PPC Blog | Paid Search Marketing | Sem Geek - Making Sense of Paid Search Marketing

How To Tell A Prospective PPC Client their Paid Search SUCKS!

I was inspired to write this post because after scoping many PPC prospects, almost everyone of them had either major flaws in either tactics and/or in the strategy. As I have matured in this scoping process over the years and had opportunities to communicate my findings to the potential client instead of writing it up and having a sales guy regurgitate it to get the sale, I have avoided the "nice guy" approach and migrated to more of a "Let me be honest with you....". And with being honest, explain to them in the highest level of non-geekdom what you will do to fix them. Of course, you don't what to tell them what you should fix specifically because the last thing you want is give away the farm.

Here's the reality. If you are an experience Paid Search Marketer, you will be able to identify missing strategies, analytics potential, and yeah of course key tactics such as keyword selection, keyword matching, Ads/creatives, campaign settings, landing pages, etc... So, when it's time to tell the prospect you can help them, it's important to let them know how much work it will take to get the campaign running smoothly and turning into a cash register. Because if you don't it will burn you in the end.

What are the common areas that always need to be fixed or redone:

• Strategy of what is being targeted
  • Not covering all products/services being offered
• Keyword Selection
  • Not enough long tails
  • Too broad of keywords
  • Irrelevant keyword groups per adgroup
  • Too many keywords per adgroup
  • No use of negatives
• Campaign/Adgroup Structure
  • Structure does not mirror sitemap of website
  • Their is no Hierarchy of categories
• Keyword Matching
  • Usually always broad match
• Campaign Settings
  
  • Day-parting
  • Under spending budgets
  • Content network combined with search network
• Ads/Creatives
  • No call to action
  • No use of DKI in any of the ads
  • Either too many or not enough
• Landing Page selection
  • Usually LP is too generic. (home page)
  • If targeted adgroup, LP should go to custom or most direct product page.
  • Recommend "hybrid" landing page to combine content and CTA.

In Conclusion:
It's important to tell the prospect the truth about their existing PPC campaign. Let them know you have a high standard for paid search and when I say "from a scale of 1 to 10 your PPC efforts are a 1", you need to explain to them why at a high level. Honesty is the best policy and the last thing you want to do is set yourself up for failure.

Study: Search Marketing In Prime Spot To Play Major Role in Political Spending

In a recent article by Michael Malone with Broadcastingandcable.com, he talks about how far behind the web is in terms of Political spending. This is very exciting news for the Search Industry especially as recession fears settle in to our lives.

However, I must say that I am a little concerned by the comment left by a study done by Borrell Associates which says “The jury is still out regarding the Internet’s effectiveness for reaching and targeting the undecided,” the report read. “There is a fear that their message may end up going to an unintended recipient. Consultants would need to be convinced of the accuracy of this type of direct advertising reaching and persuading the intended targets before they would find sufficient value to devote much money toward it.”

The Hidden Opportunity Here:
So, we need to think of this as an opportunity for all of us search marketers to educate and persuade the everyone from the politicians, campaign managers and interns to focus more of their strategies on PPC, SEO, Social Media and Web Analytics as catalysts for a new way to engage the public and get their message across.

Eliminate The Ad Messaging Concerns:
In a previous SemGeek post entitled: Political Campaigns Make a Big Push for Paid Search, I discussed the potential power of Ad Messaging strategies and how you can even efficiently 'counteract" any potential negative campaigning as well as test different geo targeted areas, non-politically affiliated segments, etc... Bottom line: We have to convince the political arena that there are very strong and "outside the box" strategies out there that can only benefit their candidates as well as the issues they stand for.

In Conclusion:
Personally speaking, I see this is a very lucrative opportunity to provide all members of the Political Arena from the intern down to the presidential candidate to stop fearing the internet and put more of their campaign donations back into a channel where not only can you communicate to a more relevant audience, but also test, tweak and report in a faster, more accurate manner. The internet can and has be described as many things, but reaching out to the people and letting them make their own choice is what matters most.

Credits: Picture above provided by The American.com.

