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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

AdWords Ads: To Optimize or Not to Optimize?

When you set up your Google AdWords campaigns, you should create multiple ads for each ad group, in order to try and find the ad copy that is most effective. You have two options for how to rotate your ads.

Google AdWords has a feature called ad optimization, which Google defines as follows:

Optimize (default): The system will favor ads that have a combination of a high click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score. These ads will enter the ad auction more often.

The alternative to optimization is a standard rotation in which all ads for an ad group will be displayed roughly the same number of times.

Of the two, intuitively it seems that you would always want to use ad optimization. It just makes sense to let Google automatically display the ads with the highest click-through rate ("CTR").

But here's the problem. If you are trying to fine tune your campaign ad groups for maximum performance, YOU yourself should judge which ads are most effective, based on an analysis of historical data. Google's ad optimization kicks in quick. Ads that have a higher initial CTR will garner massively more impressions. So ads that could actually turn out to be the best performing over the long-run might be squeezed out of the picture early on.

Do your own optimization. Run all ads an even number of times. Give each ad a fair number of impressions. How many impressions will be different from situation to situation. If your are competing in a hot market with high click rates, then you might be able to tell after only a couple hundred impressions. But in most cases, you will need to give it more than that. Maybe a thousand impressions, maybe even more than that if click rates in your industry are low across the board.

If you do not have time to actively manage your search engine marketing campaigns, then you might still be better off using the optimization feature. It is better to use early optimization than to let poor performing ads run too long, dragging down your ad group performance.

But if you have time…do it right and take care of it yourself.

Or better yet…let us do it for you! Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net to find out how we can make your life a whole lot easier.

Labels: ad optimization, ad writing, AdWords, google, Google Adwords, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Useful New Google AdWords Features

Google has a couple of new features that you should check out. The first is a new keyword research tool that analyzes a supplied web site URL and seed keyword to show keywords that might be relevant for promoting that site (that are not already being used), along with traffic and bid data for each keyword. The main caveat is that you must be an existing advertiser. It's a great way to instantly generate a list of new keywords for a particular landing page along with the data you need to make decisions regarding what keywords to use and how much to bid. It's a great tool for advertisers, and certainly a great tool for Google since it will encourage bidding on more keywords.

The URL to try it out is: http://google.com/sktool/.

Another new feature is that Google has increased the number of unique results returned for a query report. These are reports that show you the actual search terms that are triggering your Google AdWords ads. Historically, the reports have always featured line items labeled "Other queries" that contained a large portion of the total queries. Now, there should be fewer results included in the Other queries line and more unique keyword results. This increases the knowledge that advertisers have about their Google accounts, improving their ability to make adjustments based on performance data.

Google is constantly releasing new features. The better you understand these features, the better you will be able to manage your account and maximize your AdWords performance.

Here are a couple more links to pages devoted to the topic of law firm Internet marketing:

http://lawyerwebsitemarketing.wetpaint.com/

http://marketingforlawfirms.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/lawyer-website-marketing-powerful-search-engine-advice-straight-from-the-source/

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Early AdWords Campaign Awareness

Quick Tip: For the first couple of weeks after launching a new AdWords campaign, watch your keywords every day to make sure they are still online.

It's easy to feel like you've accomplished something after setting up an AdWords campaign and beginning the process of driving paid traffic to your site. But you can't take your eyes off of the situation. Even if Google begins sending a stream of traffic to your site, it is highly likely that very soon it will begin shutting off your keywords. What seems to happen is that AFTER your account is up and running, the Google system begins an audit of your campaigns to see how closely your keywords match your ad content (and possibly even your landing pages), the kind of click rates your keywords and ads have, etc. While it's going through this process, it will probably be shutting off many of your keywords and insisting that you bid more (MUCH more in some cases) to turn them back on.

So if you're not paying attention, the traffic you started receiving at the beginning of your Google campaign will dry up to a trickle until you adjust your bids. So being aware of what's going on with your campaigns early on is critical to keeping your ads running.

You can avoid this situation by bidding very high early in your campaign. The problem is you could end up paying more than you should in order to have a profitable account. It is probably best to start low and adjust your bids up as needed, rather than starting high and adjusting down.

Call us if you need some help monitoring your pay per click campaign.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem

Friday, June 27, 2008

A More Accurate Way to Estimate Keyword Traffic

The very best source of keyword data for your search engine optimization campaign may be your own paid search campaign. We use keyword research tools such as NicheBot.com a lot, especially early in the life of an SEO campaign. The problem is the data generated by such tools is only an estimate, and sometimes those estimates are highly inaccurate.

If you want concrete proof about the potential traffic for various keywords, take a look at the search queries people are using that have triggered your ads. In Google, you can run a search query performance which will show you most of the actual search terms that were used when your ads were displayed. One column of data in the report is impression share. If you run a report for a month, then divide the number of queries for any particular keyword by the impression share for that month, you will have a pretty accurate total for the number of times that keyword was used in that month. If you then divide that by 30, you will have an estimate for the number of times that search term is used on a daily basis.

The formulas are as follows:

Monthly Searches = Number of Impressions / Impression Share

Daily Searches = (Number of Impressions / Impression Share) / 30

You can then plug these search queries into NicheBot or another tool to get an idea of how many directly competing sites there are for the keyword. Or you can type the search query into Google surrounded by quotes to get an estimate of the competition.

The final data set created by doing this will give you a more accurate picture of actual search traffic and competition than simply relying on the information provided by keyword research tools. You can't go wrong with hard data.

If you need some help conducting keyword research for your search engine optimization or pay per click marketing campaigns, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, paid search, pay per click, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Latest Things You Should Know About Google

Here are a couple of items of news from the Google camp that we thought were interesting, and that you should know about.

First off, Google now takes the loading time of your landing pages into consideration when determining relevance for AdWords ads. Google requires advertisers to pay more for clicks if it determines that there is low relevancy between the keywords, ads, and landing pages. It wants to make sure that there is a strong sense of congruency - that everything relates and is relevant. But now they have gone a step further and are measuring the loading speed of your landing pages. Advertisers who have pages that load too slowly will be punished by being forced to pay more for clicks.

We don't agree with this move by Google. Economics takes care of this kind of problem. If an advertiser's keywords are not appropriate, or if its ads are not effective, or if its landing pages take too long to load, the economics of the situation will drive the advertiser away. The business will lose too much money to keep doing it. Google's micromanagement continues.

The other Google news item is that an ad purchasing system similar to what Google offers for newspaper and radio is now in beta testing for TV. The new platform lets advertisers purchase TV ad time on the Echostar satellite system. It is currently being tested by a few select advertisers, but early feedback seems to be very positive. The day is fast approaching when Google's advertising platform can be used to manage a completely integrated marketing campaign incorporating search, online content, print, radio, and TV.

Speaking of Google, we are still finishing up the first iteration of our AdWords management tool. We've been fixing bugs for weeks, but hopefully it will be ready to try out next month.

If you could use some help with Google pay per click management or any other online marketing activity, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 of Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, sponsored search, TV advertising

Monday, February 11, 2008

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Trying to Finish

Yes, after all these months, we are still trying to finish the Google AdWords management application. Some time in late November, I decided that it was just going to take me too long to finish and stabilize the program myself. So I decided it was time to seek some help. The vehicle for finding that help is http://elance.com.

Elance.com, if you don't know, is an online resource for finding developers, writers, and other skilled individuals for hire on a project-by-project basis. We don't really need a full-time programmer right now, and don't want to deal with an I.T. staffing firm, so finding an off-site resource on our own is the best option.

Using elance, is pretty easy. You just create an account and then describe what you are looking for. You can also upload documents for prospects to get more detail about the project. I think that's a critical part of the process - making sure you have created documentation that thoroughly details what you are trying to accomplish. I spent a few weeks working on a Word document that contained specs for the project. My specs are probably not up to par with what a real developer expects, so I also created a static HTML mockup of the site. This allows potential hires to get a better idea of how the application should work, beyond trying to interpret my specs.

We have been contacted by a number of developers since posting on elance. Bids are all over the place. One of the bids is so low that we don't believe the bidder understands what we are doing. But there are a couple of bids that are very much in the ballpark of what we were looking to spend, and those developer seem to have a good understanding of what we need. So we are very confident that we will be able to hire a quality developer within our budget (which ain't much).

We also posted on http://craigslist.com, but did not receive much of a response to that. We did get contacted by one local developer who was between gigs. That would have been perfect, but he really didn't have the skillset we needed.

If this project goes well, I have a feeling we will be using elance for more projects in the near future, to get things done quicker and free us from having to do them ourselves.

If you need help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: application development, elance, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, pay per click, search engine marketing, web site marketing

Monday, February 04, 2008

Microsoft Buying Yahoo! Would Be Wonderful for Advertisers

I read over the weekend that Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo!. They are willing to pay a nice premium over where the stock is at right now (having been beaten down by disappointing earnings), so it would represent a nice profit for Yahoo! stockholders. Will the deal go through? Who knows.

As search marketers, we would like to see the deal go through. We have tried to use Microsoft's search network and marketing platform (and continue to try) but Microsoft just doesn't have enough traffic yet, and its ad serving platform sometimes just doesn't seem to work very well. There are some features of Microsoft's ad center control panel that we really like, and some that we don't like.

The same with Yahoo! There are some features of its control panel we like, and some we don't. If the merger does happen, we would hope Microsoft would combine the best features of the two platforms into something really useful. The keyword inventory of the combined companies would also come closer to rivaling Google, and would exceed Google worldwide.

Frankly, we would just rather have to only deal with two major search marketing platforms than three. We like a lot of the things Microsoft has tried to do. Combining Microsoft's technology with Yahoo!'s Web positioning would create something new that could really be a boon to search engine advertisers. It would also set up an even more competitive situation between Google and the combined company, which should result in an increased pace in innovation and a better situation for advertisers. It seems counter-intuitive to think that a decrease in competitors from three to two would result in more competition, but it would. Microsoft just does not have the search engine traffic to be a real threat to Google or Yahoo!. But the new merged Microsoft/Yahoo! would be able to give Google a real run for its money. And that would be good for all of us.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search Marketing

Monday, January 28, 2008

Managing a Paid Search Campaign: The Importance of Goals

I'm still working on the specs for our Google AdWords management application. I have to say...even just doing specs for something like this is a laborious task. Trying to get everything out of my head and onto paper that I want the application to do is difficult. If I were a better programmer, I probably would have creates specs from the start for my own purposes. But it really helped me to get a feel for what we could do with the AdWords API by writing code and building the thing organically.

I'm now trying to work out the logic of how the application should make automatic bid adjustments. I have read where some applications of this type use complicated Wall Street-style algorithms to make adjustments. These applications tend to be very expensive. And I really don't think we need to worry that much about it. The situation is sort-of similar to stock trading - you can obsess over charts and technical analysis to make just the right trades, but in the long run, a steady and consistent investment plan will likely do just as well.

One problem with a single magic algorithm to make adjustments is that it does not take into account the goals of the advertiser. For purposes of our application, I don't see any way around letting the user set his own account parameters to meet his specific goals. Some advertisers may just want lots of volume, regardless of conversion rates. For those situations, obviously, a wide open, aggressive bid attack is called for. More often than not, cost per conversion is a major consideration. For those advertisers, it is critical not to bid too much. Different objectives require different strategies.

So how does this relate to you? We just want you to think about your goals while managing your paid search campaign. Do you just need the visitors? Is there a a major branding component to your campaign? Do you need to turn a profit on the campaign right away? Or are you in a position to lose money initially in order to get new customers in your system? It is important that you decide early on what exactly you want to accomplish with your paid search campaign.

