Could This Be What Google Means By “Low Share of Voice”?

Guest Post: by Adrian Key

The buzz on the forums recently has been about the AdWords “Low Share of Voice” error message.

In this article, we’re going to separate truth from fiction by defining what “Low Share of Voice” really means, discussing the real impact that this error is having on your AdWords campaigns and telling you how to get your account running smoothly again.

What Does “Low Share of Voice” Actually Mean?

Google defines “Share of Voice” as:

“… represents the percentage of times your ads were actually shown in relation to the total number of chances your ads could have been shown …”

Source: Inside AdWords Blog

But what does this really mean to you and me?

Imagine you’re using AdWords to sell chocolates. You might have an AdGroup targeting the keyword “Specialist chocolates”. Everything is running fine until Google decides to flag your keyword as “Low Share of Voice”.

Sounds familiar – what is Google actually trying to tell you?

Simply, that you could get your ad to show more often for this keyword. That’s it – done!

What Impact Is This Status Having On Your AdWords Campaign?

Many AdWords users claim this error message has had a decremental effect on their campaigns performance. But the truth of the matter is that on closer examination of the evidence, we’ve found this is not the case.

Every expert will agree, the vital life signs for a successful campaign are impressions, click-through-rate, quality score, ad position and conversions. In all instances that we’ve been made aware of, these statistics have largely remained unchanged when measured over a realistic time period.

So,why the confusion?

Comparing today’s stats with yesterday’s and stating there is a problem because your daily impressions dropped by 200 just isn’t realistic. Your campaign will always experience changes in performance from day-to-day.

Unless you have a very big and busy AdWords campaign, you’ll need at least a weeks data before and after the error message first showed in order to make any realistic comparisons.

What Do You Need To Do Now?

If you’re experiencing this error in your AdWords campaign, then the right thing to do first is to identify the cause of the problem. Like most error messages in AdWords, Google hasn’t done a very good job of explaining exactly what they mean.

Here are some of our suggestions on what to look for:

1) Could your quality score be improved?

2) do you have a very low average ad position for that keyword?

3)Can you add more, very similar keywords to the ad group?

Once you’ve identified the problem, what you do about it is up to you and your biding strategy.

To demonstrate this, let’s return to our chocolates example. If your ad was very low on the results page, you could be loosing out on potential impressions. But, this could be a deliberate strategy!

The keyword “specialist chocolates” maybe very competitive. By placing your ad at the bottom of the results page, you would get less impressions (because your ad sometimes falls off the first page), but those that do click, might convert better as they are more serious about making a purchase.

You’d therefore not want to make any changes to your campaign.

But, looking at the example from another point-of-view, you might decide that the addition of a few more keywords to this ad group would be helpful. Therefore this time, you’d wind up the keyword tool or look at the suggestions under the “Opportunities” tab to improve this ad groups performance.

P.S. As I write this article, I’m informed that Google have fixed this problem. The “Low Share of Voice” error does still remain an active part of AdWords, but the trigger for the message has been made less sensitive. This error message will therefore occur a lot less often than it has recently.

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Adrian Key is editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. Discover more resources, ideas and tips to improve your AdWords campaign at:==>> http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/

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• Advertising, Opt-in Leads, Email Marketing service helps small businesses market their products more effectively. We provide everything you need, http://www.madviral.com Phone: 256-778-8350 (9am-5pm CST M-F) MadViral Enterprises, LLC 171 Early Rd. Hartselle, Al. 35640

Could This Be What Google Means By “Low Share of Voice”?

The 6 Key Elements of a Successful Online Promotion

Guest Post: By Neil Stafford

I hear many people talking about marketing and promotion in the same breath as being the same thing. I don’t believe them, because in my experience they are very different, but they are linked by a common theme… your business.

In a nutshell, marketing can be described as everything you do to attract clients into your business but a promotion is a specific event and time based activity to get people to buy your products or services. To understand this difference, I am going to show you what is involved in running a promotion.

These are the six key elements you need to consider and how you can include them in your business, or your next promotion.

1 The Reason Why:

Canadian advertising man John E. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term ‘Reason Why Advertising’ as far back as 1905 and every promotion you run should have a strong reason for why you are doing it. Events are the usual ‘reason’ such as product launches and significant anniversaries. More unusually, I’ve seen marketers use the birth of a new baby for a sale and even “I need to pay my taxes” to run a promotion. Yes, it is cheesy, but it works.

So not all reasons are good, BUT they are still reasons and they work far better than the “I’m running a promotion this week because I can or should” angle. You have to get their attention and one of the best ways of doing that is to make the story hook them in because the more interesting you make it then then the bigger the impact it will have. Your customers will respond to a promotion with lots of BANG and that means it will grab their ATTENTION much faster.

2 Give Them A Discount Or Special Price:

People are interested in your product and that’s great, but nothing will happen unless you prompt them with a good reason to buy it right now. You have plenty of options here: you can offer a reduced price, a bundled special deal on your products, or a one on one consult with you.

3 Put An End Date On Your Promotion

Some businesses seem to be in permanent sale mode, so there’s no urgency for the customer to buy. Customers are not stupid; they see the advertising and know that this company ALWAYS has a sale on. That’s why it’s important you create a deadline for your promotion. If you then you lose credibility. Having a definitive end date creates urgency and a reason for your potential customer to act now or lose out.

4 Give Something Extra Successful:

Online marketers have mastered the art of giving bonuses and any good promotion should contain a bonus item for ordering now. First you need to look at how relevant the bonus you are offering is to the productyou are selling, and see if it can stand alone in its own value.

Ask yourself whether your bonus item could be sold on its own and does it add value to the promotion you are running?

5 TELL People The Value They Are Getting:

The first time I ‘got’ this I saw my sales increase, and although you may think your bonus is valuable, it won’t always be obvious to the customer so you must make it clear to them.

Even if you do put a value next to the items you are selling, don’t assume your prospect or customer has worked it out for themselves. If the total value is £250 tell them it is £250 because if you leave them to add it up for themselves they generally won’t do it.

6 Finally…Tell People What To Do Next All the above points are meaningless unless you follow through with this one. Tell them what you want them to do. For example; fill in this form, go to this website, click this link.

Never, ever leave it up to the customer to find out how to order your products. If it is not clear then they won’t make the effort, so just let them know what you want them to do.

For example: “To order this Internet Marketing Guide and take advantage of the special price with all of your bonuses worth £350 click on this button now.” No mistakes, no confusion…just sales.

Follow these six steps and you are on your way to your most successful promotion ever.

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Neil Stafford is Editor and Publisher of the Internet Marketing Review the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. ‘Test drive’ the Newsletter for FREE – Visit this special web page for more information: Internet Marketing Review Newsletter

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• Advertising, Opt-in Leads, Email Marketing service helps small businesses market their products more effectively. We provide everything you need, http://www.madviral.com Phone: 256-778-8350 (9am-5pm CST M-F) MadViral Enterprises, LLC 171 Early Rd. Hartselle, Al. 35640

The 6 Key Elements of a Successful Online Promotion