Will Google Conversion Optimizer Change Internet Marketing?

Things are changing.

Let’s face it, the Adwords Quality Score algorithms make or break your success in the medium, don’t they?

I know for sure that this game of affiliate marketing is getting more interesting each day. If you for any reason do not know yet, there is a great way for you to lower your advertising expenses, increase your ROI, and drive more conversion all at the same time on Google. Now how is this done?

I’m going to talk about a new Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer. Google quietly added this new feature to every advertiser’s AdWords account a few months ago.

In a nutshell, this adwords bidding feature allows you to bid on CPA (cost per action), rather than CPC (cost per click). It regulates keyword-level bids, promising to deliver as many conversions as possible, at or below a cost-per-conversion you specify.

That’s automated bid management, in a perfect world, performs a function that is difficult or impossible for a human to perform:

• Monitoring conversion behavior several times per day,
•  Adjusting keyword bids to optimal so that the advertiser will pay no more and no less than the amount required to get conversions at or below their target cost.

Conversion Optimizer has two important advantages over commercially-available automated bid management software.

1. The obvious first one:  it’s free.
2. Google knows the conversion history for most of the search terms in your campaign — across many advertisers and the bid optimization algorithms take into consideration this data that only Google can possibly have.

So they know better than anyone else how your keyword will trigger a conversion when associated with a proper ad and landing page, of course.

Since a conversion can be affected by geographic location Google also factors it in their algorithms. For example, if people in LA convert better than people in Denver, the Max CPC that Google sets may be lower when the searcher from LA sees and clicks on your ad.

This way you gain lower cost-per-conversion, and higher conversion volume at or below your target cost-per-conversion (Google calls this CPC).

Even though it sounds complicated, actually, it’s easy to set up.

But there are the caveats: Google was set to work in accounts that have accumulated at least 50 conversions in the previous month and recently dropped from 50 to 30.

If you can’t meet that threshold yet, move your ad groups into one campaign such that the total number of conversions exceeds 30.

For campaign with 30 conversions, when you click on the Edit Setting link for the campaign, you’ll see the Conversion Optimizer option.

Then You have to click on the “Change bidding strategy” link. On the next screen you just click the radio button next to Conversion Optimizer — and you’re in.

On this stage Google suggest a Target CPA – it’s better if you don’t accept the suggestion and manually set the target CPA to match your cost-per-conversion goals.

NOTE: The target CPA can be different for each ad group.

With this feature you will see a nice increase in the number of profitable conversions however you may need to be patient — you may need to wait a week or two before you notice conversions rise and level off.

One more thing you may also need to manually adjust is CPA targets. This is important especially during “natural” volume fluctuations: whether seasonal or news-event-driven.

It’s interesting enough, for some reason, the campaigns would only level off at our target CPAs when you set them 25% to75% higher than your “real” target.

The Help files for Google Conversion Optimizer are very thorough. Do read through them, though, you will find nuances that I don’t cover.

Does GCO work? Yes. It’s not perfect, but still very well.

The best part about the Google Conversion Optimizer is that it has a multi dimensional bidding feature. This feature intelligently optimizes your campaigns while driving the most sales and conversions at the best cost.

Watch the video below to understand how Google’s powerful tool help you become the biggest and best affiliate ever »