In paid search there are a lot of rough Adwords accounts out there. You've seen them I'm sure. I know I've worked on them. We get brought in to assess the situation and make some big decisions around whether an account has potential or whether it would be better just to start fresh. This is one of the most common questions we get asked -- how am I doing?
I'm always looking for tools that can help advertisers answer that question. Usually I have to log in and pull reports myself to get to a point where I feel comfortable enough to jump on a phone call and give my opinion. Needless to say that ends up costing time on both ends which of course costs money on both ends.
Recently, Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream, dropped by the Moz offices and a few of us Mozzers were able to explore what their team has been working on. We checked out Wordstream's PPC Grader pretty closely and I thought it would be worth running through what we found. I can honestly say it offers us paid marketers a unique snapshot that can be really useful when first getting started with a company or client.
Their Google Adwords PPC Grader tool (report w/ some blurring pictured above) runs by looking at your AdWords account and grading against averages and best practices they've seen from analyzing thousands of other AdWords accounts. To help show off some of the tool's benefits I am going to go ahead and share some actual data (and screenshots) of the tool's analysis of our Google AdWords account.
The big deliverable from the tool is a lengthy report page that shows a bunch of data about your account, but the first number you see is a rough "score" comparing your AdWords campaign's performance to other accounts in your spend range. It's worth pointing out that a concern we had with the PPC grader was the "spend range" component. The range SEOmoz fell into was "$15,000 to $99,999,999.00." Our monthly budgets run on the low end of that but we are compared to huge companies with huge branding budgets. You can see where that might affect some data. With that said, the tool is still a great way of showing a client or company the potential PPC has as a channel. It makes the case that with time and resources there is a profitable place to grow this account to.
Below are the sections included in the PPC Grader (as you can see this is some seriously awesome data!):
- Account Diagnostics - An overall score and rundown of your account compenents & counts.
- Wasted Spend - A look at your negative keyword list and projected spend waste calculation.
- Quality Score - A graph of your quality score distribution, which is often overlooked by too many paid search marketers.
- Impression Share - A share of voice view that helps you understand how often your ads are appearing for relevant searches.
- Click Thru Rate - Analysis to help you compare your CTR to competitors in your spend range for both Search and Display networks.
- Account Activity - A snapshot to help you better understand the volume of recent activity in your account and comparitive views.
- Long-Tail Keyword Optimization - Helps you understand if you are holding your own in the long-tail arena, which holds huge potential for PPC-ers.
- Text-Ad Optimization - Quick glance of how many text ads you have running, and how many per ad group to better understand how tailored your ads are.
- Landing-Page Optimization - Helps you see how many this account has, and how that compares to your competitors in this spend range.
- PPC Best Practices - A pass/fail audit whichs helps you quickly identify any low hanging fruit to go after on the best practices list.
- Overall Grade - A reminder of your account grade and performance summary.
Phewwww. That sure is a lot huh? This snapshot is an epic first view for paid search marketers. I'm not going to go through each of the sections in depth because that would take forever, but I thought I'd run through some of my favorite pieces to start. After that I'm going to mention some other feedback and feature requests we have. Let's start off with what we think is really awesome...
PRO #1 : Depth & Breadth of Summary
A report with both such a broad view and such a deep view is really hard (if not impossible) to come by in PPC. One of my favorite sections of the Wordstream PPC Grader is the PPC Best Practices checklist. It gives you a top-level view of how well you are doing. Below you can see what came back when we ran the SEOmoz account through the Grader:
You can see we are doing well on every section, except for "Modified Broad Match Type." This is 100% accurate, we have yet to play around too significantly with match type strategy at SEOmoz, and have instead focused on long-tail expansion. This is a great reminder that we are leaving an excellent option on the table, and we can better prioritize match type expansion in 2012.
