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Anyone who has been working on a PPC account for a while- whether it be your own or a client’s- probably reaches a point of inspiration deficiency. A new PPC account can be like a new toy (if you’re not as nerdy as us, as I’m assuming you are, and this does not hold true for you I apologize); it’s fun setting it up and seeing what it does and how the world responds. But after a while, you have other new accounts to play with. Or you don’t, and this is the one account you’ll be handling forevermore. Either way, boredom can lead to neglect, and neglect will eventually damage your account’s profitability. So what to do? Get a little creative and find new ways to improve your accounts:

• Use your colleagues! It really doesn’t matter if they do PPC as well (though that helps)- anyone with familiarity with your product or service can give a new perspective, which can be very helpful when your ad texts all start to look the same and you can’t think of one more benefit for your landing pages. If you do work with other internet marketers, you can take this one step further and ask them to review your accounts for anything you may be overlooking, and for new ideas. This works beautifully and I think you should try it. Aside from actually having coworkers review your accounts, if you have access to theirs, you can also get ideas for settings or account structure changes by looking at what works for them and then applying relevant findings to your own clients.

• Remember there’s a world outside of your PPC account. It’s not all keywords and ad texts- don’t overlook landing page testing! Clients, even if wary of website redesigns, often will allocate budget for one-page design projects if you can adequately justify the increase in conversion rates they’re likely to see as a result.

• Think outside the PPC box- luckily, at Hanapin we have both PPC and SEO clients, so we have a bit of an advantage in this area, but if you don’t, you can still look at your website from a non-PPC perspective. Improvements to your site’s structure, updated content or products, and social media integration can all translate into new PPC opportunities. Updated content can give you ideas for new ad texts and landing page messaging. New products translate to keyword targeting opportunities. Understanding who your customer is and what they want from you via social media can help your messaging become more targeted as well. Meeting your visitors’ needs and expectations is paramount to success in all areas of internet marketing, and exploring how you’re doing that outside of PPC can open your eyes to a lot of possibility.

• You can ask search engine reps for help and ideas, particularly if you work at an agency and have dedicated reps for this kind of thing. I’ll just say a) they are extremely helpful, and sometimes have great ideas and b) you should always take their ideas with a grain of salt, because ultimately their first job is to increase their employer’s profit…not yours. If you choose growth avenues wisely, you can find a balance that does both simultaneously: lovely!

One last note: don’t let your desire to try something new win out over your ROI’s best interest…some ideas are more likely to have a substantial impact than others, and you know your account well enough to understand logically what’s most likely to be useful and what is just a pointless waste of time and money. Trust yourself, do your research, and get inspired. Everyone will be better off for it.

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.

I’ve always been behind the philosophy that telling customers what to do on your landing pages or website is much better than letting them figure it out on their own. After all, that’s what marketing is, right? We lead them in the direction we want them to take; to see our new product, new offers, new promotions, new content, etc.

However, if you’re working with graphic designers to design a website, I must say, they typically don’t like using buttons. Buttons are also known as a ‘call to action’. We’re calling the customer to take an action. Buttons can certainly ugly up a page if too large, too colorful, or too in your face. The up side to these kinds of buttons is: they work. Adding buttons or calls to action on not only your landing page but throughout your website can help increase conversions and conversion rates exponentially.

For a large client of mine, we had a landing page dedicated for user submissions requesting more information. This page was accessible via top hand navigation on all pages of their site.

What I did was add an additional ‘request more information’ button to the body of all the pages of the site that also takes users to the same ‘request more information’ landing page. Just by adding these buttons consistently throughout the website we increased our conversion rates 8% and conversions by 33% in one month.

Sometimes customers can actually ignore (although not on purpose) top, left or right hand navigation on websites, especially if they’re looking for content. So by adding your call to action clear within the body of your content they may be more likely to take that action.

Here are a few tips I’ve tested using buttons that have worked wonders for me:

1. Add multiple buttons throughout your website (be sure not to be too annoying though)
2. Make your buttons above the fold – very important
3. Set your buttons to a different color from the background of your page to make it more visible and stand-out more to the user.
4. Be precise in the verbiage you’re using on your buttons, don’t just say, submit, but rather, ‘Get your free Info Kit Now’.
5. Wherever there is a button, there is a form to be filled out. Be sure to send customer’s confirmation pages/emails confirming you have received their information and how to contact you with questions.
6. Be sure to make your call to action a button, or button like. Some people prefer to use text link calls to action that don’t necessarily have the same effect as regular buttons.

