My Favorite Online Marketing Blogs

Posted by: Ian Comments: 4 comments so far

Feb. 07

I created PPC Ian to empower and educate online marketing professionals. There are many great blogs that cover the tactical side of PPC and SEO. However, I like to think of PPC Ian as the first blog with a primary focus on the career side of things. While I plan to include more tactical tips over time, my core focus will always be accelerating your career in online marketing. Today, I’d like to discuss some of my favorite blogs, those linked to in my blogroll. I encourage you to check out these blogs in your quest to learn as much as possible about PPC, SEO, and online marketing. These blogs are excellent compliments to PPC Ian.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 1: 2 Create a Website

PPC Blogs

There are some people in this world that live to help others. Lisa Irby from 2 Create a Website is one of those people. Lisa’s incredibly successful, a direct byproduct of the plethora of free information available on her site.

I’m a regular reader of 2 Create a Website Blog and highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about making money online. Lisa discusses a plethora of topics including web development, marketing, and the theory behind it all. Moreover, Lisa is a motivator. As you may know from my post about passion, I’m a big fan of passion, excitement, and motivation. I like reading Lisa’s blog to stay motivated towards my personal goals.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 2: Aaron Wall

Aaron Wall wrote the book on SEO! I learned most of what I know about SEO today from Aaron Wall’s book and blog. I am constantly inspired by Aaron’s level of depth and thought. His blog is one of a kind in that posts are very intellectual, keeping you thinking long after reading. As a bonus, I highly recommend checking out PPC Blog, Giovanna Wall’s (Aaron’s wife) blog all about pay per click!

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 3: Shoemoney

Shoemoney is a guy that needs no introduction. He’s an absolute online marketing superstar and celebrity. As one of the most celebrated blogs in the space, it’s hard to find a PPCer who doesn’t know about Shoemoney. I’ve been reading Shoemoney for around 3 years now and am constantly entertained and inspired. There’s nothing more inspiring than the rags to riches story, the online marketing American Dream. Shoemoney represents this dream first hand and I highly recommend following him regularly.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 4: Jonathan Volk

As you may know, I was recently interviewed by Jonathan Volk. As a long time reader of Jonathan Volk’s blog, this marked quite the milestone in my career. I have a lot of respect for super affiliates. Affiliate marketing is tough. Sure, affiliates are more nimble than corporations and can target niche opportunities that just wouldn’t move the needle for a large organization. At the same time, payouts are typically lower than internal teams and competition is fierce. If you’re able to make it big in affiliate marketing, you definitely have my respect. As one of the best affiliates out there, and someone who does it with class, I highly recommend Jonathan Volk’s blog.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 5: Arbel Arif

As mentioned in PPC Ian’s 2010 goals, this year has a clear domaining focus for me. I’m extremely excited about the opportunities in acquiring and developing premium domain names as long term investments (both for their equity and passive income value). Arbel Arif is the first domaining blog I started following, and one of the best by far. In addition to having great content in general, I particularly enjoy the fact that Arbel is very generous about sharing domains that are available for anyone to register.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 6: Dot Jake

Here’s a trend that I love about online marketing: The average age of the Internet marketing rock star keeps decreasing. I like to think of Internet marketing as a level playing field for bright minds of all ages. This makes the industry extremely interesting, one that requires constant innovation to stay competitive. Dot Jake is an awesome blog by a teenager who’s a domaining and online marketing expert. While Jake is still in high school, I have learned an incredible amount from his blog and moreover really enjoy his overall writing style (the posts are quick but very insightful).

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 7: Seobay

As you know, I’m a big believer in the future of PPC as a top career path in India. I recently wrote an article all about managing remote India SEM teams. It’s really interesting: When I first started out in PPC, I managed a team in India that assisted the US team with more manual tasks. A few years into my career, however, I had the pleasure of working with a remote India team that directly managed huge PPC campaigns. I only expect this evolution to continue and am just about the biggest proponent of complementing your US team with a remote India team. Seobay is an outstanding blog by one of my old co-workers, a PPC team manager and expert in India. PPC and SEO have so many parallels and I highly recommend checking out this blog to learn all about PPC an SEO, from an India perspective.

PPC Ian’s Favorite Blog 8: DNPimping

DNPimping is one of the newer blogs on my list and is quickly becoming a favorite. Pimp Jason, a very successful domainer from the LA area, discusses his thoughts on the domaining industry. As discussed above, domaining is clearly on my radar for 2010 and I’ve learned quite a bit from Jason’s blog. Additionally, Jason has a regular comic strip on his site that I always look forward to!

