MyLocalWineStore» Wine Adwords

How to Find Local Wine Customers: Local PPC

Bruce — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:34:29 +0000

If you’re a Wine Store in Chicago, you don’t want to spend money on ads being showed to Miami residents. On the other hand if a Miami resident wants to buy a bottle of wine for a friend in Chicago, then you do want them to see your ad so they can buy in Chicago and save on freight costs.

How does this work? Google identifies a search phrase as “local“. It’s the realm of Local PPC and I’ll go through how you do this in Google Adwords by using geo-targeting, ad extensions, keywords, ad copy, and landing pages.

Geographical Targeting

Google lets you target specific areas. They can be defined by country, region, city or even a custom sales area (see Adwords screenshot to the right).

Google limits results to locations in several ways:

if google.com is being used (not .co.uk etc)
if a search query contains a recognizable zip code, city or region e.g. Chicago Wine Store
the IP address, or in Google’s words “when possible, we determine the user’s general physical location based on their device location, which is usually based on their computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address”
Google Search personalization: if you’ve told Google where you live (gmail?) then they’ll use this. You do know Google is tracking your searches right?

Multi-Branch and Franchise businesses

If you are part of a national network, e.g. a franchise, then you’ll want a national office to co-ordinate the respective sales areas. Otherwise you’ll not only increase costs through internet bid competition but you’ll also violate Google guidelines (overlapping areas).

The idea is to have strong national and local campaigns working simultaneously but you need clear rules for each branch.

Ad Extensions

An Ad Extension is where a standard text ad has a little something extra added to it by Google. In the case of the Location Extension it can be your business address “location extension”, or your phone number “phone extension”. It will be either below or above the Display URL.

Location

To turn this on:

go to one of your Adwords campaigns
click on the Extensions tab (see image to the right)
choose the Location extension the grey tab: Location, Phone, Product
you have two choices manual entry or Google Places, I’d choose Google Places.
fill in your email address and password for your Google Places account.

Assuming you have set Places up. To see how to start check out the video below.

I’d give your email address and password for your Google Places account. This will take your Places account address.

Mobile Phone

To enable your phone number to show at the bottom of an ad, just follow the Location instructions above. Instead of Location choose the Phone extension. Manually add in your phone number.

Note this will only show on mobile ads (it is expected to be easier to phone rather than browse and therefore more responsive for a smartphone customer).

Keywords

Geographical targeting doesn’t always work. IP addresses are especially problematic. So I would also add new keyword phrases that attach all the towns and suburbs you service to your keywords e.g. Chicago to Wine Store as in “Wine Store Chicago” or “Wine Store 60611″

Don’t replace the generic ones, just add to your keyword list (advanced accounts should have local keyword phrase in their own Ad Group).

Ad Copy

The usual practices apply with a local twist. The local twists are:

Use your target town in your title (remember it will be bolded if it is part of the search query)
Possibly put your town in the descriptions and Display URL as well – but that may be overdoing it
Adding a phone number will also show you’re local (and appear in computer ads as well as mobile ads).

For example (location extension for computers):

Chicago Wine Store
Burgundy and Bordeaux Experts
Call 312-000-0000 now
11 Test St,Chicago
www.ChicagoTestStore/FrenchWine

Note the Location extension above, “11 Test St, Chicago” is what Google adds in automatically.

Landing Pages

Google will be making an algorithmic assessment as to how well your landing page ties into the search query phrase. As it’s a local query the landing page should also have Chicago Wine Store in the title tag and headline as well as having the store’s physical address and other contact details somewhere prominently.

Lastly, and a bit off topic as it’s not about local PPC, I’d also probably have a landing page with something like “Chicago Wine Store Top Tastings” with a call to action to ring now and book into the next one. Or some such thing that plays on your local expertise.

Facebook

Facebook is well worth using given it’s geographical targeting – but that’s another post.

