Facebook Ads Do Not Work!

Hey Everyone,

I used to think that Facebook Ads do not work, but was wrong (it happens from time to time)! I’ll certainly say from personal experience that Facebook Ads can be quite challenging for certain verticals. However, after reading Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide, I’m convinced that there’s serious money to be made in Facebook advertising and am personally empowered with some new ideas that are going to make Facebook advertising work for me. Today, I’m going to review Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide and my key takeaways. If you leave with only one message, I sincerely urge you to purchase your copy of Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide. It’s only $79 (limited time discount) and you owe it to your career in search engine marketing! If you’re in the corporate world of SEM (like me), you may even be able to expense this charge to your company (every company should own this guide in my opinion)!

Who Is Jonathan Volk and Why Do I Trust This Guy?

I’m going to start out with a brief introduction of my friend Jonathan Volk. Jonathan Volk is another San Francisco Bay Area marketer who has generated $3,693.21 per day for over 10 months in his personal Facebook advertising account! Aside from Facebook, Jonathan runs one of the most successful blogs on the Internet about how to make money online. I was actually honored a while back when Jonathan personally interviewed yours truly on his blog. Put simply, Jonathan is a force to be reckoned with in the world of online marketing and is the go to guy when it comes to Facebook Ads.

I Changed My Mind On Facebook Ads

I recently presented online marketing tips to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The presentation couldn’t have gone any better! During the presentation, I remember getting questions from GSB students about Facebook Ads. I also remember telling them that Facebook doesn’t work! If there’s only one part of the presentation that I’d like to change, it would be my response on Facebook Ads. At the time, I think it was super advice. Now that Jonathan’s guide exists, I’d like to reframe my answer: "Facebook Ads don’t work… Unless you first read Jonathan Volk’s guide!"

Facebook Ads are challenging because the strategies and tactics are quite different than the tried and true Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter ones. In fact, some of the winning strategies directly conflict with what you’d do on the major search engines! Heck, Facebook even had Jonathan Volk stumped for a while. However, he devoted himself to making it work. After investing substantial time and money in testing, Jonathan finally cracked the code.

I’m now convinced that Facebook Ads work and personally walked away from Jonathan’s guide with a wealth of actionable tips. More than anything, I’m excited to know that I can benefit from Jonathan’s investment and not have to invest the same time and money in finding winning Facebook Ads strategies.

My Key Takeaways From Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide

Now, I’d like to briefly highlight some of my major takeaways. Of course, I can’t go into too much detail (you’ll want to buy the guide to learn the secrets), but I will definitely give you a flavor of what impacted me the most.

First and foremost, I learned tremendously from Jonathan’s ad copy suggestions and tactics. He breaks down Facebook Ads into two components, image and text, and goes into micro detail on how you can optimize both. I was really enlightened by Jonathan’s tactical tips and walked away with some great strategies. These strategies are definitely out of the box!
Second, I’m a big fan of bidding strategy. There are two major bidding models on Facebook: CPM and CPC. Jonathan goes into the nuts and bolts of both and exposes winning strategies. I was surprised to find that some of his strategies conflict with my own best practices from Google AdWords!
Third, I really benefited from Jonathan’s discussion of Facebook Ads budgets and Upper Hand Techniques. This is where Jonathan really exposes some clever ideas that will take your campaigns to the next level. These are all out of the box strategies that took Jonathan substantial time and money to discover.

As some constructive feedback, I will say that the first part of the guide was a bit too basic for me. The first section discusses the basics of affiliate marketing and how to apply for affiliate networks. I’m a pro when it comes to online marketing so I was able to skip this section. At the same time, I’ll definitely say there was more than enough new stuff in this guide (most of the guide, in fact) to empower my Facebook advertising game! Moreover, I think this first section is great for those that are new to affiliate marketing.

Your SEM Career Will Fall Behind Without This Guide

To close out, I really want to highlight the fact that we’re in a dynamic industry. PPC Ian is all about educating and empowering online marketing professionals. Many of you guys are in the corporate world of SEM. I’m here to say that corporate success is all about keeping your winning edge and bringing that next big idea to your company. In my opinion, Facebook Ads are the next big thing. Facebook hasn’t blown up just yet (in the corporate world), so now’s your chance to stay ahead of the curve. Jonathan’s guide is a small $79 investment (limited time offer) that could fuel substantial gains in your online marketing career. If you’re an affiliate marketer, you’re going to make a ton more money. If you’re in the corporate world, you’re going to bring to the company strategies that will get you promoted!

