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Posts Tagged ‘New Accounts’

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.

It seems as though Quality Score has fallen off the blog bandwagon here lately, but I’m here to say that the Quality Score and the Quality Index is still here and more important than ever.

One big problem that I have seen in many new accounts that have either transitioned from other search marketing agencies or in-house employees is the inability to accurately determine when to pause an under-performing ad text and exactly which ad to pause when testing. Pausing the wrong ad or making a decision to pause something too early can have a detrimental effect on your Quality Score.

Most PPC advertisers should know that the Quality Score is mainly based off how well your keywords relate to your ad text and landing pages. There are other factors that affect Quality Score but this is the main one.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it: Google will make the most money on ads that have higher click-through rates. Ads that have high click-through rates get a lot of traffic, so it makes sense for Google and Yahoo, etc to reward those with higher click-through rates over others. The way they reward you is that if you have a higher click-through rate, you’ll receive a lower page one minimum bid. This means that if you follow their rules, do all the things that get you a great Quality Score, then you’ll be able to place higher in the search engines results pages for a lesser cost.

Too many times I see ads that are paused or deleted that over time have a much higher click-through rate over other ads that are currently active. This tells me that people are not properly testing their PPC ads to determine a statistically valid ad winner. And let me just say, if you’re not testing your PPC ads, then read this PPC for Beginners post already, geez!

Go back into your Adwords account, click on your highest volume campaign and ad group, view your ads, and change the date range to show one whole year of stats. Check all of your ads and see if the ads you have active currently really do have the higher click-through rates.

If they do, great! If not, then you may need to reassess how you determine when to pause or delete and under performing ad text.

1. Go further back in time. Most people just look at past seven day stats or month-to-date stats. Go back further in time to get a more broad view of how well an ad has really performed. If you’re looking at a shorter data range certain seasonality or ebb and flow of traffic could have made the performance of an ad change. But the longer the data range you use the more those seasonality and ebb and flow of traffic changes affect the overall outcome.

2. Know when to make your move and when to wait. The more clicks you have on an ad text the more accurate your ad stats will be. If you only have a few clicks on an ad, that will skew your results. It’s like taking a survey of 100,000 people versus only 10 people. Obviously, those 10 people only represent a small number of the population. However 100,000 people will represent a larger population of people who think the same way. Don’t pause or delete your ads too soon. If there isn’t enough click volume then wait until there is enough volume so you can make a statistically valid decision.

3. Use the statistical calculator. Using the Teasley statistical calculator will assist you in making an informed decision on if and when to pause or delete an ad. Where it says ‘element 1’ and ‘element 2’ is where you will enter your ad text stats. ‘Mailed quantity’ is where you enter your impressions and ‘# of responses’ is where you enter your click data. Below it will show you the response rate (click-through rate) for each ad.

And below that you will get either a percentage of confidence or a ‘not very’ confident that the two elements will continue to perform in the way they are performing currently.

In conclusion, you may want to go back and double-check your ads to be sure you have the ad with the highest click-through rate showing. Of course you can then test different variations of your better performing ad to achieve an even higher click-through rate to improve your Quality Scores.

And next time you run through your PPC accounts looking to pause or delete ads, be sure to follow the steps above and remember more data will represent more accurate results. In the end, your helping yourself gain additional traffic with high click-through rate ads, but you’re also improving your Quality Score which can lead to lower minimum first page keyword bids.

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.