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Most companies with an online presence (and most companies today that consider themselves a viable enterprise do have an online presence) know they cannot get by without spending at least a portion of their marketing budget on Google. While alternatives are emerging, Google AdWords remains a solid and safe bet that the company will be able to drive traffic to its website. For companies experiencing success with AdWords, it becomes a “drug” they are addicted to and cannot do without.

Google’s perspective

This basic online marketing assumption, that Google AdWords is a solid, safe bet to drive traffic to the website, is what makes Google the phenomenally successful company it remains.  The logical impact of this is that, as more and more advertisers spend more and more money on AdWords, the price of click-throughs increases thus creating a virtuous cycle for Google and its shareholders.

The advertiser’s perspective

From the advertisers’ perspective, however, there is a need to constantly manage the AdWords spend to ensure they are getting value. To accomplish this, Google itself offers free and very powerful tools like Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. Smart marketers –and if you are reading this, you can count yourself in this group– take advantage of these tools to maximize conversions and therefore get great benefit from their AdWords spend.

(I know you are probably expecting this post now move on to Conversion Optimization testing and the need to maximize conversions on the AdWords landing pages but No, surprise-surprise, this post isn’t about that.)

Conversion Optimization testing isn’t the only way for marketers to make sure they are maximizing their AdWords return

Here is why:  Google AdWords is simultaneously easy to use and becoming increasingly complex with the addition of new options and features. It can be a great source of customers, but needs to be actively managed in order to ensure that budgets are spent as effectively as possible.

As AdWords and the Search Engine marketing environment evolve, it can be difficult to keep up with changes, features, opportunities, pitfalls.  AdWords tactics that have worked in the past may no longer be as effective as they once were.

Advertisers themselves are not in the best position to minimize risk

In our experience with clients spending significant and increasing budgets on AdWords, there are two primary models on how they manage their AdWords campaigns: Outsource to an agency, or manage AdWords in-house. Both methods have pros and cons – and both have inherent biases and risks built-in.

When outsourcing AdWords to an external agency, the advertiser delegates the responsibility of deciding how to implement the AdWords budget to a separate organization with its own financial goals which  may or may not be aligned with the advertiser’s. But Google AdWords spend needs to be monitored and managed from the advertiser’s perspective to ensure advertiser spending is optimized and aligned to their business goals, and not Google’s or a Search agency’s.

On the other hand, when managing AdWords in-house , staff have a focus on a particular business so they may not be aware of AdWords techniques that have been used successfully by other businesses in the same or other industries that can be adopted for advantage. So, without full knowledge of how web analytics programs can be used for AdWords reporting and analysis, opportunities to evaluate and improve AdWords performance may be missed. Even staff working at an advanced level with AdWords on a daily basis can overlook opportunities for analysis and improvement.

In either model, management needs  to accomplish two objectives with respect to AdWords:

• Have a clearer picture of the results they are getting from its AdWords investment, and
• Get a greater sense of AdWords features, options, and tactics that they may be able to use to greater advantage in increasing the return on advertising spend

But who watches the advertiser’s back?  Enter the AdWords Audit (the unbiased kind)

Just as a financial auditor is expected to provide unbiased insights into a company’s financial reports, we at WiderFunnel believe companies should periodically engage in an unbiased audit of their AdWords campaigns.  The unbiased Google AdWords Audit must:

• Evaluate the extent to which the company is getting maximum benefit for the AdWords spend
• Identify any areas where changes can be expected to lead to improved performance.

Unfortunately, finding this unbiased source is difficult because of the way online marketing services providers are structured (just Google  “AdWords Audit” and you will get over “about 7,720 results”, most of them from companies that are trying to sell you AdWords management services!).

WiderFunnel does not provide Search or AdWords management services – nor do we plan to.  We want to watch your back!

We decided to launch this new service, the unbiased AdWords Audit, leveraging our web analytics expertise and our single-minded focus on Conversion Optimization testing, so that clients can rely on us to give them the right insights without having to worry about anyone trying to sell them Search or AdWords management services of any kind.

Free from the constraint of selling Search or AdWords management services, we believe this audit is truly unbiased.

Clearly, early client examples are showing that that is the case.

