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Archive for the ‘Basic PPC Strategies’ Category

Finding good help: it’s like the great professional field leveler. No matter how good you are at doing what you do, it doesn’t really mean you’re gonna be great at finding someone else who is good at whatever you need them to do- and that’s an issue, because a terrifying percentage of important projects are contingent on everyone doing their business both correctly and intelligently. The problem, in terms of our industry, arises because whether you’re an expert PPC manager yourself or have no idea what I meant when I used the term PPC two seconds ago, finding the right person or team to handle your pay per click baby is complex. PPC managers can’t always see beyond their own methods to understand how others are successful. HR representatives from agencies needing a PPC manager don’t always understand the balance of technical skills and sales & marketing skills necessary to efficiently handle accounts. No one knows who they should be looking for.

After a good bit of time observing PPC managers, you can identify behavioral characteristics that are more likely to make your search for a good PPC account manager successful. Since everyone doesn’t have the opportunity, as I have been lucky enough to have, to observe lots of fantastic account managers, I’ve assembled a list of some of the personality characteristics they’ve shared.

Competitiveness

PPC is all kinds of a competition. It’s a competition against your…competitors. It’s a competition against yourself as you try to best your previous results. It’s a competition for your target audience’s interest and loyalty. You don’t have to be the kind of person who wants to punch someone in the face because your soccer team came in second, but really, it should annoy you to lose. That way when you log in and you only got 85 leads last week and you usually get 105, there’s something internal motivating you to whip that account back into shape. Thinking of the business you’re losing or the person who may yell at you for poor performance might motivate you a little, but it’s not going to be enough if you’re looking for real success. You’ve gotta want it just for the sake of the accomplishment.

Capitalism

Don’t be silly and think this isn’t important. We’re spending money to try to make more money. That’s what PPC is, and anyone who doesn’t think the idea of trying to increase ROI is inherently cool is going to lose interest in the whole PPC project, and soon.

Creative/Analytical Balance

I think people who are inexperienced with PPC are more likely to overlook this important factor than those of us who manage accounts. It’s a lot of spreadsheets and data analysis and there are lots of numbers. But that’s only the surface layer. What’s important is what you can DO with that data, and that requires the mental flexibility and creativity to see patterns and meaning within and then be able to translate that meaning into action. That’s a lot of abstract thinking, and we haven’t even discussed the traditionally “creative” parts of PPC, like understanding your audience and creating keywords, ad texts, and landing pages that will appeal to them. People who think in a strictly technical “x+y=z” way sometimes have difficulty with PPC management when things get complicated, because you need to have the intuition and flexibility to realize that sometimes x+y just equals x, or sometimes w.

Perfectionism

This is a bit of a double-edged sword. Too much and it’s completely inefficient and can become an obsessive quest to make things technically perfect without considering ROI in terms of time or money. At the same time, the little voice inside your head saying, “Do it right if you’re going to do it” can be a great asset when you’re tired and sick of looking at 38236 rows of Excel spreadsheet. Having a teammate with an internal self-disciplinarian is handy, because it makes it easier to rely on the likelihood that when you ask them to complete a task, it’ll be done correctly.

Courage

I’m naturally risk-averse, so I wish this wasn’t true. But it is: even though PPC is more easily monitored and maybe more predictable than some other forms of advertising, if you really want to further your account’s success, you’re eventually going to have to do something that makes you uncomfortable. Launch an experiment. Turn a campaign off. Start running content ads. Whatever it is, it will freak you out. And this is the only way to really see what works and what doesn’t: try it for your account. People who aren’t willing to risk a little to find greater return won’t be able to help grow business, they can only maintain the status quo. Of course the caveat here is: you don’t want a PPC manager who turns on seven new campaigns and leaves the country for three weeks with it on autopilot. That’s why attention to detail and dedication to the account’s quality are characteristics that need to accompany this trait in a good account manager.

Communication

Here’s a general rule: it’s good if people give you more info than you want. You can always ask them for less if you’re getting too much, but someone who is hard to get information out of from the outset is probably not going to get easier to get information from in the future. If you want to be involved in understanding what’s going on with your PPC account, make sure your manager knows how to communicate clearly and frequently.