PRO #2: Impression Share View
I love this section. This view helps us understand how often our SEOmoz ads are showing up. We can see if our budgets are where they need to be and if our ad ranks are sitting in the right places. This can help with a really common conversation paid marketers have with advertisers around budget. Most times advertisers want to improve PPC performance without increasing budgets. While optimization should always be happening, there is a time and place for budget changes. Bid management and budget management need to be revisited often. Wordstream's Grader helps make the case for this.
.gif)
You can see that SEOmoz scored in the 58th percentile which is pretty decent, but there is still so much more we can be doing. This sort of view helps us make a case for more budget, as well as helps us prioritize some ad position management internally. This means we need to set aside more time to work on quality scores, and targeting. A view like this can tell us so much.
Okay those are just a couple of the PROs we found by running the Wordstream Grader for the SEOmoz PPC account. I do want to run through some of the concerns we had, and lace in some feature requests the team over here would love to see.
Concern #1: Competitive Spend Range
I mentioned this above but since the competitive bucket we are in is so large, we really need to take this audit with a grain of salt. The budget spend of an account is indictive of big differences in how an account will perform, and be managed. Let's look at an example:
If we were to just glance at our CTR summary without considering the above limitation we would think we are doing horribly on our CTRs. It shows us performing at the 10th percentile. Yuckkk. If you take a closer look though, we are at a 1.39% CTR and our "competitors" at a 5.34%. The baseline for CTR success is a 1.00%, so we feel pretty great about out 1.39%. Seeing that our competitors have a 5.34% makes it quite clear we are being bucketed with advertisers who have large (in the millions) budgets who likely bid on brand terms (in the hundreds). We only have a few brand terms and those perform at the 4.00% level.
Feature Request #1:
It is absolutely awesome that Wordstream has collected these audits across thousands of advertisers, but we would love to see a budget drop-down filter that had more bucket ranges to help us better categorize ourself appropriately. As a side request to this it might be cool to see some place where we as advertisers can add in "how long this account has been active" to help further categorize the advertisers so the comparison carries more description. It would be cool to know if that average lifetime of the accounts I'm being compared to is 6 months, or 3 years, you know? Just some ideas.
Concern #2: Industry Non-Specific Data
Just like in SEO, PPC performance varies greatly depending on both your industry and your site's purpose. By not having an "industry or site type" filter in the Grader, all of my data is compared to advertisers with such different goals, resources, etc. Below is a great example of how this can hurt the data cause:
Knowing how I am doing on my landing page optimization (LPO) is key. I really appreciate Wordstream building this in, as I believe it's one of the most valuable pieces to PPC success. Unfortunately given the data is not industry specific, and the competitive spend range issues, this data isn't very useful for me.
It shows me with 23 landing pages, and my competitor having 543 landing pages. Having over 20 unique landing pages given our limited PPC spend, and the size of our keyword list is pretty good. That is the score I'd love for them to show me somehow, like a "size of account" to "#of landing pages" ratio. By showing me that my competitor has over 500 pages built out, its safe to assume I am being compared to an ecommerce site, or at the least a site with big budgets and lots of resources (most likely a CMS that has a PPC template system in place). I can't really gauge from this if I am doing well in LPO.
Feature Request #2:
I'd love the ability to bucket my site into an industry like a "software" or "tech" bucket, and then have them show me how I am doing compared to them specifically. At the very least I'd like to be compared to other SaaS companies, or B2B companies. I'd also love a score that shows me something like -- a "size of account" to "#of landing pages" ratio for my account and then shows me industry standard. I am really impresses that Wordstream has included LPO in their audit, but I'd love to see them push this a bit further.
So What's the Good Word?
While the tool has a few caveats, I think it's safe to say the Wordstream Grader is the best of it's kind out there. I haven't highlighted all the features of the tool here (as it would make this a monster of an unreadably long blog post), and I would encourage anyone with a Google AdWords account to give it a spin, particularly since it's totally free. The report is great for quick snapshorts, and benchmarking your progress. I'd love to hear your experiences with the tool and feedback - I'm a fan of the folks at Wordstream and of the metrics-comparison methodology in general. So feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Sidenote: Wordstream also has a great keyword research tool and Rand is planning to do a follow-up post at some point, so stay tuned for that! He'll be digging into their keyword research tool to gauge its value for SEO folks. If you've got any thoughts, experiences or suggestions there, that's also much appreciated.
