Thomas Edison

It’s March Madness Baby!  So, time for a pep talk!

On the heels of writing about spending your PPC budget more wisely, I thought it only appropriate to encourage you to waste your money .

If you are spending your whole PPC budget on what works, you are falling behind.  Almost every author or speaker on the subject will tell you that as soon as they are ready to publish their book or deliver their presentation, the information has changed.  This industry, like most of the world, is moving fast.

So, you’ve finally gotten to the place where you’re getting a decent ROI on your budget with basic search network text ads.  Awesome!  Now what?  As more and more people (like your competitors) learn what you know, it will be harder and harder to succeed with what already works.  Therefore, you must always be adjusting, changing, learning and growing.

Yeah, I know it was hard work to learn all of the complications and best practices of getting those ads running, what keywords would work, that you shouldn’t run the Content Network and Search Network together in the same campaign, why the heck you were getting a bad quality score for a keyword you think is relevant, etc.

But now that you’ve figured out most of the basics, you need to know that there’s a whole PPC world out there filled with new ad types (sitelinks, product extensions, display, etc.), new ad channels (mobile, etc.), keywords you never thought of that would work, and many other new strategies/avenues I’m not thinking of right now.

With that said, how can you move forward in the expansion of your PPC empire if you’re not continually testing new methods, ideas and strategies.  And if you are testing, you are going to fail.  Miserably sometimes.  But, everyone comes out of the womb knowing nothing and most of our lessons are learned through failure.

I don’t know how much of your budget you want to allocate to trying new things.  Probably something big enough to get meaningful results but small enough that it won’t hurt if you lose it all.  (Kinda like the money I got on Syracuse to win it all)

So, go out there and win one for the Gipper! . . . or grab the bull by the horns! . . . or whatever your cliche of choice is and invent your own personal “lightbulb.”  Can someone please pass the tissue?

OK, we know that it’s not actually a waste of money if you’re finding out what does and doesn’t work, but you would have been less likely to read if I said “Testing with PPC,” right?

If it is an appropriate time of the day for your ads to show, you never want them to be shut off because your account has hit its budget. If this is happening, you are not spending your money as wisely as you could be.

Let me say that another way: you don’t want your campaigns to hit their daily budget.

Now you’re thinking questions like…”Huh, don’t I want to spend my money to get visitors to my website? Isn’t that the point of PPC advertising?  If I don’t have a budget, how do I keep from spending too much?”  The short answer is bid less.  Let me explain the longer answer with a very general description.

If you’re spending $2 per click and your daily budget is $200, then the most clicks you can get is 100.  After you hit 100 clicks, your ads are turned off and don’t show the rest of the day.  This means your ad is not collecting as many clicks as it could be. Since you undoubtedly have to be on some kind of budget, you don’t want to just let your ads run and spend out of control without considering ROI. Instead, you want to control your spending with your bids.

If you lower your bid to say $1.50, then you could theoretically get 133 clicks before your ads are turned off.  If you are still hitting your budget, lower your bids again.  If you spend $1.00, you could get 200 clicks before your ads are turned off, and so on…

What you want to do is find the sweet spot where you are spending just under your daily budget on a consistent basis.  This is the spot where you will get the most clicks for your budget.

With this simple experimentation method, you’ll find the spot where you can gain the most visitors for your money given your account performance and you’ll never need a Budget Tool again.  And of course, the more visitors you get for your money, the more conversions for your business.

Then, you can look at your ROI over time and decide what to do with your bids to maximize profit.

This is why I make money when I play poker.  In the game of poker, the correct play is often not what an amateur player would expect.  If an amateur sits down at a table and plays with me, they typically make plays they think are right without knowing their odds and how it affects their total profit in the long run.  Most of the time I end up with their money.

And why do they make the decisions they make?  Well, most of the time it’s emotional.  They fold when they should raise because they are afraid I have a better hand.  They raise when they should fold because they want a sense of adventure.  They are deciding based on emotional motivators and de-motivators rather than on the true odds of the situation. If this wasn’t the case and all players really knew what the right plays were statistically, no one would ever win money because in the long run every player gets dealt the same hands and is put in the same situations.