Intellectual Curiosity

Anyone who isn’t a little bit excited when Google launches a new AdWords feature just won’t like managing a PPC account for long. You have to be the right kind of nerdy, and really be motivated both to continually learn and to think internet marketing is neat. A PPC manager with this characteristic will be able to keep your account current and take full advantage of new features and on top of upcoming changes, so you can stay ahead of the curve instead of developing a competitive disadvantage.

I know there are a hundred more characteristics that help contribute to success in PPC managers, but the above are some of those which are less apparently obvious, but have been threads that have run through successful account managers in our experience. If you have others, please share!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Like many of you, I enjoyed a quintessential summer weekend during this past 4^th of July holiday. I feel like I did almost everything people enjoy doing on warm summer days. My activities included spending time at the pool, eating lunch in the park, visiting a zoo (the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago is absolutely wonderful), watching World Cup games, and grilling out with some friends just before topping off the weekend with a traditional Indianapolis fireworks display.

All in all, I am happy to say it was a pretty nice holiday weekend. However, you may have noticed that most technology-related activities were clearly absent from my weekend itinerary. Sure, tech geeks like me do not venture too far without being equipped with a smart phone and any number of handy apps. Nevertheless, with exception to some quick Twitter updates, email checks, and text messages, I was pretty vacant from my connected, online lifestyle. Instead of spending hours of my day searching Google, monitoring PPC accounts, and being logged into Facebook and Digg, I took the weekend to relax and enjoy some time with my long forgotten friend – the sun.

In fact, after realizing this void of technology pervasiveness, I remembered many of my officemates were going to be unavailable this weekend detached from both email and cell phone. Thus, my conclusion to this revelation: The only thing able to hold its own and fight for attention against the Web and digital technology might be a beautiful summer’s day.

So, in light of this discovery, I guess my question to you is: Are you appropriately adjusting and optimizing your PPC accounts for the summer months? At the end of May, Microsoft’s AdCenter Blog had a great article that introduced 10 Summer PPC Tips. Now being the beginning of July, I’d like to follow-up on their article by both elaborating on some of their points and introducing some new insights of my own.

World Cup

Ah, the thrills of the beautiful game. With only four games left, the bulk of the World Cup is pretty much over, but since the semi-finals are airing this week, I believe this worldwide event is still very relevant to talk about. So, how much does a game of soccer really impact economic and sales productivity?

It is said that each World Cup match has an average of 95 million viewers. Estimates conclude that 10 minutes of productivity will be lost a day for American businesses and unfortunately for companies (and in return, your PPC campaigns), 121.7 million dollars will be lost in the USA alone. Let me remind you that the United States is a country that ultimately has little interest in the world’s game. Our friend’s in the United Kingdom will see about 7.36 billion dollars lost in productivity if British workers view games for only an hour a day.

Now, I don’t believe I’m going out on too much of a limb here if I say that when people are so invested in a soccer match to not work, then they probably are not too interested in viewing your PPC ads either.

How to adjust:

• Try and make your keywords relevant to soccer, the World Cup tournament, and to the current matches.

• Focus ads towards those male and female sport fanatics, but also to those female fans that are tired of the constant World Cup attention (my girlfriend being one of them).

• Know what time the games are airing live and adjust your bidding accordingly with day parting. Search volume will be down during live play, but search traffic will peak with people looking for commentary and video before, at halftime, and after the game.

Summer-ize your ads and landing pages

You have perfected your ads and landing pages. They are reliable for clicks and leads, but maybe you have noticed those ads performing less than desired during the beginning of this summer.

Remember that during the summer, not only are people spending more time outdoors and away from their computers due to longer days, but also, sunlight and warm days draws out a different mindset in your regular audience.

How to adjust:

• Make your ads and landing pages relevant to the summer, utilizing summer themes and colors.

• Do your ads and landing pages express the summer mindset? Relaxation, vacation, warmth, and sunshine are words that catch the eyes of an audience with the summer sun on their minds.

• Make your ad benefits summer-related. Deals, savings, and specials should read hot deals, scorching savings, and summer specials.

• With longer days, people are spending more time outside and offline. Adjust day parting to avoid showing ads on particularly nice evenings and weekends.

What is coming next this summer season?

