Archive for the 'Pay Per Click Advertising' Category
For those companies who are fortunate enough to have large Pay-Per-Click (PPC) budgets, effective use of every penny is extremely important. For this reason, there are a number of ways to go about making sure you receive the maximum return on Ad Spend. Here is a quick list of bullets to check off in optimizing and cutting costs:
AD’s: Does each and every adgroup have at least 3 ad creatives running at once? If the adgroup has not had more than one or two ever, getting up to three or four would be a good idea. If so, checking on the past performance of the ads is a must. Look back for the past 90 days to see the click-through-ratio (CTR) performance on average. Also compare this to the past 30 days performance. Cut the lowest performing one or two. Again do not delete it, just pause it. And create another.- Relevant Landing Pages: For companies this size multiple locations nation wide or world wide will most likely be hot spots. Finding those geographic hot spots and creating landing pages for those cities, states, etc. will dramatically increase conversions in most cases. People looking for services, products or information will greatly appreciate seeing their local area acknowledged on your site.
- Time Targeting: Effective time targeting for big budgets is Awesome. Most of us have heard of the 80/20 rule in business. For PPC, start off with 80/20 or try90/10. By checking your conversions each hour, you can take the lowest performing 10-20% of the day and bid down during that time frame (this way you can conserve your budget and reallocate during peak performing times). This will help you place higher and/or get more conversions during the peak hours where competition can be tough! You can find the conversions for per-hour breakdown in Google Analytics on the left hand navigation bar by clicking on Goals, then Total Conversions then Graph By Hour.
These are three top tips on cutting costs for large PPC budgets right off the bat. As always, make sure that this applies to your campaigns and then Test, Test, Test and Analyze, Analyze, Analyze. I would also suggest making small changes at a time and then comparing it with month-over-month data. Be careful when making big changes to big PPC budgets. You should err on the side of caution, opting for slow improvements versus throwing a wrench into your currently effective marketing.
For more Help in Optimizing your Large PPC budget: Look To The Right Internet Marketing
June 26 2008 | Pay Per Click Advertising | 1 Comment »
As most now know Google is in the TV advertising game. All TV ads are running through Dish Network for now. The user interface for the TV advertising is consistently simple as the AdWords advertising. Still the options we love with AdWords like day parting, budgeting, demographic targeting based on networks, programing etc. However all changes take effect the next day. Great tracking as we are accustomed to from using analytics data. For those of us that have used radio advertising they do have a Market Place for finding people to help us develop our TV Ads. With the Google TV Ads you can block and select the actual programing (show’s) you want and don’t want to show for. I believe this is a great step in the right direction for the control and reporting that small to large business are looking for with TV. Obviously for the cost of creating ads and the actual air time it will be reserved for those companies that can maximize a relatively higher advertising budget with Google TV advertising. I look forward to hearing success stories using Google TV Ads. Noah @ LookToTheRight.comÂ
March 12 2008 | Announcements and Pay Per Click Advertising and Reviews (non-paid) | No Comments »
At times us marketing managers and business owners can get pretty overly unbalanced in our focus of getting more leads and calls in our pursuits. High touch customer service is huge! It will make or break a business. Great customer service will lead to word of mouth business not just eCommerce efforts. “Word of mouth is the most powerful means by which any product or company builds a reputation, and the internet is a medium made for word of mouth.”-Bill Gates Business At The Speed of Thought. This becomes more and more precedent as social networks grow and social network marketing grows. We all have our favorite brands, vendors, and stores we love to frequent and those we don’t. Most times the likes and dislikes hinge on the basis of the quality of there customer service. For all companies that take calls from customers and potential customers need to be highly aware of what kind of conversations are taking place. A high majority of calls will be the basis of impressions made about your web business. How may rings before someone picks up? Is the person warm and receptive? How many times is the call transfered? How long are your hold times? Are the reps knowledgeable? Are the internal reps sales focused? If you are concerned with conversions your phone reps are a huge key to this. A sales focused (or one with incentive(aka Commissioned)) rep will greatly increase over phone sales and sales on the web after those customers hang up. I see this as a big hang-up with a lot of business in the transition to doing more and more business generated from the internet. So make sure you get it right in your organization so your business doesn’t get Hung-up On!