Sincerely,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)

PS – You may be wondering, why would Jonathan give this all away for only $79 (limited time offer)? If he has such great strategies, why wouldn’t he keep them secret? My answer is simple: Jonathan wants to help people (just like my own philosophy)! Moreover, selling eBooks is a great way to diversify. Jonathan originally focused on Facebook to diversify his Google AdWords revenue streams. Now, he’s diversifying even more by selling an eBook. Not a bad strategy in my opinion. It’s a strategy that I respect very much and one that I envision myself taking in the future!

PPS – The guide comes with a bunch of amazing extras as well that will help you set up your Facebook Ads campaigns!

Image In This Post © JonathanVolk.com

Video: Stanford Graduate School of Business

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 13 16

Hello Everyone,

In my last post, I highlighted my presentation at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The presentation went extremely well and spanned two action-packed hours of PPC, SEO, and more. I’m definitely proud of this milestone.

Stanford GSB Presentation

Today my friend David Rogier, VP of Stanford GSB’s Entrepreneur Club, uploaded the video of my presentation to the Entrepreneur Club’s website! You can check out my online marketing presentation by visiting the Entrepreneur Club’s website or by simply watching it below!

I sincerely hope you find it helpful. Also, I wanted to close out by sincerely thanking Stanford GSB, the amazing organizers of the event, everyone who attended, and of course everyone reading my blog!

All the best,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)

PS – As mentioned in my last post, my PowerPoint presentation is available for free! Simply sign up for my free PPC newsletter by entering your first name and email address in the top right corner of this page or by visiting my PPC newsletter page. You’ll receive my Stanford GSB presentation in addition to my eBook featuring high leverage PPC career tips, all for free! I recommend following along with the PowerPoint as you watch the video. Don’t have enough time to watch the full two hour video? You may wish to scan the PowerPoint and then fast forward to the sections of the video that are most interesting to you! Thanks again!

Video "PPC Ian’s Stanford GSB Presentation" © PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)

My Stanford Graduate School of Business Speech

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 12 7

Hello Everyone,

I couldn’t be more excited! I just got back from one of my best presentations ever! I spent two full hours at the Stanford Graduate School of Business educating students about online marketing. I specifically presented on PPC and SEO and couldn’t be more thrilled with the outcome. (Fast Forward: I provide info at the end of this post on how you can download my PPC and SEO PowerPoint presentation.)

Ian Lopuch Speaking

However, before we get into the details, I want to start out by sincerely thanking Stanford GSB’s Entrepreneur Club, Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Marketing Club, and the High Tech Club, the organizations that sponsored my event. In terms of people, I want to sincerely thank:

David Rogier – VP of the Entrepreneur Club and Resident at the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. David organized my event and I can’t thank him enough!
Tia Gao – Co-President of the High Tech Club
Kate Gronso – VP of the Marketing Club
Brendan Marshall – Co-President of the Entrepreneur Club
Tony Hsieh – Co-President of the Entrepreneur Club
Ibrahim Elbouchikhi – Co-President of the Entrepreneur Club

I short, the folks mentioned above are none other than amazing. I was blown away by Stanford GSB’s leadership team. I’m very excited to have some new friends.

As you may know, I graduated from Stanford back in 2004 with my BS in Computer Science and Minor in Economics. In my opinion, Stanford is the best university out there! When VP of Stanford GSB’s Entrepreneur Club David Rogier invited me to speak at Stanford, I just couldn’t pass up the amazing opportunity. As you may know, I’m really big on goals and a big public speaking event is on my list of 2010 goals. I’m extremely excited that this event allowed me to complete my goal (and then some!). Over the past few weeks, I have been working very diligently on my presentation, one that provides actionable tips to optimize PPC and SEO online marketing campaigns. All of the students in the audience have businesses they are trying to launch. I hope that my PPC and SEO strategies help launch their dreams!

During my presentation, I was very thrilled to see an engaged audience for two full hours. How awesome is that! It really was amazing how fast time flew by. Moreover, I was floored with the awesome questions that the attendees asked. This level of interaction really made my presentation fun. It’s hard to find a sharper audience than Stanford GSB students, in my opinion.