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5 Great PPC Campaign Initiatives

Posted by: Ian Comments: 2 comments so far

Feb. 03

So far, I’ve been talking quite a bit about high-level pay per click career tips. After all, the charter of PPC Ian is just that: Empowering pay per click professional by focusing on career tips and strategy. However, the time has come to start including some specifics as well. Pay per click is a very operational role, one that requires initiatives to grow campaigns. It’s actually quite interesting: After all these years, many of the core initiatives are the same. Today, I will highlight 5 great PPC initiatives that will immediately grow your Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft campaigns. This is a random group. I’m not saying these are the best initiatives or the only initiatives, but they are certainly ones that will jumpstart any PPC operation.

PPC Initiative 1: Brainstorm Keywords With Your Vertical Manager

PPC Initiatives

I’m listing this initiative first because it’s a fun one, an initiative that can totally break up the PPC grind while driving value. Automated keyword generation (via the Google Keyword Tool, third party solutions such as Trellian, and your site’s catalog) is absolutely essential in capturing the basic keywords, those keywords that get you into the game. However, if you want to go above and beyond the basics and win the game, you need to get creative. My suggestion: Form a partnership with your vertical manger, category director, or whatever your company calls the person who runs your business unit.

Specifically, set up a structured brainstorming session (or a series of sessions) and generate keywords on the whiteboard. You will be amazed at the creative keyword ideas you brainstorm, keywords that will change the game for your organization because they lack competition and are not available via automated generation platforms. My other suggestion: Think about very creative ways to leverage broad match keywords with aggressive negative matching. There are many innovative strategies waiting to be uncovered, some which can make or break an entire vertical.

PPC Initiative 2: Write Custom Ad Copy For Your Mid-Volume Keywords

I like to call this initiative the one keyword per ad group strategy. I actually coined that term about 3.5 years ago and am quite proud of it! Surprisingly, when I first started championing the one keyword per ad group strategy, it was a little difficult to gain supporters. These days, I can’t find a PPC organization that does not use the strategy in one form or another. My advice is simple: Target your mid-volume keywords and write highly customize ads (hundreds of them) with the goal of optimizing click through rate.

You may ask: Why the mid-volume keywords? My answer is simple. The very high volume keywords are generic enough that your current ads are already very customized. Just think about it: Your ad for the word "mortgage" is already targeted enough because the word is so generic that it defines the entire category. Now, let’s say we’re talking about the mid-volume keyword "California Mortgage Loan". Because this keyword contains "California" and "Loan", we’re perfectly set up to write a custom ad, one that has a custom title, body, and also display URL. One of the challenges with this strategy is nobody wants to sit down and write the hundreds of ads. My suggestion: Split the efforts across the team, everyone needs to participate in the effort!

PPC Initiative 3: Analyze Top Performing Keywords From Last Year

A lot of stuff can happen over the course of the year. Campaign managers come and go, campaigns change hands, mistakes are made, and business models can change. All of this change can create some serious opportunity if you take the time to look back. My suggestion: Run a quick keyword level analysis comparing last month to the same month in the prior year. Look for keywords that used to drive significant conversions but are now lagging behind. I’m often surprised to find keywords that are unintentionally paused, underbid, or simply have ad copy that’s no longer beating the competition. This analysis is a super way to generate a queue of tactical PPC work that can drive real results.

Search Marketing Initiative 4: Focus On More Granular Targeting

If you’re in financial services, you’re no stranger to geo targeting. Taking mortgage as an example, a lead form in California is clearly worth more than one in North Dakota. Why? It’s much easier to split the lead in California and sell it to multiple different lenders (the demand for that lead is higher). For this reason alone, geo targeting offers a great way to bid more efficiently.

However, I’d also like to suggest that you test more granular targeting even if you’re in a vertical like product shopping, one that doesn’t have a clearly different product value by geo. I’ve seen it many times: Users in different geographies convert at different rates. Often times, users in highly populated metro areas like San Francisco convert the best. For that reason alone, you can bid more effectively by geo targeting your campaigns. My only word of caution: Only change your bids by geo when you have statistically significant data. The more you segment your keywords, the longer it can take to accumulate statistically significant data.

Search Marketing Initiative 5: Achieve Match Type Parity

As a closing tip, I highly recommend a regular look at your match type parity. Parity is a very simple concept. Basically, you want to look at your global keyword set and make sure you’re fully deployed on all match types. Because it offers the highest conversion rate and profitability, I’m a huge fan of exact match. Consequently, I always enjoy performing a parity analysis and making sure all of my keywords are deployed on exact. I’m often amazed how many campaigns are overly weighted on the broad match side. This creates a great opportunity to take those broad match keywords and also deploy them on exact, at slightly higher bids, for added control, coverage, and profits!

