PPC: The Perils of Set it & Forget It

November 15, 2011 Filed under: PPC — Tags: online advertising, PPC, SEM —

Image by Search Influence via Flickr

Managing and optimizing PPC campaigns can seem, at first glance, like a simple, straightforward process. Once you’ve done all the hard work –setting up a campaign, selecting keywords, creating ad groups, writing ad copy, establishing bid rates – shouldn’t it just run? Clients sometimes ask us to do the setup, then expect to just sit back and let the leads flow in. Why, they ask, do you need to keep tweaking it if you’ve set it up well in the first place?

The short answer can be summed up in 2 words: Google & Competitors. Neither one is standing still. Google is continually updating its algorithm with new capabilities, and your competitors are constantly adjusting their PPC accounts to improve conversions. This means that your PPC ads and keywords are not being served to a static environment. It’s constantly changing. As a result, neglecting your account is like surrendering one of your most effective marketing tools to your competition.

So, what is likely to happen if you do just let your PPC campaign run, unmanaged?

Keywords Get Missed. Keywords are the foundation for a PPC campaign. When a campaign is neglected, then new search queries - queries that turn into paying customers – will get missed. This makes your campaign less effective than the actively managed campaigns your competitors are running …and lets weed out the best new leads for themselves.

Ads Grow Stale. People get tired of seeing the same ads. After awhile they ignore them. When they ignore them, they don’t click on them, visit your website, and convert to paying customers. Active management of a PPC campaign allows you to keep fresh, engaging ad copy in front of your best prospects and potential leads.

Negative Keywords Aren’t Added. There are lots of queries that people type into search engines that use your keywords, but are out of context for your business (think ‘cheap’ in front of your product category – do you want this traffic?). Only when you actively add those bad phrases into your negative keyword list will you improve your traffic quality and eliminate the leads you don’t want. But typically it takes practice and tweaking to learn what people are searching for and which phrases are misfires. If your campaign isn’t actively managed, you won’t find them and you’ll waste money on unwanted traffic.

Bad Placements Aren’t Removed. Not every placement on the Display Network is good. Many will waste all of your budget with nothing to show for it. It’s essential to remove those bad placements so ensure your budget is spent on more worthy websites. Again, active management is needed to do this.

Testing doesn’t happen. The PPC engines allow you to have multiple ad copies in a single AdGroup. Each ad copy can also go to a different landing page. It’s important to test different ads and landing pages to see which ad copy or landing pages increase your primary search metrics, such as clickthrough rate and cost per conversion. Metrics such as profit per click show which ad copy and landing page combination leads to the highest most profit for your different keywords and ad copies. You need to run regular reports to see which ads, landing pages and keywords lead consumers to do business with your company.

So, if you’re thinking PPC is a great opportunity to set up ads and just let them run – you may want to think again.

The 4 Pillars of a Successful PPC Campaign (searchenginewatch.com)

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4 Tips To Improve Your Landing Pages

July 13, 2011 Filed under: Content Marketing,PPC — Tags: Landing page, Marketing, ppc landing pages —

Guest post by Brandon Clay

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

Some clichés shouldn’t die. That’s one of them. First impressions are crucial and have value beyond job interviews and first dates. Whether you know it or not, your website is giving many, possibly thousands of first impressions to prospects every day.

Are you making a good first impression on your prospects?

All the quality traffic in the world won’t help a bad website. Even if your PPC advertising and Social Media is cranking on all cylinders, if your landing page doesn’t work, you’re wasting your time. Radical statement – but true. That’s why it’s critical to your business to fix your landing pages.

Landing Page Tip #1: Define Your Purpose

The landing page, or the webpage that your visitors first visit on your site, is your visitor’s first glimpse of your website. Before coming to your landing page, visitors are predisposed to think something positive about your business. Maybe you gave them a business card or promised something in an ad. Whatever the reason, visitors are coming to your landing page because they want to check you out. What do you want them to do there? (more…)

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Make Your Advertising Accountable

July 5, 2011 Filed under: PPC,Web Analytics — Tags: online advertising ROI, PPC —

Courtesy of http://www.leadformix.com

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

Pay per click (PPC) advertising has deep roots in the advertising industry. The exact medium may be new but the principles have been unchanged for generations. It’s why PPC works so well.

Here’s the backstory:

In 1923, Claude Hopkins published a breakthrough in the advertising world Scientific Advertising. In it, he explained one of the foundations of Direct Response advertising. Its premise suggested that advertisers could test small ads, mediums, and offers. After finding a statistically-verifiable response in the market, advertisers could roll-out the tested strategy on a larger scale.