Your goals will have a major impact on how you manage your campaign. If volume, branding, and name recognition are your major goals, then you will want to be aggressive, bid high, and try to position your ads as high as possible. Likewise, if you are trying to get customers into your system even at a loss, you will want to be aggressive, though possibly less so than with a branding strategy. If immediate profitability is your main concern, then you need to be much more concerned with the price you are paying for clicks and conversion rates.

If you need some help withpay per click management so that it accomplishes your goals, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, Google Adwords, internet marketing, MSN, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Friday, December 07, 2007

Importing Google Data Into Yahoo! - Things to Keep in Mind

Earlier this week I was trying to import a Google campaign into Yahoo!. Yahoo! has this tool that is supposed to convert a spreadsheet with Google campaign data into the correct format to work with Yahoo!. Well, that thing seems to be a piece of crap. We ended up having to manually move lots of columns around, change column names, and add lots of data that Yahoo! needed. It was a pain in the butt. And then it still didn't work...at first. If you are trying to do this same thing, here is what we had to do to make it work.

1. We had to first create a campaign in Yahoo! to hold the new campaign data. Unless I'm wrong, you can't actually create a new campaign by importing the data - you can only add data to an existing campaign.

2. We had to specify our newly created campaign ID in the import spreadsheet.

We had also originally specified IDs for our new ad groups (which we made up), but Yahoo! did not like this. So...you DO specify a campaign ID in the import file, but you DO NOT specify ad group IDs.

There was a lot of work that had to be done on the import file (which was created by doing an export from Google AdWords Editor, which we have blogged extensively about), but the frustrating thing was when we got to the point of importing the file and it still didn't work. That is until we took the above steps.

If you need help managing your Google or Yahoo! campaigns (or any other search engine), feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Things to Test in Your Paid Search Ad Copy

The human mind is a wondrous and complicated thing. It is also completely unpredictable. When it comes to writing ads for paid search marketing, you might think you know what copy will cause people to click your ad...but you really don't. We've preached this before but it bears worth repeating - the only way to know what works is by testing. Here are some different things you can test that could have a profound and unexpected impact on the success of your ads.

Capitalization. Most marketers capitalize the first letter of every major word in the title. You should try that as well as not capitalizing any letters. Do the same with your display URL.

The order of content. Let's say you have an ad with both an offer as well as a deadline. Try running ads with the offer first and with the deadline first.

Dynamic versus static content. Most search engines now allow you to dynamically have the keyword that triggers the ad placed in the headline or copy. Usually, this will result in higher click-throughs, but not always. Experiment to see what works for you.

The display URL. Try using "www" versus leaving it out. Try just the root domain name versus a domain that includes a sub-folder with keywords. For example, "www.yourdomain.com" versus "yourdomain.com/keyword".

Adjectives. For example, "easy" versus "fast". One of the two will probably trigger many more clicks. The only way to know the right psychological trigger is to test both.

Call to action. Visit now...Buy now...Learn more. These are all different ways of specifically requesting that the reader of the ad click the ad to visit your web site. Try different calls to action as well as not having a call to action to see what works best.

If you experiment with the above elements of your ads, you will have a much better chance at discovering the ad copy that generates the highest click-through rates as well as conversion rates. Another important part of this analysis will be only changing a single ad element at any one time. For example, if you change both the display URL and the call to action at the same time, you won't know which change causes a chance in the performance of the ad. This kind of analysis will not only drive the most traffic to your site, it will save you some money because ads with higher click-through rates can be displayed above ads with lower click-through rates even if the placement bid is lower.

If you need professional advice for managing your paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, advertising, copywriting, Google Adwords, internet marketing, marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Internet Marketing Nuggets and a Bit About Football

Just a few nuggets of information for your reading pleasure:

In a continuing push to give advertisers more options and control, Google has released a new feature for the AdWords interface that allows advertisers to create a campaign template that can be used to quickly set up new campaigns. We have not had a chance to try it out yet, but we'll let you know what we think of it when we do.

Quick tip: when setting up ads in Google with dynamic titles, if you use the form "{KeyWord:your keyword}" where the "K" and "W" in "Keyword:" are capitalized, then the words in your title will be capitalized. Now, this is not necessarily a good thing. For instance, if you are bidding on keywords for which lots of advertisers are using dynamic or similar titles, then you might be better off using all lower case in your title in order to look different. You never know until you try.

Privacy groups are filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission regarding the new advertising platform being launched by Facebook. You may want to hold off on investing your marketing dollars in Facebook at this point.

The Yahoo! Store ecommerce platform shut down for many of the sites using it on Monday because of the extremely heavy volume. If you run an ecommerce site, that might make a strong case for using your own platform on your own server.

Last, but not least, the SEC football championship game is this weekend! Being based out of Nashville and being UT fans, we are excited at the opportunity for our Vols to bring home a conference championship. The season the Vols have had this year can serve as an important business less for all of us: never give up; never stop fighting to accomplish your dream. After three blowout losses to Cal, Florida, and Alabama, it looked like the Vols were down for the count. But they kept fighting. Five games later, they are 9-3 and headed to Atlanta to face the LSU Tigers. Go Vols!

Labels: Facebook, Google Adwords, internet marketing, Yahoo

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Ready, Fire, Aim - the Right Way to Launch a Paid Search Campaign

'Hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving. I headed down to Memphis to spend a few days at my in-laws'. I lived in Memphis for several years. The city has gotten some bad press recently because of its' crime rate, but it's a great city with lots of interesting shops and places to eat. Nashville, where we're located, is more of a corporate city. Memphis is more "down home."

Anyway, the day before Thanksgiving we got contacted by a business needing a paid search campaign up and running the same day. We're a small firm, so we have the capability to drop whatever we're doing and change directions. But getting a complete campaign created, funded, and up and running in just a few hours is quite a task. But we got it done.

The reason we were contacted is that the search marketing firm that was originally hired (about three weeks previous) was taking way too long to get the campaign on-line and was only spending a trickle of what our client wanted.

The problem the other firm made was that they spent days and days setting up a broad, super finely targeted campaign before launching. Our client needed traffic immediately. What they should have done (and what we did) was launch the campaign with a small set of keywords, start generating traffic, and then build out and fine-tune from there. This is a strategy you should adopt if you are an aggressive user of paid search.

It's sort-of like the old "Ready, Fire, Aim" marketing maxim. In other words, launch the campaign, generate data, examine that data to see what changes you need to make, and adjust accordingly. It makes no sense to spend too much time tweaking a campaign before you have any data to examine.

If you need some help with your paid search marketing, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, November 19, 2007

Google Changes Site-Targeted AdWords Campaigns

Google has changed the name of its "site-targeted" AdWords campaigns to "placement-targeted." We're not sure of the reason behind the name because it's the same thing it was before - a way for advertisers to advertise on specific web sites that are part of Google's content network, rather than on Google's search results pages. Perhaps the name change relates to Google's ongoing efforts to expand its advertising platform beyond just web sites, into areas such as radio and newspaper. Who knows.

The only difference, as far as we can tell, is that you are now allowed to bid on a cost per click ("CPC") basis for content ads, in addition to the existing method of bidding per thousand impressions ("CPM"). There have been occasions when our effective click cost for CPM campaigns was less than CPC, and there have been times when it was more. We like the fact that Google now gives you the option of bidding either way. It gives the advertiser more flexibility to try different bidding strategies and see what works best.

On a related note, we have noticed that Google's pay per action platform has been down for quite a few days now. We have one client using PPA (it is only available to select large advertisers), and we are beginning to see some very nice results with it. Our cost per acquisition is substantially lower than with pay per click. We aren't generating nearly as many total conversions as with pay per click, but we'll take a cheap conversion any way we can get it. But what is the deal with it not working? Is Google shutting it down already because they're not making enough money with it? We'll see.

If you need some help managing your Google paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per action, pay per click, ppa, ppc, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Friday, November 02, 2007

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Part 5

Yes, yes, development of our proprietary Google AdWords application is still ongoing. We just finished a section of the application that I am excited about it because it will be a major time saver in setting up Google campaigns. What we've done is give our keyword research page the functionality to create multiple ad groups at once. The list of keywords returned from a keyword search has a textbox next to each keyword where you can specify the name of an ad group for that keyword. Keywords for which you type the same ad group name will be added to the same ad group. This is a continuation of our plan to break away from the 1.2.3. approach to setting up ad groups that is used in the AdWords interface.

The next step will be finding some way to add some automation to the ad creation process. This may involve setting up a global ad template that will apply to all ad groups within a campaign. We're still trying to work out the logic in our heads and haven't really coded any of that yet.

We are running up a decent bill in Google API fees. We learned too late about using Google's sandbox AdWords API classes, which would have let us do our testing for free. But I did not want to go back and have to recompile all of our classes again. We had to add some custom code to the classes to get them to work anyway because of a bug (not really a bug, just a bad feature) of the .NET platform involving the way it communicates with Web Services. So it just seemed easier to pay the Google API fees than go back and have to re-do a bunch of work. Dealing with the API fees just from our testing certainly has shown us that we will need to be careful to price use of the application to cover the fees we'll run up once we open the application up to our clients. By the way, the trick to using Google's sandbox API is that you use a different URL for each Web Service when compiling your classes that make the Web Service calls.

Development of the application has slowed the last couple of weeks due to client demands. The thing has come a long ways - but it has a long way to go. We hope to be ready to launch by January.

If you could use some help with pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, search engine marketing, sem

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Dynamic Keyword Insertion in Google AdWords Ads

We are perplexed by how mysterious Google tends to make things. Certainly, the company does everything it can to hide the intricacies of its search algorithms so as to disallow anyone taking advantage of it for artificial gains in search rankings. Fair enough. But Google goes far beyond that in hiding its secrets.

We recently ranted a bit about Google's sparse documentation related to its AdWords API and about the lack of logic behind ad Quality Scores. We're just as perplexed about Google's failure to give full disclosure about all of the features of AdWords. We are Google certified, having studied all of Google's exam material, but we had never read anything about dynamic keyword insertion until we stumbled upon it by accident.

That's right. Just like Yahoo! and MSN, Google allows you to dynamically insert keywords into an ad. The reason for doing this is that the closer the ad matches the intentions of the viewer, the greater the likelihood of generating a click to your site. By inserting the exact keyword that triggered the ad into the title or ad copy, you more closely match that user's intentions.

To dynamically insert a keyword, place the following code where you want the keyword to appear: {keyword: default keyword}. Replace "default keyword" with the keyword that should appear if the trigger keyword is too long in characters for the ad. For example, if the dynamic variable is used in the title, but the keyword triggering the ad is more than 25 characters, then the default keyword will be used.

Don't overuse dynamic keyword insertion or your ads will all become very generic and boring. But it is a powerful tool to use in moderation.

For help managing your paid search campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Part 4

We're big on gaining as much Google "shelf space" as possible. In other words, for any particular keyword we are targeting, we want to have a paid search listing on the search results page as well as at least one natural search ranking. We think it greatly increases your chance of getting a click to your site, and it is a strong branding move. To make this happen, you need to create landing pages specific to certain keywords. This improves your chances of converting the visitor into a customer AND gives you the opportunity to heavily optimize a page for natural search listings.

Keeping all this in mind, we've decided we would like our AdWords management application to also be useful in optimizing landing pages for natural search rankings. The first part of this is providing the natural Google search rankings for each keyword. In other words, I don't want to just know what my ad position is for a keyword - I also want to know what my natural rank for that keyword is. This information will help me generate shelf space.

Unfortunately, as usual, Google makes things much more difficult than it should be. Google used to have a search API that would return search results and related information. But that API is no longer available. There is a new search API, but it is an AJAX JavaScript-based control, which really doesn't help us in our situation because we need that data on the server side, not the client side. We also need ranking data, which doesn't seem to be available in any fashion via any Google API.