Independence Day and the fireworks have come and gone, but there are plenty of other summer events to focus your PPC ads on. Try to stay one step ahead of the season and offer your company or client to new markets by expanding on your seasonal keywords.

How to adjust:

• Be creative and topical with your summer ads. Make sure to stay fresh and keep ahead of what is on the mind of your summer audience.

• Up next: Back to school as well as Labor Day festivities, which include family gatherings and cookouts.

Don’t Act Until Certain

Summers can have a tendency to throw some curveballs into your PPC campaign trends; so don’t let the dips in performance panic you too much. Obviously, keep a watchful eye, make some minor adjustments for the summer months, and make sure to continue meeting your campaign goals, but try not to make any major changes without knowing for certain that those changes need to be made.

In the summer, weather, sporting events, and the overall psyche of potential customers can have a significant impact on ad and keyword performance. My advice, make sure to relax yourself this summer. Try to be clever with ad and landing page copy and innovative with your campaign strategy.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

In my last post I discussed how to understand traffic trends in your PPC accounts. We went over looking at year-over-year data, utilizing tools such as Google Trends, keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing and staying abreast of the latest industry news. Now that you how to analyze what might happen to your traffic in the coming months, let’s talk about how to adjust your account to address these shifts in traffic.

Client Communication

First and foremost, client communication is key. If you know that your account is going to experience a shift in traffic make sure you let your client know beforehand along with an explanation. If you can tell that your client may see a surge in traffic, let them know so they can make sure that they have the resources to handle more orders or requests. If it’s bad news and traffic may drop they will appreciate the heads up. You can also add value, by presenting ideas on how you can head off a loss in PPC traffic.

Promotions

When you are managing a PPC account for a seasonal product or service, promotions are a great way to attract site visitors in your off-season. Make sure you promote the offer effectively in your ad text by enticing your audience with the details. You’ll need to work with your client to identify the right offer for the specific industry, but some ideas for promotions include providing a set percentage discount on your products or service, a tiered percentage discount (10% off of $100 or more, 20% of off of $250 or more) offering a package deal or a buy one get one free offer. This is a good short-term solution to offset a traffic drop.

Bid & Budget Management

When traffic is expected to go up due to a new industry development or for another reason competition for industry terms will increase as well. Make sure that you bid up on your priority keywords so they appear in higher positions.

Traffic for your core products might dip in certain months, but you can choose to promote some lower priority products instead. For example, you specialize in wedding gowns and there is less demand for wedding gowns in the winter. You may want to bid up on formal dresses keywords to regain some of the lost wedding gown traffic. It may make sense to pause your PPC account completely in the off-season and focus your funds on another marketing activity.

Dealing With Competition

As I mentioned in my last post, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. You won’t be able to control what they’re saying in their ads but you can certainly set yourself up for success. Take a critical look at your ads and ensure that you are highlighting the unique point of differentiation for your product or service. Make sure that you are working closely with your client to continue reinforcing a consistent brand message both offline and online.

Account Expansion

If traffic is dropping off in your account it maybe the right time to expand your reach and cast a wider net. You can broaden your reach by adding in new keywords into your account. I especially like using the Google Opportunities tab which provides keyword ideas for your account. Be aware that the tool doesn’t always place keywords into the most relevant ad groups, so you may have to pull out the best suggestions from the tool and then decide how to distribute the keywords among your ad groups or even create new ad groups. If you stay connected to your industry through blogs and seminars you can also stay mindful of new industry terms and buzz words that you can add into your account.

Google, Yahoo and MSN are all important search engines, but don’t forget about the third tier search engines either. As traffic trends downward you might want to research search engines such as Business.com or 7Search and monitor results and see how your accounts perform.

Consider broadening the audience for your ads by testing whether the content network is right for your product or service. If Google doesn’t match you up with the most relevant sites try hand-picking sites and adding them into your managed placements. There are some niche products that are just not going to perform as well on the content network, but it might be worth testing in your account.

Another ideas is to dig around in Analytics and use the map overlay feature see if there are any concentrated pockets of where site visitors are coming from. You can then set up geo-targeted PPC campaigns to attract new visitors from those areas.

