Archives for August 2012

Ways For PPC Professionals To Save Money

If you’re a PPC professional at a company, it’s all about investing your employer’s money. By making wise use of your marketing budget, you deliver solid returns for your company by driving sales. In the world of SEO, they say content is king. In paid search, cash is king. Invest that cash wisely and the returns will be impressive. Now, what’s a PPC professional to do outside of work, when it comes to saving money and investing wisely? Today I’m thrilled to share some money tips for paid search professionals.

Tip 1: Leverage Your Employer’s 401k

Stacks of Money

If you work at a company (as opposed to being an full-time affiliate marketer), your role typically comes with benefits (especially at larger companies). One of the best benefits around is the ability to participate in your employer’s 401k plan. 401ks are an amazing way to save for your retirement. Dollars go in on a pre-tax basis and get to compound over the years tax free. You only pay taxes when you eventually withdraw your money during retirement. Even better: Many employers offer 401k matching (aka “free money”). I also like 401ks because they offer a “pay yourself first” investment strategy. Money automatically goes in, before you “see it” on your paycheck. No matter how small you start, I think it’s a great idea to participate in your employer’s 401k plan.

Tip 2: Take Stock Options Seriously

Another one of my favorite benefits of a corporate career is the ability to participate in your employer’s stock option plan. View your employer as an investment and choose wisely. It’s possible to do incredibly well by getting in early on a growing company (just look at LinkedIn, as an example). In addition to stock options, I’m also a big fan of RSU (restricted stock unit) plans. As compared to options, RSUs represent actual shares of stock that are gifted to you by your employer. I recommend taking your stock option and RSU plan seriously. Understand if your employer or prospective employer offers one. Then, make sure to keep a close eye on your investment. Don’t sell too early nor too late, it’s all about timing with the stock market.

Tip 3: Consider Lending Club As A Savings Vehicle

I’m a huge fan of LendingClub. This year, Lending Club has become a nice component of my overall savings strategy. You may wish to check out the following posts:

Lending Club not only offers a great way to save money, but also a great way to earn returns on your free cash. My net annualized return is 11.10% – not bad at all. Just remember, a well diversified saving/investing strategy is always important. As such, I have personally scaled into my Lending Club account more and more over time!

Tip 4: Consider Building Websites

I’m a huge fan of web publishing and affiliate marketing. I make money from this blog and also my portfolio of websites, IJL Productions LLC. In addition to earning/saving money from my websites, I have learned so much about SEO, blogging, social media, email marketing, PR, and so much more. In short: Websites are not only a money-savings vehicle but also a vehicle to grow your online marketing knowledge (in channels outside of PPC). Round out your PPC expertise with the other channels and you become even more valuable as an employee! Just remember to always place your own websites as a much lower priority than your job (I spend very little time on this stuff, it’s really my hobby and way of relaxing). In the corporate world, your job is priorities 1, 2, and 3.

Tip 5: Remember To Save Money From Your Paycheck

This may sound obvious, but I want to point it out since it’s not always easy. PPC is a high powered corporate career. If you’re good at what you do and give it your 110%, the upside and career path is great. Take time to save money. When you’re making money, it’s easy to spend money. And, you should since you earned it. However, just remember to save and invest some of it for the future too. Make a conscious decision and take action!

The paid search career path is one of the best, if not the best, around. Combine a strong career path with a strong savings plan and you are destined for greatness!

Disclaimer: I’m not a financial advisor and this is not financial/investment advice. Before making any financial decisions, make sure to contact your financial advisor.
Image of Stack of Bills © iStockPhoto – tforgo

Some Clever Offline Marketing Examples

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 28 4

While I’m all about online marketing, I find so much inspiration in offline marketing as well. I especially enjoy it when the offline and online marketing worlds collide (as in the case of CPA Tank’s guest post about Offline Email Capture). From time to time, I like to write a post about offline marketing and here are some of my favorites from over the years: WebEx Caltrain Station Takeover, Showtime Photo Booth, and PPC Associates Billboards.