Looks neat, but i would be weary giving out my client's adword access...
+1 for your good call... we don't know how secure the program or company's records are!
Yep, that was my first thought as well. A standalone software would be great. Right now it's a good way for Wordstream to get leads & possibly data? ;-)
Agreed, and lets not forget that billing and credit card information is stored in adwords as well. I would love to see an option where you could export your campaings/adgroups to a CSV and then you can import the data to be analized.
Hi all! As the product manager in for the Grader I wanted to chime in and say that I 100% agree that security is a top concern. For that reason we only retain credentials for a few seconds while we download the necessary reports and then delete them. To take things one step further we're currently considering implementing OAuth in the Grader so that you would essentially log into Google and grant us access to a few of your reports.
We definitely want the focus to be on how your PPC account is doing without having to worry about the security of your data. Would a solution like OAuth do the trick?
-Adam Shain
Product Manager, WordStream
Hello,We're considering using your tool but our ownership group still has some security concerns and with the size spend that we're involved in we would feel more comfortable with a cvs export/import. Is the implementation of OAuth access in the Grader on a report level available at this time?
Thank you,
Milosz
yeah we used this for our account and got 4 sales calls from wordstream as a result. so if you want wordstream poaching all your prospective clients..
Your comment is interesting because I called them once to talk about using their software with one of my clients. When I told the sales person that I was going to keep managing their account I could tell that he wasn't interested in talking more. He actually never called me back after that conversation.
Honestly I don't find this tool that useful, it is just too broad and generic in it's approach. I think you are better off using a checklist and using Adwords own "Analyze Competition" data.
Hey Carlos! I hear ya on the "too broad" issue. I actually just had an email exchange with the WordStream team and they said they have some of the suggestions above already in the pipeline. Hopefully they can get some more filters in there that help us better categorize our sites for more accurate comparison data.
I found Wordstream to be one of the worst companies to work with. I disagree with the (paid to write? with nice backlinks?) blog poster with the suggestion, ya take is for a spin its free (trial).
Wordstream trial is not complete although they say it is. To try out any tool, one should test it in the real world by uploading it to the account. Wordstream KNOWs that if someone really gives it a (Real) spin, they will not buy it! Therefore they restrict your ability to put it to test by not allowing you to upload it to your adwords account.
After one day of use, I realized this tool takes far more time than they say it does, try 20 hours not 20 minutes a week. Most of the wasted time is for writing creative ads for suggested keywords that get little or no traffic.
Wortstream also claims to be able to suggest more keywords than actually exist. Its kind of like an SEO company promissing to submit your website to 10,000 search engines, which of course do not exist.
@ Gear Head,
I disagree with your review of the tool as a sniper scope. I think that the tool lacks the sniper ability greatly. I would probably recommend better tools out there like Spyfu.
@Carlos
I agree with you on that and hope Wordsteam with do somthing about it and QUICK!
Unfortunately Google is way ahead of the game on that with the new Adwords adgroup suggestions. Best of all, one dont have to shellout $399 and sign long term contracts you cant even get out after giving the tool a spin for 1 day!
I would give this tool 2 stars out of 5, in terms of value. I can give no more than 0 stars for after purchase customer service. I felt the trainer was unprofessional and lacked Adwords knowledge. 1 star for the trainers, their knowledge of Adwords.
Sales people are really persistent and good (at selling), so I strongly suggest not to talk to one.
By the way, someone asked how much it was after the trial. Plans start at $399/month and go up to $1,199, depending on the amount of advertising you do.
$399 being the lowest package is a bit ridiculous. It may be a great tool but many business don't spend that much on Adwords in the first place.
