AshPointLane.com

Not many years ago, successful pay per click campaigns could basically run on auto-pilot. As this marketing medium has matured, good ROI has become increasingly difficult to achieve. This post will focus on some tactics to keep your campaigns afloat in these competitive and changing times.

1. SEO Your PPC Landing Pages: Recent changes to Google’s quality score now look at on-page text and load time to determine relevancy, and therefore your final click price and ad position. By applying basic on-page SEO tactics and web usability best practices to your landing pages, you can save a bundle and improve your ad position.
   
2. Turn Off Auto-Matching: Apparently, Google doesn’t think PPC marketers are good enough at picking keywords, so they want to do it for us. They’ve done quite a good job at spinning this one, but don’t fall for it. With auto-matching, Google will automatically show your ads for queries that they think are related to words you already bid on.
3. Set Cost Per Conversion Goals by Product Category: How much are you willing to pay a customer? Looking at your gross and net operating margins, set a goal on how much you are willing to pay to acquire a customer through Pay per click. Then stick with it, and adjust or cut your ad groups in order to meet this goal. Taking this a step further, determine how much you can afford to pay for each product category. For example, you can obviously pay more to acquire a PPC sale for a 70% margin product vs. a 30% one.
4. Calculate Your Lifetime Customer Value: In addition to understanding your customer acquisition cost, it’s crucial to know the long term value of customers you acquire through PPC. For example, on average how many times will your typical customer buy per year? Sometimes marketers are willing to take a hit on the first sale if they know the customer will generate many future sales. Recently, I analyzed an Adwords campaign, and broke it down by LTV for each adgroup. The results were surprising. I discovered that many groups were performing well up-front (low cost per conversion), but weren’t ever generating future orders. In contrast, some groups were generating poor up-front results, but great LTV.
5. Recognize Cross-Channel & Untrackable Conversions: Because ROI tracking is so easy, we sometimes think its infallible. Realize that customers who click on your ads will often convert through other channels such as through your call-center, store, or catalog. In addition, its nearly impossible to track sales from customers who use multiple PCs (home, office, laptop). For example, a customer may find your website from work, but make their first purchase at home after typing in your URL directly.
6. Dis-Allow Trademark Bidding for Affiliates: If you utilize affiliate marketing, take a close look at your pay per click bidding policy for affiliates. If you’re not careful, affiliates will bid on your brand name terms, (keywords that you likely already rank organically for). This type of affiliate theft adds unnecessary marketing costs, since you’re now paying affiliates for a sale you would have likely received without them.
7. Use Appropriate Data Samples for Decisions: One mistake I see frequently is making decisions to cut or increase PPC spending based on an inadequate amount of data. Before making a drastic decision, make sure you view several months worth click and conversion activity. I frequently come across ad groups that perform well one month, and terrible the next.
8. Turn Off the Content Network: In my experience, the content network is extremely difficult to generate acceptable ROI with. Even if you’ve had success with the content network, be sure to separate it from your keyword campaigns, as mixing them will blur the ROI between the two.
9. Test Your Ad Copy, But Not Too Much: A/B testing your ads is so easy, there’s no reason not to do it. However, don’t stress about changes that are too small to track. Changing insignificant words in your ad copy may show slight changes in click-through rates, but the results are likely random.
10. Test Landing Pages: More importantly, test which landing pages result in better conversion. You can accomplish this by creating an identical ad, yet linking to a different destination.
11. Make Your Ads Less Appealing: Yes, you read that right. If your goal is good ROI, then you actually don’t want everyone to click on your ad, only qualified customers. This might mean adding the price of your product to your ad, with the intention of filtering out discount shoppers. The key is to qualify your clicks, not to cast a wide net. This is especially important with high volume, broad keywords.
12. Build Custom, Focused Landing Pages: One of the major advantages to PPC vs. organic SEO is the ability to send visitors exactly where you want to. Make sure your landing pages feature the same keywords you bid on in order to reinforce relevance. In addition, ensure that the next step is impossible to miss, featuring a strong call to action.
13. Use Negative Keywords Exhaustively: Not bidding on keywords can be as important as bidding on them. Use Google’s ad preview tool to help determine whether your ads are showing up for irrelevant queries. Here’s some great tools to help find negative keywords.
14. Avoid Bidding Wars: Focus on ROI, not your ego. The number one spot doesn’t always convert best. In fact, some think spots #2, and #3 outperform #1, since it tends to get clicked automatically.
15. Use Phrase Match & Exact Match: More and more, I’m finding it difficult to achieve good results using broad match keywords. Instead of a shot-gun approach, use phrase match or exact match to focus in on specifc phrases.
16. Don’t Compete with Your Organic Listings: If you rank in the top 3 organic positions for a keyword, you’re probably better off bidding for the 4 or 5 spot with PPC rather than competing with your natural listing.
17. Don’t Worry about Click Fraud: Yes, click fraud happens. It happens in some industries more than others. However, its best just to consider it a cost of doing business with paid search. If you focus too much of your time trying to catch it, or you know its happening and you can’t do anything about it, maybe you shouldn’t be using PPC in the first place.
18. Use PPC for Organic SEO Research: Let your paid and natural search campaigns feed off each other. As you analyze your top performing PPC keywords, consider optimizing for them organically. PPC makes great testing ground for SEO, since you can roughly gauge the success of keywords before going into all the trouble of optimizing for them.
19. Use Keyword Management Software: Campaign management software such as Google’s adwords editor simplifies repetitive tasks that are mundane in the web-based Adwords admin. Microsoft adCenter is now allowing beta pilot signups for a similar future product.
20. Track Secondary Conversions: It goes without saying that sales conversions should be tracked. However, what about that other 97% percent of visitors that don’t buy on the first visit? The next best thing to a purchase is often an opt-in, since a certain percentage of your opt-in list will eventually buy. Consider tracking “mini-conversions” such as email or RSS signups.
21. Double Check your Ads and Landing Pages: Over time, links get broken, copy gets out-dated, and products go out of stock. For these reasons, its important to test your ads on a regular basis, removing ads that should not longer be showing.
22. Watch your Traffic from Parked Domains: Take a look at your clicks and conversions from parked domains. While there is some debate about this, many marketers find this traffic is lower quality, and converts poorly. See this Adwords help page for how to turn this off.
23. Track Branded vs. Non-Branded Keywords: Make sure you separate your branded keyword campaigns from your non-branded ones. Realize that while branded keywords usually boast a much lower cost per conversion, they are often the result of other marketing campaigns.
    
