How A Dead Man Helped Me Double My Adwords Conversions

We’ve all heard of Pareto’s Principle; more commonly known as the 80/20 rule. I remember reading about him in high school, but it wasn’t until a couple months ago that I decided put him to the test to see if old Vilfredo actually knew what he was talking about. Well, I have to say that I was quite impressed.

I decided to use my Adwords account as the test subject for this experiment.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with day-parting, I’ll give you a quick breakdown. In a nutshell, it’s a way of choosing what day and what time during that day you want your ad creatives to be displayed to potential viewers. Google allows you the option of “shutting-off” your ads during certain days and times that you don’t think you’re visitors will be actively searching for your products or service. This gives you the opportunity to maximize your ROI, by spending more of your budget on time slots that you’ve determined to be most effective.

Now with that said, you’re probably wondering how Pareto’s Principle plays into all of this.

Well, this is what I did:

1. I looked at all of the conversions that I had received for the past three months, and started looking for a pattern.

2. I asked myself; “Which 20% of days within the 7 day week, are bringing me 80% of my conversions?” But I didn’t stop there…

3. I then asked myself; “Which 20% of hours within the 24 hour day, are bringing me 80% of my conversions?”

When it was all over, I was amazed. In the past three months, most of my conversions were being generated between 8am-10am on Monday’s and Wednesday’s. I was able to cut out all of those other “wasted” clicks, and reallocate my budget to the most cost effective 20%. I ended up raising my conversion rate from 2% to 4%, and reduced my cost per conversion by 25%.

I haven’t tried this on the keyword level just yet, but you can bet that I’ll be doing that very very soon.

January 23, 2008 | 2 Comments 

Welcome!

Well, my first blog post is obviously the “funny-feeling” ice breaker. I think it’s the idea that I’ll be broadcasting my voice to whomever wishes to listen…pretty weird.

Anyway, I think I’m over it now.

Like I said in my profile, I’ll mainly be using this blog to speak about my professional life and the industry that I work in. Focusing especially on Web Strategy Marketing for the small to medium sized business, but occasionally I might throw in an inspirational/motivational rant just to keep us all on the right path.

So on that note…

I just finished reading a post from Mark Cuban’s blog about treating business like a sport. He said something in there that really grabbed my attention:

“I love the sport of business. I love the competition. I love the fire of it. It’s the feeling of the clock winding down, the ball is in your hands, and if you hit the shot you win…all day, every day.”

For years, I wished that I would get this feeling for something in life. I didn’t care what it was, just as long as I had that fire to be the best. Finally, at 28 I can honestly say that I feel like a player in the sport of business. There is no better feeling.

I think the one thing that got me here, and the best piece of advice I can give to anyone who’s still struggling to get into their game is; figure it out now. Seriously, take a day or a whole week if you have to and write everything down. What do you want out of life? Lock yourself in your room, and don’t leave until you figure it out. Otherwise, you might just end up a bench warmer, not a player.

January 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment