets

CPA targets can be helpful for establishing or maintaining

Answer 21

maintaining profitability, and are usually set below your value-per-conversion.

Example: If a remote-control helicopter sale is worth $50 profit and any CPA below that is profitable, a $10 CPA target can help achieve a consistent $40 profit-per-sale (after advertising costs).

Question 22

Common ROI targets that are unlikely to maximize profit

Answer 22

Targets decided in advance of a campaign (e.g., “With $50 profit per conversion, $10 is a good target.”) <—- this is just a guess in advance.

Targets based on traditional rules of thumb (e.g., “Ad spend should be 9% of revenue.”)

Targets based on other marketing channels (e.g., “E-mail and Search should have the same CPA.”)

Question 23

Achieving profitability

Knowing how to accurately assess whether a campaign is making or losing money is

Answer 23

s key to success and normally a prerequisite to growth.

Question 24

If you determine that your campaign isn’t profitable, achieving profitability is often possible by comparing your

Answer 24

cost-per-acquisition (CPA) with your expected profit-per-conversion and adjusting keywords or CPC bids to a profitable point.

Question 25

How to estimate conversion value

When estimating value-per-conversion, it’s often strategic to factor in things like

Answer 25

like repeat business, word-of-mouth, and lifetime customer value. Factoring in these values can give you the flexibility to bid higher while confidently bidding below your value-per-click.

Question 26

Let’s look at a fictional business-to-business machinery company named Example Machines to see how this works. Rather than sell directly online, Example Machines uses AdWords to generate leads for its sales team. We’ll factor that in too.

Short-term conversion value for Example Machines

Average deal revenue: $3,000
Profit margin: 45%
Leads that convert to a deal: 20%
Value-per-conversion (short-term): $270 ($3,000 * 45% * 20%)

Answer 26

None

Question 27

Factoring in word-of-mouth

Example Machines has data showing that for each customer they usually gain 15% in additional business through word-of-mouth. Here’s how we factor that in:

Value-per-lead (short term): $270
Gain from word-of-mouth: 15%
Value-per-conversion (+word-of-mouth): $310.50 ($270 * 115%)

Answer 27

None

Question 28

Lastly, Example Machines knows that each new customer makes repeat purchases worth approximately $5,000 in revenue over their lifetime. It’s easiest to factor this into initial deal value.

Average deal revenue: $3,000
Repeat business over lifetime: $5,000
Profit margin: 45%
Lifetime profit-per-customer: $3,600 ($3,000 + $5,000)*(45%)

Answer 28

None

Question 29

Then we can factor back in how many leads convert to a deal and word-of-mouth gains:

Lifetime profit-per-customer: $3,600
Leads that convert to a deal: 20%
Gain from word-of-mouth: 15%
Lifetime value-per-conversion: $828.00 ($3,600 * 20% * 115%)

Answer 29

None

Question 30

How this enables more strategic bidding
Let’s assume 5% of clicks convert to a sales lead and see how this affects our value-per-click:

Value-per-click (short term): $13.50 ($270.00 * 5%)
Value-per-click (+word-of-mouth): $15.53 ($310.50 * 5%)
Value-per-click (lifetime): $41.40 ($828.00 * 5%)

Answer 30

None