I find it a bit shiesty that they asked for all my information and passwords which I provided, and only after getting that informed me I had to fill out more information and sign up for a "free trial" to see the results.
@JoannaLord it looks like a solid tool, How much does it cost? (after the free trial)
I have had the exact same caveats that Joanna lists here since this tool has been making the rounds. The UI and report structure are top class. Honestly, I can't believe it should be given a thumbs up until you can filter by industry. The differences by industry are so great that the information is useless without that context. Industry outweighs budget size for me but that is an important tool as well.
I think it will be extremely hard for Wordstream to get accurate filtering by industry but if they do then this tool would be worthwhile.
Hi Jedi! Thanks for the kind words on UI and structure.
Regarding the industry analysis, we're working on this right now so hopefully we'll earn your thumbs up soon.
It's not easy but providing some insight into industry performance (and how individual advertisers stack up) should provide a lot of value and take the Grader to a whole new level!
-Adam Shain
Product Manager, WordStream
Took the test, got 60% and now I am out and optimizing my (very very tiny) compaign. Thanks for the insight.
Fascinating. I got lumped in to the same section as you, maybe they like to target to smaller monthly spends? I'm testing out the free trial though so thanks for the heads up.
Joanna,
Thanks for writing this article, this is something I can really use to gauage just how well we are doing on PPC.
I just ran the test and scored a 72% grading. I'm in the lower end of the $500 - $5,000 spend range.
Liked some of the comments in the section, but some came accross as too generic - "could do better" so to speak.
Overall I liked the infomation provided and will certainly be digging deeper into the suggestions.
I plan on keeping a watch on our performance with this tool and will follow some of their suggestions and see if they really do make a difference to our scores and more importantly conversions.
One thing I was dissapointed with was everytime you click on a "Learn More" button you had to sign-up for a trail. Would be nice if they at least offered a few suggestions gratis. I understand the purpose of why the developed the tool - to aquire customers, but I for one am leary of signing-up at this point.
I don't spend much time in PPC but still like to know about it. Thanks for the heads up on this tool.
Unfortunately now having been with Wordstream for almost a year, we are seeing terrible results, horrible service, massive time-frames before things get done, and a very slow system. Everything is flash based which has just been a nightmare for our team to work in. With Google's own platform improvements, it almost completely negates the entire Wordstream platform. They do have a few cool research tools that were helpful but even now we have free alternatives that put theirs to shame. They do a great job at presenting this, but once your in your hooked up to a machine that should not be used to optimize campaigns and manage them. Only if you plan on seeing minimal results compared to manually optimizing campaigs through Google's own platforms. All in all my Wordstream review is not a very good one through myself and my teams experience this last year with them. They may of been awesome years ago, but now they are obsolete.
I agree with you Brandon. I foolishly signed the Wordstream contract that locks you in for a year. After 5 months of really working with the tool I contacted them requesting early termination of the contract because my company was losing money with the software. I even sat through several weeks of calls with their Adwords Certified rep and implemented the recommendations. After submitting the cancellation request, they offered me 2 months at a discount with two 1-on-1 calls, then back to full price until the contract ends. I've already gone back to rebuilding my account in Adwords and won't be touching the software again, but they continue to pull $300 from my account each month. It is a very expensive lesson learned. If the software was so great the contract would not be so strict.
I was recently approached by WordStream this week. I know these comments are older, but would like to know if they've changed/updated for the better. Any suggestions and recommendations?
Great tool for PPC Management
Conversion is the driving force!!
Cool tool, thanks for the share. I ran several campaigns thru and um... I need to get back to work. Bye.
Might give this tool a spin.
Thx for sharing, gonna give it a try right away to see what's the outcome of some campaigns I worked on past months :)
Great insight, love it!
Looks like a cool PPC tool... may be worth a deeper look.