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Breaking Up The Pay Per Click Grind

Posted by: Ian Comments: Be the first person to comment

Jan. 28

If you’re in the corporate PPC world, you definitely know that things can get rather crazy. After enough analysis, keyword generation, keyword deployment, bid changes, ad copy tests, landing page tests, account restructures, product requirements, and executive presentations, your head can really start spinning! I’m here to tell you that it’s all about PPC longevity. After all, longevity has been one of the cornerstones of my early success in the corporate pay per click world. Today, I’d like to take a step back and discuss ways of breaking up the PPC daily grind. Whether you’re an associate or director, I strongly encourage you to take these tips seriously. At the end of the day, they will only increase your employee retention and team morale!

Tip 1: Attend Search Engine Marketing Conferences

Daily Grind

Search engine marketing conferences have been extremely good to me over the years. They’re incredibly beneficial from two angles: First and foremost, conferences present the ultimate networking experience. As someone with well over 500 connections on LinkedIn and a big binder of business cards at home, I cannot say enough about the power of networking. At the end of the day, people are everything in terms of finding long term success in your corporate pay per click career.

Second, conferences are extremely worthwhile in terms of staying up with current trends and sparking innovation. The natural tendency in PPC is to think you know it all. Well, at least that’s my natural tendency. The problem, however, is that things change extremely fast. Even if you know everything today, you won’t necessarily know it all tomorrow. Even if you’re consistently innovating and driving the direction of the industry, a great speaker can totally spark new ideas.

Directors, managers, and team leads: My overall suggestion here is that you get your team full passes to the major conferences such as Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), and ad:tech. I’ve been at companies in the past that have unfortunately been cheap about getting full passes. I definitely suggest pushing for full passes. It’s an extremely small investment in your team’s education and morale, one that will pay huge long-term dividends. From my personal experience, I always come back from conferences extremely energized, full of new ideas, and ready to go! Thinking about things through that lens, conferences are the ideal way to break up the daily PPC grind.

Tip 2: Enjoy PPC Team Activities

I like to compare pay per click campaign managers to Wall Street traders. We’re in the details of a very competitive and focused trade. For that reason, we often forget to take a step back and get away from the computer. From my experience, team activities are always a very welcome break from day to day campaign management. Moreover, the bonds formed during team activities can directly improve teamwork within the office.

My suggestion: Plan a team activity at least once very six months and ideally once per quarter. Some great examples include go-karting, miniature golfing, and bowling. I particularly like team functions that involve actual activity because we’re typically at the computer for so much for our day. The key here is that the team activity is held during the workday and that it concludes right around the time people typically leave the office. That way, the team activity functions as a true reward. Also, team activities are always more rewarding if the company pays for them!

Tip 3: Schedule Regular PPC Team Lunches

This tip is very similar to the last one, but I suggest an increased frequency of perhaps once per month. It’s too easy to rush out of the office and grab a quick lunch, only to come back and start working again right away. From my experience, the time savings from a quick lunch does not add any value. If you actually break up the workday and increase the "fun" factor, the entire team gains immense productivity. For that reason, I highly suggest having PPC team lunches to celebrate milestones, birthdays, or really any reason at all. Another great idea: Invite members of other teams as well, it’s a great way to learn something new!

Tip 4: Proactively Assist Other Departments

One of my absolute favorite things about pay per click search engine marketing is the fact that we’re in the center of it all. PPC is an operationally intensive role, one that involves useful data. For that reason, I enjoy thinking about proactive ways to assist other departments. Some simple examples: Share your PPC keyword list with the SEO team, share your top ads with the design team, send competitive benchmarks to the partnership team. At the end of the day, there exists a plethora of ways you can directly help your coworkers in other departments. Not only will this break up your day a bit, but it will help your overall organization grow. Moreover, I truly believe that the more you give, the more you receive. Next time you need help from someone else, you can rest assured that help will be available immediately.

Tip 5: Give Back To The Paid Search Community

I created this blog to give back. I regularly enjoy acting as a reference for old reports. I thoroughly enjoy writing letters of recommendation. At the end of the day, it’s all about giving back in my opinion. The best managers in the world are your manager for life. It doesn’t matter if you’re at a different company. If someone’s a great manager, they will always support and invest in your career. This is how I view management. Unfortunately, this is against the grain of many managers out there.

My strong advice: Invest in old reports and co-workers. I’ve found this to be a very powerful way to help the community while breaking up my day a bit. Like I said in the last tip: The more you give, the more you will receive. Corporate PPC is a very small but rapidly growing community. Give back today and make a real difference, while keeping things fun and interesting.

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Posted in: Attitude, Career, Leverage | Tags: , | Comments: Be the first person to comment!