Google Taking Advantage of 2008 Elections with Extremely High CPC's

I have been fortunate enough to be working on paid search campaigns for U.S. Politicians and when I saw the CPC's for very generalized Political type keywords asking for a min $10.00 CPC (see below) the first thing that came to mind was "Google knows this and they want to eat up as much campaign funds as possible". I mean c'mon. $10 for the phrase match "2008 senator's election" In fact, when you add this keyword to the Google Traffic Guess-timator, it doesn't even generate enough traffic to give you any data. Also, these keywords are "State" geo-targeted. Something just tells me that the gloves are off, and this is just another sneaky tactic to steal from the politician's wallet. I guess it has to go somewhere right? Is Google putting themselves up there with TV & Radio now?

Google's Take (in my opinion):
They know these campaigns will not last forever. In fact they will only last for a few months and in some cases State Geo targeted. So in order for them to take advantage of this, they need to put a "premium" on PPC for all political campaigns. Why? Their not dumb. They know these candidates have millions of dollars $$$ to spend right now and also have seen dramastic growth every year, as PPC is becoming more and more of the campaign money is being allocated to Internet marketing. I just find it ridiculous that even their own Adwords tools which cannot even give any traffic and monetary value on a keyword but can automatically attribute a $10 min CPC just to get that keyword active. Does this make sense? It does to me if you don't drink the Cool-aid.

So how do "WE" SemGeeks deal with this?
Due to a previous experience with a previous client, the only thing you can do is to make sure the keyword selection, Ads and Landing pages as relevant and keyword rich as possible. Then, bite your tongue and increase the bid to $10.00 as Google wants and simply wait it out and let Google collect enough history and hopefully good CTR% for it to settle down. The key is accumulate click and CTR% history and typically Google will "ease" back and decide to lower your CPC.

In Conclusion:
In Star Wars, Obi-wan said to Anakin "... And don't forget, she's a politician, and they're *not* to be trusted." Well, in this case maybe it's Google that cannot be trusted. My other piece of the strategy would be to put more money in Yahoo. They don't charge you $10 CPCs and it allows you to keep the costs down. Putting more money $$$ into Google Content and Site targeting is another valid option to the search network follies..

Google Adwords - They Are Not Practicing What They Preach

The purpose of this blog post is to ask the question: How is it that Google, who has set the standard for creating PPC best practices from Quality Score methodologies to keyword selection, can honestly propose their infamous "optimization option" that promotes broad match and mediocre campaign structure and organization that has done nothing but double or triple the spend for their advertisers and leave a bad taste in their mouths from the experience. Can you say Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde?

So Who Benefits from This?
Well, obviously Google (keeps the ol' stock price up there) and I would think Search Agencies/consultants also benefit as their # 1 job would be to re-organize the structures and provide a new "realized" strategy to put their business goals back in the black. But is that a necessary evil for Google to bank on promoting "Production-Line" level PPC? I don't know, but it brings up one hell of a discussion on "hubba, hubba who do you trust?"

My Personal Take:
I have seen many of these optimization recommendations and frankly I simply laughed at all of the following attributes which all leads to poor Quality Score. I keep going back and forth on the idea that they want to train people how to get the best results from Adwords, yet they have investors who want to see growth. It appears to me that this is just a necessary cycle to keep fresh new money coming in as well as keeping them engaged to continue spending. C'mon, this is all about good business. But have they gone too far with this? I think so. Here is why they are the king of the double standard:

• Poor Campaign/adgroup structures
• Very Broad Keyword Selection (all head terms, no long tails)
• Keyword Matching (all broad)
• Ads (didn't provide much Call-to-action)
• Cost per click? (top $$$/position)
• Little to no negatives

What's your experience with this (Reader's Response)
So I ask everyone reading this post to think and answer the following questions:

1. Have you been a victim of this in the past?
2. Have you had to tell a client to ignore this?
3. What is Google's motive other than $$$
4. Should the agencies/consultants just keep quiet and let Google continue this?
5. Why doesn't Yahoo and MSN force this down their advertisers throats more?

Thanks and look forward to your responses.

SemGeek Gets Two Nominations for 2008 SEMMY Awards

Hey ya'll, SemGeek has just been nominated for (2) 2008 PPC SEMMY Awards for the blog post Optimizing Paid Search & Landing Pages for TV, Radio and Print Advertising as well as Web Analytics: Are We Losing Focus On What Really Matters? I am very proud of this honor and want to wish the best of luck to all of the other great nominees on this list.