Hopkins showed how testing small greatly improved the chances for a positive ROI. He provided a mechanism (“scientific” testing) to get the desired result (positive ROI). And he paved the way for advertisers demanding a return from their advertising investment.

Fast forward nearly 100 years…

ROI is Essential in Advertising

This science of advertising has progressed significantly since Hopkins’ time. Nearly all advertisers now demand a good return on their investment. We see Hopkins’ principle of scientific (now accountable) advertising at work in the marketplace. Ad dollars have fled low-ROI mediums like the Yellow Pages and newspapers and have flooded into higher-ROI mediums like Email marketing, PPC advertising, Facebook marketing and more.

Why?

Advertisers get more return from buying ads in Google versus sponsoring a billboard. They vote with their ad budgets. If they can measure good performance, then they renew the advertisement. If not, it gets cut. It’s that simple.

ROI is Easy to Measure with PPC

Despite Hopkins’ assurances, it’s not always easy to tie successes to every ad campaign. However, that problem is not as nearly acute with PPC advertising.

First, PPC can easily tie ad dollars to success on a website. For instance, an advertiser selling luggage with PPC may create 2 campaigns: one focused on US-based prospects and the other based on European-based prospects. With proper tracking setup, the advertiser tests and refines each campaign. The results may look something like this:

Campaign 1: Luggage – USA
Cost: $2,552
Revenue: $8,235
ROI (Revenue ÷ Cost – 1.0): 222.7%

Campaign 2: Luggage – Europe
Cost: $2,459
Revenue: $3,402
ROI (Revenue ÷ Cost – 1.0): 38.3%

In this example, we can see how much more effective this luggage manufacturer is selling to US-based customers compared to European-based customers. Based on these numbers alone, it would make sense to increase advertising budget in Campaign 1: Luggage – USA and lower (or remove) budget from Campaign 2: Luggage – Europe. That’s how PPC advertising works overall.

But PPC provides even more granular optimizations. Proper conversion and ecommerce tracking shows exactly what campaign, ad group, ad creative, and keyword resulted in particular actions on a website. This allows adept advertisers not only to pull bad campaigns, but also to pull lower-performing ads, keywords, and other less-than-stellar elements.

In addition, advertisers can bid-up on well-performing keywords and further refine winning ads. More importantly, advertisers can see what their PPC dollars bought them and if it was a worthwhile investment, thereby achieving accountable advertising. Hopkins would be proud.

PPC Works with Many Businesses (you should test it!)

I’ve worked in 70+ verticals and managed hundreds of pay per click campaigns and I’m convinced of one thing. PPC works. Thousands of businesses invest hundreds, thousands, even millions of dollars in PPC advertising every month. These businesses are getting return from their advertising investment. They couldn’t afford to shell out all those ad dollars if they didn’t get positive ROI consistently.

For instance, SpyFu, an online advertising intelligence tool estimates that Geico.com spends up to $90,710 in PPC advertising every day. That’s over $2.7 million per month. GEICO is a smart company, owned by Berkshire Hathaway (Billionaire Warren Buffett). If they didn’t see return from their advertising dollars, they would stop doing PPC.

Your business can probably benefit from PPC advertising, get a positive ROI, and ultimately get consistent revenues from PPC advertising. But don’t take my word for it.

Test it. In the spirit of accountable advertising, setup a good test with enough keywords, good tracking, an experienced manager and enough budget. Once you conduct a good-faith test in the PPC medium, you’ll know whether or not it can work for you.

If it works, expand your business, improve your revenues, and grow your bottom line with PPC. If not, you can explore other advertising mediums. Whatever the result, you’ll practice one of the best time-tested, principles in business: testable, accountable advertising. And you’ll see whether attractive ROI is possible for your business with PPC.

For more information on the concept of accountable advertising on the internet, checkout Avinash Kaushik’s webinar: Accountable Advertising on the Internet.

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Top 5 Hidden Features in Google Analytics

March 29, 2011 Filed under: PPC,Web Analytics — Tags: Google Analytics, PPC metrics, website metrics —

The best little-known, under-utilized features in Google Analytics to boost traffic generation and conversions, plus improve website design.

Guest post by Brandon Clay

Every good online marketer knows that web analytics is essential to running a successful website. And Google Analytics (GA) is one of the best web analytics tools on the market. Because it’s free, simple to implement, and easy to learn, GA has become the default analytics software package for 44% of Ecommerce websites. And many other businesses have discovered GA’s power.

