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Posts Tagged ‘Coworkers’

Google’s content network: it’s sort of like jumping over fourteen school buses on a flaming motorcycle. If you’re not careful and well-prepared, it can be a huge disaster. But if you can pull it off- it’s totally awesome. Impress your friends, clients, and coworkers! Tame your fear and win worldwide adoration. That might be overstating things; but in any case there’s usually not much excuse for you not to at least give the Google content network a try.

My arguments for risking life and limb, or rather ROI, are as follows-

I don’t want to give you an excuse to be lazy in your search campaigns, but guess what? No matter how great you are at keyword expansion, there is a limit to the number of people who will search for your keywords. That’s why we constantly expand our accounts with relevant keywords, but even so, there will be a segment of people who aren’t going to look for those keywords who still might want what you offer. Content targeting can help you reach some of them- whether or not you can afford to miss them is your decision to make. This is of particular importance to “new idea” products or services, which may have the potential to be extremely useful to Industry X. Problem is, if no one in Industry X knows that Solution Y exists, they’re not going to be searching for it. Search can work if you target related industry keywords, but until you are better known and have search volume in your own right, targeting industry websites via the content network can be valuable source of additional traffic.

I hear this argument: but my cost per lead is higher on the content network than on search! Yes, yes it may be. If you’re lucky or exceptionally talented at content network structuring and management it might not be, but this is just logic: you are targeting people who aren’t really looking for your product or service. Even if they click on your ads, they are probably going to be less committed to following through with any conversion action. Thus your cost per lead might be higher. The important questions really are: are they leads you couldn’t have gained via search targeting, and is the cost per lead acceptable in terms of your ROI? If it’s not…content isn’t working for you. Modify your strategy or get off the motorcycle. If it’s fine in terms of your return but just higher than search, then you need to seriously review whether you can increase search leads at a lower cost. If you can’t, the content network can be a great opportunity to bring in revenue.

I also hear you that your product/service just doesn’t work on content. Okay, I don’t 100% believe you unless you’ve tried more than one time. I’m certainly not claiming to be a content network guru, but I do know two things: 1) We have many lead-based clients in various industries it works well for and 2) It didn’t work as well as it does now for any of them on the first try. It needs tweaking.

You should follow Google’s advice on setting up content campaigns, and if you have a Google rep, you can have them help you. It still might not work perfectly. You need to analyze the sites your ad groups are being automatically matched to and get an idea of the theme that Google is assigning them. You need to determine which themes are working for you, and further target ad groups to similar themes. You need to have enough small ad groups both to create specific themes (I’ll say here- I think Google’s theme targeting is more specialized than they publicly admit) and remove the themes that don’t work without cutting out traffic to themes (ad groups) that do.

To make content cost per lead numbers decent, you have to, have to: stay on top of monitoring your placements. Allowing your content campaigns to run on automatic placements is an excellent traffic-catching method, but if you don’t frequently remove sites that generate clicks without converting your cost per lead is going to be ridiculous. Aside from sites that generate valid non-converting clicks, Google’s content network is, in my experience, a frequent victim of click fraud sites. We spent nearly $2000 in two weeks on just one group of such sites. I found them: Google didn’t do this for me. You can download placement performance data right in the interface now- choose a date range, eliminate sites that have spent above your cost limit without converting and those with costs per lead above your goals. Excluding them at the ad group level is the more cautious route, in that you won’t remove traffic to other ad groups in the same campaign for which those placements do work. How aggressive you’re going to have to be in removing these placements is really dependent on your margin for profit on the content network, it’s worth experimenting to determine what your cost-before-excluding cutoff should be in order to reduce cost while balancing a corresponding possible reduction in leads (you can’t guarantee that a site that did not convert by the time it spent $5 would not have converted at $7).

We know that our search quality scores aren’t affected by our content network click-through and conversion rates- thank goodness! But you do need to be aware that your content campaigns will have their own independent quality scores, based on basically the same things as search quality scores are. They’ll determine which sites your ads appear on, where you’re placed, and how much you pay for those placements. Therefore, increasing your quality scores on the content network is just as important as it is on search. That’s why you need to structure your ad groups into closely knit themes that can have properly targeted ads and landing pages associated with them. And you need to make sure that those ads and landing pages are in line with the types of placements you’ve been assigned to by Google, in order to increase your click-through and conversion rates. Just like you remove keywords that with low CTR and conversion rates on search, you need to identify both ad groups that have very low click-through rates or conversion rates and fix them up or pause them, and placements for which you have low CTR or conversion rates. These placements can be identified in the same placement performance report mentioned above, and you should eliminate them too. They’re not doing you any good, and are damaging your quality scores.

Especially when you’re getting accustomed to it, managing large campaigns on the content network can be higher-maintenance than managing search campaigns; but once you’ve gained a comfort level with regular maintenance tasks you’ll have more freedom to expand your efforts to more growth-oriented management. Pay attention, make sure you’re committed and prepared, and you’re much more likely to make it over the buses.