Not only does this happen in games like poker, but it happens in PPC management as well because there are many things about it that are counter-intuitive.  Let me give you a couple to think about.

1.  Your cost per conversion can be too low.

Would you rather pay $2.00 per conversion or $1.00 per conversion?  Contrary to what you might instinctively think, the answer may be the former.  Why?  What if paying $2.00 per conversion causes you to make 100 conversions and paying $1.00 per conversion causes you to make 80?  If your average sale was $10, paying $2.00 per conversion would gross you $800, while paying $1.00 per conversion would gross you $720.  You should raise instead of fold.

2.  You don’t have to have a monthly budget.

I’m not saying no one should have a monthly budget on their PPC accounts.  But, there’s a scenario where it just doesn’t make sense.  That’s when your account is hitting your company’s ROI targets.  If this is the case, why would you put a cap on what you spend?  You’re just losing money.  Throw more chips in the pot.

PPC account management isn’t something you just want to dive into head first and hope for the best, just like you don’t want to sit down at a poker table with professionals and hope for the best.  In both cases, you can do OK as an amateur, but you may come to realize that you are either slowly losing money or not maximizing the chance you have to make it.

Oh, by the way, here’s a bonus:

3.  Just because Google encourages you to do something, doesn’t mean you should do it.

I go in and have tons of questions.  I’m just starting to look and I don’t know any of the particulars about size, color, functionality, yada yada yada.  I was very happy with the salesman’s knowledge of the products and ability to give me all of the answers I was looking for.  Then, he tried to close me.  Of course, we all have the “one night stand” addiction.  We want everyone to buy on the first encounter.

But, I wasn’t ready for commitment.  I mean, I’m droppin’ over two grand here!!  I had to go and compare, see what the deals were, what sales were going on for President’s Day weekend, yada yada yada.

So, I shop around a bit and of course I end up at the Home Depot.  By this time, I’m not asking the questions I was before, right?  I’m being a little more specific.  So, I ask “What do you have in an 18 cubic foot fridge?”  The salesman’s answer was something like “This fridge here has this and this and this and we’ve got a great sale going on right now, plus it gives you a little more room in that it’s a 22 cubic foot fridge.”

Dude . . . seriously?  I wanted to throw my best Chris Tucker impersonation of “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” at him.  Nice guy, good intentions, but wasn’t listening to where I was at in the shopping funnel.

This sort of thing happens all the time in PPC campaigns.  The searcher is at a point in the shopping funnel and enters a search phrase to find a bunch of ads that don’t answer their questions.  Then, if they do find an ad that looks appealing, the landing page feeds them nothing but frustration in finding their answers.

This is exactly what happened in my Home Depot experience and I was ready to walk out the door like 5 minutes after I got there.  In online terms, I was ready to “bounce” right out of the store.  I was so annoyed, I didn’t even want to know the prices.  Why would I expect my paid visitors to react any differently?

PPC visitors pretty much tell you where they’re at in the shopping funnel by what they type into the search box.  If they type in a general phrase like “refrigerators,” they most likely don’t know what brand, size, or color they are looking for.  They are looking for answers to these questions.  Therefore, your ad and landing page should be like the Lowe’s guy and have all the information they need.

If they type in something like “whirlpool refrigerator,” they are telling you that they want information specifically about a Whirlpool.  They’ve already learned something somewhere else (maybe from you) that has given them interest in a more specific type of refrigerator.  These people have different questions.  Therefore, you should give them different answers.

Your goal for each campaign, ad group, keyword and ad should be to meet as many prospects as you can at their stage in the shopping funnel and move them along until they become customers.

Not only did the Lowe’s salesman meet me where I was at and provide me the answers I was looking for, they offered the best value in their products that I found.  Needless to say that I came back and became a customer.

It is true to an extent; but only to the extent that each of the keywords that you are grouping as similar should be landing on the same landing page.  Ad groups should be organized not only for keywords, but also for landing pages.

For example, if you are creating a campaign for Nike and you want to work on building a shoe campaign, then you may be tempted to create an ad group called “womens shoes,” and send the traffic to the womens shoes landing page.  Naturally.  But, the mistake I see made a lot is including a keyword like “womens tennis shoes” in this ad group.