For all PPC Ian readers out there, I want to make my PowerPoint presentation available for your viewing! As such, (in addition to my free eBook) my Stanford GSB PowerPoint is now free when you sign up for my newsletter! All you have to do is enter your first name and email in the box in the upper right corner of this page (or on my PPC eBook page). Already on my newsletter list? I will be sending you my presentation very shortly. Thanks again everyone, you are the best!

Sincerely,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)
PS – Big thank you to my beautiful wife, Nicole, for designing my PowerPoint template and for making it look amazing!
PPS – The video of my presentation is now uploaded! Check out my Stanford GSB online marketing presentation video!

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)

Google Content Match Strategies

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 5 2

Last week, I discussed some advanced Google AdWords match type strategies. This week I’m looking forward to offering a few more tactical campaign tips that will help you improve your Google AdWords account immediately. While I focused on the search match side last week, I’ll focus on the content match today. Content match is often a confusing and tricky subject for many pay per clickers. I’m hoping to remove some of that confusion with this post inspired by a PPC Ian reader!

Content Match Strategy 1: Create Separate Search and Content Campaigns

Content Match

I’m going to start out with a very simple yet often overlooked strategy. Always create separate campaigns for search and content. I repeat: There is no good reason to ever mix the two. Search and content require very different strategies for success, both in terms of structure and also ad copy. Moreover, it’s very difficult to break out content match once you have something that works. In short, if you mix the two, you’re setting yourself up for long-term failure. Even if you create two identical campaigns in the short-run with the intent of tweaking them over time, this is a far better strategy than going with just one campaign.

Content Match Strategy 2: If It Works, Leave It Alone!

From my experience, content match is very sensitive. Any small change to ad copy, keyword composition, or bids can totally destroy a winning content match ad group. For that reason, I’m a huge proponent of leaving my content match ad groups alone. If it works, I make as few changes as possible. If I must make a change, I try to keep the changes minor. If I want to test something new, even if it’s just a minor variation on my existing ad group, I’ll go ahead and create a new ad group.

Content Match Strategy 3: Start With Realistic Bids

This tip ties directly into the last one. From my experience, bid changes can totally mess with your content match campaign. For that reason, I always start off with very realistic bids in content match, bids that are where they need to be in the long-term to ensure profitability. In my video about launching a new AdWords campaign I share my strategy of bidding 200 percent of your long term bid out the gate when launching search match campaigns. This is totally important in building a great quality score and click through rate from the beginning. However, the strategy is very different in content: Always start with your long-term bid and leave it alone.

Content Match Strategy 4: One Keyword Per Ad Group Works!

If you’ve worked with me in the past, you know that I’m a big fan of one keyword per ad group in search. In fact, I like to take credit for inventing the strategy back in 2005. The ClickEquations blog recently posted about The Myth of Single Keyword Ad Groups (thanks to another PPC Ian reader and friend for pointing this post out). I couldn’t disagree more in the world of search. I was leveraging the one keyword per ad group strategy all the way back in 2005 and it has worked consistently on the right set of keywords. It definitely doesn’t make sense for all keywords, but can work wonders for certain keywords. However, I’m here to say that it can also work well for content. It wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, content needed several keywords to form an opinion of your theme and match your ad group to a relevant webpage. These days, however, content is a lot smarter and if you’re trying to gain as many conversions as possible and have an offer that’s broadly appealing, the single keyword strategy may work wonders even in content match.

Content Match Strategy 5: Experiment With Combinations

I’d like to close out with a really cool tactic: Leveraging mathematical combinations. Let’s say you have a set of 10 high volume keywords. I’ll always start off with all the 1 combinations of this set (10 single keyword ad groups). Then, I’ll start experimenting with other combinations such as all the 3 combinations (120 ad groups). As you can see, the number of ad groups can quickly balloon out of control! For this very reason, I’ll often separate my combination experiments into their very own account. The beauty of this strategy is that you can sometimes strike gold. The vast majority of your ad groups will go nowhere and you’ll eventually end up pausing them. However, a few of them will often take off!