Tracking

Usually this is done with Google Analytics where you track conversions. Again a topic outside of local PPC. One specific local tactic is to set up a new phone number (e.g. redirect a Skype number) so you can track how well your phone based ads are doing (as people are less likely to click).

Google

Google dominates the internet advertising market. Bing (Microsoft and now Yahoo) has about 10-20% market share, so they are not worth setting up in a Local PPC campaign at first. Maybe later.

When I refer to PPC I really mean Google “Adwords” which is how Google brands it’s PPC advertising product.

Note this was post was correct as at 22 Feb 2011, Google changes the rules reasonably often so best to check Adwords Help if you’re reading this, say, 6 months from now.

Know of a successful local PPC wine campaign? Please comment below.

Wine Adwords: Carefully Add Some More Keywords

Bruce — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:40:22 +0000

Adding more keywords to your Wine Adwords ad group

This is one of a series of posts for wine retailers wanting to have a go at Adwords for the first time. This is what we’ve done so far:

We created an Adwords account then launched a text ad.
We looked at the difference in broad, phrase and exact match keywords.
We analyzed each part of the ad copy: Headline, Description lines, URLs.
We set up a test of two versions of the ad copy.

Now we’re going to start adding some keywords to our adwords keyword list

Back in 2008 Google advertisers used many different tools from companies other than Google to come up with a great keyword list. In 2009 Google got its act together and it’s keyword tool now gives excellent keyword ideas for free. What’s more it’s based on an accurate database of keyword searches whereas the other tools were not.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Choose your market: Results are tailored to we’ll use English, US
Select Descriptive words or phrases
Type: napa valley merlot
Check Use synonyms
and click on the button Get keyword ideas

Which shows the following fascinating wine adwords data (I’m such a geek) by column and sorted by relevance

The keywords (that Google’s database of user search queries shows) are related to napa valley merlot
The amount of advertiser competition for these keywords
The local search volume for each keyword, in our case for English & US
The global search volume for each keyword i.e. all countries and all languages
A match type selector to see the difference between match types.

Here’s what I see in these wine adwords keyword ideas

That napa valley merlot has a lot of search and competition
That napa valley vineyards merlot has more than 1000 searches per month (Dec-09) and so is a strong second keyword phrase
Beringer and Blackstone are the most searched for brands on the US side
Duckhorn, Robert Mondavi and Sterling are popular on the global side
There are some other brands that may or may not be popular which I should probably include
That as per normal consumers have different ways of constructing their wine search query (e.g. sometimes with the year at the start, or end, or middle, or not all).

That Duckhorn, Robert Mondavi and Sterling are popular on the global side but not local seems odd. Why wouldn’t they also be equally popular in the States? I’m going to make a judgement call and say that they are and Google’s software has thrown up some nonsense. I have no reason to believe that other than my personal judgement , and such is the world of making keyword choices.

I would suggest a beginner advertiser do the following

If they stock any of the brands listed then add them to their keyword list by going to Adwords > Campaign > Keywords tab > then click on the button + Add Keywords.
Also add napa valley vineyards merlot
Add them for all match types: broad, phrase and exact
Look at your bestselling Napa Valley Merlots and add those as well.

If you’re a little more advanced then

Create three more ad groups and put all the broad match brands in a Napa Valley Merlot Broad Match as group, all the phrase match in it’s own Phrase Match group and likewise for Exact match.
Keep Napa Valley Merlot in its own ad group with napa valley vineyards merlot.

This way you can track what group gives you more clicks and more sales. Then you adjust your bid prices and the time you spend on the particular ad group based off its importance (80/20 rule).

Do not add merlot or the other regional merlots to this ad group

We want it tightly focused on this theme. In particular we want to use the headline Napa Valley Merlot.

There is much more you can do but that’s the fundamentals.

Was that clear? What would you recommend or alter?

