Posts Tagged ‘ppc testing’

Chad Summerhill wrote a nice post recently about something you should be doing if you manage your own PPC account and something you should be showing your clients if you manage accounts for others – visual statistically significant ad test results by time period.  Check out the “how-to” in that post.

I did this exercise and can see how important it is to look at your ad test segmented out by time period (day or week, whatever is most appropriate).  The main reason for this is that if you simply report the final results of your test, you won’t tell the whole story.  Most of the time, we look at the results of tests like this…

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If you take your PPC campaigns seriously (why wouldn’t you?), you’re always testing.  Always.  It’s the only way to accomplish long-term growth and gain insights that will translate into all of your other marketing channels.  One problem that has been inherent since the beginning of PPC is the inability to do true A/B split-testing with variables like keywords, bids, ad text, ad groups, match types, dynamic keyword insertion, etc.

Yes, you could test them, but only by comparing metrics from different time periods (except for ads).  For example, you’d have to run ads at a certain bid price for a while, change it, and run them at the new bid price for a while.  Then, you’d have to compare the results from different time periods.  The problem? When you would compare the results, you would be likely to assume the differences in those key metrics to be the result of the changes.  But fluctuations in demand, shifts in competitor tactics, and uncontrollable circumstances (special events, etc.) can complicate things.

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Once a PPC account is set up and running, a good account manager is always looking for ways to improve results to better reach the account’s marketing goals.  One such way is to test different types of ad messages to gain insights into what attracts your industry’s customers to your products/services so that you can better understand and communicate with them.

Some of these message types include: Click here to keep learning

There’s a big temptation that PPC managers need to stay away from, especially when first building an account.  The temptation is assumption. (And yes, we all know what happens when….)  If you assume, you can waste a lot of time building out a campaign that you will just have to spend MORE time fixing later.

A couple of primary assumptions that would be easy to make…

• Keyword phrase “x” is definitely going to work so I’ll spend the time to build an ad group and write targeted ads for it.
• Keyword phrase “y” isn’t working, so I’ll just delete it.

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One of the most important things you can do to get all that you can out of your PPC campaigns is to practice granular ad group organization. This is because the more of your budget that you can funnel into granular ad groups, the better your results will be.

Basically, this means that your ad groups contain keyword phrases that are specifically the same in their search intent, as well as the same language that the searcher used in their query.  Typically, I’ve found that this means each ad group’s foundational or anchor keyword be at least a 3-word phrase. No, this does not mean you throw out 1-2 word phrases.

Yes, “tv, hd tv, flatscreen tv and Panasonic flatscreen tv” could all be in the same ad group and you would sell some tvs.  But, you wouldn’t have as good of a CTR and conversion rate as if you practiced granular ad group organization.

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“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.

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