Today, I wanted to share some clever offline marketing examples from my friends at AdMedia ad network. I definitely recommend following AdMedia’s Facebook Page. I follow them and have been thoroughly enjoying their updates. Each day, they share really great posts, including these offline marketing examples. (Thanks AdMedia for the inspiration to write this blog post!)

Check out the clever offline ads below. The first ad shows a really cool billboard that actually blends into the landscape. How awesome! The second ad below, the bus stop ad, actually turns on/off as people pass by. That really helps communicate the message of saving energy. In my opinion, these are some clever offline ads. Have you seen any clever offline ads recently?

Offline Ad 1: Billboard That Blends Into The Landscape

Offline Ad 2: Bus Stop Ad That Turns On/Off To Save Energy

Images in this post © their respective owners
Sources: LAist and Ads of The World

Helpful Tips For Company Offsites

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 25 0

This past week, I enjoyed a leadership offsite with my colleagues in Monterey, California. Monterey is a really fun area, just south of the San Francisco Bay Area. We stayed several nights at the Monterey Plaza Hotel, right on the water on historic Cannery Row. In addition to several days of extreme productivity and strategy, we did some serious team building and networking. Today, I’m going to share a few of my favorite tips for company offsites!

Tip 1: Enjoy The Team Building Activities

Spyglass Golf Course

Offsites are a great way to network and truly know your colleagues. At my offsite last week, I got to play golf at Spyglass Hill Golf Course, at Pebble Beach. This is one of the premier golf courses in the world, a truly fun experience. You can see a picture of me to the right, at the Spyglass Pro Shop, in my new Spyglass vest. Below, you can see a picture of the deer we saw on the golf course. It was awesome, we ran into deer on many of the holes.

I’m super excited because I’ve been playing a lot of golf at work events lately. The pay per click career path has given me to the opportunity to play at the Stanford Golf Course, Granite Bay Country Club, and now Spyglass Hill. I’m actually scheduled to play again at the Stanford Golf Course again in September with several colleagues.

While I love golf, these events are not just about the golf. They are all about networking and having a great time with colleagues. A truly solid and powerful organization relies on teamwork. Team building activities, such as these, are a key area of focus for anyone in a leadership position (or looking to become a leader). The next time your company has a team building event, make sure to attend and enjoy it to the fullest extent!

Tip 2: Bring New Ideas To The Offsite

In addition to team building, offsites are the place to brainstorm new ideas. Offsites bring everyone together, away from the office. Offsites encourage everyone to look at the big picture, and are typically in a setting that encourages brainstorming. I always recommend spending some time before the offsite thinking of new, big ideas. Of course, you should also try to do the same during the actual event, in collaboration with your colleagues. However, by putting in a little preparation work ahead of time, you will contribute maximum value to the group, during the event. In addition to bringing ideas, make sure to have all your numbers, marketing plans, initiatives, and ideas handy. You never know what will come in handy during a brainstorming and strategy session!

Tip 3: Get Plenty of Sleep and Always Be On Time

Offsites can be quite tiring. You’re essentially working around the clock at such events. When you’re not in meetings, you will be at events. It’s a lot of great stuff concentrated into a small amount of time. Make sure to pace yourself and get as much sleep as possible. By keeping this in mind, you will always be on time to each event (super important) and will have maximum clarity for your meetings.

I hope these tips help and make sure to have fun at your next company offsite!

Spyglass Pebble Beach Golf Course

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

SEM Jobs: A Guide For Affiliate Marketers

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 20 2

One of the best things about blogging is all the great emails I get from you guys! Lately, several full time affiliate marketers have asked me the question, “What should I do to get my first corporate SEM job? That is a great question, and today I’m thrilled to share a few tips on getting SEM jobs, specifically for affiliate marketers.

Tip 1: Leverage Your Affiliate Marketing Skills

Affiliate Marketing

Corporate search engine marketing jobs offer a very different experience than affiliate marketing. At the same time, affiliate marketing provides a great introduction and education that will help anyone become a great corporate marketer. My advice to any affiliate looking for an SEM job: Leverage and embrace your background. Stay true to your affiliate roots! During your interviews, consider bringing in case studies from your affiliate campaigns. I’ll never forget the candidate who brought in a portfolio, complete with Google Analytics and Google AdWords reports/graphs from his very own website (that he had built and marketed himself). I definitely respect someone like that and am betting a lot of other hiring managers have the same perspective!

Tip 2: Make Sure You’re Ready For Change

SEM is the best career path around, in my opinion. SEM is also an amazingly intense career path. Meaning: You will be working around the clock. Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter are 24/7 marketplaces, they never sleep. If you’re an affiliate (and love PPC), you will love the work so this should be a breeze. However, you can’t do everything and you’ll likely need to ramp down your affiliate operations. Your new SEM job will be priorities 1, 2, and 3. Make sure you’re ready for that change. Mentally, you cannot be thinking about anything at your new SEM job than the job itself. The caveat: Don’t completely stop your affiliate marketing, it can be your competitive advantage and your pulse on the industry. Affiliates are savvy and my personal affiliate marketing efforts have helped accelerate my corporate career.

Tip 3: Focus On Professionalism

Due to the number and nature of “super affiliate” blogs on the Internet, affiliates have become the rap stars of the online marketing industry. Don’t get me wrong, rap music is my favorite. However, gold chains and the party lifestyle don’t mesh will with the corporate world. Just keep in mind that corporate SEM is all about professionalism.

Tip 4: Just Go For It!

In my opinion, corporate SEM is the way to go. Affiliate marketing is great, but I personally feel like corporate SEM takes it to the next level. You will be working with some of the largest budgets around. You will be optimizing to new levels. You will work with amazing bidding platforms. You will learn some serious creative skills (both ad copy and landing page creative). You will get to test new stuff all the time. You will get amazing exposure to some of the brightest minds around. You will become a world class businessperson, responsible for your company’s bottom line. These are just a few benefits of corporate SEM, I could list hundreds. If you’re interested in making that move, just go for it!

Image in this post © marekuliasz

The Search Marketer’s Guide To Creative Testing

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 18 0

I’m a huge fan of creative testing. Just a few days ago, I wrote a post about A Few PPC Ad Copy Ideas. Today, I’m thrilled to share Marin Software’s brand new whitepaper called The Search Marketer’s Guide To Creative Testing and Optimization.

Marin offers one of the most amazing SEM Automation platforms ever, and their new 14-page whitepaper delivers some serious value. Covering topics such as maintaining keyword relevance, testing keyword tokens, prioritization of tests, implementing proper tracking, and measuring statistical significance, Marin Software’s whitepaper offers value for both beginner and advanced search engine marketers.

I highly recommend downloading this free whitepaper. It’s packed with valuable lessons and is a great weekend read. I went away inspired with some new ideas. I enjoyed the specific examples in the whitepaper and especially the “partner spotlight” case studies for partner, Boost CTR. Back at SMX San Jose 2012, I took a photo with the Boost CTR team. They have been taking the industry by storm and are a Marin Software partner. You’ll get a bit more flavor about them and so much more in this whitepaper. Paid search is all about continuously testing. Keep testing new ads and just remember that it’s all about the entire funnel (impressions to conversions). Ads with the highest CTR are only winners if your back end conversion rate also remains high.

My Mid-Week Musings (Volume 2)

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 15 0

It’s been a while since I did one of my musings posts. (Here, you can check out my last mid-week musings.) Since there’s so much great stuff going on, I thought I’d capture some of it today, in the second edition of my mid-week musings!

Chili Peppers

I’m thrilled that my guest post about 5 Ways To Leverage In-House Paid Search Insights Across A Company was published on the PPC Associates blog today. PPC Associates is Silicon Valley’s SEM Agency. My good friend David Rodnitzky is CEO of PPC Associates and I’m also good friends with their marketing manager, Hillary Read. Thanks, David and Hillary for sharing my guest post! I’m really happy how it turned out. If you manage paid search campaigns at a company, I highly recommend heading over to PPC Associates and checking out this post.
I love working at my company. Not only is the job super exciting, but the team is the best I have ever had the honor of working with. Last night, my company treated my wife and I to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert at the Oracle Arena. We enjoyed the concert in style, at the luxury suite. I have been lucky to enjoy many sporting events from luxury suites, but this was my first concert. I actually saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers open for the Rolling Stones back in the day, when I was in high school. It was great to see them again. It was also an incredibly fun time enjoying the concert with my wife, co-workers, and their spouses too. It’s all about the people!
It’s all about Going Above And Beyond In Your SEM Career. Things have been intense ever since I got promoted to VP six months ago. And, I love it! I’m so energized and excited about online marketing. The online marketing career path is one of the best around and it’s never too late to get started! My advice: Push yourself each and every day. Always strive for excellence in everything you do.
Finding Inspiration is super important. One of my favorite sources of inspiration is my good friend, Morgan Linton. Why? I’m always focused on getting stuff done and Morgan is one of the most productive people I have ever met. His blog empowers me to be as productive and energized as possible, and it’s also taught me a great deal about domain names. In life, it’s always important to follow your dreams. Everyone has different dreams, and it doesn’t matter what they are as long as you’re true to your own path. Morgan’s Dream Has Come True – He recently started his own company, and is focused on it full-time. Morgan’s company, FashionMetric, got written up on the Microsoft BizSpark Blog since they were finalists at AngelHack. Way to go, Morgan and team, you rule!
I really enjoyed attending SES San Francisco last year. Even though the conference is right here in San Francisco (just a short drive from our home on the SF Peninsula), I couldn’t attend this year. Too many exciting projects at work, but that’s ok. My wife is attending the event and I can’t wait to hear her recap!
I’ve been getting a lot of great emails from readers recently. I’ve been doing my best to keep up, but sometimes a few will fall through the cracks and I just forget to respond. If I don’t respond, please feel free to email me again. I’m here to educate and empower online marketing professionals, I’m here to help!

A Few PPC Ad Copy Ideas

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 11 1

I’ve written a variety of posts here on PPC Ian about paid search ad copy such as Leveraging Social Extensions, Ad Rotation Is Changing, and Six Sitelinks In AdWords. Paid search ad copy is super high leverage. A higher CTR means more traffic/conversions and also a higher quality score (and therefore ad position and CPC benefits). If you are savvy about your ad copy selection, you can scale your CTR while maintaining or even growing your conversion rate. Following are a few PPC ad copy ideas that may help you choose your next winner!

PPC Ian Billboard

Tip 1: Truly understand your customer. Have you run surveys on your site? Have you or someone at your organization interviewed your customers? Do you make an effort to sit in on customer calls? In the early days of a new PPC account, we all often throw up a few ads up and let AdWords or adCenter pick the winner. We keep repeating a few times and the strategy really works. This is a great way to start, but these days I’m also recommending a more strategic approach. If you truly understand your customer, you will hit on the most important points in your copy. Paid search ads offer very limited space. Make sure your ads hit on the top 2-3 reasons your customers buy from you! Most of the time, such ads will have the highest impression to conversion performance.
Tip 2: Optimize for the entire funnel, impression to conversion. Ad copy testing is often focused on click-through-rate (CTR). A lot of the time, a higher CTR ad will truly help your program. That said, some high CTR ads will offer a lower back end conversion rate. The true metric I’m looking at these days: conversions/impressions. You will never go wrong optimizing your ads based on the entire customer funnel.
Tip 3: Test Google’s “optimize for conversions” ad rotation setting. These days, you’re able to rotate evenly, optimize for clicks, or optimize for conversions. Optimizing for conversions allows you to accomplish tip #2, in an automated fashion (at least, on a micro/ad group level). And, Google will not make any rash decisions. If there’s not enough conversion data to make the right choice, they default to optimizing for clicks.