Wine Adwords: Increase Click Through Rate

Bruce — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:04:46 +0000

How to steadily improve your wine adwords results through testing

This is one of a series of posts for wine retailers wanting to have a go at wine Adwords for the first time. This is what we’ve done so far:

We created an Adwords account then launched a text ad.
We looked at the difference in broad, phrase and exact match keywords.
We looked at each part of the ad copy: Headline, Description lines, URLs.

Here’s our ad:

Napa Valley Merlot
Favorites In-Stock and Easily Found
Buy from the Widest Range of Merlot
www.TonysWineStore.com/Merlot

Let’s do some testing to increase our click through rate

We’ll create a second ad that tests which headline drives more clicks and sales conversions. That ad will have one simple addition to the headline, the word “Boutique” as follows:

Boutique Napa Valley Merlot
Favorites In-Stock and Easily Found
Buy from the Widest Range of Merlot
www.TonysWineStore.com/Merlot

(Remember the Destination URL should go to the Napa Valley Merlot page not the home page.)

We do this by clicking on the campaign we created in our Google Adwords account. Then the Ads tab > New Ad > Text Ad.

Notice the following

We have not changed anything else. If we did then we would be unable to isolate the reason for any difference in the test (an ‘A/B split test’).
We changed the headline because that’s the most powerful part of the ad copy.

I may have chosen ‘Boutique’ because I might have noticed that my best customers were wine enthusiasts who like to explore little known boutique wines (actually they exist see this post about Experimenters).

I also do the following crucial step

I click on my campaign. Then Settings > Advanced Settings (at the bottom), expand Ad delivery: Ad rotation, frequency capping and edit Ad rotation.

Change this to Rotate: Show ads more evenly and Save. (Ignore the yellow warning).

What we’ve just done is to get Google to show each ad evenly over time so we can choose which is the best ad – not Google.

Depending on your traffic you can then check to see which ad works the best by comparing the click through rates (CTR). Once you have found the winner, you delete the loser and create a new ad to test something else.

Get large CTR increases over a year by getting small increases over a month

The amount of traffic depends on you. My rule of thumb is at least 200 impressions for each ad . This sacrifices certainty of the test vs speed of testing. I want to quickly improve each part of my sales process, including the ad copy, so I can get larger overall increases over a 12 month period.

Large companies with lots of traffic may wait for 200 clicks or even 200 conversions (sales) before making a decision. They have the luxury of traffic which a small business does not.

What would you test and how often do you wait?

Wine Adwords: the Ad Copy

Bruce — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:25:47 +0000

Writing your wine adwords ad copy

This is one of a series of posts for wine retailers wanting to have a go at Adwords for the first time.

Quick recap form the previous posts

We called the campaign Varietal
Make the Ad Group Name: Napa Valley Merlot
Headline will be: Napa Valley Merlot
Description line 1: Wide Range, Great Prices!
Description line 2: Your Merlot Expert
Display URL: www.YourWebsiteHere.com
Destination URL (http://): www.YourWebsiteHere.com/NapaValleyMerlotCategoryPage.html
In Keywords put the following on separate lines: Napa Valley Merlot then “Napa Valley Merlot” then [Napa Valley Merlot]

We outlined the difference in broad, phrase and exact matches.

Now we’re going to look at the text of the ad, or it’s ‘copy’.

Headline

I would always recommend you have your keyword in the headline as per above.
It’s what people are searching for and their query words will be in bold.
Some people believe that headlines can have 50%++ influence as to whether your desired action results, not just for Adwords but also landing pages and sales letters as well.
Don’t put your store name in there, it’s not about you – rather it’s about the consumer solving their search problem.

Description

My example above is pretty bland to be honest it needs the following:

A call to action e.g. buy or order now.
Something that is relevant to our target market, though Your Merlot Expert isn’t too bad e.g. line 1: Widest Range of Napa Valley, line 2: Merlot in Texas. might be better.
Different consumers want different things – indeed a good part of my career was working this out. For example why does someone drive a Mercedes: usually Status. Why does an aspiring businessman drink a Rousseau Chambertin Grand Cru at a restaurant when he doesn’t know much about wine: the same reason, Status. See my four posts on Different Wine Consumers for more detail about wine consumers.
Expressed in the feature – benefit approach e.g. line1: Widest Range of Merlot, line 2: Favorites Easily Found.