February 25 2008 | Business Building and General Business Issues and Pay Per Click Advertising and Social Networking | 1 Comment »
Quality Score is HUGE for every PPC marketer. The better your QS, the higher placement you get, and Cheaper your clicks cost! When I first got my start in PPC I was able to reduce CPC for my employer by 50% after going to an educational session for Campaign Structure optimization. More and more recently I have been seeing changes in the ease of getting Good and Great QS for new campaigns by starting off broad. I have some old (real old) Clients that have 100′s of key words in one adroup with 90% great score and 10% good QS and minimum bid as low as $0.01. These days I have noticed proper structure from the start is even more needed to get and keep QS that is good and great from the start. Following this out line HERE is great to get and keep QS of good and great from the start and on. However, with some of my Geo targeted clients even with absurdly structured campaigns they still can get some poor and okay QS. Which takes a bit more work with the other variables in the AdWords Process. I found with these getting the Click Through Rate up as quickly as posable will get the QS up the quickest. I suggest using the link above as a reference in all new campaign and adgroup creation to keep your Quality Score as high as possible. If you have any great tips on this topic Please Let us know! Noah @ LookToTheRight.com
February 19 2008 | Pay Per Click Advertising | 2 Comments »
Did you know that you can advertise on Stumble Upon for .05 per click?
It’s easy to get started if you already have a Stumble Upon Account. You can simply click on Create Campaign, Choose a Category, Put in your URL and Ad Funds…You’re Done!
What about Bidvertiser? Have you ever used it? Like Stumble Upon Ads, it’s easy. It only takes a few simple steps. You should try it out if you are looking for an alternative form of internet advertising.
Traffic Help:Â I’m open to comments on how to drive traffic to The Open Door over the next 2 weeks. Any suggestions?
February 04 2008 | Internet Marketing and Pay Per Click Advertising | 7 Comments »
If you want BIG ROI from Paid Search, YES!
This is a common question with almost every small business or individual that runs their own web based business asks and a very common question for medium and large businesses. There are a LOT of key things to consider when making the decision to do in-house or outsource.
PPC Budget
Your companies budget is always a concern. We all have one. And have to stick to it if we want to stay in business. If your a start up with low funds you DON’T need to be gambling with your capital by outsourcing from the start. A quality campaign does not happen over night.
My experience is 3 to 6 months till the performance is in top gear with enough data to be predictable. If cash flow is tight educate your self and do it for a while on your own. This way you will know how to communicate with your paid search manager down the road when you do outsource or have a consultation.
The more data you have and build the better. Even if there is a fair amount of waste and low results it can be refined upon by a full time professional Paid Search Manager.
Keeping PPC in House
A close friend of mine who is cleaning up with SEO and paid search says, “those that are good do it for themselves.”
If you have an in house sales or marketing person that is getting incredible results with PPC for your company, be willing to risk them leaving if you aren’t going to reward appropriately. If that person is money motivated, you will have to pay to keep their attention.
Make sure you invest in the proper education for paid search if it is done in house. Training, books, CD’s, and networking events are all great resources in gaining the necessary knowledge for top performing Pay Per Click Advertising.
If you have an individual that can focus time, energy, and passion to PPC marketing that will stay with you long-term that’s good as gold. I would still suggest an occasional audit from an outside source just to make sure that nothing is being overlooked that could increase ROI even more.
Outsourcing PPC
When you take the plunge and make the decision to have a full time pro take over your paid search accounts, do your home work before you hire someone. Certified Professionals have proven skills. The most common search engine stamps of approval are:
- The “Certified Google Advertising Professional (or Company)”
- The “Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador”
- The “Microsoft adExcellence Member”
Make sure you get quality referrals from current or past customers. However, just because an individual is certified at a big company doesn’t mean they are quality. If a big company or even a small company with current clientele wants to get an individual certified quickly with out proven success it’s very very easy to do.
Unlike a company who may put a rookie on your PPC campaign, an individual that has built their own clientele over time has earned and worked for their reputation. They can’t get the referrals and new clients if they don’t. Make sure that there is a real individual reviewing and overseeing your account. There are great robots that can manage things but a truly effective PPC strategy requires a human touch!
In closing, I do believe that there are times when you shouldn’t outsource PPC and times when you should. Use this post as a thought card in your considerations. It is always great to consult an outside expert periodically – and for serious ROI, almost necessary to fully outsource.
Noah @ LookToTheRight
December 18 2007 | Pay Per Click Advertising | 5 Comments »
A majority of the time I cover a lot of topics that are relevant to AdWords campaigns that are up and running, and having success, and a bit more advanced.
Today I wanted to just get down to the basics of the thought process for a new campaign or a company that may just be setting things up with their Pay Per Click stratagy. I have found a lot of sucess in setting up PPC marketing by starting very broad and fine tuning from there. Tthis can be a many month process to get everything geared up. However, it can save a lot of time, money and energy in the end. Some companies and individuals will try and up load the keywords and phrases for every single product in their catologue. And separate each product into individual campaigns and ad groups.
