Tag Archive for: PPC

There are certainly times when you have too many options. Specifically, I’m talking about you AdWords campaigns. Making the right choices could potentially mean netting thousands of additional users. Thanks to split-testing, you can be more certain that you’re running the most effective campaign possible.

Split-testing is simple enough. Essentially, you run the campaign as is, and you also run it with one elemental change. Both ads are randomly displayed to users and eventually, over thousands of views, you discover which is more effective.

You change in your campaign can be a variety of things. Maybe the two ads being split-tested are drastically different in color, text or another way. Or, the ads could direct users to different landing pages.

To achieve your split-test, you’ll need to set AdWords to rotate your ads evenly. This may not be as effective as the ‘optimize for clicks’ option that AdWords suggests, but for the sake of testing it’s the only way to get real results.

Alistair Dent details the split-testing strategy at Search Engine Watch. Essentially, you should set aside one campaign strictly for split-testing, which allows your other campaigns to capitalize on what is already working. Copy the campaign you wish to improve into the split-test campaign, then turn it off in the main campaign.

Remember, it will take time and thousands of users to minimize potential variables, so don’t rush through the testing phase. If you are patient, you’ll get a clear answer on how to tweak your campaign.

TV

Imagine seeing AdWords style ads displayed on your TV during your favorite show. The idea isn’t as far away as you might think.

A startup called The Compass Group LLC is working on a way for advertisers to create text overlay ads, which could appear any time on any participating station. This would lower the cost of television advertising and allow small businesses to put their ads in places they never could’ve afforded.

Essentially, TV stations would allocate space on the screen and times when ads could be placed, much like a website allocating space for ads, which are then filled by AdWords. Users would then be able to creat their specific ad and choose when they’d like to run it. This streamlines the process, making it almost entirely user-generated and automated.

The one possible hang-up that has yet to be adderessed is whether or not the public, which is not used to seeing this type of advertising on TV, will respond to the ads. In general, more advertising on TV is usually met with some hositility.

Advertisement Journal has more on The Compass Group LLC.

The cost of doing business with pay-per-click advertising has risen sharply over the past decade. So much so, many small business owners are wondering if the price they’re paying to get their message out is worth the return on their investment.

As Darren Dahl reports for the New York Times, larger companies joining the PPC craze has caused rates to skyrocket and nearly priced out smaller competitors.

AdGooroo, a research firm specializing in the PPC market, reports that more than nine out of ten companies spend less than $10-thousand a month on PPC advertising. At the other end of that spectrum, however, are giants like Amazon and University of Phoenix, who spent $54-million and $37.9-million respectively in the first half of 2012 alone.

The advice many experts offer is to scale back PPC ads and make keywords as specific as possible to your business. General keywords like ‘life insurance’ or ‘car sales’ put you in direct competition with a number of companies, many of whom have much deeper pockets.

PPC also shouldn’t be your only advertising platform. Branching out into social media and search is crucial to drive as much traffic to your site as possible.

It’s worth looking into SEO services to improve your organic search rankings. There’s even services online that pledge to manage your social media marketing accounts, as well. When you own a small business, time and money come at a premium and online advertising is becoming costly for both.

As with any Google service, AdWords is constantly innovating and improving. Lisa Raehsler recently put out her list of the 10 best recent AdWords improvements at Search Engine Watch.

1. Media Ads

This one hasn’t been fully made available yet, but could be huge for certain businesses. The ad includes two links, one to a landing page and one to a relevant video, which is expandable from the ad.

2. Product Listings

These ads are linked to a Google Merchant account and show your product to users searching for a relevant keyword. Also currently in limited release.

3. Enhance Sitelinks

New sitelinks are larger and actually appear like regular ads, but they’re connected to one closely related ‘umbrella’ ad. CTR have reportedly significantly improved with the enhancement.

4. Remarketing

Currently in beta testing, advertisers will soon have the opportunity to use a consumers previous search for keywords to show them relevant ads on subsequent searches.

5. Offers extensions

Ads and offers combined. Your specfic promotion or coupon is included with your ad and can be saved to a Google offers account.

6. Reminder extensions

Users can send themselves an email from your ad reminding them about a sale, opening or special. Just started in beta.

7. Remarketing in Analytics

Build targeting lists in analytics using a variety of factors, including referral source or the site the user came from. These lists are easily integrated in AdWords.

