Partners Blog
What's new @ Google? Tips and tools for agencies
Learn from the experts with the new Adwords Community!
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The recently launched
AdWords Community
, which has replaced the AdWords Help Forum, is a vibrant resource for advertisers seeking expert advice on optimizing their AdWords accounts, to share industry best practices, and to engage with like-minded online marketing professionals. The new and completely revamped site offers an enhanced Community experience, where agencies and individuals can learn about the newest AdWords features and trends.
Check out the new look and functionality of the AdWords Community!
Here are just a few of the new features you can expect to see when you visit the AdWords Community:
Discussion Forums
: Six new discussion categories provide easier navigation and categorization, helping users find quick and effective answers to their questions, and to connect with other advertisers.
AdWords Wiki
: AdWords Wiki is a new section with helpful articles, written by expert AdWords users, on how to manage an AdWords account and achieve more of your advertising goals. Plus, you can implement the experts' recommended updates straight away by clicking on the ‘Try it now’ button below every Wiki article!
About this Community
: Meet the
Top Contributors
, learn about their profession, and visit their websites! In this section you can also meet Google's
AdWords Community Team
, read the posting guidelines, and learn more on how to become a Power User in the Community.
Connect with Other Users
: See who else is posting now! On the left hand side you can which users who are currently online. And don’t forget to rate the best answers and reward other posters for their help: Now you can give stars, +1's, and share your favorite posts on your Google+ page.
The new AdWords Community website is now available in
English
,
French
,
German
,
Spanish
,
Portuguese
, and
Russian
. Grow your online business with the help of the AdWords Community and its members!
Posted by Justyna Rasiukiewicz, AdWords Community Lead
Put your business in fast forward with Google+
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Today, we’re thrilled to share with you the story of musician and Google+ breakout star
Daria Musk
.
We often get asked for examples
of how to use Google+ to engage with users
.
Lighting up Google+ with live concerts, as Daria’s done, can seem a song apart from selling wares such as designer laptop cases, hotel rooms or even car insurance -- but the principles of building an engaged Google+ community ring true across industries. Daria’s story is a shining example of what working with an active audience can look like.
Be authentic and committed
On March 13, Daria crossed the amazing milestone of having more than one million followers. That means more than one million Google+ users have added Daria to their circles, all in the space of about eight months.
Daria was looking for those listeners when she joined Google+. “I was dreaming maybe there’s this wider world that I can sing for,” she said. “Maybe my people are out there somewhere.”
Through posts and Hangouts, Daria has kept her fans engaged. Keys to success, Daria said, include starting with enthusiasm and authenticity. “Right now if you get on Google+ and you show that you’re doing something remarkable, they’ll notice you,” she said.
Being remarkable, Daria coached, includes being yourself and avoiding canned-message posts. Users can tell if you’re trying to make a real connection. Be genuinely excited to connect with them and they’ll connect back.
When users do notice you, make sure you commit enough time to connect back. Taking just 10 to 15 minutes to respond to comments can keep the conversation going.
Create a Hangout ritual
When it comes to connecting with Google+ users, Daria’s found the perfect vehicle: Hangouts, which allow Google+ users to connect over video chat, in real time, for free. For Daria, that has meant
instantaneous
global concerts
that have included a
round-the-world
New Year’s Eve Hangout and a Hangout on stage at her
TEDxTalk
-- allowing her to share key moments with her “
G+niuses
, ” her followers.
For a successful Hangout ritual, follow Daria’s example and recommendations:
Announce the Hangout: Be excited! Hang a virtual poster on your stream and tell users what you’ll be doing or discussing.
Encourage participants: If you’ve noticed great comments, invite those users directly to get a lively discussion going.
Follow up: After the Hangout, post a summary on your stream. What happened? What was discussed? What will you do with what you learned?
Get inputs -- and inspiration -- from your audience
For Daria, Google+ isn’t just a way to promote her music. It’s also a way to help shape it. The magic of Hangouts -- including watching a sunrise in Norway from her studio in the United States -- has inspired Daria to create additional “products” – her songs and music -- including tunes such as “+1 Me.” She even cut audio from the live Hangouts into her live album, "L+VE." What could you learn from your own customers?
Google+ makes Daria feel like an innovator -- and it’s open to anyone. All you have to do is sign up and start engaging. “We’re … making our own party,” she said, “and everyone’s invited.”
Join the party
today. Create a Google+ page for your business at
google.com/+/business
.
Posted by Becky Bowman, Account Manager (Cross-posted from the
Inside AdWords
blog)
A better way to buy display
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Display advertising has undergone a bit of a fairytale-like transformation over the past several years, from the medium of “Click Here!” banner ads, to one that can be
smart and sexy
and help bring big ideas (even those from advertising’s past) to
life
. Now that display has had its “Cinderella moment,” we figured the “carriage” could use an upgrade as well. So today, we’re unveiling some changes designed to simplify the way you buy and run display through AdWords.
Display’s New Home in AdWords
For nine years, AdWords customers have been buying display campaigns through an interface designed for search. This is like trying to run in glass slippers -- it might work, but it’d be a lot more effective with the right running shoes. So we’re giving display its own tab within AdWords. Rolling out over the next few weeks, the new Display Network Tab is an interface built from the ground up to run display campaigns, and will enable you to bid, target and optimize display campaigns all from a single place. Click the image below to see the different Display Network Tab targeting options.