As useful as Google Analytics is, not every online marketer uses it to its full potential. That’s why we compiled a list of the top-5 hidden features. These little-known items can take your GA experience to the next level. They can also boost your performance in traffic generation, conversion optimization, and even website design.

1) Advanced Segments

The default setting for visitors in Google Analytics is “All Visits”. That means, every visitor that is tracked will be seen in every report. However, if you’re trying to drill down on any one traffic source – say new visitors – then you should segment new visitors from the rest of the traffic.

You segment traffic for every report using the Advanced Segments option. It’s located just above the date range on the top right of the Dashboard. You can select standard segment like New Visitors or Paid Search Traffic, or you can create a custom segment.

Advanced Segments is useful when determining behavior for a particular segment of your audience. For instance, if you want to see which pages your Bing/Organic traffic is visiting and how many Bing visitors made a purchase, segment by Bing/Organic in Advanced Segments and review your reports just like normal. Once Advanced Segments are set, every report will reflect that segment.

2) AdWords Integration

Many online businesses using Google Analytics also use Google AdWords. Online marketers spend hours optimizing their AdWords account, but never look in Google Analytics to see how effective the AdWords traffic is – a marketing tragedy!

You can now easily drill down on just the AdWords traffic by checking out the last option under Traffic Sources > AdWords.

Although this feature has been around for awhile, AdWords Integration was in Beta for many months, thus somewhat hidden to many GA users. This feature helps you to see your most effective keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns measured by goal conversions, bounce rates, and more. Instead of relying on AdWords data, it’s a great way to see what your paid traffic is doing and then optimize your Google AdWords traffic.

3) In-Page Analytics

Until recently, Google Analytics did not display click overlay view. But with the addition of In-Page Analytics, you can now see a screenshot of your website with clicks. This feature shows click data for your HTML links to help you better optimize link positions on the page – a great way to test your website design.

Here’s the path to find In-Page Analytics: Content >> In-Page Analytics (last option)

One limitation to In-Page Analytics – screenshots are limited to current website version. If you plan to make any changes to your site for links, make sure you take a screenshot of your In-Page Analytics. Once the new version is in place, the old version is lost until changes are reverted.

4) Funnel Visualization

Goal tracking, aka conversion tracking, is one of the most useful features of Google Analytics. But there’s more to goal tracking than just counting conversions. One way to optimize conversions is through funnel visualization. It requires a little setup, but the results are always worth it.

Here’s the path to setup goal funnels:

Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Goals > + Add Goal (or use existing Goal with Edit) > Goal Funnel > + Yes, create a funnel for this goal.

Once you create a new funnel, choose the URLs that visitors visit before converting on your website: anywhere from 1 to 10 Steps. When you start collecting conversion data, you can then review the results in the normal interface.

Funnel Visualization can be used a number of ways. The best way is to optimize your conversion path. If you discover one step is a bottle-neck to your conversion (say 80% funnel abandonment rate), you should find a way to optimize the problem page or eliminate it altogether. Funnel visualization is especially helpful to Ecommerce sites with multi-step conversion paths.

5) Top Exit Pages

It’s hard work getting visitors to a website. Once visitors are there, many visitors just don’t stay. Google Analytics tells you where your visitors leave from – via exit pages.

This report is found under Content > Top Exit Pages

This feature is useful when trying to optimize your website’s engagement metrics: time on site, bounce rate, pages/visit. If visitors leave your website from certain pages, there may be a problem on those pages. By optimizing your Top Exit Pages, you can improve website activity on the entire site.

Perhaps you need to give visitors another option to click before they click the back button – or perhaps you should remove some links to make things more obvious. Once you make the changes, measure the exit percentage before and after the changes. This will help to increase overall site goals and improve your visitor experience – a win-win situation.

Google Analytics is a great tool for online marketers. Learning the hidden features in GA and implementing lessons learned is tremendously beneficial. It will help to improve your effectiveness as an online marketer and ultimately grow your bottom line.

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Google Display Network: Getting the Most Reach with Google PPC

March 8, 2011 Filed under: PPC — Tags: Google Display Network, PPC —

Guest post by Brandon Clay

According to eMarketer, online advertising spend will reach $32.0 billion in 2011, up 10.9% from 2010. Online advertising growth has been facilitated by expanding advertising networks that provide ad content to millions of websites. Networks like AOL, ValueClick, and Yahoo! serve billions of impressions to web users. Google owns one of those advertising networks, called the Google Display Network.