Adding buttons to your site are not difficult, you’re graphic designers should be able to create a unique button in about 2 minutes or less, and programmers can program them to a site in about the same amount of time. They’re a great way to increase conversions and conversion rates for your PPC account. If you haven’t convinced your marketing team that adding buttons to the site will help, use Google’s website optimizer, which allows you to test a version of your landing page with the button and one without the button. Website optimizer will then show you conversion rates on both conversions. Not too many people can say ‘no’ when numbers are there backing you up!

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.

I have to say I really love my Yahoo! Rep. He calls me whenever there are new features coming out in Yahoo! And, instead of depending on other bloggers for the info I’m hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth.

There have been some new advances made in the Yahoo Network (finally!) that may help decrease spend on non-converting domains and increase conversions are high converting domains, as well as optimize your bids on the Yahoo network or partner networks.

1. Yahoo launches distribution quality report. This report can be found in the reports tab, at the bottom of the reports list.

The distribution report allows you to see all data (clicks, impressions, spend and conversions) broken out by Yahoo! O&O (yahoo owned and operated – all yahoo branded sites) and the partner network.

This report allows you to determine whether you can afford to advertise on Yahoos! Entire network or just yahoo search only or yahoo partners only depending on your traffic and conversion rates.

If you find that you no longer want to advertise on the Yahoo O&O or Yahoo search partners you can adjust your settings so you’re only advertising on one or the other, as well as adjust bids on one or the other.

To change your settings, click on a campaign, then click on campaign settings. Under the network distribution area on the right, click edit. This will allow you to choose which network you wish to advertise on. You can also adjust your bid plus or minus a percentage of your set maximum bid on the yahoo partner sites only at this time.

2. You can also run an ‘ad delivery report’ in the reports tab under Traffic Quality Reports. This report shows you specific domains you’re ads are being served on via the Content Network or Yahoo’s search network. If you find there are several domains that are driving up your traffic and spend but not converting, you can easily block these domains.

To block certain domains, you can go to the admin tab, under the account general information there is an area for ‘blocked domains’ (right under blocked continents). Here you have the option to submit up to 500 domains to be blocked from serving your ads.

If you find that you are exceeding the 500 limit of blocked domains, you can send your domains to your Yahoo rep and they can remove domains that they no longer advertise on any longer, so you can remove those domains and add in others.

My Yahoo rep says though a great way to prevent your ads from showing on certain unqualified sites is to keep track of your negative keyword lists. Negative keywords allow you to not show up for searches that contain that keyword. For example, if you’re offering bridal magazines, you may want to add in the keyword, ‘free’ assuming your magazines are not free. This will prevent your ad from showing if someone types in the keyword, ‘free bridal magazines’.

Another great addition to Yahoo is they have expanded their negative keyword limit from 250 to 500! To add negative keywords you can add them in at the account level by going to the admin tab, then clicking on edit under tactic settings. Or you can add them in ad the ad group level by going to your ad group, click on ad group settings, and again click edit under tactic settings and add in your excluded keywords there.

There are a few more new Yahoo! features or enhancements that I’ll talk about later this week. Stay tuned!

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.

Happy New Year! 2009 was a rough year for the country with the economy and all, so PPC Hero is cutting loose! Okay, maybe a bit too loose! But you can’t blame him… he has the PPC world resting on his shoulders. He is the sentinel being, the chosen one, who watches over the land of PPC to make sure all is fair and just. That is a lot of responsibility! So, even our fearless hero needs to get gussied up and have some bubbly everyone once in a while! Have a safe & happy new 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.

Brad Geddes is one of my favorite bloggers, and he has a really interesting link to a YouTube video that talks about how you can get information at the keyword level in Google Analytics that shows what conversion rates you get at what position in the SERPS. You can view the video here:

I have wondered at times for a particular account that recently lowered its budget if our positions are just too low now to generate the kind of sales we used to. Now, I should be able to find out this information using this report in Analytics.

If you find that you generate super high conversions in positions 4 – 6 over positions 1 – 2, that’s great evidence to your client that you don’t need to be in super high positions in order to convert well. Some people call clicks on ads in positions 1 and 2 curiosity clicks. Curiosity clicks are clicks from people who aren’t ready to purchase yet, but they’re in their leaning phase and click on ads in top positions just to get a further idea of what they want.

To run the report in Analytics, simply follow these steps:

1. Login to analytics
2. Click on traffic sources on the left hand navigation
3. Click on Adwords
4. Click on Keyword Positions
5. From there you can click on any keyword that shows up in the middle of the page.
6. The report by default will show keyword visits by position
7. If you want to get conversion rate by position, simply click on the drop down menu where it says visits, and click on conversion rate. (see screen shot below)

This report is also great to get additional budget from your client to get in higher positions in the SERPS. You can simply show your client that you convert higher in higher positions (if that is the case) and hopefully they’ll increase their budgets to get in those higher positions more frequently.