Another similar tip: Try repetition within keywords in content. You would never buy the word "mortgage mortgage mortgage" in search. In content, however, these repetitious keywords can really help out. A sample adgroup targeting mortgage refinance might include the following keywords:

refinance
refinance refinance
mortgage
mortgage refinance
refinance mortgage
mortgage refinance refinance

Image of Computer Screen Content © iStockPhoto – Petrovich9

PPC Match Type Strategies

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Apr 27 7

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a deep dive into tactical campaign management strategies. As such, I wanted to focus on some low level tips today that will directly impact your campaigns. Specifically, I’m going to focus on Google AdWords match types and how you can leverage broad, phrase, and exact match to their fullest potential.

Tip 1: Always Start With Exact Match For Added Control

Dart Board

If you watched my recent PPC Ian video about launching new AdWords accounts, you already have a preview of my first tip today. It’s really simple: Always start with exact match, period. Exact match gives you the most control out of all match types. Exact match has the highest revenue per visitor out of all match types. Exact match is straight-forward and simple.

After starting out with exact match, you’ll have a great understanding of which keywords work and which don’t. In the cases where the keywords don’t work, you will have minimized your losses because you started with the most controlled match type. Now, it’s time to expand to phrase and later broad. As an ideal structure, I always like to see the largest number of keywords on exact, fewer on phrase, and even fewer on broad. Also, I’m a huge fan of separating the different match types into separate adgroups. Sure, this creates more adgroups, but you’ll see later that it offers even greater control for a niche strategy leveraging negative words.

While this tip may seem very basic, it’s amazing how rarely it is followed. Time and time again, I have experienced AdWords accounts over-weighted in broad match. Oftentimes, accounts are exclusively focused on broad match with very few exact match keywords. I can’t underscore it enough: The healthiest AdWords accounts are over-weighted on exact match.

Tip 2: Leverage Broad Match For Keyword Generation

I really like tip 2 because it ties into tip 1 very nicely. Once you have established your baseline of exact match keywords, it’s time to start experimenting with phrase and broad. I especially like deploying phrase and broad match variations of my top tier exact match keywords. Not only do they offer great volume expansion opportunities, but they also offer amazing keyword generation opportunities! You heard that right: I leverage phrase and broad match to generate more exact match keywords. The beauty of this tip is it keeps feeding back into tip 1 (over-weighting in exact match). As my phrase and broad match variations start generating some serious traffic, I’ll run a search query report. Those search queries that drove conversions (and are missing from my exact match keyword set) are immediately deployed as brand new exact match keywords. Why deploy them on exact? Simple: Exact match offers the greatest control in terms of traffic quality and also bidding.

Of course, it’s very important to not go overboard here. Search engine accounts need to remain manageable so it’s a judgment call whether to let phrase and broad match take care of a certain query or to deploy the query as a new exact match keyword in your account. If a query has driven a conversion, it’s important to deploy it in my opinion.

Another important point: 20 to 25 percent of Google queries are new. Because of this very fact, it’s important to have good phrase and broad match coverage. Moreover, it’s important to go far enough down the tail on phrase and broad match to help the algorithm match to all of these possible new queries. My point: Remember to keep things balanced and invest time building out phrase and broad match as well so you definitely capture those 20 to 25 percent of new, unique queries.

Tip 3: Leverage Negative Match Types To Improve Bidding Accuracy

I’d like to close out with my most advanced match type strategy. Remember under tip 1 when I said that I like to separate the different match types into different adgroups? That all comes to play with my final strategy of creating added bidding efficiencies with savvy match type execution. It’s really simple: Once I’ve separated the three match types into different adgroups, I like to leverage negative match types so the phrase and broad match versions get none of the exact match traffic and the broad match version gets none of the phrase match traffic.

Let me explain this through an example. Let’s say we deploy three keywords in three separate adgroups: [mortgage], "mortgage", and mortgage. Let’s say we have no negative words. Let’s even say that the exact match version is bid the highest, the phrase match in the middle, and the broad match the lowest. (Side note: This should usually be the strategy.) No matter what, the phrase and broad match variations will always get some amount of exact match traffic. Moreover, the broad version will get some amount of phrase match traffic. If the user types in the exact match [mortgage], it will sometimes get mapped to "mortgage" or mortgage. Why? Google likes to test.

