Thomas Creek Concepts – AdWords Specialists

What Is The Most Important Metric To View First Thing Every Day?

For many small business advertisers with very limited budgets, the most important metric  of your AdWords account to view everyday may very well be total cost. You know advertising with AdWords can have a great benefit, but unlimited money is not a luxury many of us have. It’s an ongoing process to try and get the best value for your advertising dollars, and can also be a bit of a  juggling act. Some days you may have to raise your bids and budget to maximize your exposure, some days you may have to reduce your bids and budgets to bring the costs in line. You won’t know where you stand today, this week,  or this month without keeping an eye on your budget.

Why Can Cost Be The Most Important Factor For Small Business?

The adwords system may accrue up to 30% more cost on any given day than your maximum daily budget. Depending on your  overall financial situation, a 30% increase in costs over several days or a week, could be an cause for great concern. Is that also the week payroll goes out, vendor bills come due, or a costly emergency pops up? Pausing all your advertising to temporarily reduce costs may drastically reduce sales, compounding the overall short term cash flow issue. If you check your budget and spend daily, you will be more likely to stay ahead of the game, and not have to stress over playing catch-up when you are already over budget.

When Should You Adjust Or Optimize Your Bids And Budgets?

While it’s important to know where you stand regarding your budget at least several times a week, it may be counter-productive to make too many changes, too quickly. If you’re 10% over budget, perhaps reduce your daily budget by %10 to keep costs inline, but think twice before drastically reducing your bid in the short term. Keep your impression share metrics in mind.

If you are losing more impression share due to budget than position, any reduction in budget will mean a decrease in overall traffic. Ads that show in a higher position typically have higher click through and conversion rates than ads that show in lower positions. Even if you lose some traffic, try to maintain as much relevant concerting traffic as you can with a reduced budget. You may get more clicks for the same daily budget in a lower position, but f those are not profitable clicks (lower conversion rate), you will continue to spiral further into the red. Why pay for “bad” traffic, no matter how much you get for your available budget?

Tips For Estimating What Your Daily Budget Should Be:

If you do have a conversion strategy in place, and a value formula, then you know whether or not your ad buy is profitable. The impression share metrics are crucial metrics to establishing how much more profit you could make, for how much more cost. If you are only reaching 50% of your potential impression share due to budget for a profitable campaign, how much more revenue could you earn by increasing the budget? There is a point of diminishing return, but typically that point is around the 90+% mark. If the more you spend the more you make, in the long run, try to find a way to move more resources into your advertising. Consider your ad buy an investment, not just a cost of doing business.

If you are reaching 100% of your available impression share with your current budget, but still losing a significant impression share due to rank, raising your bids alone may not be the most effective approach. Yes you are more likely to get clicks and conversions for ads which show in a higher position, but the point of diminishing return can be much more drastic when it comes to bids than budget. If your return per click is $.06, and your average cost per click is $.05, any increase in bid will erode your current profit margin.

The opposite can be true if you lower your bids too much. An average CPC of $.04 may reduce adrank to a point where you lose the more profitable position, to competitors with a higher overall ad rank. Spend more make more, spend less make less – as a rule – is not always true, but is always a possibility that should be considered. From the first thing in the morning, to the last thing at night, knowing where you stand regarding your costs and profits is the key to knowing what you should be spending on AdWords, at any given time.

What Is Click-To-Call Only?

Click to call can be a great tool, and couldn’t be easier to set-up. Click-to-call only insures that every click on your ad from a mobile device capable of making a phone call, results in a phone call being initiated by the user. This feature allows the website to be bypassed entirely, and calls to your business to be initiated directly from Google’s search results pages.

With “standard” call  extensions (Show my business phone number only on high end mobile phones) a click to call icon is always displayed (when eligible to show a call extension) whether you have selected click to call only or not. Click to call only prevents a user from clicking through to the website, when using a device capable of making a phone call. Only the call icon is click-able. You are charged for a “call” when someone clicks the click-to-call icon, and you are charged the same as you would be for a click through to the website.

Why Use Click-To-Call Only?

There is one over-riding requirement to use the click-to-call feature – Having a phone number, that you want customers to call.

If calls generate the majority of your conversions, it may be beneficial to make sure the campaigns are segmented by device, and the structure/strategy of those campaigns – including keywords and especially ad copy – is focused on optimizing for click to call calls.