8. Dynamic Display

Target specific users based on their activity or websites based on their audience. Display ads will link with a Merchant account to show your relevant products.

9. Comparison ads

It’s a cost-per-lead model that does just what it sounds like. Compare your prices to other companies. This one may be a long way from full release, but it’s being tested on financial companies.

10.  App promotion

Advertise your app to app users. AdWords does most of the work here providing the graphics, formatting and updating the rating ad reviews.

Bing Ads recently made Sitelink Extensions available to all U.S. users, which allows advertisers up to 10 sitelinks to their ads. This helps consumers navigate directly to their desired page, rather than landing on the homepage and having to find their way around.

As Pamela Parker reports for Search Engine Land, during beta testing, click-through-rates for ads with sitelinks improved by as much as 25-percent over standard ads.

In another tweak, advertisers no longer need to be logged in to use the ad preview tool.

In order to improve your existing online ad campaigns and discover new opportunities that you’re currently missing, you have to study the analytics. Trend line analysis is likely included whether you use AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter or any other platform and it saves you from poring over column after column of numbers. Instead, you are presented with an easy to read and, more importantly, an easy to digest report.

Matt Van Wagner has an in-depth report on different types of trend line reports and how to use trend line analysis at Search Engine Land.

Let’s look at some potential errors to avoid and how to make these reports work for you.

First and foremost, you have to understand the context of any report and be sure to enter proper parameters. If your reporting time is too short, you may see a graph suggesting a problem that isn’t really there. You may also notice a simple fluxuation of variables beyond your control and perceive it as a problem with your campaign.

Before making any changes, do some investigating. Take the guesswork out of online advertising and diagnose the problem. Then, you will know what needs to be changed, or what can be left as is.

Always keep your specific campaign goals in mind. For some, conversion rates improving but total conversions going down could be a problem. However, if it’s in line with that campaigns goals, then you’ll probably want to leave the campaign untouched.

Sometimes it’s what you decide not to change that will make the biggest difference.

With time, you’ll start to be able to recognize at a glance a graph showing the early signs of trouble. Be sure you understand not only what each individual trackable metric means, but also how they relate to each other.

Handshake

Sometimes, the determining factor in whether your work for a client will have a happy ending or not is simply how strong your relationship is with that client. By effectively communicating, making sure you understand their goals and using the right language, you give yourself the best chance to succeed.

Purma Virji has, what she calls, “5 amazing tactics” to build that strong client-consultant relationship. Check out her in-depth look at Search Enging Watch.

1. Learn from each other

In order to successfully fulfill the client’s needs, you need to be on the same page. Understand what they want out of the project. When you pitch ideas to them, back them up with reasoning and a cause-and-effect approach. Set realistic timelines that you both can live with. Be sure that they understand your language. Educate them so they know what’s possible and how valuable your work is.

2. Lines of communication open, not flooded

Your client wants to feel that their voice is being heard and they want to have access to you. However, allowing anyone involved in the process to contact you at all times will be too time consuming. Instead, set a communication schedule and stick to it.

Set a weekly meeting time where everyone involved has a chance to voice concerns and you have an opportunity go over timelines, new ideas and progress.

You should also send out regular updates to keep your client involved. Ideally, these short reports will answer any questions they might have before they come to you with them.

3. Be prepared when asking for buy-in

Do your homework and have metrics ready when asking for an increase in budget. You should know exactly how much time and funding will be needed for a specific project. Then, be sure to articulate why it will be worth it.

4. Prioritize

When first starting out on a project, your to-do list will probably seem pretty daunting. You want to knock out as much as possible and show your client that you are making quick, effective progress.

To do so, tackle the tasks that are short and simple but could yield big results first. Anything that involves a simple adjustment without weeks of testing should be at the top of the list.

5. Be honest and upfront about bad news

Mistakes will happen. Goals will be missed. You will not meet every expectation. If you handle bad news correctly, however, you can and will overcome it.

Send out a detailed email as soon as the problem is discovered. Set up a meeting if warranted.

When discussing it with your client, summarize the problem while including how much it is costing. Talk about what you’ve done to fix it, what is needed and when you expect to overcome it. Also, try to find the good that has come out of it. Maybe you’ve avoided potential lost time or discovered a new method of doing things or just gained some valuable knowledge.