But we've figured out a way to do it. It's much more processor intensive than if we could just request the information directly from Google, but that's alright. We're getting it done, even though it's a lot more work than it should be. Why Google is intent on making its vendors and customers jump through hoops is beyond me, but the situation is what it is. We'll deal with it. We can't wait for the day when Microsoft catches up with Google in terms of natural search traffic and keyword inventory, because we know Microsoft would make it easier to plug into their backend to get the data we need.

So we carry on, fighting one battle after another. When we're done, we will have an application that will make it much easier for us to manage our own clients' paid and natural search campaigns. The next step would be to open it up to others who might want to use it for their own campaigns.

If you could use some help managing your own search engine marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine optimization, search marketing, web site marketing

Thursday, October 11, 2007

A Rant About Google Quality Score

We don't do a whole lot of complaining in this blog. We like to stay on the positive side. But Google is really getting on our nerves with its keyword "Quality Score". A representative from Google described Quality Score thusly:

"Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It's calculated from various factors, including the relevance of your ad and keyword, your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and your landing page quality.

Quality Score is used to determine your ads' position on Google and the Google Network. It's also used to determine your keywords' minimum bids. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the better your ad position and the lower your minimum bids."

Okay, no problem. Only...from what we are experiencing first-hand in many instances, Quality Score works very poorly.

We have ad groups running in which a keyword perfectly matches the text used in the ad and on the landing page, and that have a reasonable click-through rate (or no click-through rate because it's brand new)...and Google is still giving us a low quality score!

Basically, Google can assign a low Quality Score to any keyword and mandate that the advertiser pay an outrageous price for clicks, even if there is not a single other advertiser for the keyword. As far as we can tell, the logic for determining Quality Score has some serious problems. Google is forcing advertisers to overpay when it should not be necessary.

Is this good for Google? It might make them a few more bucks in the short-term, but long-term they are going to hurt advertisers and force them to go elsewhere. It's simple economics. If advertisers are forced into paying so much for clicks that it makes it impossible to generate a positive return on investment, then they will stop advertising there. Is Google so big and powerful that it can afford to have its customers start leaving? I don't think so.

Hey Google, how about letting the market determine what advertisers are successful and stop meddling in every little detail of everything that happens? Control freaks...

If you are experiencing your own Google frustration and need some help managing your AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, Quality Score, search engine marketing, search marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, October 08, 2007

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Part 3

Today we will continue with our series of posts chronicling the development of our proprietary Google AdWords management application.

One thing that's a little unwieldy about using the Google AdWords API via its various Web Services is that every time a Web Service is called, you have to pass in a number of variables, such as the account email and password, the client email, and the developer and application tokens. And it's not as simple as setting properties of an object to these values. The values have to be set as arrays, so I have to create a variable to hold each value, then pass that value into a single element array, etc. etc. This can result in a lot of code just that doesn't really DO anything. To get around this, all of the code that actually involves using the Web Services is placed in separate classes that my web user controls call.

Which brings us to another key development strategy, which is breaking major chunks of user interface and functionality into their own web user controls. This way, those same elements can be easily reused on other web pages. It takes more time early in the development process to set things up this way, but it will save us a lot of time down the road.

One thing that seems odd about the way the Google AdWords API works is that it has a service called Criterion Service that is used to do things like add or remove keywords or web sites from a campaign, or add new keywords. To me, it seems like it would make more sense for there to be a function provided by the Ad Group Web Service that would return the keywords for a particular ad group. A lot of the AdWords API functionality seems counter-intuitive.

We have quite a few working components of the system, so this week we will probably begin tying everything together into a cohesive unit. This is going to be exciting.

If there is anything we can do to help you manage your paid search or natural search campaigns, feel free to contact us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web site marketing

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Part 2

I had a good day yesterday working on our Google AdWords management application. I started implementing keyword research functionality. I created a .NET user control and class that lets the user perform keyword research, using Google's keyword data, which is returned in the form of a datatable with checkboxes that allow the user to specify the particular keywords he wants to use. Then we added a couple of functions which we think gives the user a lot more flexibility than when using Google's AdWords interface. After selecting his keywords, the user can either add them to any existing ad group in the campaign or use them to create a new ad group. Essentially, we have broken keyword research/addition out of the ad group creation process and made it a standalone process. We feel that this will greatly speed up the process of creating new ad groups or adding keywords to existing ad groups.

Speed is going to be a critical aspect of our application. The online Google AdWords interface seems like it is tailored toward users who need a step-by-step, "take me by the hand" approach. Google is probably right in designing its interface for the inexperienced user. But for the experienced user, the interface is slow and clumsy, and often not very practical.

Google does provide a much quicker, leaner AdWords management tool, the Google AdWords Editor, which we have blogged about extensively. The AdWords Editor is an offline, client-side application that can be used to create ad groups and other account elements, and move things around quickly. However, since it is completely disconnected from the Internet, it has no research functionality. We feel that our application, which will run on-line, bridges the gap between the off-line tool and the default online AdWords interface. It won't be as quick to use as AdWords Editor, since it will still have to move data back and fourth from Google's servers, but it will be a more complete management environment.

I would be fibbing if I said that we had this application completely laid out and designed before we started coding. We needed to get a feel for what we could with the AdWords API in order to know what we could do. And the best way to do that was just to start coding. So the application is very organic - growing as we program it, right before our eyes.

If you have some particular features you would like to see in such an application, feel free to email your ideas to us at Info@WorkMedia.net. And as we always say, please contact us if you need some help managing your Google AdWords or other paid search campaign. You can email or call us at 888-299-4837.

Labels: AdWords Editor, api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application

Jerry Work here. I think I never commented on my daughter. She had surgery last week to fix a kidney reflux problem, which basically caused her urine to flow the wrong way. The surgery went well, although there will probably be some additional future treatment required. So that's the update there.

I mentioned in our last blog post that we have begun programming our own Google paid search management application. I thought I would spend the next couple of blog posts discussing that process. This may turn into a whole series of posts chronicling the development process. We'll see.

First off, Google does not make it easy to figure out how to use its Google AdWords API and Web Services. There is an API reference, although one critical page of information didn't seem to be linked to from anywhere (that I could find) and was only discovered by searching the API reference web site. And the code samples are very sparse. It almost seems as if Google wants to make things difficult.

I have also searched online for code samples or tutorials that discuss using the AdWords API and have found next to nothing. So we're having to do things the hard way - by trying things out to see what works. We are building the application on the .NET 2.0 platform. At one time I was a certified .NET C# developer. That was several years ago, but once I got into the development process it all (well, maybe not ALL) started coming back to me.

So the main hat I am wearing in the company right now is that of application developer. Chris is really keeping the company going for the most part, while I spend as much time as I possibly can programming. I am using Microsoft's free Visual Web Developer software to build the application. I have to say, I am impressed by the little program. It is barebones but much simpler to use that full-blown Visual Studio. And since our application is meant to run on-line, it works just fine for our purposes. One thing that I love about it is that I can easily run the application on my development workstation without placing the code on a server. I just click the run button and it launches the site in my browser, running on its own built-in server.

So far, the application is communicating with the Google server, returning data related to ad groups, bids, and so fourth. The very first time I actually made that work, I was thrilled, even though all it was was a text string with the name of an ad group. We've already come a long way since that point, with nicely formatted data grids that contain all kinds of data, including performance data.

In our next blog post, we'll talk more about the challenges of pulling this off and where we're going with it. Until then, if you need some help managing your paid or natural search marketing campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

150 Blog Posts and Going Strong

This marks Work Media's 150th blog post. Whoohoo! To those of you who have been along for the ride, we thank you. If you're new to Work Media, then welcome. If you don't know, Work Media is a small Internet marketing firm based in Nashville. The company consists of the Work brothers (Jerry - 34, Chris - 28, and Corey - 20), and their partner/sister company, Frank/Best International, which is a top-10 Nashville advertising agency with clients such as Honda and AKG.

We specialize in helping companies develop and implement aggressive, multi-pronged Internet marketing attacks using paid search, natural search, and content strategies to drive targeted traffic. We have many things in the works for the coming months, including the release of our own paid search bid management tool. That is a big step for us. We want to be the THE agency in the Southeast for cutting edge Web marketing that combines technology with results-oriented marketing strategies. We also have a new book about to come out which discusses using Google AdWords Editor for efficient AdWords campaign management. And soon we will be recording our first audio podcast.

We've got a long ways to go, but judging from how busy we are, we're headed in the right direction. If there is every anything we can do for you, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, search engine optimization, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Using Google's Ad Preview Tool to Verify Your Geographically-Targeted Ads

One technique for fine tuning your Google AdWords campaign is to use Google's geographic targeting options to only run your ads specific markets. One very good reason for this is if you only do business in certain markets. In this case, you will be wasting money if you run your ads nationwide. It just makes sense to only run your ads in markets where you do business.

Another reason for using geographic targeting is if you have reason to believe that your products or services may sell better in certain markets. In this case, you would want to set up a separate campaign for each market in order to generate separate performance data for each market. By doing this, you can learn exactly what markets are more receptive to your marketing message and concentrate your budget in those markets. If you already know that your products or services will sell better in certain markets, then you should just run your ads in those markets to start with. For instance, it is a pretty good bet that snow blowers will sell better in Minnesota than Arizona.

Google's geographic targeting works by examining the IP address of the Web browser and making a determination of the location of the user. It's not a perfect system, but it seems to work fairly well. The negative for you, if you are running geographic-targeted ads, is that you can only see yours ads in Google if you are actually sitting in the market in which your ads are running.

But Google provides a way for you to test your geo-targeted ads:

Visit Google.com/adpreview

This page will let you select a specific market in which to view search results pages and ads. Just type your search phrase (one of your campaign keywords), select a market, and then do the search. This will let you actually verify for yourself that your ads are running in your target markets.

If you could use some help managing your Google AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Advanced Bid Changes in Google AdWords Editor

In Google AdWords Editor, when you are on the Ad Groups screen/tab, there are two options for making bulk bid changes: Advanced Bid Changes and Advanced Content Bid Changes. They accomplish exactly the same thing for search and content bids, respectively.

Clicking one of the buttons brings up the Advanced Bid Changes popup screen. The tool allows you to increase or decrease bids for the selected ad groups by a particular percentage or dollar amount. You can also set a ceiling or floor for bids.

For instance, if you want to raise all of your bids by 10% but bid no more than $2 in any particular ad group, you would select the "Increase bids by:" radio button, type "10" in the text box, and set the dropdown list to "percent". Then you would click the checkbox labeled "Set bids no higher than:" and type "2" in the text box. Then click the "Change Bids" button.

Alternately, if you want to decrease all bids by $.50 but want to maintain a minimum bid of $1, you would click the "Decrease bids by:" radio button, type ".50" in the text box, and set the dropdown list to "USD". Then you would click the "Set bids no lower than:" radio button and type "1" in the text box.

If you are on the Keywords screen, you have a similar option (also labeled "Advanced Bid Changes") that does the same thing for keyword bids, but it also has a couple of extra options. One option is to raise the minimum cost per click for selected keywords that are inactive to the minimum for activation. The other option is to remove keyword-level maximum CPCs and use the default ad group bid. There is also an additional constraint option to disallow setting keyword maximum CPCs to values lower than their minimum CPC bids.

If you could use some help actively managing your Google AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, September 10, 2007

Google AdWords Editor: Replace Text & Advanced URL Changes

When working with text ads (in the Text Ads tab) in Google AdWords Editor, at the very bottom of the screen are two very handy functions - Replace Text and Advanced URL Changes.

