|
Some Considerations for Successful PPC Use Search engine selection: Since you can’t do everything at once, it makes sense to decide on
a priority ordering of the search engines for PPC advertising, so that you get the “most bang
for the buck” vehicles rolling the soonest. (ROI – adjusted to include some measure of the
staff time needed to maintain a campaign on a given engine – will tell us when to stop, so we
don’t need to worry about that just now.) In prioritizing the engines, it’s probably not the best idea to simply go by their well-publicized
global market shares. There are wide and not readily explained variations in those shares
among different segments of the public, and even of the B2B world; so those “average”
shares may have no relevance at all to your business. A better way to start is to look at your
own web site’s log files, determine the relative popularity of the search engines funneling
visitors to your site, and follow that ordering. A clear benefit of this approach is that whatever
you’re doing right from an SEO standpoint to cause, say, Yahoo/Overture to be your site’s
leading engine will only be further leveraged by the planned PPC campaign on that engine.
This provides a rational approach to starting up campaigns sequentially across multiple
engines; but that sequence may not correspond precisely to the actual “results” ordering of
the engines ...nor is that ordering likely to remain static. No problem; once you have
everything rolling, you can manage that by simply shifting ad budget among the various
engines based on ROI ...just as you’ll do among keywords, ad versions, offers and other
variables of your campaign within each engine. Keyword/phrase selection: Despite the relative ease noted above of getting started with
PPC, don’t let that lull you into a “ready-fire-aim” approach. Without good information, there’s
no way to develop a sensible strategy; so it’s prudent to take some front-end time to
understand the landscape you’re moving into: the number of bidders and bid amounts for
target keywords, and their relative popularity. The “heavy lifting” of keyphrase generation is best accomplished by brainstorming (which
keywords “make sense” for a searcher to use in finding your product/service?), log analysis
(what keywords are searchers successfully using to find your site today, via “organic” means?), and using several internet-based tools. Much of what you need can be obtained from tools provided by the search engine itself; other useful tools include third-party sites such as Wordtracker, which can give you click stats for specific keywords and their close relatives. It may seem counter-intuitive (since you’re already getting this traffic for $0), but it can be good to select phrases which rank your site well in organic searches; it reinforces your branding and tends to increase conversion rate. In general, employing three or more words in a phrase allows you to target visitors who have a greater degree of intent, often at a much lower cost per click. You can also employ different match strategies (the details vary across search engines) to minimize cost per click on even the most broad or general terms. Targeting/segmenting users: Eventually, you will have a small family of ads – with differing
keyphrases, match strategies, creative, etc. – around each product or service you choose to
promote via PPC. Google probably provides the best means of organizing all this, with its 3-
level structure of account/campaign/ad group.) For a multi-product company, this does get
logistically complex in short order; however, all of the engines provide management tools to
ease the task to some degree. It still will require a serious commitment of staff time, as has
been noted; but keep in mind that you’re working with perhaps the most cost-effective, most
flexible and most highly targeted promotional vehicle yet devised. Positioning (ranking) strategy: First, it’s probably good to discard the goal of achieving the
top-ranked PPC position for your important keywords; in many markets, it’s simply too costly
and very often just not worth that high cost. Unless ego is driving your positioning strategy,
the goal should be ROI; so position becomes simply another variable like everything else. If
you can get the same – or even better – conversion rate at a lower position, you’re able to
lower your cost per click and stretch your ad spend. In some markets, “second-place-bydesign”
is an excellent strategy: you might well end up paying only a penny more than the
3rd-ranked company’s $1 per click, while the #1 company is spending $10! Effective position testing should occur over a long enough period of time to determine
whether or not there is seasonality or some other dynamic factor(s) at work in your business.
If so, you’ll probably find that altering your PPC ranking to leverage those dynamics may
keep your ROI at your target level throughout the year. Creative development/testing: OK, it’s not exactly like developing a full-page, full-color ad,
so you might wonder just what’s really “creative” about it. You’re given one or two measly
lines (in addition to your designated click-through URL), typically with stringent length limits
stated in characters. What to do? Well, one very good idea is to try to use the search keywords that led to the ad
as part of the ad itself. This gives the searcher the maximum level of comfort that you have
just what she was looking for, that you really speak her language, etc. Also, in the Google
world, such evidence of “relevance” will raise your quality score, potentially resulting in an
improved position and/or lower cost per click. Don’t be surprised to find that your ads actually affect lead conversion as well as just clickthru
rates. If you think about it, lead conversion will be most influenced by... - the actual offer being made;
- design of the landing page; and
- the visitor’s predisposition on clicking through
...and that predisposition is almost entirely the product of your ad.
Of course, as soon as you have an ad that seems to work, it’s time to sit back and relax,
right? No! ...you should immediately try to beat it with some variant of that ad, or a
completely new one. In fact, you should forever be trying to beat your current bestperforming
ad; otherwise, you can’t claim that you’re truly maximizing your ROI. << previous | next >>
|