These are just a few high level thoughts going through my mind these days when it comes to ad copy. What types of frameworks are you leveraging in your ad copy testing?

What’s Your Mobile PPC Strategy?

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 5 0

Do you advertise on mobile smartphones and tablets? Mobile search marketing is absolutely taking off. If you’ve tapped out the easy opportunities on desktop search, you absolutely must take a look at mobile. Even if you haven’t exhausted desktop search, you’ll want to look at mobile as part of your overall strategy. Today, I wanted to take a step back and provide a high level framework to think through mobile search marketing. I hope this framework helps in formulating (or refining) your own mobile strategy.

Start With Google AdWords, But Don’t Forget AdCenter

As with desktop search, you’ll get the most leverage with Google AdWords. That said, Microsoft adCenter provides great mobile search marketing opportunities as well. Just like Google AdWords, adCenter allows you to create separate campaigns for tablets and smartphones. They even allow you to segment by device. The key message here: adCenter has been innovating and you’ll be amazed what you find! Make sure your mobile strategy covers all search engines.

Create Separate Campaigns For Tablets & Smartphones

Mobile search is quite a bit different than desktop search. We’re talking about different conversion rates, different CPCs, different bid landscapes, and different strategies. I highly recommend managing your mobile campaigns separately. Specifically, you will want to segment out unique campaigns for desktop, tablets, and mobile smartphones. Sure, this creates more overhead and complexity, but it also gives you the precision needed to really dial in your campaigns. Remember to go granular. Just because mobile is a smaller percentage of your ad spend now, it will one day surpass desktop search. Set up the proper infrastructure now for long-term scale and success.

Think Through Your Mobile Customer Experience

Mobile Smartphone Ads

Most likely, your tablet experience will be similar to your desktop experience. Tablets are incredibly powerful and offer large screens. Think through your tablet experience. If you’re thinking of doing something different than your desktop experience (especially a really simplified mobile smartphone-like experience), definitely make sure to test. You may be surprised at what the conversion rates tell you when you offer something too simplified. Bonus tip: Understand how your site views tablets. Does your website bucket them into the “mobile” bucket? If so, you may be incorrectly sending tablet traffic to the smartphone site. Make sure to QA for both iPads and also Android tablets. Both should go to the intended tablet site.

Now, when it comes to mobile smartphones, you will have a more difficult decision. First and foremost, I recommend developing a mobile smartphone site. Most likely, your mobile site will be different than your desktop site. No matter how simple your business, desktop experiences just don’t work on small mobile smartphone screens. Even if you don’t opt to send paid traffic to your mobile smartphone site, you will need it to capture organic and direct traffic. Bonus tip: Consider testing mobile smartphone landing pages. Landing page testing is a great way to improve conversion rate, on both desktop and mobile experiences.

After your mobile smartphone site has been developed, you now will want to start testing paid traffic from AdWords (and adCenter). If you have a long conversion funnel and a strong call center, you’ll also want to consider mobile click-to-call. Click-to-call is the perfect way to leverage your call center while bypassing your mobile smartphone site if you don’t have one or if it performs at too high of a CPA for paid search to effectively work. Alternately, you could send traffic to your mobile site, but also display your phone number in a sitelink. Users on mobile smartphones are on phones. Offering/highlighting the opportunity to call is a great way to convert new customers.

I’ve been thinking about mobile a lot lately. Mobile tablet and smartphone advertising marks an important shift in our industry (perhaps the largest since AdWords was invented). What’s your mobile PPC strategy?