Replace Text does just what it says - it replaces text. It works just like find/replace functionality in word processing software. First you select an ad or a group of ads, then click the "Replace Text" link. In the box that appears, type the text you want to replace in the "Find text" text box and the text you would like to replace it with in the "Replace with" text box. You can specify whether to replace text in all of the ad fields, or in a particular one such as the headline, display URL, or one of the description lines. When you are ready to run the replace function, just click the "Find Matches" button. A popup box will appear that will require you to confirm the replace if any matches are found.

The Advanced URL Changes function allows you to do the following for a single ad or a group of selected ads:

Change the URL. To do this, type the desired URL in the "Set each URL to:" box.

Append a text string to each URL. To do this, type the string in the text box labeled "Append this text to each URL:". This is a very handy function if you want to append a parameter to a set of ads for tracking purposes. For instance, if you want to append a parameter to each URL so that you can identify the source ad group that generated traffic to your site, you could set the string to something like "?Source=Google-Ad_Group_Name". Then when you look at the analytics for your site, you can identify the traffic that originated from the ad group because it will have the ad group name appended to the end of the URL.

Remove a parameter from each URL. To do this, type the parameter name in the text box labeled "Remove URL parameter with this name". Continuing with the example above, if each URL already has the Source parameter but you want to remove it, you could type "Source" into the text box to remove it from a set of ads at once. To remove it from all ads, you would need to make sure that all ads were selected.

These functions let you make changes to your destination URL in bulk, which can save you a lot of time. Play around with them and see what uses you can come up with.

For help making the most of your Google AdWords campaign, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Friday, September 07, 2007

Making Use of the Google AdWords Editor Tools Menu

The Google AdWords Editor has a Tools link on the main menu that has four options: Find Duplicate Keywords, Keyword Grouper, Show Ads with Selected Images, and Settings.

Find Duplicate Keywords is a very useful function for making sure you are not duplicating keywords across ad groups. To use it, select Tools/Find Duplicate Keywords, then select strict or loose word order (whether or not the separate words in the keyword have to be in the same order), whether to search for duplicates account-wide or within a specific campaign or ad group, and whether or not the keywords have to have the same match type to qualify as duplicates. Then click the "Find Duplicate Keywords" button.

The keywords found to be duplicate are listed in the Keywords screen/tab, grouped together by ad group. To eliminate any duplicates, you can select the keyword, then delete it, or right-click/cut, or set its status to Paused. We recommend pausing them, just in case you decide to use it again later.

The Keyword Grouper tool will automatically divide a set of keywords in an ad group into many smaller, more specific groups. One of the keys to successful pay-per-click campaign management is having ad groups devoted to a specific, finite set of keywords so there is tight congruency between the keywords and ads. The Keyword Grouper tool makes this easy because it does the work for you. It is often the case that an AdWords account begins with just a few ad groups which each contain lots of keywords. This helps keep things manageable and makes it easier to launch the campaign. But over time, as more time is devoted to the campaign, it becomes clear that there are sets of keywords that would probably perform better if they were broken out into their own ad groups.

To use the Keyword Grouper tool, select Tools/Keyword Grouper from the main menu. Then select the campaign and ad group within the campaign you would like to break up. Then click the "Generate common terms" button. This will extract the keywords from the specified ad group. To focus the generated keyword list, you can type words that should not appear in any of the returned keywords by typing them into the "Ignore these words" text box. Then click "Next".

AdWords Editor will then show you a preview of new ad groups it would create from the list, based on common terms shared among groups of the keywords. If you plan on creating new ads from scratch for all of the new ad groups, check the radio button that says "No, don't create any text ads...". However, it will probably save you some time to check the radio button that says "Yes, copy text ads..." This will automatically populate the ad groups with the same ads used in the original source ad group (or another ad group that you specify). Then you can go back through each new ad group and modify the ads as necessary. Finally, click the "Finish" button.

The Settings option on the Tools menu lets you specify various options, such as whether to hide deleted campaigns, ad groups, or ads. You can also specify if you want to download deleted and ended campaigns and ad groups. You also have the option to connect to an HTTP proxy and the account language.

The Tools menu contains some powerful features that can save you a lot of time. Get to know it - it could become your best friend.

If you could use some time-saving help for managing your AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Google AdWords Editor: Importing and Exporting Data

Google AdWords Editor lets you export AdWords account data in several different formats - as a CSV file, as an AdWords Editor archive file, as an AdWords Editor sharing file, and as an HTML file. File exporting options are available via the File link on the main menu at the top of the interface, or by right-clicking on an account, campaign, or ad group name.

The "Export for Archiving" and "Export for Sharing" options do essentially the same thing. They both export AdWords Editor data in a format that can be re-opened in AdWords Editor. For example, if you wanted to move your account and data settings from one instance of AdWords Editor to another, you could export the account data with the Export for Archiving option, save the file (a .aea file) to your computer, then move the file to another computer. On the new computer, you would use the File/Import Account Snapshot links to import the data into AdWords Editor. Imported data can be in either the .aea or .aes file format. The .aes files are created by using the "Export for Sharing" option to export your data, rather than "Export for Archiving".

The other two export options, "Export to CSV" and "Export to HTML" are for exporting the data to look at in other programs. The CSV option creates tab-delimited text files which can be opened up in spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel. This is useful for analytical types that like having all the data displayed for them in one big file.

The HTML option creates a nicely-formatted HTML option that can be viewed in a web browser. This option is useful for creating a file that can be easily viewed by anyone. If you have clients or other interested parties who want to see the keywords and ads that comprise an ad group or campaign, you can create an HTML file and give them exactly the information they need. Work Media has used this option on numerous occasions to get client approval for the keywords and ads we are using before launching a campaign.

What exactly you can export depends on what is selected in the left-hand side of the screen. For instance, if the account name is selected, from the File menu you have options to export the entire account or export the current view (if exporting to CSV). If a campaign is selected, you have options to export the entire account or the currently selected campaign. If an ad group is selected, you have options to export the account, current campaign, or the current ad group.

Using AdWords Editor's file exporting options, you have a lot of freedom to export all or part of your AdWords account in several different formats - either for data movement purposes or account viewing purposes.

If you would like help managing your Google AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

A Walkthrough of the Google AdWords Editor Tabs

We thought we would step back a moment in this blog post and discuss each of the tabbed sections on the right-hand side of the Google AdWords interface.

The right-hand side of the Google AdWords Editor is divided into eight different screens, with tabs at the top to move from one screen to the next. The screens/tabs are: Keywords, Sites, Negatives, Text Ads, Image Ads, Mobile Ads, Ad Groups, and Campaigns. Following is a description of each screen.

Keywords. The Keywords screen displays all the keywords for the campaign or for a specific ad group, if an ad group is selected on the left-hand screen. By default, the information displayed for each keyword is the type, status, minimum CPC, and destination URL. If stats are turned on, then it also displays average CPC, total cost, average position, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.

Sites. The Sites screen is only enabled for site-targeted campaigns. By default, it displays the site URL, status, maximum CPC, and destination URL for each site in the campaign. If stats are enabled, it also shows the clicks, impressions, click-through rate, average CPM (cost per thousand impressions), cost, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion for each site.

Negatives. The Negatives screen shows negative keywords or sites for a campaign. It also displays the type.

Text Ads. The Text Ads screen shows the headline, first line description, second line description, display URL, destination URL, and status for each text ad in an account, campaign or ad group. If stats are enabled, then it also shows the clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC, Average CPM, cost, average position, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion for each text ad.

Image Ads. The Image Ads screen shows the image, name, dimensions, display URL, destination URL, and status for each image ad in the account, campaign, or ad group. If stats are enabled, it also displays the clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC, cost, average position, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.

Mobile Ads. The Mobile Ads screen displays the headline, description, business name, business phone, country, display URL, destination URL, markup language, status, and mobile ad type for each mobile ad in the account, campaign, or ad group. If stats are enabled, it also displays the clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC, cost, average position, conversions, conversion rate and cost per conversion.

Ad Groups. The Ad Groups screen displays the ad group name, status, maximum CPC, maximum content CPC, and maximum CPM for each ad group. If stats are enabled, it also displays the clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC, cost, average position, conversions, conversion rate and cost per conversion.

Campaigns. The Campaigns screen shows the campaign name, status, daily budget, start date, end date, whether or not search or content is used, whether or not specific content bids are set, and if budget optimizer is turned on for each campaign. If stats are enabled, it also displays clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC, cost, average position, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.

For each screen described above, clicking on an item in the data section displays details/options about that item in the box below. For example, clicking on a campaign name on the Campaigns screen results in the display of a series of text boxes that contain the campaign name, daily budget, status, search or content networks, and the start and end dates for the campaign. You also have options to edit the language and geographic targeting of the campaign.

Now that we have described each screen in detail, we advise you to just click around the AdWords Editor interface to get comfortable with it.

And, as always, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if there is anything we can do to help your paid search campaigns be successful.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web marketing, web site marketing

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Creating Site-Targeted Campaigns with Google AdWords Editor

Continuing with our Google Power Users series focusing on the Google AdWords Editor...

Google AdWords Editor can be used to quickly set up site-targeted campaigns. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the account name in the left-hand menu.
2. Click "Add Site-targeted Campaign".

The new campaign will appear in the campaigns list. Click the Campaigns tab to set the attributes of the campaign, such as campaign name, daily budget, status, and start and end dates.

To set the sites where your ads will run, do the following:

1. Click the Sites tab.
2. If you have a single site to add, click the Add Site button.
3. If you have multiple sites to add (which is more likely), click the Make Multiple Changes button, then "Add/Update Multiple Sites".

If you opt to select multiple sites, a popup box will appear in which you type in or paste multiple URLs. With regard to adding sites, the AdWords Editor is lacking because you do not have any way to research sites. So for this, you will probably want to begin the process of setting up a site-targeted campaign in Google to generate a list of strong sites to run your ads. Or you can add sites discovered from other sources and let Google tell you if they are members of the Google content network.

If you could use some help with your Google AdWords management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web marketing

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Using Google AdWords Editor to Quickly Set Up Separate Search and Content Campaigns

Here is a quick tip on using AdWords Editor for setting up separate search and content campaigns.

Google's AdWords Editor application is not without its bugs. One thing we would really like to be able to quickly do is create a copy of a campaign and then change it from a search campaign to a content campaign. We talked in a previous post about the advantage of splitting your content campaigns from your search campaigns in order to give each its own budget. Ideally, we should be able to make a copy of a campaign in AdWords Editor, make one a search campaign and the other a content campaign, and be done with it.

But it just doesn't work. At least not as of the time of this writing. The AdWords Editor throws errors when this is done.

But there is a sort-of work around that cuts at least some time out of the process.

What you have to do is create the shell of the content campaign in the AdWords online interface. It can have a single ad group, a single ad and a single keyword. Just enough to get it started. Then open up AdWords Editor and use the Get Recent Changes button to pull down the new campaign.

Once you have the shell of the campaign downloaded into AdWords Editor, you can use the editor's copy/paste functionality to add the ad groups from the corresponding search campaign. Since you can copy an entire ad group, you will automatically add all of the ads and keywords for each ad group. You will also need to check the settings for the campaign you copied to create the content campaign to make sure it is set for search only; otherwise, you will have duplicate settings.

If you need some help implementing an effective Google AdWords campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Google AdWords Editor: Cut & Pasting Ad Groups

The AdWords Editor makes it very easy to set up new ad groups, ads or keywords based on ones that already exist. This is particularly helpful in two situations: when you require ad groups that are very similar except for some kind of central concept, and when you want to create similar yet slightly different ads for split-testing purposes. It makes it easy by giving you the ability to copy and paste items.