Display Network Tab
click to view larger image
A Revved-Up Contextual Engine
The contextual engine, which matches ads to pages based on keywords, is at the heart of display-buying through AdWords. We’ve been hard at work behind-the-scenes to give this engine its biggest enhancement ever, the ability to combine the reach of display with the precision of search, using Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. This means that you can fine-tune the performance of your contextual campaigns down to individual keyword level, which will help you take the performance of your marketing campaign to a completely new level. It’s now easier for you to extend search campaigns to display and more efficient to run the two types of campaigns together.
For example, let’s say you’re running display campaigns for a Travel Agency who offers a vacation packages in several Caribbean islands. In the past, you would have created themed ad groups targeting vacations to Turks and Caicos and the Caribbean. Now, with this new keyword level transparency you might realize that the keyword “Turks and Caicos vacations” is 4 times more profitable than the keyword “caribbean vacations”. You can optimize your campaigns to aggressively target these high performing keywords, and be more conservative on “caribbean vacations”.
Giving a Visual Edge
And like the writers of the best fairytales know, sometimes pictures communicate better than words (or numbers). Along with the new Display Network Tab and contextual engine, we’re introducing a way to visualize the reach of your campaigns, and see how that reach is impacted by combining multiple targeting types, such as keywords, placements, topics, interests or remarketing.
These changes are some of our biggest steps to date towards bringing together the science of search advertising with the art of display. We hope they give you some powerful new tools to connect with their customers and deliver engaging and relevant display ads.
Learn More
We’re rolling out the new Display Network Tab to all advertisers in the upcoming coming weeks.
For more information on what’s new on the Display Network Tab visit our
help center article
.
Please join Google in our upcoming webinar on May 15th to learn more about optimizing your targeting strategies for campaigns using the Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. Check out our
new webinar page
to register.
Watch Brad Bender, Director of Product Management for Display talk about the new Display Network Tab and the Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting.
Posted by Alok Goel, Product Manager Next Gen-Keyword Contextual Targeting, Rebecca Illowsky, Product Manager Display Network Tab, and Claire Cui, Principal Engineer
Capturing the Value of Social Media Using Google Analytics
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Measuring the value of social media has been a challenge for marketers. And with good reason: it’s hard to understand exactly what is happening in an environment where activity occurs both on and off your website. Since social media is often an upper funnel player in a shopper’s journey, it's not always easy to determine which social channels actually drive value for your business and which tactics are most effective.
But as the social industry matures, marketers and web analysts need true outcome-oriented reports. After all, although social is growing in popularity, brand websites - not social networks - remain the place where people most often purchase or convert.
That’s why we’re releasing a new set of Social reports within Google Analytics. The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about - allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business. We wanted to help you with 3 things:
Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs
The Social reports allow you to analyze all of this information together and see a more complete picture of social impact than often used today. Here are a couple of the things you can do with our new reports:
Overview Report: see social performance at a glance and its impact on conversions
The Overview report allows you to see at a glance how much conversion value is generated from your social channels. The Social Value visualization compares the number and monetary value of all your goal completions against those that resulted from social referrals - both as last interaction, and assisted.
A visit from a social referral may result in conversion immediately or it may assist in a conversion that occurs later on. Referrals that lead to conversions immediately are labeled as Last Interaction Social Conversion. If a referral from a social source doesn’t immediately generate a conversion, but the visitor returns later and converts, the referral is included as an Assisted Social Conversion.
Conversions Report: which goals are being impacted by social media
With the Conversions report, marketers can now measure the value of each individual social channel by seeing the conversion rates of each social network and the monetary value they drive to your business.
For example, you can see the effect that social content (i.e. a new video you created) had on conversions. Look at the time graph to see whether Goal Completions via Social Referral peaked after the content was published. Remember that you need to
define goals
and goal values in order to see data in this report, so tailor it to the things that matter to your business. Networks with a higher assisted / last interaction conversions ratio provide greater assisted conversions.
Social Sources - find out how visitors from different sources behave
The Social Sources report shows engagement and conversion metrics for each social network so you can see how people are interacting with your content and whether it’s leading to a desired outcome.
For example, if you run social campaigns that promote specific products, you can see via the Social Visitor Flow whether visitors from each social network entered your site through these product pages and whether they continued on to other parts of the site or whether they exited.
Social Plugins: find the content that’s good enough to share
If you publish content, you'll want to know which articles are most commonly shared or recommended, and on which social networks they're being shared. The Social Plugin report shows which articles on your site are receiving the most engagement and which social buttons - for example, Google +1 - are being clicked to share them.
You can use this information to create more of the type of content that's popular with your visitors, and test different layouts of social sharing buttons to improve use by your community.
Activity Stream: what’s happening outside of your website
While the other reports show you the impact that social engagement is having on your site, the Activities Stream tab (located within the sources report) shows how people are engaging socially with your content off your site across the social web.
For content that was shared publicly, you can see the URLs they shared, how and where they shared (via a “reshare” on Google+ for example), and what they said. Currently, activities are reported for Google+ and across a growing list of our
Social Data Hub
partners including recently signed brands Badoo, Disqus, Echo, Hatena and Meetup.
These new social reports will be available for all users over the next few weeks under the Standard Reporting Tab - please take a look and tell us what you think.
Posted by Phil Mui, Group Product Manager
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