Display URL

Usually www.YourWebsiteHere.com but sometimes relevant subdomains like www.YourWebsiteHere.com/Merlot can work well.

Destination URL

It’s one thing getting people to click on your ad, it’s quite another to get that converted into sales.
The best start to this process is having a relevant and congruent landing page.
In our case the URL would go to a Napa Valley Merlot page, or at least a Merlot Page but not the home page!
Your searcher is trying to buy a particular wine, make it as easy as possible rather than forcing him to start his search again from the home page.

Landing pages, consumer research, testing different ad copy, testing landing page copy or ‘optimization’ are also important and I’ll cover later.

What ad would you write?

Wine Adwords: Choose your Keywords

Bruce — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:44:45 +0000

In this post we’ll go through wine adwords Keywords

In particular the difference between broad match, phrase match and exact match.

This is one of a series of posts for wine retailers wanting to have a go at Adwords for the first time.

Quick recap form the previous wine adwords post

We called the campaign Varietal,
Make the Ad Group Name: Napa Valley Merlot
Headline will be: Napa Valley Merlot
Description line 1: Wide Range, Great Prices!
Description line 2: Your Merlot Expert
Display URL: www.YourWebsiteHere.com
Destination URL (http://): www.YourWebsiteHere.com/NapaValleyMerlotCategoryPage.html
In Keywords put the following on separate lines: Napa Valley Merlot then “Napa Valley Merlot” then [Napa Valley Merlot]
Ignore Placements
In Add Group Default Bids make the bid between $0.50 and $1.50. The higher it is the quicker you’ll see results. I don’t necessarily recommend these as default bid prices.

So in your keyword box you would have:
napa valley merlot
“napa valley merlot”
[napa valley merlot]

Match type: “” denotes phrase match, [] denotes exact match, and no punctuation denotes broad match. Google ignores case.

Exact match

is easy to understand, if someone types in the exact keywords

Napa Valley Merlot

then you have told Google you would like to bid for that search, and if your bid (and quality score) are high enough, then you will be shown on the right hand side under “sponsored links”.

I’ll go through Quality Score in another post, it’s a little tricky to understand (but very important). Quality Score will decide if you’re on the first page and in what ad position.

Phrase match

is when someone types in,

Napa Valley Andreas Vineyard Merlot
Napa Valley Merlot
Napa North Valley Cabernet Merlot

It will not show for

Merlot Napa Valley
Napa Valley
Napa Merlot

Google will show your ads if your a search query has all your keywords in the right order but with other words perhaps between your keywords.

Broad match

has been very controversial in PPC circles. But is becoming much more acceptable as Google’s technology get’s better. Here’s what Google says,

your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained either or both words in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations.

So it will show for

Merlot Napa Valley
Napa Valley
Napa Merlot

and all the other examples above.

The controversy is synonyms, and other relevant variations.

This could be good if someone was looking for Napa Valley Cabernet. That’s a pretty close match. Or Nappa Valley Merlot, or Californian Merlot. So far so good.

But sometimes Google will also extend it to searches such as Sonoma Pinot Noir or even Marlborough Wine. Not so good.

What you do nowadays is use Broad match but run a report called Search Query Performance Report , which tells you what the search queries were for each click you got. You then select irrelevant keywords to tell Google to exclude these in the future.

In effect you are providing boundaries to Google’s search algorithms. And that is becoming the latest way to do search but is far too advanced for this beginner series.

My recommendation for a beginner of wine adwords

Use all three types but every 2-3 days check your Search Query Performance Report to exclude irrelevant keywords.

Any questions so far?