We know that exact match offers the best quality traffic. Pay per click is all about optimization. Now, if some of that really high quality traffic is getting attributed to the other match types, we are probably over-valuing phrase and broad and under-valuing exact. What’s my solution? Easy: I’ll add [mortgage] as a negative keyword to both the phrase and broad adgroups. I’ll add "mortgage" as a negative to the broad adgroup. That way, my traffic is always perfectly segmented by match type and I’ll bid as effectively as possible. Another option: Place your exact, phrase, and broad keywords in separate campaigns. That way, you can also use campaign level negatives if you’re not fond of adgroup level negatives. Personally, I like to place negatives on the campaign level that are just plain bad keywords. I like to place negatives under this strategy on the adgroup level. These are two unique types of negative keyword strategies and it’s easier to keep them straight if I have them stored in different places.

Remember, good data is the foundation of a solid biding strategy. Leverage this structure and match type trick to your advantage and you’ll run circles around the competition!

Image of Dart Board © iStockPhoto – adventtr

Video: Launching a Google AdWords Account

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Apr 11 7

Hey Everyone,
Due to great feedback from everyone, I’m excited to share my fourth PPC Ian video today. Specifically, I’ll be discussing some practical tips for launching brand new Google AdWords campaigns in a brand new Google AdWords account. From both personal experience and also questions from PPC Ian readers, I know this is a topic at the top of everyone’s mind and I sincerely hope my tips help make your launch a tremendous success!

Airplane Launching

There are two different career paths within the corporate pay per click world. Those in the first bucket take on large existing campaigns and are tasked with maintaining the baseline while slowly growing. This line of work is very challenging because many of the easy growth initiatives are already completed. The second PPC career path involves launching brand new search engine marketing accounts from scratch. It goes without saying that this is a difficult task. Sure, the sky is the limit in terms of opportunities, but there are numerous hurdles one may face in launching new campaigns, in a new account, for a new site.

I personally live both of these career paths each and every day as someone who has managed PPC teams in the corporate world for over five years. Large companies always have baseline businesses (bucket 1) which are supplemented with new, higher growth businesses (bucket 2). Earlier in your career, you will sometimes fall into one of these two buckets, but as you progress, there’s no doubt you will enjoy experiencing both of them. I hope you enjoy today’s video!

All the best,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)

P.S. As a related post, you may wish to check out my landing page quality score tips, a very important aspect of launching a new AdWords account.

Video "Launching a Brand New Google AdWords Account" © PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)
Image of Airplane Launching © iStockPhoto – sharply_done

Search Engine Marketing Spring Cleaning

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Apr 6 2

The spring is finally here and my wife and I are doing some spring cleaning around our home. It’s time to streamline our lives and get rid of stuff we don’t need. Similarly, it’s the perfect time to think about spring cleaning in the world of online marketing. Today, I’m excited to highlight a few brief tips around how you can remove clutter and stress from your daily routine. Keep your search engine accounts in perfect order and the simplicity will take your numbers (and sanity) to new heights!

Tip 0: Back Up Your Search Engine Accounts

Window Cleaning

The following spring cleaning tips will potentially transform your search engine accounts quite a bit. For that reason, please back up your accounts before making any of these changes. It’s important to always have a PPC rollback plan. Mistakes happen. It’s all about how quickly you can recover. Above and beyond having a rollback plan, I’m a huge advocate of regular backups because I worry about the worst case: What if something major happens to your account(s) completely out of your control and you need to reproduce them immediately? Have great backups and you’ll be the hero of your organization! My tips for successfully backing up your search engine accounts:

Leverage AdWords Editor for Google
Leverage bulksheets for Yahoo (and remember to include all components)
Leverage your search engine reps for adCenter (or their editor if you’ve got it)
Store all of your backups somewhere very secure that’s being backed up routinely by your IT department

Tip 1: Remove 0 Impressions Keywords

About a month ago, I shared a few simple tips to easily grow your PPC campaigns. For those of you that know me, tip number one was no surprise at all: Consistently deploy keywords. Looking back at day one of my online marketing career, I was advised to consistently deploy keywords and that keywords are the primary driver of growth. To this day, the keyword deployment strategy holds very true, especially on Yahoo and Bing. However, here’s the downside with consistent keyword deployment: Your search marketing accounts can get massive, cluttered, and even unmanageable.