For example, an automobile dealer might require ad groups for different models of cars. The ad groups would likely be very similar, but would contain ads and keywords that used the name of a particular model. So there might be a Ford F-150 ad group and a Ford Ranger ad group. If you already have a Ford F-150 ad group set up, then you can make a copy of it and then change the name, ads, and keywords of the copied ad group to use the word "Ranger" instead of "F-150".

From an ad perspective, it is often desirable to split-test the same ad with different headlines. In AdWords Editor, you can simply make a copy of the ad and then change the headline in the copied ad.

You can even create a copy of an entire campaign, if you have need to do so. Another interesting option on the right-hand menu is "Copy Campaign Targeting", which lets you quickly apply the targeting criteria of one campaign to another.

Just like any standard program, AdWords Editor has a right-click menu that gives you access to a copy option. It is often necessary to use the File link on the top menu to paste items. Cutting and pasting items in AdWords Editor is MUCH quicker than manually building all your ads or ad groups from scratch.

If you need some help implementing an effective Google AdWords campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

Friday, August 24, 2007

Generating Stats with Google AdWords Editor

Performance statistics for your Google campaign can be obtained directly from the AdWords Editor interface. To turn on statistics, click the Data button on the main menu, then Stats, then one of the pre-selected date ranges or the Create Custom Date Range button to create a custom view. You can also click the button with the graph labeled "Showing stats for:" at the top of the page and select a date range. Statistics can be viewed at the account level, the campaign level, the ad group level, or for individual ad group elements such as keywords and ads. To view statistics for each level, click the appropriate link on the left-hand menu.

For instance, to get a quick overview of keyword performance (to see what keywords are costing the most money, and which ones are making the most money), click an ad group name on the left-hand menu. You will then be shown the average cost per click, total cost, conversion rate, and cost per conversion (if conversion calculation has been enabled in the account), among other values, for each keyword. You can then scroll down the list to see which keywords are converting the most or at the lowest cost per conversion. And you can see which ones are costing the most money yet generating few conversions.

You can also quickly see which keywords (or ads, or whatever) are performing the best by sorting them. To sort, just click the header of the column you want to sort by. To see which ones are costing the most per conversion, for example, click the Cost/Conversion column header. It is likely that many of the keywords or ads have no conversions, so this will group the ones that do have conversions together.

The advantage of using the AdWords Editor to view statistics is that it is a much quicker process than using the AdWords online interface, or generating reports through AdWords. As you scan through the list, you can make adjustments on the fly - increasing bids where necessary, turning keywords off, etc. - and then upload your changes.

If you could use some help maximizing the effectiveness of your Google AdWords campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, paid search, pay per click, ppc, reporting, search engine marketing, sponsored search, web site marketing

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Google Campaign Management: an Introduction to AdWords Editor

AdWords Editor is a client-side program released by Google to allow for off-line AdWords account management. "Client-side" means that the program is installed and runs on your hard drive, rather than from a web site. The advantage of the program is that it is much quicker to use than Google's AdWords web site. The disadvantage is that it is much less user-friendly. It doesn't walk you through anything like the AdWords web site. If you can get comfortable using it, however, it can save you a ton of time.

To get the AdWords Editor program, log into your account, then click the Tools link. Near the bottom of the page is a link that says "Download AdWords Editor".

The AdWords Editor user interface is fairly sparse, with a spreadsheet-like appearance. The interface is divided into two vertical sections - the left side is a list of folders and objects that represent the campaigns and ad groups in the account. The right side is the information associated with each object. It is tab-divided into eight sections: Keywords, Sites, Negatives, Text Ads, Image Ads, Mobile Ads, Ad Groups, and Campaigns. Beneath the tabs is a spreadsheet-looking window that displays data. Clicking on an object on the left side changes the information on the right.

For instance, clicking on an ad group on the left, and then clicking the Keywords tab on the right, changes the information display to show the keyword data for that ad group. By default, the information displayed for each keyword is the type, status, minimum CPC, maximum CPC, and destination URL. You can also change the data display to show statistical information (this will be discussed in a subsequent post). Clicking on an item in the data screen displays details about it (in editable text boxes) in a section of the screen below.

Above the tabs is a dropdown list labeled "View:" which changes the data shown. By default, View is set to "All". One interesting option on the View menu is "Duplicate keywords", which will show you keywords that are repeated across or among ad groups. You can also use it to view unposted local changes.

When you first start using AdWords Editor, you use the File/Open Account menu option to access a particular AdWords account. The first time, you will pull down the entire account. After that, you will use the Get Recent Changes option each time you start up AdWords Editor. The exception is if you are definitely the only person ever working on the account, and you always use AdWords Editor to make all account changes. Otherwise, ALWAYS use the Get Recent Changes option before you start working or you might end up overwriting work that has already been done.

There is no "save" functionality in the program. Once you have made your account changes and are ready to post them to the account, you click the Post Changes button. Easy.

The reason that using AdWords Editor is so much faster than the online AdWords interface is that all of the information is right in front of you, and you don't have to wait for various screens to load in your browser to make changes. Similar to working with a spreadsheet, you just type your changes in the appropriate places in the data screen - no loading or waiting required - then upload all of your changes at once in bulk.

There is much more to know about AdWords Editor, and we will expand on this discussion greatly in the coming days and weeks.

If you could use some help maximizing the effectiveness of your Google AdWords campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web site marketing

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Splitting Up Your Search and Content Campaigns for Maximum ROI

Today we're going to start a new series of blog posts - the Google Power Users Series. We're going to be focusing on strategies and techniques to get the most work done in the least of amount of time, while maximizing your campaign performance. So here we go...

Splitting Up Your Search and Content Campaigns

Most search campaigns combine search and content together. Oftentimes, this is not the best strategy. Even if you set separate bids for your content ads, you should probably just separate content into its own campaign. The reason is that content is almost always much less effective than search, but it may generate just as many if not more clicks.

For instance, here is some actual data from one of our clients:

Search
Click-through rate: 1.57%
Avg. cost per click: $1.71
Total cost: $261
Conversions: 20
Conversion rate: 13.07%
Cost per conversion: $13.07

Content
Click-through rate: .05%
Avg. cost per click: $1.03
Total cost: $414
Conversions: 15
Conversion rate: 3.73%
Cost per conversion: $27.64

As you can see, the content clicks, though they cost less, convert at a MUCH lower rate, and conversions cost twice as much. Also, content clicks are consuming almost twice as much of the total budget. Now, every case is different, and it very well may be that this account is getting all of the search clicks it possibly can and must run content to generate more overall traffic and conversions.

But that may not necessarily be the case! It may also be the case that if a cap was placed on the total budget that was spent on content, then more budget would be soaked up by search, which would result in an overall increase in conversion rate and decrease in cost per conversion. But the only way to do that is to move content into its own campaign. If content and search are running together in a single campaign, it could very well be that when the daily budget has been hit, much more of the budget was spent on less-effective content ads. If content is running in its own campaign, then it can have its own budget, so we can allocate more of our budget to search.

With the help of AdWords Editor, it is a reasonably easy process to duplicate a search campaign and change it to a content campaign (thought not as easy as it should be due to bugs in the AdWords Editor). We'll talk about that in a subsequent post.

If you could use some help in maximizing the effectiveness of your paid search campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay-per-click, ppc, search marketing, sponsored search, web site marketing

Monday, July 23, 2007

Fine Tuning Your Paid Search Account with Negative Keywords

There is a fine line between running ads for enough keywords in your paid search account to generate sufficient traffic and running so many that you generate junk traffic. Unless you only use exact match (or the equivalent). But there are so many variations of keywords or themes that if you only run exact match ads, you are likely to miss a lot of relevant traffic. But there is another way to fine tune the traffic your ad draws without missing relevant searches.

It's done by using negative keywords.

Negative keywords are keywords you specify that should not be included in search queries that trigger your ad. A common example is the word "free". If you sell a product but you do not want ads for your product being displayed to those looking for something free, then you could set a negative keyword of "free" to prevent it.

For example, let's say you sell an ebook about dog training. You might run paid search ads for search phrases like "dog training", "how to train a dog", "dog training information", etc. But if you don't want your ad to be displayed for a search of "free dog training information", then you would set a negative keyword of "free".

You can probably think of some negative keywords at the start that make sense, but as you run your campaign, it really helps to know what keywords people are actually using that trigger your ad at inappropriate times. In Google, you can generate a search query report that will show you exactly what phrases have triggered clicks to your site. As you look through the report, if you see keywords that are not appropriate, then those are keywords that you should add to your account as negative keywords.

Using negative keywords is a way for you to fine-tune the traffic that you drive to your web site via paid search without limiting yourself by using exact match ads. It is a strategy we definitely recommend you look into.

If you need help fine tuning your paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search marketing, search query performance, web site marketing

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Problems With Google Reporting

There seem to be some technical issues going on at Google related to reporting. We have one client who is unable to change the range of data reported in his control panel. To see a specific range of data, he has to go through the full process of creating a report. Here is Google's response to the problem:

Thank you for your response. We do have a workaround for this issue for you to create a report. Please follow the instructions given below to create a report on demand:
1) Sign into your AdWords account.
2) Go to the 'Reports' tab.
3) Click on ' Create a Report Now ' link and create a report following the instructions given.
Please continue to manually generate reports until we find a solution to this issue. Also, our engineers are currently working towards resolving this issue. I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

And we have another client for whom conversion data is being reported incorrectly. This is a serious problem since we use conversion data as the basis for our actions. Conversion rate is a much stronger basis for determining the success of a keyword or ad than click-through rate. So the lesson here is to make sure you double check the data in your reports. And if you are having trouble (with date ranges, conversion data, or anything else) make sure you contact Google AdWords customer support (there is a contact link inside the control panel). We have found Google to be fairly responsive when it comes to these issues. Which you would expect them to be since having people run ads is how they make their money!

If you need any help managing your Google AdWords campaign, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, web marketing

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

More About Google Radio Ads

In our last blog post, we began a discussion about Google's new Google Radio Ads feature. Today we are going to provide some more detail about the service so you can decide for yourself if this might be right for your.

Currently, all radio ads purchased through the Google system must be 30 seconds in length. There is a slight bit of flexibility - if your ad is within 2% of 30 seconds, Google will compress or stretch the ad. We suggest you just go ahead and make it exactly 30 seconds.

As far as the content of the ads, Google states that the ads must adhere to their AdWords' content policy (nothing promoting violence or discrimination, no academic aids, no anti-drug testing devices, no auto-clicking products, etc.) as well as a set of editorial guidelines specifically created for audio ads, which basically state that the ad should accurately represent your business and emphasize the unique qualities of your product or service. In addition, content promoting sexual content is not allowed, as well as political election or fundraising ads. Ads of a non-commercial nature are also not allowed.

With regards to the technical specifications of the ads, it may be in MP3 or WAV format. If MP3 format is used, the maximum file size of the ad is 1.5 MB. For WAV files, the maximum size is 11 MB. You may get slightly better sound quality from using WAV format, but it could take a lot longer to upload the ad. You're probably just fine going with MP3.

Given the cheap cost and high quality of today's audio recording/mixing equipment and software, you can easily create your own ad or hire a professional to do it. If choosing between spending your time on production or writing compelling ad content, we would advise you to spend the most time crafting your message. If the message is strong, and audio quality acceptable, then the ad will be successful if it is heard by the right people.

If you would like help running Google Radio Ads for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, Google radio, Google radio ads, internet marketing, pay-per-click, search marketing, sponsored search

Monday, June 04, 2007

Bringing Your Message to the Masses with Google Radio Ads

You may have noticed a new tab on your Google AdWords control panel - "Audio Ads". The Audio Ads option lets you run a radio ad campaign in a very similar fashion as a paid search ad campaign. When you click the tab, you have the option to "Create an audio ad campaign". Sound familiar?

