PubCon Pro session on the mechanics of quality score and why it's important to treat quality score as a health indicator, instead of a KPI. This talk discusses structure, campaign strategy, and a case study of a client who focused on profit/
2. | 2@navahf @wordstream e: nhopkins@wordstream.com #pubcon
Agenda
• Why Do We Panic?
• Mechanics of Quality Score
• What Does Chasing Quality Look Like?
• Case Studies
• Worked in digital marketing since 2008
• Work with agencies and advertisers across
WordStream’s international customer base.
• I’m a proud pet mom and just adopted dog
named HK
About Me:
#PPCPuppy
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We want to be exceptional!
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It Won’t Surprise Anyone To See This Chart of Average CTR by QS
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$0.50
$1.00
$1.50
$2.00
$2.50
$3.00
$3.50
$4.00
$4.50
$5.00
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
CTR Average CPC
63000 US
accounts
in Q2 2018
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But What if We Take Branded Campaigns/Ad Groups
Out of the Picture?
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$0.50
$1.00
$1.50
$2.00
$2.50
$3.00
$3.50
$4.00
$4.50
$5.00
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average CTR and Average CPC for Q2 2018
Average CTR without branded CTR Including Branded
Average CPC without branded Average CPC with branded
• Quality score of 6 beat 7
with cheaper clicks and
higher CTR
• Quality score of 9 beat 10
with higher CTR (flat CPC)
• Quality Score of 1 had
cheaper CPC than QS 2-7
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Conversions and Impression Share follow a similar
trend
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50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average Impression Share & Average Conversions By QS Q2 2018
Impression Share with branded Impression Share without branded
Conversions Without Branded Conversions With Branded
63000 US
accounts
in Q2 2018
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• Higher click through rate (CTR) and
auction prices tend to be lower.
• Perfect keyword to ad, to landing
page relevancy.
• Home pages tend to get the lion
share of development and design
(experience)
Why do Branded
campaigns have such a
strong impact on quality
score?
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Just because you have a good quality score, doesn’t
mean your leads are converting.
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Same Quality Score – drastically different results
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Certain strategic objectives are predisposed to lower
quality scores.
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Let’s break down Quality score into its base elements
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CTR Suffers If We Don’t Rank In The Top 4
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
18.00%
20.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average CTR and Position by Quality Score (Account Level)
General CTR General Average Position
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Historical CTR Can Suffer if There Isn’t Enough Volume
– Some Industries Will Always Struggle Here
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Expanded Text Ads and ETA++ Mean Your Copy Is Due
For A Revisit!
Description text would
have made great
headlines!
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It’s Hard To Build Relevancy If Campaign Structure is
Flawed
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Sort By Impressions to See Where Ad Networks are
Trying to Put Your Money
60% of
impressions
Budget will
only go to
“winners”
instead of
everything
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Broad Keywords Can Drag Your Budget into
Unintended Auctions
162%
More
Than
Average
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If landing pages don’t deliver on your ad’s promise,
you lose relevancy.
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Don’t put prospects/customers to sleep waiting for
your site to load!
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Users shouldn’t have to hunt
through a text-wall to contact
you.
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We live in a mobile first world – don’t build bad
mobile experiences
Wall of Text
Unclickable
Number
Tiny Menu
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If we “solved” for those elements we would have a
healthy account.
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• Too many targets
• Too wide a range in auction price
• Too many objectives
Budgets Underperform
When:
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Most Advertisers Struggle to Achieve 50%+ of
Available Impressions
Based on
2973
accounts
with at least
$.01 in
search
spend
Average
impression
share is 47%
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3% cheaper
& perfect
conversion
rate!
What Auctions Will Give You a Positive ROAS
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Are There Parts of Your
Business That Shouldn’t Get
Access To Budget
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Any Redundancies to Clean Up?
Catching all “logo design”
keywords on mod broad
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CTR and Conversion Rates Tell You If Your Message is
Landing
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All of This is Meaningless if Your Audiences Aren’t
Aligned With Your Value Proposition
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• Balanced in-home dog training
• Board and train programs
• Group classes for specializing dogs
(police, service, etc)
Koru K9 provides:
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• 79 in-home engagements: $2,521
average customer value = $199,159
gross revenue
• 13 Board and Train: $4,037 average
= $52,487.5 gross revenue
($251,646.5 total)
In February they “crushed”
it
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That means we achieved 38X
return on ad spend!
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They obviously wanted to fuel the beast and go for
more leads!
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• 73 in-home engagements: $2,521
average customer value = $184,033
gross revenue
• 37 Board and Train: $4,037 average
= $149,369 gross revenue
($333,402 total)
May’s numbers looked off
until we looked at the
metrics that mattered
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We outperformed Feb by 130%...but not all the
metrics showed that
Feb 2018
• CPA: $25.13
• Search Conversion Rate: 11.62%
• Search CTR: 4.68%
• Average QS: 6.96
May 2018
• CPA: $45.02
• Search Conversion Rate: 5.78%
• Search CTR: 5.51%
• Average QS: 6.89