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Three Ways Google Should Improve Adwords

Google Adwords is a great advertising solution. It's (relatively) affordable, measurable, and very fast to make changes to optimize campaigns and programs.

Beyond our own marketing programs at Ingeniux, we often work with customers who want to use Ingeniux CMS to maximize return on advertising by better managing SEO, Paid Search, and Landing Pages (designated web pages that provide ad-specific content and calls-to-action). These are always fun projects that combine creativity, software, and analytics.

Google Adwords provides a lot of features for optimizing ads. But I think Adwords can be a lot better. For those in Mountain View (or Seattle) who are listening, here are a few friendly suggestions:

B2B Ad Targeting by Vertical Market and Business Size

For B2B (business-to-business) advertising it would be highly valuable to target Adwords at businesses within a certain revenue / employee size range or vertical market. This could be as simple as filtering by TLD, for instance only sites with .edu to target education or .org to target non-profit. But more specifically filtering by valid referring IP address. All of the data is readily available in the referrer IP and other sources. Google could easily segement ads by company characteristics such as SIC codes, employee size, D&B, and revenue range. Most B2B advertisers would pay a premium to target their ads at qualified prospects and it could change B2B marketing on the web.

I can see how privacy advocates may decry this practice, although there is nothing personally identifiable. Or that perhaps dynamic filtering by IP would be too expensive at a resource level, but geo-filtering is already supported. My guess is given Google's capabilities these issues can be addressed. Ultimately I think that B2B advertisers will demand IP-based B2B ad targeting and Google will lead the way.

Post-Click Conversion and Landing Page Management

Post-click conversion is equal to if not more important than the ad campaign. As a Google Web Optimizer Technology Partner we have seen firsthand the power in optimizing landing pages. For advertisers that can afford a good Web CMS or can invest in a dedicated post-click conversion solution like Ion Interactive it is easy to manage landing pages. However, many advertisers lack the IT support to set up even basic landing pages and provide services like forms - not to mention more complex services like CRM integration.

Google should offer basic Landing Page management that provides simple forms processing, automatically integrates Website Optimizer and analytics, and uses customizable themes to apply branding. With this feature you could manage all of your landing pages right in the Adwords console, further simplifying landing page management and tracking.

Of course I can see why Google would be weary or moving into post-click services, especially around web pages. Google Web Page Creator never really panned out and has recently been sunset'ed - but landing pages are arguably part of the ad and most organizations manage landing pages separate from the content on their marketing website. Google should add basic capabilities for integrated landing page management to improve Adwords conversions and ROI.

Integrated Email Marketing

You have to scratch your head and wonder why Google has not entered email marketing. Email marketing is a part of any modern advertising program. It would be a simple enough technology to support. If they decided to go the buy route there are dozens of email marketing platforms. With Ingeniux CMS we have even built our own integrated email marketing solution. For Google, the ROI of just getting marketers into Adwords more often would justify the solution.

However, the main reason I think email marketing should become part of Adwords is analytics. Google Analytics is already part of the Adwords platform. It will tell you which organizations are visiting your website and help measure conversion - but it will not tell you which people are visiting your site.

Recently "Sales 2.0" email marketing firms like Genius.com have started providing proxy services that track which recipient of your email visited your website and can even notify you when they visit. If Google Adwords combined web and email marketing analytics with an integrated ad and email platform it would be very compelling - and provide a complete solution for creating, deploying and measuring marketing programs.

Google Adwords is clearly the leading online advertising platform. But there is a lot more Google can do to provide better advertiser value. As the cost of clicks continue to rise and post-click conversion becomes more complex, it would wise of Google to continue to improve the Adwords platform with better targeting and wider spectrum of online marketing services.

Posted by David Hillis at 4:15 pm