We at Work Media are excited about the prospect of being able to create and manage radio ads right alongside paid search ads, all from a single interface. There are probably a lot of marketing theorists and business school professors who would argue that it is not good for a single company, Google, to dominate so much of the advertising market on so many different platforms. But as business pragmatists, our view is "Who cares?" If it helps us make more money for our clients, and it makes life easier, then we're all for it.

The first thing you do when setting up a campaign is to set your weekly budget. There are several pre-set options, ranging from $500 to $2,000, but you can set your own budget at whatever amount you want, as long as it is at least $25. The second step is to select your geographic market. The third step is to select your option for specific stations. You have the choice of either running your ads on whatever stations reach the most listeners at the lowest cost, or you can pick stations in particular formats. If you have a definable target market, then your best bet is to select stations that best cater to your market.

Now, this is a brand new program, so the number of stations on which you can run your ads at the present is fairly limited. For instance, when we were playing around with setting up a radio campaign, there were no sports stations available in our preferred target markets. But hey, this is cutting edge stuff, so you can't really expect everything to be perfect yet.

The next step is to set a bid per thousand impressions. Same old auction format - tried and true.

After selecting the days and time blocks in which you would like your ads to run, Google will show you an estimate of how much you will spend and how much your cost per thousand impressions will be.

The next step is to either upload your audio ad or use Google's ad marketplace to find a company to create your ad for you. Either way, the end result is that you will be running audio ads on multiple targeted radio stations without the hassles of having to deal with radio sales people. Beautiful!

If you could use some help running your own Google radio ad campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or via email at Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, Google radio, Google radio ads, internet marketing, pay per click, ppc, search marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Google AdWords Power Management: the AdWords Editor

We at Work Media have started using the AdWords Editor tool quite a bit. The AdWords Editor is a free tool that Google recently released to allow for OFF-LINE editing of your AdWords account. It is a bare bones application with a couple of neat features. One feature that is very useful for a large account is the ability to report on duplicate keywords across ad groups.

We are currently managing an AdWords account for a software company with many very similar products. Our keyword research for each ad group has returned many duplicate keywords, some of which get added to the ad groups in an attempt to flesh out the keywords. The AdWords Editor will show us when we have duplicate keywords, so we can make sure we only use each keyword for a single ad group.

The main reason we've begun using the AdWords Editor is speed. Using the Google AdWords online interface is a fairly slow process. You can only work on a single ad group or ad at a time, and there is a lot of "traveling" involved in moving from one thing to the next. With the AdWords Editor, we can quickly move from one ad group to the next. We can quickly add a group of keywords, and even copy ads from one ad group to the next, or within an ad group.

The ability to copy ads is a feature we are making heavy use of. If you have read much of our writing, you know we encourage ad testing in which a single element is changed in each ad, such as the title. By copying and pasting ads, we can quickly create lots of ads by just changing the title (or body copy) on each one.

If there is more than one person working on your AdWords account at any one time, you should be careful about stepping on each other's toes with the AdWords Editor. It works by pulling down the data for your account, and when you are done you upload the account data. In the interim, there is the possibility that someone else could have made changes that are not reflected in the data you have.

The Google AdWords Editor is a power tool that can save you a lot of time. However, we suggest not using it until you understand how your AdWords account works. After a few weeks of actively managing your account, then switch to the AdWords Editor.

If you could use some help managing your Google AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing

Monday, May 21, 2007

Google QuickTip: Watch Your Dashes

When setting up Google AdWords ads, you have to split your ad copy up into two lines of 35 characters or less. To save space, you may be tempted to split up a word with a hyphen, starting the word on the first line and continuing on the second line. This is often the only way to squeeze all of your words into the ad.

For example:

This is test ad copy that is going to be hy-
phenated. This will save some space.

When your ad is positioned on the right-hand side of a search engine results page, the ad looks fine. However, if your ad is positioned at the very top of the page, the body of the ad will be on a single line, and the hyphen will still be there. From a practical standpoint, it doesn't matter, but it won't look nearly as good.

So if your bidding strategy is to try and achieve top ad rankings, then you are best to avoid the use of hyphenated words. If your bidding strategy is more conservative and will generally result in right-hand positioned ads, then you're fine using hyphens to save space.

For help managing your paid search campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, paid search, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web site marketing

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Preferred Cost - Using Google's New Ad Pricing Technique to Reduce Your Risk

Traditionally, bidding on clicks in a search engine has been a hit-or-miss proposition. You set the MAXIMUM you are willing to pay for a click, and then your actual click cost usually ends up well below that. To play the game, you have to be willing to bid high to get your actual cost about where you want it. But you also run the risk of getting burned by being forced to pay what you bid.

Google has released a new ad pricing method that reduces your risk - preferred cost bidding. In this new method, you don't specify a maximum bid - you specify an AVERAGE price you are willing to pay for clicks to your site.

For example, if you know that, based on your historical conversion rate, you can afford to pay a maximum of $.50 per click to achieve your desired return on investment, then you can set a preferred cost per click of $.50. Google will then adjust your ad ranking on the fly to get your average cost per click as close to $.50 as possible. You are freed from worrying about getting burned by bidding more than you really want to pay. It also frees you from having to constantly monitor your bids.

To make this technique work, obviously, you have to understand your numbers. You need to know how many people who click through to your web site become customers and how much profit you earn on them. If you know the lifetime value of your customer, that's even better. But as long as you know how much you can afford to pay to generate a sale and what your conversion rate is, you can figure out how much you can afford to pay for a click, and use that as your preferred cost.

We think there is a lot of potential in Google's new pricing scheme and we will definitely be checking it out. If you have enough information about your business, then we suggest you do the same.

If you would like some help managing your Google campaign bids, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: bid management, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web site marketing

Friday, April 13, 2007

Managing Your Pay-Per-Click Spend When Funds Are Limited: Spend It or Save It?

If you are on a very limited search engine marketing budget, you face two options when it comes to budgeting: either spread your budget out over the whole month (divide your monthly budget by 30) or spend it until it's gone, regardless if you use up your budget before the end of the month. Intuitively, you might think it is better to spread it out, but in our opinion, this is not really the case. Why? One word: data.

When you spread a small budget over a month's time, you are going to generate very little data for any one day, and it will take the whole month to generate sufficient data to do any kind of analysis. What kind of data are we talking about? Performance data. As we have said before, you do not know what keywords, ad copy, landing page copy, etc. will work. It doesn't matter how smart you are. The only way to know what works is by testing.

So rather than spreading your budget out over a month, go ahead and run your campaign wide open (within the confines of a responsible biding strategy). You will most certainly burn through your budget quicker, but if the campaign generates quality leads or sales, who cares? Why wait to generate new business? Why generate business next week when you can generate it today?

It's also better to do be able to analyze your campaign performance sooner than later, because you can then make changes to the next round of your campaign based on what you learn. Your next round should perform better than your first because you will have an idea of what works.

So...don't think of your budget in terms of an amount to spend over a month's time. Just think of it in terms of generating data and conversions as quickly as possible.

If you would like some help managing your pay-per-click campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Google Gets in the TV Game with New Online TV Ad Purchasing System

Google is making a lot of people very happy...and some people very sad. In a move that could begin a momentous swing for the way TV ad space is purchased, Google has announced a partnership with EchoStar Communications to launch a new system for purchasing ad space on TV channels on the EchoStar network.

In the new system, TV ad space will be auctioned on a CPM basis using an online interface much like the current AdWords system. Within 24 hours, the advertiser will know if he won the auction, where the ads ran, how many ads ran, how many households saw the ad, and EVEN IF THE HOUSEHOLD WATCHED THE ENTIRE AD OR ONLY PART OF IT. Using this information, advertisers can make adjustments to their campaign until they find the optimum combination of TV channels, times, and ad creative. In the world of TV advertising, that kind of quick feedback is unheard of. It combines the power of on-the-fly pay-per-click campaign tweaking with the massive reach of broadcast TV.

Google claims that there will also be a happy result for the consumer in the form of more relevant advertising, as advertisers adjust their campaigns based on the feedback they receive. To us, the argument from the consumer side is weak because consumers are already flooded with 10 thousand commercials a day - we don't think it matters to consumers if they view more relevant commercials. In addition, TV commercials are often filtered out or bypassed anyway. Which brings us to another point: is TV advertising dead anyway? Is Google beating a dead horse?

The answer is "no". Even if Google is entering an industry that is declining, TV advertising in some form or another will always exist. By giving advertisers a strong platform to place ads, and much better, quicker data about the performance of their ads, Google is bringing new fire to an industry that badly needed it. And eventually the world of TV will figure out a way to force-feed ads to consumers who zip through commercials...and Google will be there with its technology, making it easy and efficient to use whatever the next phase of TV advertising looks like.

In addition to the ad purchasing platform, Google will run a marketplace to hook up TV advertisers with TV commercial producers. Similar to Spot Runner (discussed yesterday), it gives any small business the ability to purchase an already-created commercial and personally brand it - drastically cutting ad production costs.

We are excited about the new TV ad platform because it moves the world of advertising closer to one universal system in which advertisers bid on ads to run on-line and off-line, with almost instant feedback to improve their ad campaigns. And you better know Work Media will be on the front-lines, helping advertisers figure this stuff out.

For help creating your own state-of-the-art marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, cable TV, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, marketing, TV advertising

Thursday, March 29, 2007

New Online Advertising Methods We're Looking At

We thought we would take the time today to talk about some online advertising methods we are either already doing or are thinking about implementing.

We are working with a mortgage lead generation business that is using Google video ads. We are running the ads on news web sites local to our target markets. Google video ads are bought on a cost per thousand impressions basis, although it's still a bid model. So far we have had limited success due to lack of sufficient impressions. We are dealing with fairly small markets, so we don't really have enough data yet to make any conclusions. Our feeling is that given enough exposure, the video ads would be very effective at both generating traffic and brand building.

We are looking into using www.turn.com. It is a CPA ("Cost per Acquisition") ad network. In other words, you determine how much you are willing to pay for the accomplishment of some kind of action - a newsletter sign up, a sale, etc. - and that is what you pay. So rather than paying for just a click to your site, you are paying for the conversion, thus eliminating risk.

We are also looking at trying out some ad networks. One that looks interesting is www.mediatraffic.com. The way Media Traffic works is that the advertiser's offer is displayed in a popup or popunder window to users who have downloaded utilities by Vomba Network. The company claims there are 7 million of these users. Advertisers bid on keywords and URLs used by the Vomba Network users. When a match is found, it triggers the ad.

If you would like help running a more sophisticated Internet marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad networks, advertising, branding, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Google AdWords - How to Know What Times of Day Your Campaign is Most Effective

Knowing what hours of the day your pay-per-click ads are running and when in the day you are generating the most clicks is very useful information to know. For instance, it may be the case that your ads are not running at all part of the day because your budget is getting spent too soon. Or it may be the case that there are particular times of day when action is hottest. If you know these kinds of things, you can make adjustments to your campaigns to maximize its effectiveness by making sure that your ads are displayed when people are most actively looking for your kind of information.

Here is how to generate this kind of data for your Google AdWords campaign:

1. After logging into your Google AdWords console, click the Reports tab.

2. Click the "Create a Report Now" link.

3. Select a report type. If you are going to be looking at time of day performance at a high level (campaign or ad group), then select ad group performance or campaign performance. If you want to see more detail, such as time of day performance for a particular ad or keyword, click keyword, ad, or URL performance.

4. In the Settings section, set the "View" dropdown list to Hourly (by date) or Hourly (regardless of date), depending on whether or not you want to see aggregate data or data for individual dates.