When Should I Use Click-To-Call Only?

There is a distinction between click to call, and click to call only. When I decide whether to use one option or the other, I try to take the website format into account. If the site is formatted for mobile users (smart phones), and your conversion events can occur on or off the site, giving users the choice of clicking or calling seems like the right way to go. They may not yet be in the purchase stage of the buying cycle, and may only be looking for information on the site. Or, they could be looking to call the business directly, and make an immediate purchase. If your website is mobile friendly, why not give them a choice?

If your website is not mobile friendly, you may want to consider using the click-to-call only option. Users still may not intend to make a call, but if the website is not formatted for smart phones, they could immediately bounce from the site as well. At least if they call, and let the phone ring long enough for you to answer, you have some chance of engaging the customer.

Tips On Using Click-To-Call Only:

Why can’t I see my ad? Like all things AdWords…it depends. As tempting as it may be to cite the lack of your ad appearing for a single live search as evidence of Google engaging in a conspiracy against you, there are a few things you may want to consider first.

To begin with, the Ad Preview Tool is the first place I would go to try and find out what is happening, and why. It is considered best practices by Google to use the preview tool instead of conducting a live search to see your ads. The primary reason given is “to avoid negatively impacting your ads performance”. Huh, what does that mean? Essentially, thousands of impressions with no clicks, will reduce click through rate, which is one measurement of “performance”. Odds are you are not searching thousands of times a day trying to see your ads, after all who has time for all that! Even if you use the preview tool, and your ad appears to be running, it’s only natural to want to conduct a live search for that keyword, and see the actual ad in the search results. The preview tool is just an estimate of what your ad will look like, and often the actual live ad is different.

I’m not making a very good case for using the preview tool am I? The biggest advantage I think the tool offers, and the reason why it is the first resource I use is because of the additional information the tool offers. When previewing a keyword, if and ad is not showing for that keyword, the tool will list some of the reasons why, such as…

Budget: If you have exceeded the campaign budget for that day, your ads will not show for keywords in that campaign. Even if you have some budget remaining for that day, it may not be enough budget to allow an ad to show. Let’s say you have $1.00 left in your campaign budget for that day, but your average cost per click for that campaign is $2.00. If you would have to pay more than $1.00 for a click, to earn an adrank high enough to show your ad on the first page of the search results, your ad may not show. This also applies to the monthly total spend of the campaign. Some days you may be over or under budget for your campaign. Over the course of the month, you will end up spending your daily budget X the number of days in the month. So if you still have budget available for that day, but you have gone over budget for the month, Google may stop showing your ads to get the total monthly budget in line.

Location: The location you are searching from when conducting a live search can be misleading. Even though Tom Sr. and I both live in the Portland Metropolitan area, Google doesn’t always see it that way. When Sr. is searching from far northeast Portland, Google may determine that he is actually searching from Vancouver, Washington. When I search from central southeast Portland, for some reason, the Google machine decides that I am actually in Troutdale, Oregon. If we are searching for a keyword, in a campaign targeted only to the city of Portland, either or neither of us may see an ad. Back to the preview tool I go.

Another advantage of the tool is the ability to select your location. The location targeting is still not perfect, and you do have to be mindful of the location you select. Using the Portland example, the location settings may default to the entire United States. If you enter in the keyword you want to preview, you will likely get a message saying that “Your ads are set to show only to users in the locations you’ve chosen”. If you are targeting only the city of Portland, selecting Oregon, or the Portland metropolitan are alone, will return the same result. You have to select the metropolitan area, and the specific city within that area to actually preview your local ads. If I only select the Portland metropolitan area, the preview tool defaults to the city of Albany, some 50-ish miles south of Portland. Why? Because the Portland metropolitan area as outlined in the campaign settings is the majority of the populated area in the state. Albany is closer to the geographic center of the metropolitan area, as per the campaign targeting area, than the city of Portland. It’s easy to get frustrated at the Google machine for thinking it’s smarter than you, it’s concerning when you start to wonder if it’s actually right.

Keyword Match Type: Match type may be more of an issue with the preview tool than with a live search, and is a complicated issue altogether. The bottom line is, if you are trying to view an ad for a keyword that you have added as a negative keyword, whether by accident or choice, you will never see an ad. Negative keywords are very important if you use broad or phrase match keywords, but must be used with care. Whether live searching or previewing a keyword, make absolutely certain that the keyword is the exact same keyword as one you are advertising on. Even with broad match, widget and widgets are two different keywords. Your adrank for one may be high enough to show an ad, but not for the other.