• All 2008 SEMMYs nominees (all categories)
• All 2008 SEMMYs PPC nominees
• All 2008 SEMMYs Web Analytics nominees

About the SEMMYS?
SEMMYS are an annual awards event honoring the great content produced across the search and online marketing industry. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has grown to include a variety of disciplines, including blogging, social media, reputation management, and more. The SEMMYS attempt to include all these elements into one awards event. We hope the SEMMYS serve as a complement to the excellent existing awards which honor blogs and bloggers.

How can you win a SEMMY?
A team of expert judges will review the nominees and select finalists in each category. At that time, public voting will determine the winners of each SEMMY.

Why Call Centers & Live Chat Are Killing Paid Search Conversions

Once is a while, a topic such as this one puts a little fire in my belly. In this case, I am talking about off- line attribution vehicles such as Live Chat and those pesky "Call Now to Order Toll- Free" #800's plastered all over the client's site and carts alike that are killing the opportunity for accurate tracking from a possible very successful PPC Campaign. It gets even worse if the client's site sells a product or service with predetermined demographics and/or very complex instructions or just a "less than desired" (aka.crappy) conversion process.

Good for Client. Bad for PPC:
Great Marketing Strategy and worth the investment. It's an obvious "no-brainer" that having additional outlets to make a purchase will increase online revenues and provide good user experience which leads to happy & loyal returning buyers. However, for us search geeks in the PPC world who rely on good performance, it's a freakin' nightmare.

Communicating to the Client "The Issue":
It's one of the most frustrating things when communicating and convincing a client to simply ask them to either accurately track or replace it with a new dedicated #800 to separate it from other channels. Because if you do not, the "well-oiled" machine that you created and used to get 100 conversions a week now is only getting 35 and the KPIs which you were achieving have gone down the toilet. It is also often a losing cause to ask to get data on their call volumes and/phone sales and do some fancy math to calculate the attribution.

In conclusion:
The goal of this post is to bring attention to this often overlooked "conversion buster". There are many solutions out there that can help track the performance of PPC, even though the consumer decides to order of the phone or through a Live Chat person. However, it is imperative to start the dialog about this during the beginning stages of the relationship such as the sales and scoping process

Political Campaigns Make Big Push for Paid Search

For search marketers, this has always been a "no brainer". There is truly no downside to using this channel for getting out the vote, making donations, counteracting negative campaigning and most importantly getting the message for what the candidate stands for. Furthermore, there is even more upside when it compares to other media outlets such as and Television, Radio and Print. Why? because the online world even though still very new, is far more advanced with analytics and not only tracking the in-depth results, but also anticipating behavioral changes, and of course the ability to try lots of testing in little time. And to add more whip cream to this Win-Win Sundae, it is also much more cost effective because the people who are searching online about their political party, candidates names, running mates, issues, etc... have already established  "intent" and are already engaged. Furthermore, the likelihood of converting them in terms of an email address, volunteering and most importantly making a donation is much higher. A good example of this is the political campaign of Steve Sauerberg for U.S. Senate in Illinios where his campaign is planning on doing just that.

Why Paid Search is a must Platform for Politicians:
PPC has emerged as not only an effective channel to drive leads and sales for companies. It has become a persuasive vehicle to get the message out and test different messages amongst different demographics and psycho graphics.Why is this important? It enables the campaign staff and politicians themselves to react and see the results to their political stances as well as their competitors.

Paid Search a Catalyst for TV, Radio and Print:
There is no reason why Politicians should not use Paid Search as a research tool so they can get an understanding of which messaging or issues that they believe get the greater response. This makes complete sense, because what other channel not only enables them to reach an engaging mass public audience but also allows you to change, remove or add different messaging tactics with little to no time,  effort and especially COST!

Political Campaigns Seeing PPC as the Future:
We are already aware that 2008 Political candidates are using the Internet. But how many of them are getting the most out of it. Probably not many. In fact, an esteemed colleague of mine Liana Evans from SearchMarketingGurus.com is writing interesting, "in-depth" post about Political Internet Marketing especially their effectiveness within Social Media. Moreover, I know that there are a handful of U.S. Senatorial races where their respected campaign managers are reaching out to PPC as a vehicle to get the candidates messaging out and providing their voters with the ability to sign up for newsletters, volunteer and DONATE.