24. Use Your Time Wisely: Whether your paid search program is managed in-house, or by a third party, your time resources are limited. Make sure you spend that time effectively, doing the things that will make the most difference. The Rimm-Kaufman Group suggests a break-down of how to allocate your time between term list management, bid management, landing page/site layout, and ad copy tweaks.
25. Make Big Promises; Overdeliver: Seth Godin recently wrote brilliant post on these four words that applies well to PPC. Your ads need to make big promises in order to get clicks. Your landing pages need over deliver on the promise of your ads, then make more big promises to keep visitors engaged. Your product pages need to fulfill the expectations from your landing pages, and so on. Top this off with a product that actually exceeds expectations supported by great service, and you’ve got yourself a winning formula for any type of marketing.

What PPC tactics have worked for you lately? I’d love to see another 25 tips in the comment section

About PWM

Justin Palmer is a Google Adwords consultant, who specializes in helping small businesses improve the ROI of their Pay per click campaigns.

If you have not come across Dan Ariely yet, I suggest you become acquainted. Ariely is Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT whose recent book Predictably Irrational is on the NY Times Business Bestseller list. I came across a recent presentation from him at a MarketingProfs event in Boston. He is a phenomenal presenter with both informative and entertaining content. 

There are a number of ideas that this presentation has spurred in me related to email marketing strategy. From the building and management of email lists, to execution of email marketing campaigns, there is something all of us can take away.

The biggest take away for me is to pay close attention to the balance between the financial world and the social world--that there is a complex relationship between the two that we can interrupt to help our organizations prosper. It's all about context and creating a perception of value.



I encourage you to take some time to watch this. It is a bit long, but worth the ideas it should generate. In addition, you can check out a site entirely dedicated to these ideas at www.predictablyirrational.com.

Reside is an ExactTarget client and sponsored the Route 1 to 1 event in Minneapolis. As part of the event, they conducted a survey of attendees and came up with some interesting results.