The issues with the preview tool are usually associated with “embedded match” keywords, which is a common tactic we employ at Thomas Creek Concepts. When we find a “winner” keyword, such as widget, we will often add the exact match of the keyword to a “top tier” campaign, and dedicate as much budget as necessary to maximize the return on that keyword. Then, we will use the broad or phrase match of that keyword in another campaign, with the exact negative of the keyword. The idea being to still advertise on “long tail” keywords closely related to widget, but with a limited budget, make sure as much of that budget as necessary is being spent on maximizing return on the most profitable keyword. We certainly believe it works, and is a common practice among many advertisers. If you do choose to employ this tactic, be prepared to see some “weird” error messages with the preview tool. “A negative keyword is preventing your ad from showing”, as an error message, may be followed by see X# of other keywords. When you click on those other keywords, you may see that in fact your ad is showing, for the exact match keyword, in another campaign.

There is another aspect of keyword match type throughout your account that can cause confusion. With broad or phrase match keywords, without a well thought out negative keyword strategy, there is always the possibility of keyword impression poaching. Yet another terrible example – If you have the keyword widget in one campaign or adgroup, and the keyword blue widgets in another, a search for blue widgets may return a result for the ad associated with the campaign or adgroup for the keyword widget. What is the best way to avoid keyword poaching? Well, this is another reason why we believe in the effectiveness of embedded match. If the keyword is important enough to merit a specific ad, it is important enough to insure that the exact match of that keyword is isolated and controlled. Whether previewing or live searching, make sure you are using the exact same variation of the keyword you  have added to your account.

Ad Delivery Method: This, like embedded match, is another complicated and potentially confusing aspect of AdWords, that could be preventing your ads from showing. The default setting for all campaigns is standard, which means: The Google machine will try to show your ads throughout the day evenly, regardless of your daily budget. If your budget is $20/day, and each click costs $5.00, if you get three clicks early in the day, Google may stop showing your ad for hours at a time. If you are searching or previewing during this time, you may not see your ads. The easy solution is to just spend more money. But, let’s be honest, if you had more money to spend, you would not be limited to a $20/day budget.

If you have a conversion strategy, and a value formula for those conversions, assuming you have a profitable return on investment for your advertising, accelerated ad delivery may be an option to consider. This is more for those who have the budget to spend on keywords they know generate a profit, than those just beginning that optimization process. Accelerated delivery allows your ads to show as quickly as possible for as many matching queries as possible throughout the day.

The Google Machine is outsmarting you: Don’t take it personally! This is arguably the greatest benefit of using AdWords. If you do routinely conduct a live search for specific keywords to see your ads, when signed in to your Google profile -  and, or, using a browser which does not clear all cookies every time you close it, the Google machine knows that you are not going to click on your ad. Eventually, the Google machine will quit showing you something you don’t want to see. Do you ever, have you ever, by accident or choice, clicked on your competitors ads? If so, what you’re telling the Google-bot 5000 is that the only paid ads you want to see are from your competitors. That does not mean that your customers are telling Google the same thing. Whether searching or previewing a keyword, regardless of the results, try to take it in context with the data, in the AdWords interface. Are you more concerned that your customers see your ads, or that you do?

If you do decide to hire someone to manage your AdWords account, know which goal is most important to you, and make that clear to the account manager.  A good account manger will always try to do what earns their client the highest return on investment. If what you want is to see your ad, for a specific keyword, when you search from a specific area, for X amount a day in ad buy, a good account manager will try to accomplish those goals, and still try to earn their client the highest return on investment possible. You may tire of hearing all those pesky questions about sales, customer lifetime value, and return on ad buy, but it’s in our nature. If it was not profitable for you to see a certain ad, for a certain keyword, for the amount of money it costs to do so, in a certain area, would you still want to?

If you have selected accelerated delivery, you have ample budget available, are previewing or searching for the exact keyword you are advertising on, in the specific area you are targeting, and still don’t see your ad, the reason has to be…well, it depends.

By, Tom Hale, Jr.

What is Google AdWords?