Most people know Google as a search engine. But Google is much bigger than search. While they have been perfecting their search algorithm so we can get the best answers to our questions, Google has quietly built a separate advertising network – away from Google.com.

What is the Google Display Network?

The Google Display Network (formerly known as the Content Network), is Google’s portal to independent websites. Here’s Google’s take on their Display Network: “The Google Network is a large group of websites and other products, such as email programs and blogs, which have partnered with Google to display AdWords ads.” (more…)

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Stop Wasting PPC Budget with Bad Keywords

January 21, 2011 Filed under: PPC — Tags: keywords, PPC —

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

“Keywords are the foundation of a successful AdWords campaign.”

- Brad Geddes, Author of Advanced Google AdWords

PPC advertising can be hard to visualize. It’s often difficult to peruse spreadsheets of words, ads, and numbers and remember exactly what you’re looking at. That’s why it’s good to take a step back – and think. Think about exactly what you’re doing. The best way to think about PPC is to consider the keyword.

The keyword is the string of characters the search engine user types into the search box. Keywords can be one word like “playground”. Keywords can also be multiple words like “cool playgrounds in Seattle, WA”. Keywords, also called search queries, are questions that searchers ask a search engine. You gain access to keywords in the search engines by ‘bidding’ on specific keywords.

Are Keywords the Most Important Part of PPC?

The keyword is, perhaps, the most important component of your PPC account. The keyword is the front door through which all your prospects pass before seeing your ad, clicking your ad, and visiting your website. If you’re bidding on a keyword, you may get access to prospects typing certain keywords. If not, you won’t. It’s that simple.

But keywords aren’t mindless words appearing in your PPC account. Instead, these strings of characters represent thoughts that your prospects and customers have related to your products or services. They are the visual, measurable representation of the conversation inside your prospect’s head. Your prospects are, in essence, raising their hands and asking questions by typing words into the Google search box. They want to see results that will answer their question, including ads.

That’s a golden opportunity for a hungry business. (more…)

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Four Essentials of Good PPC Ads

January 4, 2011 Filed under: PPC — Tags: Paid search ads, Pay Per Click Advertising —

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes. – Phillip Dusenberry, Former Chairman, BBDO Advertising Agency

Advertising has evolved in recent years. PPC advertising is a perfect example of how it’s happened – hypertargeted advertising served with results on the search engines is much better than buying million dollar spots during the Super Bowl.

But exactly how does it happen?

Online ad copywriting can make or break an advertising campaign. The reason? The PPC ad is the key link between your business and your prospect. The ad is the way prospects are usually introduced to your product or service. Good PPC copywriting improves the way advertisers initially engage the prospect and also boosts performance of every effective PPC account.

There are four things that every good PPC ad copy should have. Without addressing these areas in your ads, your PPC account will languish. More importantly, your business will bleed PPC budget until the copywriting problem is fixed. Use this as a checklist when auditing your PPC ads: (more…)

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Online Marketing: How the Pieces Fit Together

November 10, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,PPC,SEO,Web Analytics —

How Web Design, Content, and Analytics Work Together to Generate Online Leads and Sales

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

Good online marketing is like a jigsaw puzzle.

Dump all the puzzle pieces on the table and you have a mass of colorful cardboard. The pieces are useless when separate. However, when everything fits together it’s a different story. Once the pieces are connected, you have a picturesque seaside complete with beach house, sand dunes, and seagulls floating in the wind. Your pile of disjointed sections becomes a beautiful picture.

Successful online marketing is much like that jigsaw puzzle. There are many pieces to a solid online business. A good business, a strong market, an engaging website, and other factors play a role in determining how well a company does online. But if you remove any of those key components, a business will falter online. It takes everything working together to maximize the online medium. (more…)

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PPC Advertising: Why Your Online Business Should Advertise

October 6, 2010 Filed under: PPC — Tags: Pay Per Click Advertising, PPC —

Guest post by Brandon Clay

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.”

–Thomas Jefferson

Our commercial culture is awash in advertising. Whether or not city-dwelling consumers are actually exposed to 5,000 ads per day, as claimed by the New York Times Magazine (Feb. 2007), the premise of the research is true. We see lots of ads. From radio spots on our morning commutes to Google-served ads as we search for stuff, we are bombarded at all hours with advertising. Advertisers never stop trying to pry-open our wallets and to get to our credit cards.