Bottom Line

The bottom-line is that there are ways in which you can identify traffic shifts early and there are ways to deal with these changes effectively. Just remember to be proactive and to keep communicating and setting expectations with your client.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

The great thing about PPC is that it is easy to track and measure. When you link your PPC account with Google Analytics or other data program, you can exponentially expand your wealth of data to really understand who your user is and how they are finding you. All of this is great, but the data doesn’t do any good unless you use it. Don’t wait until your account is in trouble, looking into data now can help you stay on top of small changes in your account and identify opportunities for expansion.

Compare performance history at the keyword level: Your account performance may not be poor but it is also not off the charts, or maybe your account is doing really well but you want it to do even better. No matter where your account is at, periodically dig into your keywords to look for patterns and changes at a granular level. Compare your top performing keywords this month to last month and even compare to the same time last year. Month-to-month comparisons can help you indentify little shifts in the industry as well as in your user and their behavior. I was recently digging into a client’s data and although the account was performing at a similar level as the past few months, when I looked at the keywords I found that the top performing keyword had dropped in impressions by 50%. When I compared the position and keyword bid month-over-month, everything had remained the same. After additional research using Google Insights and other tools, I found that search patterns had shifted in the last few months, and I needed to change my approach to gain back the traffic I had lost. On the surface it looked like the account was performing as usual, but really other keywords had just been making up for the traffic my top performing keyword had lost. If I could get that traffic back, I would then see growth in the account.

Review year-over-year account data: You have access to a lot of data but to get the big picture, pull out your key metrics by month and get it all on one page. Do this for the past two years and look for trends; you might be surprised what you find. For instance, if you plot the clicks, impressions, click-through rate, conversions and conversion rate for Google search vs. content network over the last two years, you may see that the content network has become a larger player in your account. If that is the case, you may want shift your optimization focus to either bring search back up or push the content network further. You also may see that every July your traffic tends to take a sharp drop, so you can help set the client’s expectations now that it is likely to happen again. Start thinking about how you might counter the dip as well as maybe increase traffic for June to help make up for it ahead of time.

Predict and Plan: Use the yearly comparison or month-to-month data to predict what is going to happen over the next couple of months, and adjust your campaigns in advance. Develop a calendar of events, promotions or offers you can promote for the months where traffic tends to decrease so you are planning ahead to try and minimize the natural decrease. If your brand isn’t one that relies on offers, look for other ways you can supplement a decrease in one search engine – maybe boost spend in another or consider adding a third tier search engine to help pick up some additional traffic. The key is to use the data to develop a plan.

Break down data into plain English: As a search marketer you know what every number represents and the lingo that goes with it, but as you report data to clients and other partners, make sure you are translating it into plain English. For instance, instead of just listing all of your campaigns next to their conversion rates and handing it over, cluster campaigns together and add descriptive category headers like “High Performers”, “Slow & Steady” and “Growers” to help tell a story about the campaigns. Think of the mindset of your users and what they might be like. Use the data along with any other consumer insights you have to paint a picture – literally. Visuals can help bring your numbers to life and make them easier to remember. Place an image of the Midwest if your “High Performers” are mostly from the Midwest or a photo of a middle-aged woman if you know the Slow & Steady, reliable campaigns are made up of mostly women searching at work.

Provide monthly recaps: Don’t keep your clients and team wondering how things are going. Take the time to pull together monthly stats and compare them to previous months, as well as year-over-year if applicable. Make sure you not only provide the data in an interesting way, but also formulate a summary to call out any trends or changes in performance. Use your monthly report to set expectations for the coming month as well as indentify areas for expansion and improvement.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Changing keyword bids is going to be a task that faces you with some regularity if you’re managing any PPC account. It would be fantastic if we could just manage ad group bids and never consider the cost of our individual keywords, but it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes, you have fabulous keyword performers who need to be supported with better bids, hanging out in an ad group with massive overspenders who need to take a time out or at least a little dip in their ad ranking. And that’s all very well and good, if you have a very small account. But if you have a large PPC account- with lots of performers, and lots of overspenders, bid management can be very time-consuming if you don’t have access to, or would rather not use bid management software. Which is unfortunate, because there are a hundred other things you could do in your account, or to your landing pages, that might have a more substantial impact on your performance, and if you use all of your time changing bids, you’ll never get to them.