The more insight you have over your Adwords keywords the better decisions you can make on bid adjustments, etc. I love that Google offers these robust reports and will explore this in all of my accounts!

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.

If you haven’t already filled out our PPC Hero Readership Survey, please, please, please take a few minutes and do so now.

We are continuously working to improve the blog and need your help in order to do so. Plus, you can be entered to win a free landing page review from the Hanapin Marketing team! If you’d like a shot at winning the review, be sure to fill in the last box of the survey which asks for your email. If you’re the lucky winner, the PPC Hero team will provide an analysis of the well-formatted elements of your landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates. Thanks for your participation and as always, thanks for stopping by!

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.

Since we’re only a couple days away from the end of 2009 and many of us are working a short week this week, it seems like a good time to pull out a classic end of year cliche: the Resolution List! Like many people, I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. I usually don’t make them, partly because choosing an arbitrary date – January 1st, for example – to begin making life changes always seemed a bit disingenuous, and partly because, like most people, I rarely keep them anyway. However, this year, instead of making promises about my personal life – start working out again, finally organize my office, teach the cats to make me coffee, etc. – I’m going to offer five simple resolutions for PPC professionals in the New Year.

1. Make Sure Keyword Research is Always the First Step
Whenever beginning a PPC campaign for a new product or site, explore as many keywords and themes as possible. Do extensive research on the product, the industry or market in which it competes and the products it competes with. When in doubt, ask for help.

2. Always Test More than One Ad
Never run a campaign with only one ad. Why? Because it leads to missed opportunities for improvement. Just changing a couple words in the ad text or title line can sometimes result in significant differences in click-through or conversion rates.

3. Focus on Specific Goals/Metrics
The broad goal is always “As much as possible,” but it’s always easier to optimize for specific goals. It’s most effective to pick a couple particular goals – i.e., increase CTR by 3% & reduce cost per order by 5% – and focus on optimizing for them.

4. Analyze, Optimize, Repeat
Optimization is a constant process. Don’t get complacent, don’t assume past success will lead to future success without adjustments, and don’t ever stop analyzing keyword and ad copy performance.

5. Read Everything
The optimization tips from your Google or Bing rep, PPC tips from PPC Hero, SEO ideas from SEO Boy, industry news from Search Engine Watch… Never miss an opportunity to learn something new.

That’s all I’ve got today. I hope I was at least a little helpful for some of you in the PPC world in 2009, and I look forward to being just a little helpful again in 2010.
Happy New 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.

Late last week Search Engine Land posted an article on how Google is planning to stop allowing companies to create local business ads, and for anyone who currently has a LBA will stop displaying mid-December. Now the post did say that Google’s LBA’s will be coming back in the future, but declined to say when exactly.

This could potentially hurt some local advertisers, especially the ones who rely on the local business ads but do not run any PPC ads. However, if you are running PPC ads there is a mini solution to this issue until Google gets their LBA’s back up and running.

They’re called Location Extensions. If you’re running a PPC ad with a location extension your PPC ad will show the local address you entered as the extension in your PPC account as well as a map allowing customers to at least get your business name, address and even directions.

The location extensions will show your PPC ad with a plus sign below the ad text. Upon clicking on that plus sign your map will come up.

To enable the location extensions in your account, simply click on any campaign, then click on the settings tab.

Under ‘locations, languages and demographics’ you should see an option to ‘show relevant addresses with your ads (advanced). Click on that link.

Once you click on the link, another link will pop up saying, ‘add an address’. Click on that.

Then, you simply add the name of your company, address, phone number if you’d like, city, state and zip and hit save. Your final version should look something like this:

These ads with address won’t replace Google’s LBA’s but they will help your customer see where you’re located. The location extensions won’t show up for searches located outside of your geographic location as well. In addition to, if I’m not mistaken, the plus box allowing the customer to see your address is only available in positions right below the search box or in the shaded sponsored ad area in Google.

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.

We’ve spoken before about using Google website optimizer to test different elements of your landing page to help increase conversion rates. But the other day the team here at Hanapin Marketing came up with a full list of those elements to test using the multivariate testing option in Website optimizer.

The multivariate testing allows you to add in a piece of code to your landing pages and test showing that change 50% of the time to your users. Meaning, 50% of the time users will see the updated or changed landing page, and 50% of the time users will see the original landing page.