AdWords is Google’s Pay Per Click advertising program. It allows you to display ads on the Google search engine results pages, and the Google Display Network. Ads may appear above, or on the side of the organic search results. Or as image, video, or text ads on various placements in the Google Display Network. AdWords also allows you to place ads on Google partner sites such as Youtube. Pay per click advertising means: You only pay when someone actually clicks on your advertisement. Unlike traditional media, you do not pay to have your ad seen or heard, you only pay when a potential customer responds to that ad. The AdWords interface makes it very easy to track every penny spent on advertising, and verify what value those costs are worth.

Can I use AdWords, will it work for my business?

Anyone can begin an AdWords account for their website and business. Will it work…well, like all things AdWords the answer is – it depends. AdWords is a tool, and like all tools is most effective in the hands of a skilled user. AdWords is not a minimum investment, maximum return proposition. It takes time to learn and is constantly changing. AdWords education is an ongoing process. Even when you think you’ve got it all figured out, seeing things from another perspective inevitably leads you to question your own assumptions.

Before you decide to begin an AdWords campaign, the best thing you can do is take time to read through the help documentation. If you decide that AdWords may be too time consuming for you to manage alone, knowing the basics before you hire someone else to manage your account is in your best interest. How else will you know if you are getting a good value for the fee charged? Whether you decide to hire someone to manage your account or not, the first step to beginning an account is to establish your advertising goals. What do you want a user to do when they see your ad? Click through to the website and make a purchase, sign up for a service, newsletter, or fill out a contact form? Know what you want to accomplish ahead of time, and the approach to accomplishing your goals will be much clearer.

Why should I use AdWords?

Google is the #1 search results provider in the world. Even if you prefer to use another search engine yourself, the odds are that more of your potential customers are using Google than any other search engine. Some may feel that advertising in general is a waste of money for a small business, or that they just don’t have the money to advertise. If every dollar you spent resulted in two dollars profit – not net revenue, but gross profit – would that change your opinion or position in regards to the advertising budget? With AdWords such results are not guaranteed, and to achieve any sustainable profitability takes time and effort.

There may be no substitute when it comes to customer loyalty for word of mouth, but Google knows a lot more people. With the roll out of Google+, establishing a presence on Google can reach more customers who have people in their circles who recommend your business. The exposure of the #1 search provider in the world, and the loyalty that comes from a trusted recommendation.

But, I’ve got someone who does that Google stuff for me already. They posted links and added some keywords on my homepage. Why do I need to pay for people to click on an ad?

Search engine optimization for unpaid organic listings, is different from search engine marketing for paid results using AdWords. Yes, with as much time and effort AdWords requires to be profitable, SEO effort could be just as profitable, with no actual PPC charges. However, with Google’s search results – paid listings will show above and beside organic unpaid listings. With all the options and formats available for AdWords ads, those top position ads can crowd the organic listings down further on the page. This could be a real potential issue for brand terms search results. You may rank first organically for your website name, but your competitors can bid on your domain as an advertised keyword.

How would you feel if a loyal returning customer Googled your website name – to find your phone number, double check your hours, etc. – saw an ad for your competitor above your organic results, is engaged by the message, and ends up being a loyal returning customer for your competition? Angry at Google for allowing competitors to advertise on your brand terms? Remember, that is Google’s business model -  “If you build it they will come”. Google built the content by providing search results more relevant and engaging than their competitors – the product. AdWords, is the mechanism to monetize that product. Your competitors can advertise on your brand keywords, and you can do the same right back. If it costs you literally one or two cents per click, is it worth it to guarantee your customers will remain your customers, after they do a search for your website?

I have an AdWords account, but I don’t understand what my AdWords are!

The lexicon associated with AdWords takes time to learn, and if the definitions of the terms in the help documentation are still unclear, really understanding how it all works will be even more difficult. AdWords, is just the name of the program. Each advertiser will have their own account. Within the account, there can be multiple campaigns. Within each campaign there can be multiple adgroups. Keywords, placements, topics, and audiences, are all different ways to target your ads to users, within the adgroup. Your ads are the only piece of your AdWords account, any user will ever see. It has always helped me to think of an AdWords account as a pyramid, with account at the top, and ads at the bottom.

Account: When you sign into your account, the default page is the home tab. This is a very broad overview of your account, and really lacks the detail necessary to provide any insight. The green tabs at the top of the page – Home, Opportunities, Reporting and Tools, Billing, and My Account – Are the various sections of the account. The campaigns tab is where you will actually manage the content of the account.

