Shiny New Search Funnels

It’s a new world these days when we think of businesses.  If people didn’t trust corporations & the financial industry 10 years ago, what must they think of them now?  The only way to earn back the trust of the masses is by doing business transparently.

If you want to be honest with your customers, you have to keep your business transparent, and Google helps you doing that. It introduced a new feature for AdWords called Search Funnels, helping you both with conversion and also showing to your clients how you spend their budget. As an example, of how you can include this in your business, we have the perfect example for you. Read on the case study:

Comedian Louis CK showed us all this week how much that point drives-home with all of us.  On December 9^th, Louis released a which he produced, promoted, and without utilizing any distribution channels (RIAA and MPAA).  For the cost of $5.00, you could download his comedy special which has no DRM (Digital rights management) or regional restrictions & comes with the freedom of 100% ownership.

“The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?”

In the age of P2P & Torrent networks, would there even be enough people in the world paying $5.00 to cover production costs?  The result was staggering.  In just 12 days, Louis CK’s special grossed over.  That’s over 200,000 paid downloads.

Continuing the transparency with his customers, the comedian released the following statement:

“I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.”

• 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.
• 250k is going back to his staff and the people who work for him on the special and on his show.
• 280k is going to a few different charities
• 220k is going to Louis CK

It’s not often that you feel so good about a person making a million dollars in 12 days without despising them just a little bit.  It’s interesting how our perspective changes when people are open & candid with you.

We have heard from many of our clients over the years who have worked with other Search Marketing Agencies. We have heard how they are neither given ownership nor logins to their own accounts, shown key data metrics from the actual interfaces, nor ever presented with auditable billing information.  Why is this not shared? Is there something to hide?

Engine Ready prides itself on our transparency.  We will walk our clients through each search engine and show how each dime is spent, each refund attained, and when the time comes, transfer ownership and logins for every account we built or managed (if they didn’t have it already).

It’s your money and you have stake in how it is spent.

Google started rolling out a brand new AdWords feature called Search Funnels. It’s still in beta, of course, but we here at Engine Ready have been poking around with it anyway, like all shiny new toys deserve to be poked around with.

So, first things first, what the heck is a Search Funnel, and why the heck is it capitalized?

Well, you know how sometimes people don’t always buy things or sign up on the first click of your ad? Yes? Maybe?

Yes, sometimes they don’t. In fact, sometimes it takes quite a few search queries and clicks before a customer ever gets to the checkout lane or sign-up form. That means, in a nutshell, that your PPC campaigns aren’t necessarily getting all the credit they deserve, especially when a customer does something like click on your ad, check things out, decide what they want, then wait until their paycheck comes in or their wife approves to get to your site organically and buy everything.

This is where the Search Funnel comes in. No longer will your campaigns be undercut by indecisive or vacillating searchers, because AdWords will be keeping tabs on every single click and query that leads to a conversion.

To put it simply: Search Funnel equals conversion path. All roads lead to the conversion, and the Search Funnel is the map.

So how do you check out this nifty new Search Funnel feature?

In your AdWords account, hover over the Reporting tab and click Conversions. Then, on the next screen, hit the Search Funnels option on the left hand side. This brings you to an overview of all your conversions, including stats on the average days, ad clicks, and ad impressions to conversion, among others.

So far, we’re still playing around with all the different data the Search Funnel feature provides, and we suggest that you do the same. While it might not change your entire outlook on conversion reporting in AdWords, it does provide some very valuable insight anyway. And yes, people can still switch computers and clear their cookies, so the system isn’t entirely perfect, but it’s still another step closer to the goal of happier optimizing.