While you would definitely gain conversions by sending this keyword traffic to this landing page, the problem is that there is a better landing page for this keyword on the Nike site.

Although the keywords “womens shoes” and “womens tennis shoes” seem to be closely related; the addition of the word “tennis” makes an extremely large difference.  With the term “womens shoes,” the searcher didn’t tell you specifically what type of women’s shoe they wanted; so we can’t make assumptions. Take them to the relevant category page and let them go from there.

With “womens tennis shoes,” the searcher told you specifically what kind of womens shoe they are looking for.  So, take them where they want to go!  The more you make them work to find exactly what they’re looking for, the less likely they’ll want to stick around.  So, when organizing your ad groups, ask the following two questions of your keywords:

1.  Are the people using all of these search queries looking for exactly the same thing?
2.  Should all of the people searching on these terms land on the same landing page?  Or is there a better option available?

PPC campaign organization is an underrated skill.  Master it and watch your performance shine.

I’m just one guy running my business. I want a great PPC program and I heard you can cater to someone like me. Can you help me?

I typically respond to questions like this very carefully because there isn’t a simple yes/no answer. I don’t want to provide false hope because yes, I do create great PPC programs, but much of the success is going to depend heavily on the website. Let’s look at a few things relevant to the campaigns first.

Key Problem Areas

There are four problem areas common to inefficient/ineffective landing pages:

1. Message match: Often times the search phrase (keyword) and promise in the ad text are not even mentioned on the landing page. Make it obvious that the search phase they used, and the ad they clicked on, are what the landing page is all about.
2. What they want: What’s in it for them? What’s the unique value proposition for the visitor?
3. Make it easy: Don’t make them search for the information they’re after. Use clear and easy to find calls to action. Crowded landing pages will confuse your visitor and they leave. You don’t get their information, you’ve lost the lead.
4. Keep it simple: Keep the forms simple, collect only the essential information necessary. No one likes long complicated forms – collect additional information after you’ve contacted them.

Comparisons

There was a limited demonstration of improved results on modified landing pages, where landing page testing had been completed. We were shown the ‘original’ page, then the ‘redone’ page, and given examples of the improved performance the new page had over the original.

Review Landing Pages

Attendee’s had submitted their landing pages for review. Pulling all the reviews into a summary, these were the most common problems in the submitted pages:

• CTA: the ad, and landing page didn’t have a distinctive obvious CTA. If a CTA was on the page, it was often below the fold. fix:put the call to action above the fold, and be very clear.
• Incentive: What’s in it for the visitor? fix: make it clear why the visitor should complete the form (or buy from you if it is a sale site)
• UVP: No clearly defined reason that the visitor should buy from you. fix:look back at your home page, reinforce what makes you special
• Benefits: No clear obvious benefit why this product is right for the visitor.fix: state why the product will benefit the visitor, clarify value (savings)
• Too cluttered: too much information on the page, one size fits all content. fix: segment information to different users. Too many options are distracting so simplify

Testing testing testing

One element not emphasized by the webinars was the value and importance of testing. Key to all landing page performance is testing. There was a brief section (3 – 4 examples each day) showing the original page and the ‘new page’ and some analytics to demonstrate improvement, but nothing more after that segment of the presentation ended.

At the end of the presentation, the speaker mentioned the need for multiple landing pages to serve different purposes, and proceeded with a sales pitch for working with ion interactive and their ‘live ball’ landing page software. It was a very soft sell for a simplified method of creating various landing pages, but there was no real emphasis on testing.

End take away is that I now have one of Stoney’s favorite features, a LIST of features to check against the landing pages I use. A check list that I can use when developing new test landing pages.

Let’s keep it really simple, counting down from #10:

Each of the three major PPC platforms follow a similar approach, with Google AdWords and MSN adCenter using essentially identical match types and Yahoo! Search Marketing being a little more confusing. If you can get your head around the different terminology in the three platforms then you’re going to be just fine.

