How to have an Adwords Party

First things first… I suggest using the new Import your Analytics Goals into Adwords.
If you are not tracking Conversions, you are really shooting in the dark, so make sure you set it up.

photo by: @dens
In a “phase I” Adwords campaign, I typically setup an Adwords Party:
Setup conversions for as many “soft conversions” as you can…

• view of key pages, ie. viewed contact us page
• deeper pages, not accessible from the main page

Of coarse you will still setup the usual “real conversions”: list signup thank you page, lead generation form submissions, sales thank you, ect.
What do you accomplish by setting up these “soft conversions”?  Again, in Phase I, we are still “sculpting” our account, so we may not have a good handle on our website business model, we are still shaping things.  At this stage, its great to see which keywords engage our visitor.  That is the crux of the Adwords Party.  These page views show interest, or engagement, without having to commit to a sale or form submission. 
You’ll have so many conversions…

• you’ll feel a sense of elation (false perhaps)
• you will be able to optimize keywords based on this engagement

In Phase II of your Adwords account development, you may wish to remove these soft conversion page views, returning to the more traditional “real conversions”. I personally leave them, as it has been found that many conversions happen on subsequent searches on brand name or bookmarks, which will not register as a ppc conversion in many cases.  By pausing broad keywords, for example, you may be turning off the "information keywords" which may be a necessary preliminary ppc keyword in your funnel.  By allowing these information kws to remain active, and optimize based on engagement using this "Adwords Party" method, you will keep this traffic stream open, as it should be.
When you arrive at that point, pop the cork and have another Adwords party. Life is too short.

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