“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
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?