In one particular case, the client was more than a little bit surprised [understatement] to learn from the audit that 3% of their Search budget was delivering 52% of the business. On a more positive note, the “worst news” we have ever had to deliver to a client was that their campaign is being flawlessly managed! (Now they know for sure)

Ready to learn more about the AdWords Audit? Here is how:

WEBINAR: “The Top 10 Signs You Need an AdWords Audit”

WHEN: March 16, 2011 at 10:00 AM PST

COST: FREE

REGISTRATION: Required (limited space available)

In this upcoming webinar, “The Top 10 Signs You Need an AdWords Audit” we are presenting a quick and FREE 35 minute intro where you will be able to learn:

• The 3 major causes of PPC campaign under-performance
• How to identify the Top-10 Signs you need an AdWords Account Audit
• How you too can effectively utilize the FULL AdWords ecosystem
• How to get completely unbiased advice for your Pay-Per-Click campaigns

To register for the webinar, click here.

Ready NOW for an unbiased AdWords Audit?

If you are ready for an Audit, you can request a quote here.

Either way, if you are spending money on AdWords, you owe it to yourself to make sure the money is well spent. You owe it to yourself to make sure someone is watching your back,

I am absolutely delighted to tell you that Bryan Eisenberg, the online marketing pioneer and recognized authority, the man who has focused his career on teaching businesses how to improve online conversion rates, will be delivering two free webinars as part of our Master Webinar Series.

Here are the details:

• April 1st, 2010: “Don’t Be April’s Fool: Proven Techniques To Maximize Your Advertising ROI”

• June 2, 2010: “10 Steps to a Higher Conversion Rate”

You can learn more about these free webinars and register by clicking to go here.

Now, “just in case” you need this info (because you are brand new to conversion optimization…) here is a bit of background on Bryan:

Bryan Eisenberg is the co-author of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today and New York Times bestselling books “Call to Action”, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and “Always Be Testing”.

Bryan has been the keynote speaker for Search Engine Strategies, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, E-consultancy, Webcom, SEM Konferansen Norway and the Canadian Marketing Association.

He is also the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Web Analytics Association. Bryan serves as an advisory board member of Search Engine Strategies, the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and several venture capital backed start-up companies (i.e. Bazaarvoice, iPerceptions, UserTesting.com, ClickEquations, etc.) and is on the board of trustees of the Direct Marketing Education Foundation .

Want to learn even more about Bryan? Go here.

Social media, as we know it today, is only a few years old – at best (Mark Zuckerberg invented Facemash on October 28, 2003; and work on “the Twitter project” started on March 21, 2006).

Yet, remarkably (!), the world today is filled with so-called social media experts (Google search generates 289,000 results for this term) and yet very few (surprise-surprise) are measuring much or developing metrics that support the execution of a social media strategy based on ROI.

So, what is really happening here? How are BtoB and BtoC companies managing their social media strategies? How are they measuring ROI?

Business.com recently published its “2009 Social Media Benchmarking Study” – and we take note because of the depth of their research based on insights into business social media usage provided by nearly 3,000 North American business professionals.

According to them, the two types of firms, BtoB and BtoC, have different social site usage patterns for business purposes – with BtoB firms demonstrating marketing leadership.

Their study found that:

• B2B companies already using social media were much more active in the space than their B2C counterparts, especially when it came to microblogging, participating in discussions on third-party sites, blogging and monitoring company mentions on various social media. Plus, they were managing profiles across more social sites and were significantly more likely to be present on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

• B2Cs were ahead in a few areas: social media advertising, user ratings and reviews, and online communities for customers and prospects, and won the day at Facebook and MySpace.

• B2B social media users were more active in measuring most social success metrics as well and more B2Bs were looking at Web traffic, brand awareness, and prospect lead quality and volume.

• Six in 10 B2B respondents used Twitter search to monitor mentions of their company or brand, compared with just 35% of B2Cs. The difference in usage of Google Alerts was slightly smaller, at 59% of B2Bs versus 40% of B2Cs. Consumer-oriented firms were most likely to keep tabs on mentions via Google search, at 61%, just edging out B2B companies, 60% of which googled themselves for this purpose.

How companies are measuring Social Media Success:

The average company in this study used four different success metrics:

1. The amount of web site traffic generated — the most popular way
2. Engagement – with prospects and customers
3. Brand impact – awareness and reputation
4. Leads – both quantity and quality

• Companies measuring leads are more likely to also measure the revenue impact of social media initiatives than companies which don’t focus on leads.