Campaigns: This tab is where you will find the sub-section grey tabs for all the adgroups, keywords, ads, and every aspect of your account. Each campaign can have different settings regarding networks, devices, language and location targeting, and daily budget. When you begin your account, if you follow the help documentation to a “T”, you will have only one campaign, with one adgroup, one keyword in that adgroup, and one ad for that keyword in that adgroup. You will also be opted into the search and display networks by default. In this case, it’s hard to be able to view the interface in such a way as to distinguish between the different levels of your account. If you keep the visual of a pyramid in mind while viewing the different tabs, the structure will become clearer.

Adgroups: Each adgroup contains keywords, and ads. The adgroup level is where you set your bid for what you are willing to pay for a click on an ad, when the user query matches the keyword. All of this happens within the adgroup. Again, if you are just beginning, the account wide data will only be for one ad, one keyword, one adgroup, etc. If you have two keywords for example, and want to show a different ad for each keyword, then you could create two adgroups. One for each keyword, with the “right” ad for each keyword. Your ads will only be shown when the settings of the campaign are met, up to the campaign daily budget. If you set your campaign to Portland only, with a budget of $50/day, then your adgroups will only show ads for keywords which match the search query, for users in the Portland area, as long as you have daily budget available.

Keywords: This may seem strange, but do not think of keywords as actual words. Try thinking of them more like computer code. For example, widget is not the same as widgets. The user intent when searching for the singular version of a word vs. the plural may be completely different. Widget may indicate a user is in need of one hard to find, or very specific specialty product. Widgets could mean the user is interested in buying bulk product for resale. User intent is the most fundamental challenge of choosing which keywords to use to target your ads. As the business owner and industry expert, you may know widget is the technically correct term to use for gears, or cogs. But, do not assume your customers will have that same knowledge. That’s why they want to find you, right? It is rare that the initial keywords you choose will prove to be the most profitable keywords. It takes time and investigation to determine what words your target market market searches on to find businesses which offer your products or services. What do you call that long piece of furniture in your living room – a couch, sofa, or davenport maybe?

Ads: Ads are the most important aspect of your account. Regardless of which keywords triggers your ad, the ad is the only part of your account a user will ever see and interact with. As the foundation of the pyramid, the better your ads perform, the better your account performs. Every other level of data in the account relies on the data associated with the ads. Finding out what ad text resonates with your audience is a never ending process. Change your message too often, and you may never be able to establish what or who you are to your audience. Don’t change the text often enough, and users may find your message stale and outdated. Being at the bottom of the pyramid, it’s easy to overlook the ad statistics. Writing ad copy can be the most difficult aspect of managing an account. I never feel self conscious when I create a new campaign, but always feel apprehensive when writing a new ad. Thousands, even millions of people may see that ad. Including the client and the competition. But, you have to start somewhere. What is the theme of your site or business, have you already found a message or slogan that resonates with your customers? What is the message of your competition, and what is different about your business? Just as with keywords, it’s rare that your first ad will prove to be your best ad over time.

By, Tom Hale, Jr.

With “traditional” brick and mortar shops, having your phone number listed in the phone book is an absolute necessity. For those of us old enough to remember what a phone book is, you know that when trying to find a business the first listings in each category are always for AAA+ Acme Co. Adding as many A’s as possible to your business name gains a competitive advantage, even if you cannot afford a full page ad.

So there your number is, with no information at all about your business, and you hope that by being the first number listed people will call, and then learn something about your company. Maybe you, or the person who answers the phone is the best salesperson ever, and you have a 100% closing rate for every call. Even if that is the case, your customer base is still limited only to those in your local area who still use a clunky old paper phone book, and call the first number they find. So, you build a website, and begin an online advertising campaign. Now you want to show your phone number with your ad, and you think this call extension thing is the way to go. But…How do you make sense of all this call extension stuff? Where do you even start? Perhaps, the first thing to consider is whether or not call extensions are right for your business.

What kind of business are you? A local service business, or a national retailer? Do you sell products online through your website, or do you rely on direct contact with your customers to complete a sale?

Of course, if you only sell product through a website, and you have no public business number, call extensions in any form are not for you. If you do have a business number, and you are available to close sales over the phone, but primarily sell product through the website, the issue becomes more cloudy. You then have to ask yourself “where do I have the higher closing ratio”. If you have a higher conversion ratio for calls to your business, than clicks to your website, perhaps the focus of any marketing campaign should be phone calls.