The average respondent indicates 2.5 marketing focuses for '08-'09, with the most common combination being "Drive Higher Sales" and "Engage Prospects".  However, for same-company respondees (representing 33% of the overall mix of participants), there seems to be a great discrepancy in identified focus.  A full 50% of these participants had a zero match to their colleagues when identifying their focuses for the year.  Of the remaining, those who matched their colleagues' identified focuses did so only half the time (49%).  Could there be room in the marketing department for clarity of focus and business objectives?

On the surface, these results may seem surprising. However, more often than not I see this issue where colleagues who work side by side every day do not have a common definition of success. I hear it already... "But WE don't have that issue!" Everyone says that. "Our objective is to drive revenue!"  Yeah, everyone says that too. But, do your objectives drive decision making? Are there clear standards for how decisions should be made?

Companies that do this well have a marked advantage over the competition. In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath cite one reason for Southwest Airlines success is the fact that they have successfully communicated objectives to the ENTIRE organization. "Be THE low cost airline." Followed by "Have Fun!" Everything they do flows from there. Faced with a question about adding in-flight meals? Nope, that is not in line with their objectives. Make jokes over the PA? Sure, why not?

Without these clear guidelines, people fulfill their roles and focus on their personal objectives--there is no compass to guide day to day decisions. This is not a moral statement... it's simply human. And... it provides a simple explanation for the results of Reside's survey.

For some practical tips on evaluating objectives for email marketing, check out David Baker's recent article on Mediapost.

Again, taking a fresh look at the mobile email survey I looked at a section where we asked for comments on why people liked mobile email more than email on a desktop or laptop and vice versa.  Here is a summary of the responses (with some representative quotes) from the 1,000 plus written responses we received:

People like mobile email because:

• It’s portable, not tied down
• Kills downtime
• “Wireless service faster than dial-up on my home computer.”
• “I don’t have a computer.”
• “You can check anytime and get rid of junk email”

People like email on a computer because:

• Easier to view/read (bigger screen)
• Easier to write (bigger keyboard)
• It’s cheaper (perception that mobile email is free -- compared to SMS which users pay for)
• Time – it does not take as long
• Easier to click and respond
• Access speed (for high-speed internet access users)
• Can open attachments
• Can leverage full computer functionality
• Can print
• Easier to search archives
• Easier to concentrate
• Does not drain the battery on my mobile phone

Anyone who has ever meddled with SEO has asked themselves a ubiquitous question, “How quickly can I rank for [insert keyword phrase here]? More and more, I’m finding the word “quickly” and “SEO” don’t belong in the same sentence.

We want to believe there’s a magic SEO tactic that, if used, will revolutionize our results. On the contrary, a sound, long-term strategy consisting of great content combined with long-term SEO will win out. Below are 6 tips for ensuring long-term SEO success.

1. Build links steadily, not suddenly: We’ve known for years that overly aggressive link building can trigger ranking penalties. If Google sees optimization happening too quickly, they may penalize you for what they consider unnatural link building practices. Even successful link-baiting campaigns can sometimes backfire, resulting in too many links in too short of time. In reality, the safest bet is slowly developing high quality links over a longer period of time.
2. Focus on long tail keywords first, then broaden your approach: Suppose you were trying to rank for the keyword “ipod”. With the competition you face, its unlikely you rank for this word anytime in the next 5 years, even with aggressive SEO. Rather than shooting for the stars and landing on the moon, consider taking a different approach. By starting out optimizing for your primary keyword in addition to a modifier (e.g. color ipod, ipod 60GB, etc), you’re more likely to rank in a reasonable amount of time. Since this modified keyword phrase contains your primary keyword (ipod), you will also slowly start gaining ground on your original target. In a way, you’re shooting for the moon with the intention of gradually working your way to the stars.
3. Diversify your Target Keyphrases: Sure, your top keywords may be performing well today, but what about a few years from now when your competitors catch up, Google changes their algorithm, or some other external factor pops up? Rather than keeping all your eggs in one basket, begin researching now what you’d like to rank for a year or two down the road.
4. Create landing pages before you need them: Ever get an idea for a new keyword, but don’t have time to build a page? You may not have the time to fully create and optimize a page at the time, but why not at least create the page, throw a few internal links at it, and come back and optimize it later? I’ve found that this strategy gets the clock ticking with Google, since they obviously place value on the age of the page itself. Even if you can’t get to it for 3 months, you’re better since the page has now been given time to age in the index.
5. Use Reactive vs. Proactive keyword research: Even the best keyword research will never yield perfect results. That keyword phrase that you thought would be easy to rank for sometimes ends up being more work that its worth. Or worse yet, once you are ranking you discover it isn’t converting to sales. A reactive SEO keyword research method would take a different approach. Rather than doing a perfect job of keyword research upfront, you analyze the traffic you are currently getting and re-optimize your pages accordingly. As I analyze the top keywords bringing traffic to my blog, I’ve realized 90% of the keywords I never intended on optimizing for, it just happened. But once I see it happening, I reoptimize the posts, adding some internal links and on-page tweaks.
6. Content first, SEO second: Yes, it sounds trite, but if you focus on your content good rankings will follow. Quite frequently, potential clients contact me and ask them to review their website, believing they have an SEO problem. On the contrary, they have a content or usability problem, and SEO is the last thing they should be paying for. It’s important to not get caught in an SEO tunnel vision mindset. SEO will help good companies be better. SEO will do nothing for sites that have nothing to offer in the first place.