I have even huge large lists of ad groups with only one keyword or phrase in each. I understand the intent of breaking each and every keyword down to its own ad group. But this process would take way more time and energy than nessasary. Its not just about gaming the search engines into getting your ad above everyone else by making individual campaigns, adgroups for each keyword. I have found that it is much better to start broad and have a lot of keywords (that are related) and group them together. Some of my clients have 300++ keywords in one adgorup to start with. Then as you see which ones are preforming well and getting the most impressions breaking them into thier own adgroup and grouping only specific key words together at that point. (also better to use adwords editor for moving keywords around to other adgroups and campaigns.)
This can save A LOT of time. This way you dont spend energy creating a stratagy for low preforming keywords and phrases. Also from a sales and marketing background I alwayse start with marketing products/services that either have a short sales cycle to purchase, and or have the best margin. That way you get the biggest bang for your Search engine dollars and time you spend on your PPC account creation and optimization.
Noah @ LookToTheRight
November 15 2007 | Pay Per Click Advertising | No Comments »
I have spoken in the past about the value of tracking everything you can. Especially in Google Analytics. How ever when managing your paid advertising, Google AdWords Conversion Tracking is exactly what you need for fine tuning your PPC campaigns into a money making machine!
With AdWords conversion tracking you can track the true value of each individual keyword or key phrase. Also great way to see which match type works the best as well, weather its broad, phrase, or exact. You can see exactly which one yields a Purchase/Sale, Lead Submission, Signup, Views of a Key Page, or Custom.
The stats you get are How many Conversions (people that took desired action), Conversion Rate % (conversions divided by clicks), and my personal favorite Cost per Conversion (total cost divided by conversions). With my past sales and marketing experience it has alwayse been about how much work must be done or how much money must be spent for each sale. This is the exact answer. And if you know your Margins for the products or services you sell or provide you can figure out your exact needed budget.
My Duty as a PPC pro is to help get that cost per conversion down as low as possible at the same time as keeping the conversions as high as possible. Its not all about clicks, its about our viewers and potential customers being people who take action now. So if you do your own PPC management or plan to outsource later set it up and implement it as soon as possible to help now and in the future when you get to fine tuning and optimizing!
Noah @ LookToTheRight
November 08 2007 | Pay Per Click Advertising | 3 Comments »
As a pay per click pro one of my main goals is to just get people to look at my ads. I always ask my self: How do I get More Looks and what do I say once they Look? Before you can get clicks you have to get looks. So what will draw your ideal searchers eyes to your ad?
Stand Out-Most importantly is having the key words in your ad so the search engine will put those keywords in Bold Blue. Or bold black, or bold green.
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition- A true advertisers motto. The more your potentials clients see your ad the more likely they will be to take action. A lot of us search a few phrases and look around for different results. And if your there each time it can make a difference. Also repeating the keywords (which will be bolded) in the “Link Line” the two “Content Lines” and in the “display URL line” after your domain and the .com/
So once they look you Must have something good to say. And unfortunately most of the time you only have 95 characters to communcate. This is the biggest factor in increasing CTR (click through rate). There are some great tips over at the Red Fly Marketing Blog They have some AWESOME suggestions for Phrases that increase CTR. I have a few my self…but for now reserved for my clients only 
Don’t forget to not only make them Look, But make them Click!
Noah @ Look To The Right
November 01 2007 | Pay Per Click Advertising | 1 Comment »
And by $$ I mean more ability for profit and possibly cost as well. Announced August 8th Google will be making “an improvement to the top ad placement formula.” This change is supposed to bring “increasing control for advertisers.” However this means that they will swing focus on “actual” CPC to maximum CPC. In the past your CPC/actual CPC has been a large factor of what those BELOW you have been bidding. This new formula means that “your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you” but more so on how high your Max CPC is. Don’t worry Quality Score is still a big key to your CPC and Position. Although we may see more CPC’s near our maximum bids instead of where they are now. For several of my clients our CPC is always about 1/2 of our Max bid, and we place in the top 3 every time. From my understanding this could mean that what you put down as your max will be what you pay, or closer to. We will have to wait and see how this really affects things. For some of my clients it could mean a lot of cash in increased CPC, the need to use position preference, and closer monitoring day in and day out. They say “We anticipate that most of your ads will continue to perform as they have in the past.” But only time will tell on this change. It could be really cool at the same time. It may mean that some of my clients competitors with a little bit better quality score that have a lower max CPC we can now beat out in position. And that could mean a lot more cash in profits in the end. Please comment on any changes that you notice in your own campaigns. More feedback from other AdWords advertisers on the results of this change could help us all.
Quotes from: Inside AdWords The official source for information about AdWords
August 13 2007 | Announcements and Internet Marketing and Pay Per Click Advertising | No Comments »
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