Click here to read the full post at Search Engine Guide…

Have you ever speed dated? I’ve been married long enough that I’ve not ever had the opportunityneed to attend a speed dating meeting, yet I’ve seen it on TV. (wow I feel like I just almost made a bad quote, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”)

Last Night I attended Charity Speed Networking as part of Small Business Marketing: Unleashed and it was FUN. Honestly, if I were single, I may seriously consider speed dating if I was looking for someone with common interests.

Do you know how this works? Well let me tell you. We had one long row of tables, and along one side we had the “movers” and on the other side, the non moves. We were given three minutes to talk to the person across the table from us, and then the movers got up and moved down one seat to talk with the next person.

What a great way to force everyone into talking with other people who they otherwise might not ever speak with. My most memorable date discussion was with someone who had no idea what Search Optimization or PPC were. I got to TEACH! Problem was, three minutes wasn’t enough time. I ran out of time in talking to other people too, where I was learning information from them.

After the Speed Dating Networking, we had time to catch up with whoever we may have missed (due to time limitations, the movers didn’t get matched up with all the non movers) or may have wanted to follow up with.

Things to bring if ever speed date network

• Big stack of business cards
• Hand sanitizer

As I said, I was reluctant to move on, but working in the IT industry it was pretty much mandatory, and I did eventually make the move. After some initial adjustment, I never went back. That is until recently. On Wednesday the AdWords Addict posted AdWords on Dogpile – Can You Spot Them? and I had to go check it out.

I did a quick search for a keyword in one of my best performing campaigns (shame on me for not using the AdWords Preview Tool, but it doesn’t show me Dogpile results!) and found my ad to be listed at #4 … and the sponsored ad did indeed look pretty much like the organic search results. The difference is that the display URL is listed as Sponsored by: and at the end of the display URL it indicates which provider had the ad.

Another quick search, for another keyword, for another client, finds them in the #1 spot A little further down the page was the client’s natural listings. I initially found it curious that neither of my search results indicate the ad was found on Google, Yahoo and MSN (as some of the other ads displayed), because both of these clients perform tremendously well on all three networks. It didn’t take me a lot of thinking though, to realize that the results wouldn’t be identical because I have different ad creatives for each network.

Just for fun, I tried another keyword and found one of my Yahoo ads. In our industry, we’re going to notice things like the display URL pretty quick, but I’m quite certain that people like my mom (and maybe yours?) aren’t going to see that difference, particularly if your ad creative reads like a sales pitch and is written in sentence case rather than initial caps … This just further supports reason to write good ad copy and make sure the landing pages relevant to what the visitor is looking for! In doing so, you’re going to be able to capture more traffic from the Search Networks.

So Dogpile … I still love ya, even though I left ya. Kind of like an old boyfriend I had once …

Google AdWords
Quite often you will want to create a negative keyword list that applies to your entire campaign, rather than creating individual lists for each ad group. Google makes this easy by following these steps:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account.
2. Click the campaign you wish to edit.
3. The number of existing campaign negative keywords will appear beneath the campaign name and daily budget.
4. If no campaign negative keywords exist for your campaign, click Add. Otherwise, click edit.
5. You may select and enter negative keywords for your campaign in one of two ways:

You will find at other times you do want more control over the negatives, and Google again makes it easy to apply negative keywords at the ad group level by following these steps:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account.
2. Select the campaign and the ad group that you’d like to edit.
3. Select the Keywords tab.
4. Click Edit keywords, above the keyword table.
5. Add your negative keywords, one per line. Make sure to put a negative sign (–) before each keyword (e.g., –free).
6. Click Save Changes.

If you’re editing your accounts using AdWords Editor, then things are even a little easier.

1. In the Account column, select the campaign or ad group.
2. Select the Negatives tab.
3. For a single negative keyword, click the Add Negative and select the type of negative you wish to add
4. For a group, or list of multiple negative terms, click on Make Multiple Changes and select the type of change you’d like to make

Yahoo! Search Marketing

1. Sign in to your account
2. Go to your Ad Group Settings page.
3. Click on “Tactic Settings.”
4. On the “Tactic Settings” page the “Excluded Words” feature is displayed.
5. Click on “Excluded Words” to open the entry field.
6. Add your excluded words but do not to use any commas or semicolons after each word.
7. Click “Save Changes,” to process the Excluded Words list.

