How to Use Google Analytics Filters to Increase Your AdWords ROI

Posted: January 19, 2009

Google Analytics It’s one thing to have access to data.

It’s another one to know how to make the data usable.

You can use Google Analytics custom reports to segment data in many ways. But how to do you take that segmentation and actually improve your AdWords account?

Here’s one example.

Create a custom filter by city (watch the video below for instructions)
- In the metrics, instead of using bounce rates, use ‘Total goal completions’,‘Goal conversion rate’, and ‘New visitors’.
- Save the custom report.
When you’re viewing the report, under ‘Segments at the top of the screen’ (see picture below) choose ‘Paid Traffic’
You will now be viewing conversion rate and visitor information from paid traffic in each city.
Look for cities with low conversion rates and high traffic.
- For those cities, you should consider creating a geo-targeted campaign to help reach that audience.
- If you can’t make those geographies convert, you can also block those regions in your campaign’s location settings.

You can do a lot of analytics of the data in Google Analytics and Google AdWords. However, analysis paralysis is common. Before you start the analysis, think about the actions you can take from what you learn. If you can’t take any action – should you even bother to do the analysis?

Google Analytics Advanced Segments:

How to create Custom Reports in Google Analytics

Related Information:

« links for 2009-01-17

Case Study Showcases Conventional Wisdom Failing when Search and Content are Not Treated Separately »

Written by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper · Filed Under Analytics, Blog, Google AdWords

Comments

2 Responses to “How to Use Google Analytics Filters to Increase Your AdWords ROI”

Rod Whisner on January 19th, 2009 9:37 pm

HI – great post! Question on the city geo-targeting idea: how would you go about setting that up, especially if you’re already targeting the entire city, or surrounding zips? Based on your great advice, I’m already running 3 search modes (search, content, placement), for specific regions. Are you simply suggesting going with a city name-specific keyword combo, such as “philadelphia fleet management?”

Thanks!

Rod
Brad Geddes aka eWhisper on January 20th, 2009 8:51 am

If you are running 3 campaigns, all national, and you want to reach users in a specific demographic differently, here’s what you can do.

Minimum:
Search campaign
Add the area you want to target separately as an excluded region within you location targeting options for the campaign.

Use the adwords editor and duplicate your search campaign. Change the location targeting to just show ads to the region you excluded in your original search campaign. Change the ad copy to be geographic specific.

You now have 2 search campaigns targeted to different locations.

Maximum:
Do the above steps for your placement and content campaigns.

In your national search campaign (or a new nationally targeted campaign) use geographic keywords and geo appropriate ad copy.

Results:
One set of campaigns that reach everyone in the country except one geography.
One set of campaigns that only reach one geography.

Of course, you could do this for several geographies as well. Are you doing fantastic in in San Fran and always want your ads shown there? Give San Fran its own campaign with a very high budget.

Are you not doing well in LA? Go through the above exercise, and give people in LA more engaging ad copy to see if you can convert that GEO.

This works for both national and local companies. This exercise can be just as effective for eCommerce companies as for a location based company.

Hope that helps,
brad