If you have a hundred keyword bids that need to be changed today, it’s going to be a general waste of your time to hang out in the AdWords interface or desktop editor and think: oh, this keyword is in position 3.4. Its bid is $0.24. I want to be in position 2. But its average cost per lead for the last 30 days is $4.68 and my maximum profitable CPL is $5. So what do I raise it to? $0.28? $0.50? Don’t get me wrong- you have to consider all of those things, and more, but bid management- really, it’s not something that needs to consume your life. You can cut it down to something that’s both efficient and effective if you create a physical structure and some mental rules to support bid changing. So, having said that, here are the rules I follow when bid changing in Google. MSN/Bing would be similar due to the similarity of the AdWords and AdCenter desktop interfaces.

1. Never ever even think about changing bids in the interface. Unless it’s like, two keywords. Instead, download account statistics in AdWords Editor for whatever date range you need. The date range you need is going to depend on a lot of things, like how recently you’ve made bid changes, and the volume of your account. Don’t make bid changes based on 30 day performance, then go back 6 days later and make bid changes based on 30 day performance again- the impact of what you did 6 days before will be totally lost amongst the 30 day stats.
2. Once you’ve downloaded statistics for the date range you want, just select all of the keywords for the account in Editor (or just for the campaign or ad group you want to change them for, if your review is limited to one), and paste them into Excel. There will be a lot of data there. Some if it is useless for your purposes. Destination URL, Comment? Avg CPM? Just delete those columns. Once you’ve just got the data you want to consider, highlight your first row (containing column names) and go to Data>Filter>AutoFilter. Now you can sort and sort to your heart’s desire and the data should stay with its proper keyword.
3. Unless you’re using this method to determine if you have anything paused that you might want to turn back on, then set Campaign Status, Ad Group Status, and Keyword Status filters to show Active only. Paused stuff will just get in your way.
4. Determine the goal of your bid changes. Do you need to lower your spend rate without lowering your leads too substantially? Is your CPL low and you have some room to increase cost to get more leads? This will determine what you need to focus on. Let’s say my main goal is to decrease CPL by lowering cost without lowering leads too much. The first place to look is at anybody who has spent money but NOT converted. Major offenders. So set your Conversions filter to show only 0 conversion keywords, and sort by descending cost. Say my goal CPL for this account was $10. I need to decide whether keywords that have spent over that goal and have not converted should be paused or have their bids lowered. Before deciding to pause a keyword, check its longer-term performance. Just because something might be doing badly in the past 14 days doesn’t mean it always has, or always will.
5. Make a notation of your intended action for the keyword. I generally use X for pause, D for decrease, and I for increase. You can color code instead if you’re not using Excel for Mac. This just makes it easier later to track what I want to do to a keyword later when I am sorting by other things, like average position or total conversions.
6. After you’ve worked out what you’re doing with your 0 converters, it’s time to start looking at those keywords which have converted for you, but whose performance can be optimized. So just travel back to the Conversions filter, and make a custom filter that sets conversions not equal to 0.
7. If I am trying to reduce CPL, a natural target is keywords whose CPL is too high. In general, this is how I begin: sort by cost per conversion. Add two columns next to “Max CPC”- “New Max CPC” and “% Difference”. If a keyword is well above the CPL goal for my account, I’m going to lower it more aggressively. As keyword costs get closer to my CPL goal, I’ll lower bids less aggressively. I fill in a “starting point” percent decrease in the % Difference column, and then calculate a New Max CPC based on that percent difference. The same applies in reverse for bid increases, which you can also perform within the same group of bid changes to balance the lead-decreasing potential of your bid decreases without increasing CPL, as long as you only increase bids on keywords with CPLs well under goal.
8. Sorry, you’re not done! If only it were so easy. But there are other things to take into account- modifying the bid of a keyword with more spend and more conversions is going to impact your overall CPL more than modifying the bid of a keyword with lower spend and conversions, and not all keywords are in the same positions. So you need to use the starting point you’ve developed with the percentage system and take a moment to consider the keywords individually. Sort by conversions, and make sure you make your most well thought out decisions about your high converters. You should be conscientious about all of your bid changes, but it just makes sense to focus most of your energy where most of the impact will be. If increasing bids, remember that one conversion isn’t really enough data to go on when estimating that increasing a bid will get you more leads. Then sort by position, and consider what your suggested bid change may do to the ad position. If it seems that it will drop it too extremely, you may want to be less aggressive. If a keyword whose bid you’re increasing is already in position 1.2, you can’t consider that increasing its bid 30% is really going to get you 30% more leads. Additionally, you should consider each keyword’s current average CPC. If a keyword is already spending near its maximum CPC on average, then a bid decrease is more likely to lower its position more substantially than a keyword that is not spending near its max CPC on average.
9. After you’ve made all of the bid adjustments you need to make, set the filter on New Max CPC to “show nonblanks”. You can get rid of most of the data now- you just need Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, Keyword Type, and Max CPC to load your changes into AdWords Editor. So copy your New Max CPC values, paste “special” them into the Max CPC column as Values, copy the columns you need to make bulk keyword changes in Editor, and paste them in! Voila. Your bid changes, accomplished.