MSN adCenter

1. On the Keywords page, in the keyword entry box, type each keyword on a new line.
2. Click Add to Keywords List.
3. In the Negative keywords column, type negative keywords for each keyword.
4. To save your negative keywords, click Continue.

Looking at the campaign level, I found some paused and deleted campaigns with healthy Conversion Rates, leading me to wonder why that campaign had ever been paused, much less deleted. A quick glancing at the CTR and my questions were answered. Sometimes it is best to just dump what isn’t working and begin again. Ad group quality score certainly reflect that.

Digging in deeper to the ad group level of the higher converting campaigns, I found a few strong ad groups, and more that were not so strong. So I dug down into the higher converting ad groups to look at ad text and keywords. With the ad creative, I was interested most in which landing page had been used, as we’ve all learned that conversions are highest on the most relevant pages.

Where I found a universally dismal CTR, I also found the conversion rates to be pretty healthy for some of the keywords. Examining the ad creatives, again I found an overall dismal CTR rate, but some of the ads had very strong conversion rates.

Using this knowledge, I went into our current campaigns and made some pretty dramatic changes. The ad creative that I’ve been using has produced a solid CTR, so I combined what was working from my campaign efforts, with what had worked in previous efforts (landing pages) and the results are that my CTR rates are still improving, and the conversion rates are rising as well.

Win Win.

They compile a gigantic list of keywords because they sell hundreds of products. They create one campaign with one ad group to sell everything in their inventory. Their ad lists the company name and points everyone to the home page. Thousands of impressions, hundreds of clicks and dollars later, few conversions are the result.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out just how to organize such an overwhelmingly large list of products. I find using the grocery store an an organizational model can be very helpful.

1. What do you sell?
   Create one gigantic list of everything you sell. Canned corn, fresh corn, frozen corn, bread, cheese, milk, cereal, lettuce, eggs, tomatoes, napkins, oregano …
2. How are you organized?
   Is your website organized by category? If it isn’t, it should be. Organize your ad campaigns as thoroughly as your website, if not even more so. Canned goods, produce, dairy, butcher, dry goods, frozen foods, paper goods …
3. What items belong in which category?
   Figure it out and split up your keyword list accordingly. Within your canned goods category/campaign, you may break that down into smaller levels of organization such as vegetables, meats, or soups
4. Why should someone buy from you?
   This helps you write your ad creative – use your keywords in the creative: Top quality organic chicken broth
5. What aisle will you find a specific type of product?
   There’s your landing page. If you’re selling creamed corn, the landing page has creamed corn on it. You don’t want to pay for a click for Kosher Hot Dogs and have the ad click through and land on the Frozen Dairy page.

If you can’t think of how to best organize your campaign, visit your local grocery shop and take a lesson from them. Make it easy for your customer to find what they want, create the ad text that tells them you have what they want, and insure their click lands them on just the right page.

Campaign Summary:

AdGroup Level:

Ad Variations: (Dappi Diaper Pants):

Keyword Detail: (Dappi Diaper Pants):

With very limited and tightly focused long tail keywords – great success.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – can be used externally without an AdWords account – allows you to enter single keywords or find keywords from a web page.
• Google Search Query Performance – must be used with an active AdWords account – generates a list of what key words actually triggered your ad to display.
• Google Suggest – allows you to try different keywords to improve your search results.
• Google Trends – reflects what keywords people are searching for.
• PPC keyword tool – functions similar to AdWords because you enter a list of keywords or phrases and then it generates a list of other words and phrases that you may not have thought of.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggest Scraper Tool – shows frequently search for phrases starting with the words and letters in your query.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool – generates suggested monthly search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
• Wordze – gives users a general idea of how often a keyword is being search for, also allows the user to track daily trends as keywords.

I especially like the Google Suggest, although it doesn’t help generate a hard list. Tools like Adwords Keyword Tool, SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool, and the PPC keyword tool generate a list you can copy/paste and use in any of your campaigns.