For local service based business, a business line is still an absolute necessity. The website may be a place to give potential customers some idea of who you are, but at some point in the sales process you have to speak to the customer. Assume that the customer will “call around” before they decide who will earn their business. Making a personal connection over the phone early in the buying cycle sets a standard by which any other competitor will be judged.

So, call extensions for local service businesses seems like a no brain-er, but with AdWords call extensions there are still potential issues to consider. For many small businesses the equity placed in the local phone number is far greater than any investment in advertising. That number is your business. You want customers to see your established local number with your AdWords ads, so you enable call extensions using that number. However, when you search for your ad on your computer, you don’t see that number. The reason – call extensions only allow a phone number to be shown on mobile devices capable of making a phone call, ie mobile phones.

In order for your number to be shown on desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, you have to enable call metrics. So you do, and you search for your ad on your desktop and see a phone number…but it’s not your number, It’s not your business. Why is sanother businesses phone number appearing in your ad? Call metrics generates a random toll free Google forwarding number for your ad. It is your phone number underneath, but neither you nor the customer see that number.

You know customers calling you is a good thing, and that Google AdWords can deliver those calls, but you just can’t trust that random number. It’s not your number, it’s not your business. What if a customer records that random number as your business number? Google can change it at any time, and if a customer calls back at a later date, that number may no longer ring through to your business. What’s potentially worse still, is the fact that the call metrics number is not a local number. You may have spent decades establishing yourself in the local community, only to find that now your customers can’t tell the difference between your business and a national sub-contractor. So that means call metrics are not for local service businesses, right? Not so fast…

Like all things AdWords there is more to the equation. Remember, the call metrics number is shown as an addition to your ad text. Potentially in addition to sitelinks and location extensions. Now you have 70 characters of ad copy, four additional 35 character sitelinks, a location extension featuring your address, and a hyper-local map in the SERP’s which shows where your business is located. Does that change what your business is? Is your business still your local phone number, or has it now become something greater than?

These ad extension combinations only occur for ads in the top 1-3 positions, but with a combined ad extension strategy can take up a lot of the page real estate. Not only can you show up above your competitors, but you can crowd out the other top position ads as well. Want to be listed first, and have the biggest ad? What would it mean for your business if calls from converting customers doubled? Would that alleviate some of the concerns you have for not seeing your phone number for your business?

Yes, the issue of what number a customer associates with your business as a returning customer remains, but after you make contact with that customer and earn their business, how many opportunities do you have to reinforce what your actual contact number is? Business cards, email lists, newsletters, not to mention a good ol’ fashioned conversation. What if during that conversation you could get a customer to add your real business number to their contact list or phone book. How likely is it when you broadcast your real number through traditional advertising that a customer picks up the phone and calls right away, then adds that number to their contacts immediately?

Call extensions, and call metrics may not work for every business. Smart phones are less phones, and more limited, hand-held, mobile computers. Call extensions allow you to show your local number to smart phone users who can immediately initiate a click-to-call, and within seconds be speaking to the business directly. If your site is not mobile friendly, running a click-to-call only mobile campaign may be the way to go. Real estate in the top position on the mobile SERP’s is even more limited than computers. Having a strong call to action message in the top position can take the website entirely out of the equation. Don’t have the time and resources to put into optimizing your website for mobile, and mobile SEO? Try running a click-to-call only AdWords mobile campaign. Smart phone’s and mobile devices are set to outpace desktop computer sales by 2015. Eventually if you want your business to survive, you will have to adapt. But, for a local service oriented small business, that investment in time and resources can mean the difference between profit and loss in the short term. In the long run, having a plan to maximize profits with your current resources now, to build the capital to re-invest later, will help to insure long term sustainable profitability.

by Tom Hale Jr.

Hello Portland Plumbers!

We like small business, professionals, and entrepreneurs. Probably because we ourselves are small business professional entrepreneurs.

And we can’t think of a more iconic local small business profession than that of plumbing!

So…..we would really like to have a plumbing client from our hometown of Portland, OR.

We are not cold calling scammers or a behemoth ad agency – we are simply small business professionals looking to provide AdWords and pay-per-click services to the same.