5. Set the other necessary options, such as the date range for the report.

6. Click "Create Report".

Now you will have a report that tells you what times of day your keywords and ads perform best.

If your ads are not even being displayed throughout the day, then you might want to increase your budget. Or if there are certain times of day when your campaign performs particularly well, then you might want to set the campaign to run only during those certain hours and ramp up your campaign to show more ads during those times.

For help maximizing the effectiveness of your Google AdWords or other paid search campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web site marketing

Monday, March 26, 2007

Is it Time to Go Mobile? Google Mobile Ads

Imagine this scenario:

You own a construction equipment rental company. A piece of equipment being used by a construction crew somewhere across town breaks down, and they have to find a replacement as quickly as possible. Someone on the crew uses his phone or other mobile device to do a search on Google for equipment rental companies in the area. An ad for your company appears. The person with the phone clicks a button and is connected to your company instantly. You arrange to deliver the equipment the company needs. The cost of the sale to your company? A quarter.

This scenario is not that far-fetched. As mobile devices become ever more omnipresent, people are going to turn to them more and more for research purposes as well as communication. You might as well begin preparing for it.

To run mobile ads in Google, you just select the mobile ad option when setting up an ad group (you must select the "Ad Variations" tab). Mobile ads are even more sparse than standard Google text ads, as you are only given two lines of text with a maximum of either 12 or 18 characters, depending on your language. You can also have a "Call" link appear on your ads if you choose the option to allow customers to directly connect to your business via phone (and why wouldn't you?).

You can also choose to display a mobile web page to the user who clicks the ad. This is where things get a little tricky because mobile web pages are different than standard HTML pages. They are created with an alternate markup language specifically for mobile devices, such as WML or CHTML. You will need to format the page so that is displays properly on mobile devices, which means it is probably going to need to be a lot more narrow and sparse than your standard web page. When setting up the mobile ad, you select the language in which your mobile web page is written.

Currently, mobile ads can be targeted to Google users in the following countries: the U.S., the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Ireland, India, Russia and Australia. You can also specify to show your ad with particular mobile phone carriers, or to all carriers.

You don't want to be the last one in your industry to be on the cutting edge by displaying your Google ads to mobile searchers. You're better off getting in before the market catches on.

For help running Google mobile ads for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, mobile ads, mobile pay per click, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search marketing, web site marketing

Monday, March 12, 2007

Pay Per Click Marketing: How to Set Up Keyword Tracking in Google

Today we're going to give a quick lesson on how to set up keyword tracking with your destination URL's in your Google AdWords campaign. In Google, as in all the search engines, you want to try and use a separate URL for every keyword in your campaign, so that when you look at your stats, you can instantly see exactly what keywords are generating traffic. It used to be that Google would only allow you set up a single URL for each ad in an ad group, but not for each keyword. Now, if you know how to do it, you can set up a separate URL for each keyword. Here's how:

First you have to set up your ad group. We're not going to go through all the steps on setting up ad groups. We're glossing over that part because you can't set up the keyword URL's during the process of setting up your ad group. You have to go back and set up your URL for each keyword in a separate step.

From the Campaign Summary screen, click the name of the ad group for which you want to set up keyword tracking.

Then click the Keywords tab.

Click the checkbox next to "Keywords" on the left-hand side of the keywords table header. This will select all of the keywords.

Click the Edit Keyword Settings button (this is not the same as the "Edit Keywords" link).

On the next screen, fill in your destination URL for each keyword, which will include the keyword itself. You might want to first type a URL without the keyword, such as www.mywebsite.com?keyword=, into the first text box and then click the "V" button next to the top URL textbox to copy the URL to all the other textboxes. Then you can just go from box to box adding the keyword to the URL.

Then click "Save Changes" and you're all done.

Now when you look at your web stats, you will be able to tell what keywords generated the most traffic because you will see URL's ending in those keywords.

If you can't get Google's own conversion tracking script installed, this is a great way to generate your own data (although it won't tell you which ones actually converted into customers).

For help managing your Google AdWords campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Pay-Per-Click Ad Keyword Tracking: Just Do It!

Keyword tracking is very important to the success of a pay-per-click advertising campaign. If you have a conversion event page on your site, such as a thank you page or order confirmation page, you can measure your exact return on investment (ROI) or return on ad spend (ROAS) for each keyword.

Even if you are not able to specify some kind of converting event on your site (for example, if you sell services rather than products), you can still use keyword tracking to learn which keywords generate traffic that spends time on your site. This information will help you determine what keywords attract the most interested users.

To track your keywords, each keyword ad needs its own URL with a parameter that contains the keyword. For example: www.yourwebsite.com?keyword=whatever

The search engines have historically made it as hard as possible to track your ads at the keyword level, but things are getting better. With the release of the latest update to the Google AdCenter interface, it became possible to set a separate URL for each keyword.

You can also set up a separate URL for each keyword in Yahoo, although you have to go back and do it after setting your ads up.

MSN makes it simple. In Microsoft adCenter, you can attach a dynamic variable to the URL for a group of ads that will automatically add the keyword.

It takes more time to set up a separate URL for each keyword in your campaign, but it is definitely worth the time.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net for help setting up your PPC campaigns.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, Microsoft adCenter, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, sem, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Friday, February 09, 2007

Pay-Per-Click Marketing Analysis: Another Look at the Numbers

When preparing to begin a pay-per-click (ppc), or sponsored search, campaign, it really helps to go into the situation with an idea of what the numbers look like. By "the numbers", we mean what kind of return on your investment you can expect assuming different bid levels and different conversion rates. Following is a chart that is an example of one we might create when beginning a ppc campaign to give the client and ourselves an idea of what he might expect his return on ad spend (ROAS) to be. It also helps us establish a benchmark average bid.

These numbers are reflective of a company selling a fairly high priced item. We have used a range of conversion rates from .10% (1 in 1,000) to 2% (2 in 100). For a high priced item, we would expect a low conversion rate for online sales, possibly 0.25% (1 in 400). Assuming a 0.25% conversion rate, the $.50 bid makes more sense than the $.75 bid because it generates a ROAS of 548% (or $5.48 in revenue for every $1 spend), versus 416% for the $.75 bid.

However, at the $.50 level, you are going to receive fewer clicks to your site. If the ROAS at the $.75 level is acceptable, you may want to use the higher bid to generate more total revenue. In this example, the $.75 bid generates $42 thousand in revenue, versus $31 thousand for the $.5o bid.

The question of how much to bid may also be determined by your budget for the campaign. At higher bids, you are going to burn through your budget quicker. If there is so much keyword inventory related to your business that you are able to use up all of your budget regardless of what you bid, then it makes sense to bid lower...if ROAS is your main consideration.

If there is a branding component to your online marketing, then you may want to bid higher for higher positioning on the page. Another consideration is that not all sales are made immediately. If you position yourself as the leader in your category (high on the page), you generate more immediate traffic and more potential future business from prospects who visit your page but don't immediately do business with you. This branding component is not reflected in the kind of analysis we displayed above.

An analysis like the one above can easily be prepared using a spreadsheet, and we highly advise you perform this kind of analysis to get a feel for your numbers. Use the sponsored search control panel for whatever search engine you want to use to get an idea of what bids for keywords in your industry look like, along with how many clicks you can expect to generate at different bid levels. Using this information, you can estimate how much revenue you could generate assuming different conversion levels. Then you can calculate ROAS at different conversion levels. Doing this for each of the major search engines will also help you determine the best place to spend you money.

If you would like some help preparing to begin your own paid search marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, MSN, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, roas, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Warnings on PPC Bid Management Software

Bid management software for managing pay-per-click campaigns seem like a great idea. You tell the software what you want your campaign to accomplish, set up the ads, and let the software do the work of changing bids many times a day to accomplish your goals.

But it ain't all it's cracked up to be. And it ain't what it used to be.

For one thing, the search engines, while making their API (application programming interface)'s more robust, are making access to them more difficult. Yahoo has placed restrictions on the number of calls that can be made to an API. What that means is that if you have lots of keywords in your Yahoo search marketing campaign, there is going to be a tight limit on the number of times that bids for those keywords can be updated in any given day. That's the whole point of bid management software - to change bids.

Google, by contrast, has not such bandwidth limitation, but it charges for use of its API. We like to call it the Google tax. The current rate is a quarter for every 1,000 calls to its API. $.25 may not sound like much, but consider this: updating a single bid will likely require several calls to the API. If you have thousands of keywords that are all being updated 10 or 20 times day, that is many, many thousands of calls to the Google API. Over a month's time, it definitely adds up.

But on top of the problems using the search engine API's is the fact that bid management software generally works by making constant updates to bids to try and achieve some kind of specific metric, such as return on investment (ROI). If you guess about what the target metric needs to be, you could end up with bids that are way off. If you target an ROI that is too high, you may force the software into setting bids too low, which could end up cutting way back on the amount of traffic you generate. Likewise, if you target an ROI that is too low, you could end up paying more for your clicks than you need to.

The way to find out how you need to use your bid management software is by manually running the campaign for a while, doing lots of testing, and generating data. Once you have an idea of what your typical conversion rate is and what your profit is on a typical conversion, then you can determine what your bids need to be and what you can expect in terms of ROI. This kind of information is extremely valuable in figuring out how to configure your bid management software.

If you would like some profesisonal help in managing your pay-per-click marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: bid management, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Monday, February 05, 2007

Google Site-Targeted Search Engine Campaigns: Another Internet Marketing Weapon

You already know about pay-per-click. If not, you haven't been paying attention. Give us a call.

But did you know that Google has an alternate ad distribution method called "site-targeted"? This is different than using the content network. Standard content network ads are still keyword-based, pay-per-click ads. Site-targeted ads, on the other hand, appear on specific content-focused web sites that you specify, and they are priced on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) model.

When you set up a site-targeted ad campaign, you have several options with which to choose the sites to target:

Browse categories. This option lets you browse through categories and sub-categories to look for sites that are categorized a specific way. Similar to adding keywords, the site selection screen provides you with a list of possiblities, and you click the ones you want to add to your selected sites.
Describe topics. This option lets you type in words related to your business and Google will show you a list of sites that match those topics.
List URLs. With this option, you type in specific web addresses where you would like to advertise and Google tells you if those sites are available to run ads.
Select demographics. This option lets you select certain demographic options and Google will show you a list of sites whose audience matches those demographics. Possible demographics are gender, age, annual household income, ethnicity and whether or not the audience has children.

Regardless of what option you choose, a list of matching sites will display at the bottom of the screen for your selection.

After you have selected the sites you want to target, you enter a maximum daily budget and your maximum CPM.

The cost-per-thousand pricing model requires you to know and work your numbers in a slightly different way. Click-through rates are probably going to be much lower than search ads. But you really won't know what your CTR might be until you run start running some ads and see what happens. But if things work out, your net cost-per-click could end up being lower or about the same as standard PPC ads.

For example, if you pay $1.00 CPM and your click-through rate is .25% (1 in 400), then your cost-per-click is $.25. If your CTR falls to .1% (1 in 1,000), then your CPC rises to $1.00.

If you are careful in your selection of web sites you target and manage your CPM wisely, then you can do quite well using site-targeted ads in Google.

For help implementing a site-targeted search engine marketing campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, January 29, 2007

Seach Engine Marketing: the Trouble with API's

An "API" is an Application Programming Interface that allows you to hook into another computer system to exchange information with it. For example, Google and Yahoo both have search API's that allow you to extract search data from their systems for display in your own applications or web pages, formatted however you want. This data is generally in XML format and exchanged via a protocol called SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). If you're not going to be doing any programming, you really don't need to worry about this stuff. But the reason I bring it up is just to give a little bit of technical background for the remainder of our discussion, which is about using pay-per-click applications that use the search engine API's to get data.