It can sound complex at first, but starting with some ground rules applied across all keywords and then modifying based on individual factors for the highest impact keywords while keeping in mind the cautions listed above can seriously streamline the keyword bid management process while positively impacting your account performance. It’s a matter of practice and of actively monitoring the results you see to gain an understanding of the impact of your changes after you’ve made them. Like the rest of life, pay attention, know when to follow rules and when to break them and you’ll be just fine.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Knowing your audience is essential to knowing where to target your ads, but sometimes you don’t know your audience as well as you think you do. You can gain valuable information about your audience through your conversion form. If you run an email list, this will not only help you target your advertising, it will also help you target your mailings. To know your audience, you must know who is converting, both in the demographic form (i.e. income and age) and in their interests.

You have the perfect means to figure this out by asking your visitors on the conversion form. If you run an informational email list don’t be shy to ask your subscribers for their income range, their industry of employment, and/or their area of employment. Just be sure that you are going to use whatever information you gather to better market to those customers. Subscribers with a higher income range will generally make purchases more often and purchase higher priced items, so you can send them more offers. This can also help you with targeting advertising, as you can view which web pages and keywords drive the most high-income earners to your list, and then you can spend more effort targeting related keywords.

Some people may not be comfortable giving away too much demographic info. One thing you can do is to include two forms on your squeeze page: a long form including demographic questions and a short form just asking for an email address. You can provide an eBook or other free gift only to those who provide their demographic info. In this way, you are encouraging people to add value to your list while not losing too many who don’t want to provide their info.

Secondly, you should make sure to include a disclaimer on your form that you will not use demographic information to violate anyone’s privacy and that you are simply asking for it to improve the quality of the emails you send to them in the future. You can include a short line like, “Why are we asking for demographic info?” and have subscribers click the link where it opens in a new window with a longer explanation.

When targeting affiliate offers, it is possible to gain the most value from psychographic info about subscribers’ interests. If you are running a sports-related email list, for example, you can ask what subscribers are interested in, while including options for betting on sports, attending events, and sports blogging, etc. Then when March Madness rolls around, you know who to target heavily with bracket challenge offers.

If you want to dig even deeper, you can ask which websites the subscribers like to visit, for example, when they are betting, then you know which specific services from which to send them offers. Once again, this question serves dual purposes: Not only does it help you target your emails, but it can also help you target your ppc advertising. If you get a lot of subscribers indicating they have certain interests and they visit certain websites, you know who your content appeals to, so you can target your advertising more squarely at the people whom you are most likely to convert.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

This post was written by Matthew Umbro from http://theppcblog.com.

Matthew has been in the PPC industry since August 2007 and has earned his Google AdWords and MSN adExcellence certifications. He can be reached via email at matt@theppcblog.com or through Twitter @Matt_Umbro.

As a PPC campaign manager for business-to-business (B2B) clients, there’s one question I always ask: “Will you share your leads with me?” I don’t want to muscle in on their territory. I want to know how effective their PPC campaign is.

I recently read a great article by pay-per-click (PPC) Guru Brad Geddes concerning Post-Click Conversion Optimization for Long Sales Cycles that really made me think about how PPC conversions and revenue are tracked for B2B clients. Geddes states that for most companies, “single click-to-purchase transactions are rare,” and can require “several visits and multiple touch points before any revenue is generated from initial clicks.” I understand exactly where Geddes is coming from. Finding the ROI of a PPC campaign for long sales cycles can be difficult, especially if you are only managing the paid campaign and have no insight into what becomes of the leads you bring in.