• Also, companies judging the success of their social media initiatives on engagement with prospects and/or customers are more likely to also measure brand impact than they are revenue or leads.

The study also asked respondents to tell how well they can see the impact of company social media initiatives on the success metrics they use today:

• 65% of respondents using web site traffic as a social media success metric report that the data they need is either part of standard reports today or is easily accessed when needed

• At the other end, 14% reporting that they don’t have the data (i.e., either they know they cannot measure the impact of social media initiatives on web site traffic at all or they have no idea whether or not the data is available)

• The brand metrics – awareness and reputation – fall to the bottom of the scale with almost equal percentages of respondents indicating that they can easily see the impact of social media initiatives on these metric or can’t measure the impact at all.

So, it looks like marketers are at least trying to measure social media success – but it isn’t clear this is a cross-industry trend.

“Looking at these results,” writes study author Ben Hanna, Ph.D. VP, Marketing R.H. Donnelley Interactive, “one can’t help but ask the obvious questions – how can a company claim to judge social media on a particular success metric like brand awareness or customer engagement with no ability to actually measure that metric? Do companies think they should measure the impact of social media on brand and engagement metrics but never get around to doing so? Or is this result more a function so many companies with little experience in social media participating in this study and we should expect that the ability to measure brand impact and engagement improves with experience?”

This study should provide you with context to decide how proactive you are in measuring social media success (you can access the complete study here).

The point is, are you in fact measuring social media success? Proactive companies are.

Sales conversions are crucially important to business (you knew that) so what is really interesting to me is that the study revealed once again (we have blogged about it before) the gap between what clients think is important and what agencies think is.

On the client-side, overall site conversion-to-sale was the top metric used by 68% of respondents. Other site metrics clients value include:
• Conversion to response
• Lead conversion rate
• Basket conversion rate

The study also reports that 39% of companies are not satisfied with their conversion rates.

To improve their conversion rates, clients report using A/B testing as the most valuable way to improve conversion, with more than one-half of companies saying it was ‘highly valuable’ and another 42% saying it was ‘quite valuable’.

Other methods valuable for improving conversion rates, according to client s and in descending order, include:
• Customer journey analysis
• MVT
• User testing
• Cart abandonment analysis
• Segmentations
• Event-triggered behavioural email
• Online survey/customer feedback
• Copy optimization
• Pinch point analysis
• Expert usability reviews/consultancy

And here comes the interesting part: agency-side respondents in the report did not always know what their clients thought about the best ways to improve conversions!

When asked ‘what worked’, agency-side responses listed A/B testing farther down the list, plus they overestimated the value of expert usability reviews for their clients.

So when it comes to conversion rate improvements, better to work with experts.

Apparently, there are researchers questioning the value of the click as a metric of success.

comScore and Starcom USA have followed up a July 2007 study conducted with Tacoda that segments Internet users into heavy, moderate and light clickers and found that a decreasing percentage of users are making up an increasing portion of all click-throughs.

Here are the researchers’ findings:

• Heavy clickers only accounted for 4% of all Internet users in March 2009, but they were responsible for more than two-thirds of click-throughs that month.

• Both moderate and light clickers decreased in number and in share of clicks.

• Non-clickers rose as a proportion of all Internet users by 16 percentage points.

As a result, researchers asked themselves, ‘With just 16% of Web users clicking on ads in March, how informative are click-through rates?’

And answer themselves they did: “A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity. Your online advertising has some goal—and it’s certainly not to generate clicks,” said John Lowell, Starcom USA SVP and director, research and analytics, in a statement.

Are these people for real?

These researchers have suggested other metrics, such as the view-through rate, gross ratings points (GRPs) and dwell time as more appropriate gauges of success.

This is certainly not what we are seeing happening today.

Especially in this economic environment, marketers desperate to create demand for their products and services are relying very heavily on click-throughs as well as conversion rate (the “post click experience”) as key metrics.

It seems to me these researchers should have spoken to actual marketers, right down in the trenches, working hard and succeeding under very difficult conditions.

What we are seeing is that now, more than ever, click-through and conversion rate are the key metrics driving decisions around advertising and marketing spend.

While I acknowledge these researchers are talking mostly about advertising metrics and not direct-response metrics, it seems to me irresponsible of eMarketer to decry “More Trouble for the Click-Through” at a time when click-through as a metrics is more important than ever to marketers.

Perhaps the real question these researchers should be asking is, “What is the future of Advertising?”