In our opinion, it only makes sense for the search engines to provide open access to their API's and to provide plenty of information for advertisers to run effective ad campaigns. But the trend seems to be going in reverse.

Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging a fee of $.25 per 1,000 operations. This doesn't instinctively feel like a lot, but it is. Performing a single action in a pay-per-click management program generally involves several operations. And these programs, by their very nature, are intended to be used to make several or even dozens of bid changes for ads every day, for every keyword or keyword group associated with each ad. So this adds up to potentially many, many thousands of actions every day, adding substantial costs on top of the expense of paying for the ads in the first place.

A backlash has already started, as some companies are moving toward using cheap labor to manage their ads, rather than this expensive technology. Given that the easier it is for advertisers to manage their campaigns, the more money Google will make, we don't see how this benefits anyone.

Yahoo, with the release of its new ad management system, has also made a change to its API. Though Yahoo is not charging like Google, it has placed a much greater bandwidth restriction on the data returned from its API. What this means is that bid management programs will have to make fewer changes to bids to stay within limits. Again...why would Yahoo make it more difficult for advertisers to use manage their accounts? We know that constantly pinging search engine servers to make changes to sponsored search bids are a drain on their servers, but these companies make billions of dollars a year, and their profit should easily pay for enough servers to handle it.

As for MSN, except for invited parties, they have not yet released their API for general consumption (we wish they would get on with it), but we have a feeling that Microsoft will be much more open with its API, at least initially, since it is still playing catchup in the search arena.

The net effect of these changes to API's is that it just won't be as cost effective to use bid management software as it once was. With Google, you will be paying an expensive tax on top of your bids, and with Yahoo, you will have much less control. At Work Media, we are still experimenting with different ways to manage campaigns. We actually still do most of our campaign management manually and will probably continue to do so. Especially now that the search engines are making it so difficult to use their API's.

If you need help managing your sponsored search marketing campaigns, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Friday, January 26, 2007

The Two Disciplines of Successful Pay-Per-Click Marketing, Part 2

Yesterday we began our discussion of the dual disciplines of successful Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing with an explanation of the mathematician side. Today we continue that discussion by looking at the artist side - the part of the process that involves creative writing. It's not really so much "creative" writing as it is direct marketing style writing. The PPC ad writer has very limited space in which to persuade the reader of the ad to click and visit the advertiser's web site. Writing the ad is actually the very opposite from a sales letter situation, where the top copywriters often flourish. The long-form sales letter is a forum that great copywriters love because they have all the room they want to draw the reader in, list lots of benefits (not features!), tell stories, and do everything they can to convince readers of the letter to visit. However, long-form copywriting experience comes in very handy when writing the copy for the destination web page. If they've clicked your ad link, then they have expressed some interest in what you have, so the destination web page is where you can use copywriting to convince the visitor to do business with you.

But as far as the ad itself, how do you use such limited space and so few words to compel the reader to click the ad? We've touched on PPC ad writing strategies in previous posts, but following is a summary of some of our tips to get you started:

Use the search terms in your ad.
Use a call to action.
Write from the reader's perspective.
Use buzz words like "free" and "guaranteed".

The first tip above is the most basic but perhaps the most important. You have to find the line between keyword/ad granularity and having a manageable number of ads. The more separate ads you have with few keywords for each ad, the more effective your campaign will be because the ads will more closely match the search terms. If you can use the exact search terms, or nearly exact, in the ad body, or even better in the head, then the more closely the ad will match what the person was looking for.

The second tip is a basic copywriting rule. Tell the reader what to do! The search engines may not allow you to use the words "Click here", but you still need to use some similar kind of phrase to tell the reader that he needs to take some specific action: "Visit now", "Buy now", "Come see", etc.

The third tip means that you use the word "you" and focus on the benefit to the user, as opposed to some kind of list of features. People do not buy features, they buy what those features will do for them - the benefits. Using the word "you" focuses the ad on the reader, so he knows that the ad is talking to him.

The fourth tip really gets into the "artist" area because this is where good writing really comes into play. There are certain words that get people's attention, and "free" and "guaranteed" are high on the list. Two huge tools in the copywriter's toolbox are giving away freebies - free reports, free samples, free memberships, etc. - and reversing the prospect's risk. Risk reversal means that you guarantee your product or service so that the customer knows he can get his money back with no trouble - you take on the risk, not the customer.

Much of this discussion is based on copywriting principles that have been around for years, tweaked to apply to the online world of writing for a very small ad space. We cannot recommend enough studying copywriting from some of the masters, such as:

Dan Kennedy
Brian Keith Voiles
Jay Abraham
David Ogilvy

There are many more fine copywriters, but if you look into the work of the above men, it will set you on the road to learning what you need to learn to be a strong copywriter. And that's how you tackle the "artist" side of the Pay-Per-Click equation.

If you need some help managing your Pay-Per-Click campaign, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, sponsored search, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Thursday, January 25, 2007

The Two Disciplines of Successful Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click, or Sponsored Search, marketing is an interesting field because of the duality of skills necessary to be successful in it. On one hand, you have to understand the numbers - you have to know what a customer is worth to you, how many visitors to your site you can reasonably expect to become customers, how much you can afford to pay for a single visitor, etc. On the other hand, you have to be able to write convincing, compelling ad copy, and the destination web copy has to also be well-written. So to be successful in Pay-Per-Click, you have to be both a mathematician and an artist.

The Mathematician

The Mathematician really needs to understand the goals of the Pay-Per-Click campaign. You need to know how many customers you want to try to gain and how much you can afford to pay to acquire each new customer. If you don't know what a new customer is worth, then that is something you really need to find out. Otherwise, you're shooting in the dark.

As a professional PPC marketer, I have clients asking me to generate x sales per day or per month while spending y dollars. This is often a difficult situation because it often means I need to get clicks as cheaply as possible while maintaining a certain level of conversions. The thing that makes this a difficult situation is that as click bids go down, often conversion rates go down as well. One reason is that to generate low cost traffic, you have to use content networks as well as search results, which are much less targeted.

Nonetheless, to even tackle the problem I need to understand the numbers. Here is a very simple formula to calculate how much you can spend per click on your PPC campaign:

Cost Per Click = Amount You Can Afford to Pay Per Customer * Conversion Rate

OR

Cost Per Click = Average Sale * Profit Margin * Conversion Rate

For example, if you generate $50 revenue per customer, on average, with a 50% profit margin, then you can afford to pay up to $25 to acquire a new customer. You would only break even at that rate, but at least you would gain a new customer and would have the opportunity to sell more products or services to that customer in the future. Assuming a conversion rate of 1%, then the numbers work out like this:

Cost Per Click = $25.00 * .01 = $.25

OR

Cost Per Click = $50.00 * .50 * .01 = $.25

So you now know that you can afford to pay a quarter per click. If you can double your conversion rate (which falls on the Artist side), then you can double your profit or double your bids.

As you watch your PPC campaign, you might find that certain products sell much better on-line that others. If this is the case, then you might want to re-work your numbers to emphasize the products that are selling. For example, let's say you have the following products, which are selling via PPC in the following proportions:

Product A - $25 profit per sale - 50%
Product B - $10 profit per sale - 10%
Product C - $40 profit per sale - 40%

Then your average profit per sale via PPC is as follows:
($25 * .50) + ($10 * .10) + ($40 * .40) = $12.50 + $1 + $16 = $29.50

Based on these numbers, you now know that you can raise your bid to about $.30.

As eluded to above, it may even be worth taking a loss on the first sale just to get the customer. If you know the lifetime value of your customers, then you can make this call. If you generally only do business with your customers a single time, then that is another area of your business you need to investigate - how to sell more to people who have already done business with you. This is where you should use vehicles like email, newsletters, blogs, etc. to create a community of customers who come to rely on you for information. It all comes down to creating a holistic, integrated marketing plan, and it all starts with knowing your numbers.

Tomorrow we will look at the other PPC discipline - the Artist.

If you would like some help managing your own effective, powerful Pay-Per-Click marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Monday, January 22, 2007

Internet Marketing: Pay Per Click Keyword Research Tips

When setting up keywords for our PPC campaigns, it is generally a better strategy to set up keywords and ads with as much granularity as possible - in other words, use lots of ads for small sets of related keywords, rather than have a single ad running for lots of keywords. It is also better to use an exact match strategy, if this strategy generates enough clicks. If you cannot generate enough clicks using exact match, then you can switch to broad or phrase match (there are Google terms) ads, which will result in your ad being displayed more often. The reason you want to use exact mach whenever possible is twofold: 1. The ads will be more targeted, since your ads will only be shown to people searching for the exact phrases you specify; and 2. You will save some money on click costs because exact match ads are always shown above broad or phrase match ads.

Since we are arguing that you needs lots of ads representing lots of exact keywords, then you are going to need to generate a lot of relevant keywords. We highly recommend using a tool called NicheBot: http://nichebot.com.

Nichebot will show you a list of similar keywords for any keyword you type in, along with traffic and competition data for the keywords. For each keyword, it will show you how many people searched for the term during some period of time, the number of competing sites (sites that are specifically optimized for the phrase), and the KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index. This data will allow you to rank keywords so you can decide which are the best keywords to target for your web site.

The search engine tools section at http://seobook.com also has a nice keyword tool that uses data pulled from Yahoo's search inventory. The data also shows the number of searches for each keyword, along with other data such as bid rates.

Here a few more sources of possible keywords:

product names
competitor names or competing product names
URL's
names of people associated with your industry
synonyms

Don't just rely on keyword tools to show you lists of related keywords. Think of anything and everything that people who have a need for your product or service might search for and use it as a keyword in your campaign. The wonderful thing about Pay-Per-Click marketing is that if you select a keyword that does not generate any traffic, you haven't lost anything. So you have nothing to lose and lots to gain by experimenting with different keywords, even if they seem wacky.

For help managing your Pay-Per-Click campaign, call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, MSN, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web site marketing, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Google Website Optimizer: A Powerful New Tool for Improving Your AdWords Performance

Google has always been a step ahead of the other search engines in terms of providing tools to maximize the performance of your pay-per-click campaign. For instance, the Google Adwords interface has allowed for ad split-testing (or "A/B testing") for quite a while. The new Yahoo Search Marketing interface, still being rolled out, allows for ad split-testing.

In keeping ahead of the curve, Google has launched a beta version of a tool called "Website Optimizer." The tool allows you to test creative elements on your landing pages - titles, images, content, etc. Changing a single element of an ad or landing page can make a profound difference in its effectiveness. But to learn exactly what works the best, you have to test. The Website Optimizer tool makes it easy to test these elements in relation to your AdWords ads.

The basic way it works is this:

After signing up for the service (and receiving access - access is limited right now), you create an "experiment", which is similar in concept to a "campaign" in that it encapsulates a set of landing page elements the way a campaign encapsulates a set of ads.

Then you add "tags" to your landing page in the places where you want to test content. A tag is a Javascript script that allows for content to appear dynamically on the page. You also tag the page at the end of a conversion, which will be something like a form thank you page or order confirmation page.

Then you set up the page sections and variations for the landing page. The default is set to the content on the landing page that was tagged. Then you add variations. The variations will be rotated, with page content alternating between the variations.

The power of the Website Optimizer really comes into play when you perform the final part of the experimenting process, which is to view the reports generated by the data. If you use a fairly limited number of total variations and perform the test for a long enough period of time (probably a month of more), you will have strong proof of what landing page elements convert the best.

We'll discuss this tool in more detail in later posts.

To try Google Website Optimizer, visit http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/.

Contact Work Media for help maximizing the effectiveness of your Google AdWords or other PPC campaign.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, Website Optimizer, Yahoo Search Marketing

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