One of the accounts I run for myself has gone almost meteoric over the Christmas and New Year period. Conversions are up, my CPRs are down, and the conversion to paid members has remained pretty much the same. Combining that with a healthy increase in rebills and repeat payments, and January’s revenues for this account are looking very promising.
With all that good news, I was content to leave it where it is, and focus on bringing some other account more to the boil too…until I got an email from my Account Team at Google.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time nurturing this relationship, and it has paid dividends over the past couple of years for me. To many, Google can seem like a faceless company that’s hard to penetrate when it comes to understanding the way they work, why certain accounts perform better than others, and so on and so on (we all have stories, I’m sure, of times when Google has baffled us with their changes in algorithms that have affected our campaigns here and there!). So developing a good relationship with your account team can give you a bit of an inside track (and a competitive advantage).

Profitable Keywords

Anyway, back to the email from my account team… They had taken the initiative to look through the account that was performing well, to see if there were any opportunities or areas that I was missing out on. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an altruistic activity on their part. They’re trying to get me to spend more money. Nothing wrong with that. And, they’re trying to get me to spend more money profitably. And I really don’t have a problem with that either!
Their suggestions included increasing bids on profitable keywords, and adding a large number of expanded search terms into my account that were leading to profitable registrations.
At this point I should point out that the account team are no longer in a position really to know the profitability of a search term since they don’t report on Sales any more. Before changes to their reporting tool, you used to be able to draw off reports detailing registrations and sales. But you can’t do that any longer. I’m told they’re aware of this, and are looking to include sales data again, but I haven’t seen it implemented yet.
My point is, until the reporting tool changes to include sales data again, you should rely on your own data rather than Google’s with regards what a profitable search term is. Which is what I did. In the end, after correlating Google’s data with my own, I implemented over 90% of their suggestions.

What was the result?

Sure enough, traffic has increased, quality scores have improved even more, and conversions & sales levels have held up well. My account has got even more structure and transparency to it, and that will serve me well in future too.
Now to implement those learnings on some of my other accounts too…
I am always grateful for the advice my account team at Google are willing to impart. They never tire of my daft questions, and always respond courteously and promptly. They’ve been instrumental in the success of my online marketing efforts.

Why am I telling you this?

Let’s face it. Google is a key channel to market for most of us. If you’re serious about growing your dating company, and if you’re committed to expanding your AdWords spend (profitably), establishing a long-term relationship with the guys at Google will be worth its weight in gold.