In conclusion:
This is a perfect marriage for both the Search Industry and Political Arena. In my eyes, their is a common goal of engaging the public, providing them with what they need so they alone can choose to decide for themselves what they want to buy or who they feel should be running the country.

Additional Political Related PPC Blog Posts:

• How Paid Search Can Help Elect the Next President ~ by Joseph Vivolo
• SendTec: Dems, Reps Fall Short on Search ~ by Mike Shields

 

SemGeek Listed On Clix Marketing's Top PPC Blogs

Hey, SemGeek was recently mentioned as one of the Top PPC Blogs by David Szetela at ClixMarketing.com. I am very proud to be added to this list and honored to be in the company of other great blogs such as Andrew Goodman’s Blog Traffick.com, and others.

The Goal of SemGeek.com:
The main goal for SemGeek is to provide it's readers with "real" issues, comments and suggestions about everyday PPC experiences.  From profitable strategies to misguided, overzealous tactics, I want to share them with others in the industry. Of course, I'm not going to spill all of the secret sauces that I have gathered over the years, but it is my PPC duty to share just enough of them for others to dip a McNugget once in a while. 

In my candid opinion, Search Marketing blogs should NOT be about stating the obvious and/or providing theories without any actual hands-on experience and knowledge. Just because you read a book or an article doesn't make you an expert or even a good search marketer. Furthermore, to reinforce this statement, I wrote a post last year in which I described How To Find A Good Search Marketer and that post is still very relevant today. Nothing can be more successful than learning from actually doing it. (Ironically, I am stating the obvious here)

In the words of Yoda, "You must unlearn what you have learned."

2008 Wishlist: Universal Adwords Editor for Yahoo Search and MSN AdCenter

Today, I was thinking. What if a genie suddenly popped out of a bottle of Pawtucket Ale (Family Guy Reference, ~ I love the that show) and he could offer me just one (1) wish with regard to paid search marketing, what would it be? And within 30 seconds, I would have to say a "Universal and Compatible Adwords Editor for Yahoo and MSN. However, all of this wishing is also making me feel like mentioning  one of the most memorable quotes from one of my favorite movies Grumpy Old Men - "Well you can wish in one hand and crap in the other, and see which gets filled first!"

Can you imagine the raw efficiency of having that software program? In a post I wrote back in March of 2007, on Li Evan's blog Search Marketing Gurus, entitled Revenge of the Adwords Editor I discussed some annoying compatibility issues with exporting campaigns into excel and then importing them into the very Beta Panama. Since then, the Yahoo import tools have been a little more forgiving, but I ask the question: "Is anyone out there building a Universal Adwords Editor that will make all of our lives easier without having to spend hours looking at an excel file and/or guessing if the Yahoo 3rd party import tool will work? Since were on the subject, here's a good article from PPCHero.com about Tips on Importing Google campaigns into Yahoo. Anyways, if there is one in production, please reply to this post and I will help you get the word out.

Why Does the Industry Need This?

• Simplicity: Having the ability to structure simple to the most complex campaign structures in one place and copying them with a click of a button. This would make SEM life much more simpler.

• Efficiency: Many PPC marketers are required to make many changes to keywords and Ad/creatives daily, weekly and monthly. Imagine the possibilities????

• Improved Strategies: Personally this is the most important, especially in the sales and launch process. If your job performance revolves around ROAS%, Revenue, Leads or whatever, you will be able to increase the quantity and quality of all multivariate testing, creation of additional campaigns,  and have that all important edge on the competition by launching very time sensitive offers and/or new products/services coming to the market.

In Conclusion: Again, unless I am totally off the mark, I am unaware of any such software, other than Web Analytics companies such as Omniture who have working PPC interfaces for all engines, but nothing close to the adwords editor. Plus, I have to believe that the AE is more heavily used than any of these analytics programs. Isn't it about time we simplified our daily lives. At least Google understands us, However, they just make the advertisers/clients pay through the nose for it with increased CPCs, changing algorithms, broad match and the content network.