Totally appreciate the post and your review. Some cool stuff. If it had an auto optimizer (between ads/landing pages) that would be huge. Looks good for a checkup and quick access to competitor comparison. But for $999 per month, I may rather use that 999 towards actual ad spend and manually do the work. To chose 1,199 to test it for a month or two, seems too costly to me.
The tool looks interesting, and it's about time they made something that gives an overall health check of a PPC campaign. Running ours as I type here and looking forward to seeing how the tool says we measure up. Definitely would love to see more stuff like this in the near future.
Right? Isn't it bizarre there aren't more tools like this? I am guessing its the account credential requirement piece. I know there is a lot of tweaks that WordStream can do, but I think they are moving in the right direction. I'm excited to see what they come up with.
Its not bizarre their aren't more tools "Eactly Like" Wordsteam, because their is no need for such a product (Google adgroups more than replaces 90% of the product :). If it werent for pushy sales people I seriously doubt if anyone would buy it on their own.
I know you wrote this awhile ago, but are you aware of adCore's new keyword tool? adCore's key tool automatically tells you what keywords Google would recommend to add and after importing a campaign from Google, the tool gives you the actual terms users searched. adCore also lets you "clean" your selected keywords and multiply a list of keywords by a set.
adCore's keyword tool is definitely worth a look.
Looks like a great tool. My PPC definately needs some attention.
Its a nice gimmick to get leads for wordstream- I would like to see a tool that grades a account structure that is the biggest crime in ppc today based on what i see
adCore's got a really neat new keyword tool. It automatically tells you what keywords Google would recommend to add and after importing a campaign from Google, the tool gives you the actual terms users searched. adCore also lets you "clean" your selected keywords and multiply a list of keywords by a set.
adCore's keyword tool is definitely worth a look.
Great tool - I've just started using the 7 day free trial version to see what it can do - so far the most useful thing is the competition tool, but there are quite a few tools with that included. It does feel very slick though and it's great that you don't have to put your credit card details in to try it out.
I love the idea of this tool but I wish there was a standalone utility that I could download and run from my desktop. I hate the idea of any webpage (no matter if they are supported by SEOmoz of not) having access to my analytics data. That being said this tool is a fantastic idea! Due to the large variants of adwords my company uses I spend 40% of my time on adwords every week at the least. This tool is like having an adwords sniper scope and that's fantastic!
"Adwords sniper scope" ... uhm awesome. Wish I had been that creative when I wrote this :) I know the access issue is a hurdle, but I do think that WordStream is onto something like you have said. Let's see where they can go with it :)
Wow! That's really a great tool to beat your competitors in PPC. I already try it and happy that's its free tool.
I got a 97% along with a "you rock". I consider myself an Adwords Ninja. I got my Adwords certification here: https://support.google.com/adwords/certification/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs I recommend that people learn this in detail and use negetive keywords! Some of my campaigns have a longer negative keyword list than regular keywords. Also, I don't care about CTR because it's all about conversions. My adwords conversion rates are a whopping 20.59% for December. My CTR was 6.54%
It's all about conversions!
Congratulations. You are right it's all about conversion and subsequently bottom line!
Although a shameless :) self promotion, you sure have put the clickthrough rates at 6%+ and conversions at 20%+ at proper perspective.
No automation software that claims to manage an adwords account in 20 minutes can do this. This surely is achieved by professionals, by writing hundreads of creative ads (and constant testing) for hyper relevant keywords.
In other words take your keywords and go deep instead of broad. Wordstream claims to have 1 billion keywords (REALLY?, thats a million times more words than do exist in the English language), that will dilute your relevancy and waste your money and drop your Adwords scores because of poor performing ads, that NO ONE has time to write when you have a gazzilion ad groups.
At the end of the day the best grader is your "Adwords quality score". No one needs a grader. Wordstream is capitalizing on Google slap, which is a defect within Google. Sooner or later, Google will realize that they need to stop being arrogant (they already got kicked out of China, the next India?). When they do, stupid tools like Wordstream will be in the trash can.