Once you run a SEM campaign for a set amount of time, data will be collected. It is important to therefore conduct regular data analysis, to optimize the promotion of your brand during your SEM campaign period. In this article, we will share 9 data analysis methods for SEM promotion in China, ranging from impression analysis, ad spending analysis, to search term analysis.

1. Impression Analysis 

• Export the data report from the search promotion backdrop. Sort through the terms in the data report by display volume, from highest to lowest.

• Identify the keywords with low or no display. Improve the display of these keywords by adjusting the bidding price, matching level, geographic area, and time allocation.

• Determine if the top 10-50 keywords are highly relevant to your business promotion, products, and so on and whether the keywords are high conversion keywords. Ensure the keywords are consistent with your promotion content and conversion.

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2. Click Analysis

• Identify which keywords have been shown but not clicked in the previous month. If your SEM ranking and creative is not impactful, those keywords which have not been clicked can be categorized as not beneficial for advertising, and it might be prudent to consider suspending or deleting them.

• Determine which keywords have a low click-through rate (CTR), as a low CTR indicates a low-quality keyword. Therefore, to increase the CTR of a keyword, it is imperative to enhance its corresponding ad creative, keyword ranking, etc., to increase your keyword CTR.

3. Ad Spending Analysis 

To illustrate how ad spending analysis can advance your SEM marketing campaign in China, consider the photo below:

As highlighted in red, 20% of total keywords account for over 80% of total ad consumption. Therefore, to utilize ad spending analysis in your SEM campaign, it is important to begin by identifying those keywords that accumulatively account for the highest ad consumption. Then, you can conduct the following analyses: 

• Analyze if the identified keywords bring conversion and are proportional to the ad consumption;

• Examine if these keywords are related to your promotional content and if they are suitable keywords for promotion.

If neither of the above parameters are applicable, then the proportion of advertising consumption for the identified keywords should be reduced. Instead, the budget should be reallocated to keywords that are more relevant to your business and products.

4. CPC analysis 

• Identify those keywords with high click-through rates (CTR), whereby its cost-per-click (CPC) exceeds the average click-through price. Monitor these keywords, with a focus on its corresponding conversion and advertising costs.

• If the ad cost exceeds your expectation, optimize the related keywords, and reduce the conversion cost by lowering the click price of these words. We suggest that this can be achieved in three ways:

• Slightly lower your bid for keywords exceeding the expected price at a ratio of 5% to 10%, to prevent major adjustments from affecting your promotion, and in extension, causing fluctuation in results;

• Improve the quality of your keywords;

• Include optimization to help improve the estimated CTR of your system, the relevance of your ad creative, and your experience of the landing page.

5. Geographic Analysis 

• Compare and analyze all important data such as display, click, conversion and advertising cost of each region to find out which region(s) customers are concentrated in, and whether they match with the main geographical areas as promoted by the company.

• If there are regions with better customer quality, consider shifting resources to these high-quality regions, and adjust your business focus to these regions instead.

6. Time Analysis

• Analyze important data such as display, click, ad cost consumption, conversion volume, conversion cost, etc. in each 24-hour period, to derive peak conversion time.

• Improve competition during peak hours by adjusting the time slot coefficient of ads, to gain additional conversions.

7. Search Term Analysis

• From the keyword report, identify keywords that appear frequently and match your company’s promotional content. Add these keywords to your ad, and conduct conversion tracking to see if the new keywords can lead to conversions.

• If there are a small number of irrelevant search terms for your keywords, treat them as negative terms.

• If there are many irrelevant search terms, we recommend improving the accuracy of keyword matching. We also suggest controlling the relevant words to match those keywords that appear in high frequency and match the promotion content to ensure the acquisition of accurate traffic.

8. Sequential Analysis 

Analyze your weekly/monthly data, in comparison with the previous week/month’s data in a loop, to identify those factors that have an impact on data fluctuations.

• If the factor is an intrinsic factor, it is necessary to optimize the advertisement. For example, if the display volume is low, consider raising the ad bid. If the CTR is low, consider optimizing the ad creative, etc.;

• Alternatively, if the factor is an external factor, you need to adjust your promotional strategy in accordance with the actual situation (i.e. malicious clicks, and adding these malicious visitors’ IP and other information to the block list of ads).

9. Conversion Analysis

It is important to analyze and compare the conversion rates of campaigns, ad groups, and keywords to find out which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords contribute most to conversion and stabilize promotion. By driving traffic to the correct direction, overall conversions can also increase.

For more information on China's SEM advertising methods, contact our marketing consultant at: enquiry@so360.hk.