If you are a Portland plumber looking to start AdWords or improve your current AdWords performance then you best give us a shout out pronto – we will only serve one Portland plumber at a time.

Contact Us to learn more about AdWords for plumbers.

Hello Portland Eye Care professionals!

We have enjoyed our relationship and the good work we have been doing for Ft. Lauderdale eye care professional Dr. Gary Enker at World Eyeglasses & Personal Eyecare

Now we are looking for one good eye care professional in our hometown of Portland where we can do the same.

If you are an eye care professional in Portland, OR, and are interested in starting AdWords or improving your current results, then you would be well served in contacting us.

We are going to do someone some good, so this is as much audition as sales pitch – because we will only represent one Portland eye care professional at any one time.

Contact Us

Hello auto repair shops and mechanics!

We like small business.

And one of our favorite small biz AdWords clients is Tom Dwyer Automotive Services.

In fact, we have enjoyed our experience with Tom Dwyer so much we want more clients in auto repair. The nature of auto repair is local, so we are not looking for another auto repair client in the Portland Metropolitan Area. But that leaves 199 or so other Designated Marketing areas in the United States that we would love to put our auto repair AdWords skills to work for some lucky client.

Two Metro areas we are especially interested in cracking is Seattle and Miami – Ft Lauderdale.

Seattle because we love the Northwest.

Miami – Ft Lauderdale because we have had noted success with other sector-clients in that area and would like more business there.

But our expansion is not limited to those two metropolitan areas. If you are in the auto repair business, and you are not located in the Greater Portland, OR metropolitan area, and you have an interest in Google AdWords, then you might be very well served contacting us about our services.

We are in the process of putting packages together – but if you get in early, you will get special consideration, as the first eager beavers will help us determine the nature of future offerings based on our mutual success. We consider ourselves pioneers in bringing experienced and personalized AdWords management to small biz Main Street. If you want to explore options other than cold call – spamming scammers or high priced Mad Men like agencies, you should give us a call.

Contact Us to learn more about our AdWords services for Auto Repair.

We are compiling articles, case studies, and select best practice contributions having to do with AdWords Call Metrics.

If you aware of of some good material on the subject – please let us know.

Case Studies

So far, this Google generated case study is all we have come across – more to come from us and others I am sure. Don’t let the participating agency name throw you. Nina does not work for us

Room & Board – Google Call Metrics Case Study

Articles & Posts

Here is a piece detailing a technical fix for making the Current Call Metrics more robust. With good give and take in the comments.

Four Steps To Get More Data From Google Adwords Call Metrics

Prior to AdWords Call Metrics starting to roll out, if the subject of call tracking came up, I might very well say – Have you heard of Mongoose? At one time Google was mentioning them as a possible solution for PPC-SEM advertisers. Here is a reaction from Mongoose.

Google Adwords Call Analytics Explained & Compared w/ Mongoose Metrics Call Tracking

Call Metrics, Phone Extensions, and Click-to-Call are related but not the same. In these early days there is a lot of jargon calibration going on. Keeping that in mind, here Greg Sterling talks about how the success of Google’s “call” initiatives are accelerating change.

A Year Later Even Google Surprised By Success Of Click-To-Call

Here is a report of fuller functionality being tested. Can I get a second?

Google Call Tracking is Here!

Here is a post at AdWords Help Experts

Google Merging AdWords Extensions

More AdWords Call Metrics information.

Our curation of Official AdWords Call Metrics Documentation

Our original post on AdWords Call Metrics.

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Here is our current curation of the official Google documentation on AdWords Call Metrics.

The initial Inside AdWords blog post.

Measure the phone calls you get from AdWords

The real nitty-gritty AdWords Help articles.

Call Extensions.

About AdWords Call Metrics.

Sharing Call Extensions Across Multiple Campaigns.

Campaign Segment Data and Call Extension Data.

The pivotal breadcrumb.

Call metrics

Another intro from Google Ad Innovations

AdWords Call Metrics

The intro video is included in other documentation, but here it is on YouTube.

Google AdWords Call Metrics

Here is some select activity from the AdWords Help Forum.

Phone Extensions Vs. Call Metrics
Call Metrics: Ad does not contain phone number
How do you enable adwords call metrics?

More AdWords Call Metrics information.

Our curation of AdWords Call Metrics Resources – Articles, Case Studies, Best Practices – suggestions welcome

Our original post on AdWords Call Metrics.

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