What advice do you have for long term SEO results? Be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts.

A couple weeks ago I dug deeper into a survey we conducted last year on the use of mobile email for a presentation at the Email Insiders Conference. In the course of that evaluation I came across an interesting trend that has not entered into discussions about mobile email--that there is a significant segment of users who maintain "mobile only" email addresses.

Most of the discussion on mobile email has focused on people who access the same email from their mobile device that they access from their primary email account. In that scenario, the mobile inbox simply becomes a different access point for email--people may read the same email on their mobile device that they read when they get back to home or office. Thus, maintaining the integrity of email rendering for the desktop/laptop computer is critical. However, now we see that there is a very large group of people who maintain mobile only email addresses that they never access from a desktop/laptop computer.

Here is the breakdown from our survey:

52% of mobile email users access same email account on multiple devices (Skews toward the BtoB Crowd)

• Tend to be younger (25-44)
• More technically savvy
• Employed full-time
• More affluent

48% maintain a separate mobile email account (Skews toward the BtoC Crowd)

• Tend to be older (45+)
• Retired and homemakers
• Less affluent

Unfortunately, we do not have information on whether people use these mobile only addresses when subscribing to newsletters and other commercial email, or if they are used primarily for personal communication. I suspect that when people have a choice, they don't give their mobile only address--but that is only speculation. However, for some less affluent consumers, mobile devices offer an affordable access point to the internet. For people who do not have regular access to the internet from home or work, this means that the primary email address these consumers maintain is mobile only, which would require us to think differently about best practices for collecting information from and emailing to these segments.

It's been a while since there was a good debate about whether emails should be sent with the brand or a person highlighted in the sender line. For a while, our founder Chris Baggott was a huge proponent of sending from individuals--logic being that people connect with people, not faceless entities.

Where the subscriber actually KNOWS someone inside your company, this may be true. However, a recent experience with Yankee Group made me very skeptical about adopting this approach across the board.

I registered for a webinar Yankee Group was doing this week and I never got the information on how to actually attend the webinar. Let me restate that... I don't know if I received it. I haven't received anything from "Yankee Group" or anything similarly logical. I can only assume that if an email was sent, that it came from an individual that I have still to identify in my inbox. Why do I suspect that? Because this week I started receiving the "Yankee Group Anywhere Newsletter" from someone named Emily Green. Worse still, the reply email address is not branded.  The domain on the email address is from the email service provider used by Yankee Group: Emily_Green@[ESP Domain].

Seems to me this is an example of a good idea gone bad. Sending commercial messages from an individual is a decent idea if you are confident the receiver will recognize the sending name. I get marketing messages from companies I work with that are "from" my sales rep. For example, one research company I work with sends email this way. I get their email--which is obviously produced and distributed by the marketing organization--from "Steve". I know Steve and I know who he works for. This tactic works since I always check emails from Steve. However, I don't know Emily Green. I do know the Yankee Group.

Moral of the story, make sure you send email from an entity--be it person or company--that your subscribers will recognize.