 

Change

Chances are that your company doesn’t have piles of money to throw at advertising in order to get results. Most likely, you’re wondering how to get a big ROI from a modest to meager ad budget. Jeremy Decker has five tips for you, which you can read more about at Search Engine Journal.

1. Utilize lower ad positions

When you search for a specific topic or product, do you always click the first result that appears? I’m assuming you answered ‘no’ because I don’t know anyone who does.

With that in mind, you can take advantage of ad placements below the top three on Google and still see results, often at a lower cost-per-click.

2. Specific targets

Using general, one-word keyword will allow your ads to pop up more often. However, your audience in that scenario will rarely be searching for exactly what you offer.

Instead, use keywords that pinpoint what your business is. These ideally would be phrases of three or more words, which will probably include your location. Fewer users will enter those search terms, but the ones who do will be hoping to find a business just like yours.

3. High-converting keywords need their own campaign

Be sure to check out how each of your keywords are performing. When some separate themselves as ‘high-converting’, consider creating a campaign that includes only those keywords. This way, the most effective keywords will have a budget to themselves. Otherwise, less effective keywords could show up more and you’ll reach your cap without the heavy hitter getting a chance.

4. Display network doesn’t get conversions

Using the display network option in addition to, or instead of, search results will potentially spread awareness about your company to a gigantic audience, it usually doesn’t yield conversions at a high rate. If your ad budget is limited, it’s best to put all of your investment into search traffic rather than limiting yourself in order to invest partially in such a risky venture.

5. Location, location, location

It’s not just a key for real estate. AdWords allows you to track what cities your traffic and conversions are coming from. With this information, you can get the most of your budget by omitting your ads in locations where conversions are low. You can also create new campaigns specifically for your top performing areas.

In the past 18 months, Google has waged war against spammers. It began with their attempts to purify organic search rankings by introducing the Panda and Penguin updates. Now, with an AdWords policy update this week, Google has targeted those evil doers of the PPC game.

Ali Harris has an in-depth look at the changes at ClickThrough Marketing, but here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know.

Google’s goal is to improve the ad experience across the board, meaning only those with ill intent will object and most users and campaign managers will applaud.

By weeding out the spam, your Quality Score will likely rise and your cost-per-click will likely drop. But, you have to know the rules and follow them.

  • Your ads and keywords must be easily relatable to the landing page they point to.
  • If you mention a specific promotion or product in an ad, the landing page must feature it too.
  • No more throw-away lines like “Click Here Now!”
  • Just like in English class, poor grammar will be punished.
  • Keyword campaigns must be relevant and clear.
  • If your landing page has ads, they must be clearly discernable from original content.
  • No phone numbers
  • No email inbox look-alike ads

Essentially, you are expected to use common sense and be sincere in your advertising. If your goal is to trick users into clicking your ads, you will be punished.

Those punishments start modest but can become severe.

Campaigns that are flagged as not in compliance won’t run the disapproved ads until they are changed. If advertisers feel they were judged unfairly, they are able to submit their ad for review again.

Suspensions could be doled out to domains to temporarily stop their use of AdWords.

For repeat or serious offenders, accounts could be banned along with any related or future accounts.

Most likely, you’re already keeping tabs on AdWords metrics, particularly Quality Score. But now would be a good time to go through your campaigns with a fine-toothed comb in order to be sure you’re in compliance.

 

Google Shopping officially switched to a paid service for businesses at the beginning of the month, which means a whole new set of issues for users trying to get their Product Listing Ads campaigns up and running.

Mary Weinstein reports for Search Engine Watch that AdWords support staff has been less than helpful when trying to resolve these new issues. So, here are the problems you’re likely to encounter and how to fix them.

You may have found that trying to get your Auto Targets to validate is extremely frustrating. Don’t throw your computer out the window just yet though.

  1. Check to make sure the wording on your Auto Target and the wording on your product type or AdWords label matches exactly. If it isn’t a carbon copy, with no special symbols, AdWords may have trouble matching them.
  2. Check your filters. Ideally, you have no filters running for your PLA campaigns. If you open the filters tab and see filters being applied, remove them from this campaign and you might just solve the problem.
  3. Check the PLA campaigns ad extension. Your AdWords account should be linked to your Google Merchant login. Also, if you have multiple logins, make sure this campaign is linked to the correct one.

Hopefully, these quick fixes will get you up and running with PLAs and allow you to avoid the time waste that is Google support.