After a few days or weeks you can check on your multivariate test to see which version of your landing page is generating the higher conversion rates. So, what should you test you may ask? There is almost no limit to the things you can test on your landing pages. But here’s a tip, test one element at a time. Or set up multiple multivariate tests so you can test one change on your landing page but have multiple of those tests running.

For example, with multiple multivariate testing you could have one test running where you simply change the headline, another test could be adding a larger call-to-action button, another test could be adding a form to your landing page rather than a link. All these tests can be run separately, but at the same time.

Here is a full list of items we came up with that we feel are important to test to help increase conversion rates:

PPC

1.Call to action

- Location on page

- Color of button

- Copy on button

2.Form/Shopping Cart

- Length of form

- Link location

- Content of form (required fields and such)

3.Headline

- Color, size, font

- Copy (including keywords)

- Location on page

- Subheadline – yes or no?

4.Copy

- Tone (Sales, Emotional, Urgency)

- Structure; a lot of copy, versus minimal copy

- Format (bullets vs. paragraph)

5. Trust Symbols

- Testimonials

- Case Studies

- Trust Logos

- Client Logos

Additional Test Elements:

Contact Forms

Colors on landing page

Images on landing page

Flash on landing page

Video on landing page

Drop-down vs. basic navigation

Offers/Promos

Conversion funnel (singe vs. multi step)

Featured Products

Shopping Cart Funnel

- Process

- Add to cart button

Before you begin testing these elements of your landing page, consider these tips first:

Step 1: Know what you are trying to achieve

• Conversion action
• Audience – Know your user intent

Step 2: Know your value proposition

• What are the product benefits?
• What is the benefit of signing up now?

Step 3: Layout your testing strategy + follow it

• What will you test at each stage?
• What is the objective of each stage?

Step 4: Landing Page Testing >> Where do you start?

• See list above!

Website optimizer is something everyone should be using especially in today’s economy. It’s not a difficult process to do the multivariate testing, Google even gives you or your developer detailed instructions on how to add the code to the back end of your landing page.

I have tested several different aspects of my client’s website and have found the tests to increase our conversion rates each time except for one which made huge leaps and bounds in the total number of leads we were generating.

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.

This post is coming to us from a new guest blogger. His name is Brian Connelly. He will be writing for PPC Hero on a weekly basis, so look forward to hearing more from Brian soon!

After spending the past few years working in PPC marketing, I’d like to believe I’m exceptionally competent at managing effective search campaigns. Based on the ROI and profit margins associated with many of those campaigns, that may be true.

For companies that handle all of their own search marketing internally, it’s possible, and likely, for the search manager to be an expert on not just the best practices for running a Google or Bing campaign, but also an expert on the product and target market. However, working for an agency with dozens of clients and hundreds of products presents a different problem. It has forced me to acknowledge the unpleasant truth that there are many things I know nothing about. Among those things: construction, anti-aging skincare products, scrapbooking, all-natural male enhancement pills…

Despite my relative ignorance of those subjects, I can still devise comprehensive keyword lists for products that fall into those categories. How? Research. There are countless keyword research tools available – Google’s Keyword Tool is particularly useful and convenient when setting up new ad groups – and it would be foolish not to take advantage of them whenever possible. Those tools can be extremely valuable, as can soliciting advice in the forums of industry sites like Webmaster World and Search Engine Watch. However, there’s another vast source of knowledge and useful ideas that most SEM professionals leave untapped: non-SEM professionals.

It’s easy to occasionally fall into a comfortable pattern, using similar keywords and themes that have worked in the past, and it can be difficult to think like the customers I’m trying to target. So, instead, I find it very helpful to talk to those potential customers. More specifically, I find it helpful to talk to people I know who are not involved in PPC search. The same people who I see at parties or family gatherings and attempt to explain, without success, exactly what paid search marketing is are the people who can help me the most.

For example, maybe I’ve got to manage a PPC campaign for a new scrapbook tool. I’m clearly not in the target audience for this product, but I know that my wife is. Rather than spend an hour creating a list of terms that I think are relevant, I’ll send her a link to the site with the questions, “what would you search for if you wanted to buy something like this?” A client selling an innovative new power saw? That one goes to my brother, who works in construction and offers me a few suggestions about what he might call the saw and what kind of jobs it would be good for.

Sometimes these questions don’t lead to useful results, but sometimes they can lead to extremely effective general and longtail terms that would not have occurred to me or to the Google Keyword Tool. The point is this: don’t assume you’re always an expert, and don’t ever ignore a potentially useful resource for good keywords.

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.