I strongly believe that the PPC campaign manager must have insight into the leads in order to better optimize the campaign. This statement sounds obvious, but often the leads will go right into the clients’ sales automation system and not be shared with the PPC manager. And if PPC is being outsourced, it can be extremely difficult for the PPC manager to know how relevant the leads are. I can tell a client that his campaign saw 25 conversions last month, but I cannot share which keyword and text ad brought in each specific lead. For example, I want to be able to tell a client that the term “IT disaster recovery plan,” led to a whitepaper download by a network engineer. When I can do this, I am not only reporting a number, but the actual quality of that lead.

Whenever I begin a campaign for a B2B client I stress conversion optimization. In other words, the primary goal of the PPC campaign will be to garner quality leads. I stress the importance of sharing these leads with me so I can see what is and is not working. I need to make sure that the quality of leads coming in aligns with the goals of the campaign.

Sometimes clients are hesitant to share this information or claim it will require too much work to get the leads to me. I understand their concerns. However, I present a way that I can receive the leads with little client involvement. Often, B2B leads are generated when a visitor fills out a form in order to receive a whitepaper or some other download. These leads can go into a sales automation system, but they can also be sent to a special email address (i.e., sales@example.com). I ask to be added to this email list and, through the analytics, I can break out the leads by source. In the monthly reports, I list all leads captured through the PPC campaign and ask the client what is happening with these leads. Through this simple process I know the quality of the leads and I am able to show clients the value of their PPC campaigns and, ultimately, the ROI.

I understand that not all clients will be willing to share their leads, but it is imperative that you ask. Not only will you be better able to optimize the campaign, but it is also an opportunity for you to be more involved in the sales cycle and know exactly what happens to the leads.

How do you track the quality of PPC campaign leads?

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

It is easy to get lost in the details of bids and keywords with your PPC account but have you asked yourself recently what are you really trying to achieve? It may seem like a silly question but think about it. If your response is just X number clicks or X cost per lead, then you have some thinking to do. Taking a step back to outline your audience and goals can do wonders for your PPC account.

Think back to elementary school when you learned about the key questions – who, what, when, where, why and how. Use these basic questions to identify who you are really talking to. Who is that ideal person? When are they online and how do they use the web? How old is your ideal visitor, where do they live, what is their mindset, what are their values and how do they feel about your company or product now? Analytics data can offer some insights into the people you are attracting now, but that may not be who you ultimately want. You will need to do some digging to define your true audience as well as their mindset and behaviors. Sometimes in PPC we become consumed within our tightly defined conversion funnels that we forget there are real people on the other end of a click. Remember that gathering consumer insights, not just what we see by tracking consumer website usage, can create well-rounded, more successful PPC campaigns.

If you can get inside the head of your audience, it will be easier to communicate in their language and know where they are coming from. Next you need to think about what you want your audience to do, or really, what is your ultimate goal? Think about the immediate action (for instance request a catalog or submit contact info) but then think beyond this to the ultimate revenue-generating goal. Do you want them to watch the mailbox in anticipation of a trial kit? Tell friends and family about a great offer? Enroll in a class? Work backwards to create a funnel with all channels guiding your user to the end goal. If your goal is to have a visitor spread the word about an offer, make sure your landing page gives them the opportunity to easily pass along the news.

Sometimes taking a step back to think about your audience and goals can give you a new perspective. I once worked on a campaign for a theme park. We initially identified the target audience as moms living in specific states. We determined she worked full-time, so was usually online during the workday or late at night. Life was chaotic for her, so she wanted simplicity and ease. We wanted mom to request a visitor’s kit for the park, so this was our X number of conversions goal. However, what the client really wanted was for the whole family to actually visit. After some research it became apparent that our immediate audience might be mom because she was online, but who we really needed to get excited were the kids. We designed a landing page that had a few bullets of information that mom could read quickly, but we also mentioned the cool items that would be in the visitor’s kit just for her kids. While mom was the one filling out the form, the kids were major influencers so it was important to get the kids excited too. What was sent in the visitor’s kit was important but so was the landing page. Mom was looking at the landing page from the perspective of her kids – we needed to consider the photos and colors to make the page feel like a fun place to be. She wanted to know that it would be a place her kids would enjoy and be excited about. We needed to find a balance that would appeal to mom, encouraging her to request a visitor’s kit, while giving her the impression her kids would enjoy the experience. By taking this new perspective, we were able to develop ad text, landing pages and a visitor’s kit that allowed us to target our entire audience rather than the single audience the analytics data pointed to.