Fact is – advertising works. If you have a decent product or service, you have a budget, and you’re good at advertising, you’ll get the lion’s share of the business. It’s that simple. If you’re missing any one of those components – you might get a mouse’s share. Advertising is often the difference between a thriving business and bankruptcy. Online businesses must advertise to make it.

The Key To Online Business Success is PPC Advertising

One of the primary ways to advertise your online business is through pay per click (PPC). PPC advertising is also referred to as search marketing, online advertising, search advertising, and other things. Whatever you call it, PPC is the best way to get top placement on the internet. Sure, you have to pay for the spots – no advertising is free. But it’s one of the most cost-effective methods for introducing your product or service to potential customers.

Most of the world’s largest websites accept advertising. According to the Alexa 500, 18 of the top 25 websites in the United States accept advertising. Other than a few sites like Amazon and Wikipedia, you’re welcome to advertise your online business virtually anywhere your prospects can be found.

Not only that, but you can get top placement where those same prospects are. You don’t have to build up your own Yahoo or Facebook. Instead, you simply open an advertising account on the appropriate website and they start sending you visitors to your website. Sure, it takes time getting used to the interface – but it sure beats having to wait for prospects to stumble upon your website. These days, prospects will almost never accidentally visit your website.

PPC Advertising Formats: Text, Banner, Video and More

PPC advertisers use different ad formats – one size doesn’t fit all. The most common ad format is the text ad. You see these simple text advertisements on most pages on search engine results – usually at the top and right of the organic results. These ads usually include a headline, 1 or more description lines, and a URL pointing to the advertiser’s website. Many other websites besides Bing and Google also display text ads.

There are other types of PPC ads as well – often called rich media. Banner advertising – the once-despised format on the internet – has made a resurgence with better graphics, moving pictures, and less annoying quirks. Online video advertising now often resembles TV commercials – they’re that good. Popup ads continue to challenge our patience, while other ad formats that round out the mix. Online advertising is bursting with PPC opportunity for online businesses.

But you don’t need rich media ads to succeed online. Simple text ads usually work. After all, your goal is not the coolest commercial or a Madison Avenue award. Your goal as a PPC advertiser is for visitors to come to your site and enter your sales funnel – that’s it. Everything else is incidental and will probably waste your PPC budget.

Why PPC Advertising Works: Hyper-targeting

A perennial problem in advertising is speaking to the right people at the right time. The old direct marketing (a.k.a. junk mail) formula says that 40% of a successful mailing relates to the list. If you can talk to the right people at the right time, then a good offer will take care of itself – you’ll get sales.

That’s why PPC advertising is so effective. It allows the PPC advertiser the ability to target people when they’re thinking about something your company does – like when prospects type a search term into Google or when they’re reading an article related to your business’s services. If your text ad or banner ad appears on the same page as a related action, that increases the opportunity for you to get a targeted visitor to your site. That’s good targeting.

There are also ways to optimize your PPC advertising . You can choose to advertise only on sites that send you quality visitors – and stop advertising on sites that send uninterested visitors. You can also only bid on keyword terms that historically send quality visitors to your website. These methods will improve the types of visitors coming to your site and bring you more leads and sales. That’s hyper-targeting.

If you’re not using PPC advertising, you’re losing your best prospects. When your competitors advertise their products and services, they’re capturing the valuable attention of paying customers. Needy prospects go to the businesses that will meet their needs – the way they often get there online is through PPC advertising. The net result is you lose the sale. To succeed in today’s competitive market, you must advertise – PPC is the way to do it.

About the Author: Brandon Clay is a professional search marketer and blogs at Search Traffic Pro. He specializes in pay per click, search engine optimization, landing pages, and pretty much everything else related to online marketing.

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Web Analytics: How to Stop Wasting Your PPC Dollars

September 3, 2010 Filed under: PPC — Tags: Pay Per Click Advertising —

Guest post by Brandon Clay

Advertising works. If you have a good offer and spend money on good advertising, you will earn revenue from your advertising efforts. Search engine or pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great example of revenue-generating advertising. Good businesses spending money on well-run PPC advertising should get a decent return on their ad dollars.

But not all advertising works – including PPC advertising. As soon as you start a PPC campaign, rest assured some of those Google dollars are going right down the drain. Whether or not you know it – you’re bidding on terms that will never turn into a sale. Famous 18^th century businessman John Wanamaker once said “I know that half of my advertising money is wasted… I just don’t know which half.” This is especially true with pay per click advertising.

(more…)

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