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 importance of strong keyword grouping and organization extends past the Google AdWords interface. How you organize your keywords plays a large role on how to build messaging platforms on your landing pages. Check out this post from Ion Interactive on grouping your keywords around user intent to build smart, higher-converting landing pages.

Google Adwords is rolling a new feature to their Opportunities Tab on the interface. The new “Bid Ideas” feature helps identify opportunities to adjust your bids on keywords to maximize your ROI. The feature provides you with bid-raising ideas, bid-lowering ideas or neither for your keywords and you can choose to implement the suggestions based on your goals.

Google is once again updating their opportunities tab in the Adwords interface. You once had new keyword opps along with budget recommendations. Now they’re adding a new ‘big idea’ section along with bid simulator information to help you determine where your bids should be set.

Google buys Aardvark, the half human, half algorithm social search engine according to John Battelle. Will they actually do something with it this time or will they let it flounder like Dodgeball?

Go straight to the source and Listen To Your Customers suggests a post this week on Search Engine Guide. If you’re working on adjusting your keywords, stop brainstorming with coworkers and start asking your customers what they think!

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.

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.

Tell your friends, tell your coworkers, tell your mom (well, if she’s interested in search engine marketing)!

On Monday, September 21, Hanapin Marketing (the company that produces the PPC Hero and SEO Boy blogs) will be announcing an amazingly awesome SEM giveaway contest. We’re giving away $16,000 worth of search engine marketing-related prizes, including:

• A hundred SEO, PPC, and SEM books!
• Free subscriptions to seven exceedingly useful SEM tools and services from some great companies: SEOmoz, SEO Book, ClickSweeper, ShoeMoney, The Search Monitor, FormSpring, Trellian, and ClickEquations!
• Our grand prize- a full PPC account or SEO website review from the Hanapin Marketing team!

Plus, everyone who enters will receive PPC Hero’s unreleased new publication detailing the team’s experiences, tips, and cautions in inheriting very large PPC accounts, as well as access to the brand new SEO Boy keyword rankability tool!

We can’t wait to distribute this SEM wealth to the world, so be sure to look for the contest announcement on both the PPC Hero and SEO Boy sites on Monday, September 21. See you then!

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.

Are you about to take on a big website redesign? How about rebuilding that clunky-but-critical software application? Before you dive in, remember that the final arbiter of quality is not you, it’s your users. Here are a few steps to better understanding their needs and behaviors before you spend any precious programming dollars:

Do your user research

Start with any quantitative data, such as analytics, that you already have to see what your users are (or aren’t) doing. For additional insight, you can user-test the current site or software to see firsthand what delights and what frustrates your users. Talk with colleagues in sales or customer service to learn current and persistent user issues. Even if this research data already exists in a report somewhere, make the time to talk. The empathy engendered from an actual conversation with people “in the trenches” will naturally equip you to make more user-centered design and development decisions.

Build a prototype

Actually, make that “prototypes” (plural)— no one creates a perfect prototype on the first try. But that’s the idea: to fail as quickly, as cheaply, and as often as possible knowing that each iteration gets you closer to a solution worth building. Certainly you can build effective prototypes with HTML or Flash, but Acrobat, Powerpoint, and even paper and pencil are still excellent tools to get your ideas into a tangible format. In doing so, you can better communicate, evaluate, and test your ideas. Speaking of testing…

User testing

When some think of user testing, they imagine white lab coats and clipboards. Unfortunately, many also imagine delays and extra expenses. When forced to choose between this and no user testing at all, most choose the later. For shame! On smaller projects or those with a wicked-tight deadline, take the guerilla approach: find 6 to 10 coworkers, parents, spouses, neighbors (whoever is willing to help) and observe them individually as they complete one or two of the most important tasks on your prototype. This won’t give you all of the insight or fancy reports that formal usability testing provides, but testing even just one person is 100% better than testing no one. The results might surprise or even frustrate you, but better to know these things now than after the project is otherwise done.

The right design

It’s true that we human beings like shiny, pretty things. In technology, nicely designed interfaces are perceived as easier to use than non-designed ones. This doesn’t mean your project should be a beauty contest, however. For example, imagine if Google’s screen design utilized rich imagery and elaborate screen transitions. While this might be appealing in another setting, it would be a complete nuisance on a search screen. For Google, and indeed many others, the most “beautiful” screen design is often the simplest.

It’s worth it

We know very well the pressures on a new project to quickly “get to work” building something. It’s unfortunate when steps like user research, prototyping, and user testing are the first things to go when budgets and timelines tighten. The irony is that these will often save time and money in the long run, and ultimately keep you from unwittingly rebuilding a merely better-looking version of what doesn’t work.

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Blog-Tipping: Catalyze, A Social Network for Software Development and Usability Experts
• How Easy is it to Do Business With You Online?
• Most Users Don’t Like Change
• Cappuccino and the Lies of Packaging
• Wow, that’s Transparency!