Once you have clearly defined your audience as well as your goals, make sure these are clear to everyone involved – clients, agency, management and team members. It is a lot easier to manage expectations and create cohesive messaging strategies across all levels of advertising and marketing when everyone is speaking the same language.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

One thing we do regularly for our clients is run search query reports from Adwords and MSN, pull all queries that are resulting in unqualified impressions or clicks, and add those in as negatives.

Doing this can really help narrow down your keyword list and prevent unqualified traffic from seeing your ad and not clicking – which prevents your impressions from skyrocketing and therefore lowering your click-through rate. But negatives also can prevent people from clicking on your ads, costing you money and lowering your conversion rates.

However, if you’re only relying on the search query reports you’re really only being reactive in preventing your ad from being shown and clicked on by irrelevant traffic.

Before you even start a PPC account, you should be running basic keyword research reports to find potential keywords that could cause irrelevant traffic from seeing your ads and/or clicking on them before it even happens. This is a more proactive approach in keeping unqualified traffic out and therefore increasing click-through rates and Quality Scores. For example, you could be doing PPC keyword research on ‘vacation in Paris’ but find keywords that have search volume for, ‘weddings in paris’, or ‘paris movies’. At this point you would want to add in ‘weddings’ and ‘movies’ to you negative keyword list to weed out that irrelevant/unqualified traffic.

You can run keyword research reports in Google, Yahoo, MSN and several other free keyword tools to find potential negatives.

Every PPC firm should have an on-going list of potential generic negatives that could be used across all of their accounts. Some of these terms can include:

Free

Sex

Comparison

Reviews

Diagram

Pictures

Career

Job/Jobs

Bargain

Discount

Cheap

And much, much more. **Note that some of these generic keywords may be relevant to your business.

Really, the search query reports are for finding negatives that you miss from your initial keyword research. Get in the mind of searchers and find those negatives before they find you!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Now that the holiday festivities and hangovers are over with, it’s time to determine whether or not you pre-holiday optimization efforts were effective.

So, what questions do you need to ask and what numbers do you need to evaluate?

Impressions
Did your keywords get more impressions than normal during the holidays? Were those impressions for your standard keywords, or for holiday-specific terms like “christmas sale” or “holiday special?”

Click Through Rate
Since getting more impressions is worthless without being able to drive more traffic to your site as a result, the next question is, “Did your holiday themed ads generate more clicks than the non-holiday ads?” If so, what were the differences? Was it something more than just inserting “christmas sale” into your ad copy? Was there a discount or bonus that was being offered?

Conversion Rate
Increasing conversions is the ultimate goal behind increasing impressions and improving click-through rates, which makes it the most important factor in determining whether or not your holiday optimization was effective. Did your search campaigns see higher conversion rates during the holidays? If not higher rates, did they see more overall conversions? Did you find specific keywords that converted better?

Now that you’ve considered the questions you need to ask about your search campaigns, it’s time to determine which holiday adjustments you can keep to maintain or improve performance going forward.
Try keeping some of the holiday keywords that generated a significant number of impressions. Any term that gets visitors to your site is potentially useful and should be tested further, even if it seems seasonal or specific.
If you saw a significant improvement from your ads, try to incorporate some of the holiday changes into your current ads. No, you can’t run “Christmas Sale” ads anymore, but you can try “New Year Special” offers to try to maintain holiday performance a little longer.
If you saw better conversion rates for specific keywords, look at the surrounding data for those terms. Were there changes in bids, ad position or match types? If so, those are changes that can be maintained and further tested.

It’s great to see improved performance and an increase in revenue during the holidays, but it’s even better to learn something from it and continue those improvements during the rest of the year.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.