I’m going to flip things around for my first PPC spring cleaning tip: Filter through your keywords and delete those keywords which have driven 0 impressions in the last month. If a keyword has driven 0 impressions after a month (and bids are at reasonable levels), it’s ok to remove that keyword permanently from your account. There are very few cases I actually advocate deleting keywords, and this is one of the rare ones. Of course, you’ll want to review any keywords on your list that have high search volume. There will be exceptions and you’ll want to break those out into new adgroups and optimize until they work. However, the vast majority of the keywords caught by this filter will be superb candidates for deletion.

Another important tip: Keep a log file of the deleted keywords so you don’t generate and deploy them again by accident.

Tip 2: Clean Up Old Ad Copy Tests

After campaigns pass through enough hands and survive enough years, the mess of abandoned ad copy tests can be astounding! We all have those adgroups that have five or more ads in them set to rotate evenly, but have one or two ads that are the clear winners in terms of click through rate and conversion rate. Now is the perfect time to go through all of your old adgroups and pause all ads except the best ones. Some things to think about in your ad copy test cleanup:

It will be a manual task that involves judgment but is well worth the time investment
After you’re done, shoot to have just one or two ads in each adgroup
The ads to keep are the ones with both the highest click through rate AND the highest conversion rate
Once you’re done pausing the loser ads, make sure to turn ad rotation to optimize (unless, of course, you plan on running some new tests right away)

Tip 3: Face Reality on Failed Tests

Many of the campaigns I have launched have turned out to be complete failures. I embrace failure because I know it’s part of my journey towards success. Moreover, failure means I’m getting out there and testing creative PPC ideas. However, I also must admit that I sometimes let a test run a bit too long with the hope that it will build up history and turn around. In your spring cleaning, it’s time to face reality!

Go through your tests as objectively as possible and pause the losers. Each campaign you pause frees up resources to try the next big thing. Even consider pausing entire search engines. We all have certain second tier search engines that work and those that fail. Sometimes we let the failing second tiers run too long because the reps are extremely convincing and we believe it will turn around. In my experience, second tiers that don’t produce quickly are simply not worth your time if you’re managing a multi-million dollar pay per click business. It’s time to face reality and pause the losers. The beauty of it all: Time to start thinking about the next round of ideas to test!

Tip 4: Spend Some Time Organizing Your Desktop

I could go on and on about PPC campaign spring cleaning, but I feel the above tips are the perfect start. Complete these tips across all major search engines and you’re on your way! However, this list just wouldn’t be complete without drawing focus to your computer desktop, your files, and your physical desktop. In the world of corporate PPC, we’re rushing around from one thing to the next. We’re like Wall Street traders, except our market is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, I can’t underscore it enough: You need to take time for yourself. One great way to improve your overall leverage, productivity, and sanity is spending a few hours doing the following:

Clean up your computer desktop
Clean up your physical desktop
Clean up your email inbox and file important emails accordingly
Take time to reflect on your accomplishments and record them in your company’s task manager (this comes in super handy when performance reviews come around)
Back up all important files and emails on your company’s file system
Actually take some time to dust and clean around your desk
Maybe bring in a plant or photo or two for your desk

There you have it: My top spring cleaning tips for online marketing professionals. Now, it’s time for me to start executing upon these initiatives!

Image of Window Cleaning © iStockPhoto – matspersson0

Growing PPC Campaigns Is Easy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 1 5

While I’m passionate about all the topics I discuss on PPC Ian, today’s is toward the top of the list. It’s at the top of my list because I’m about to reveal one of the most fundamental secrets behind success in corporate PPC. My secret is extremely simple, but also extremely difficult at the same time. Let’s jump right to the punchline: Growing pay per click search engine marketing campaigns is very easy! I’m serious here. There’s absolutely zero magic. If you have a basic understanding of business operations and math, you are totally capable of understanding all the mechanics behind PPC.

Easy Road

Of course, this is only half of the picture. If PPC were so simple, why do some organizations fail while others succeed? Why do some managers make it to the top and others lose the game? Here’s the difficult part: You need to be an absolute master of process, systems, and execution to thrive in pay per click. While the fundamental mechanics of pay per click are reachable, building scalable systems and consistent execution (on the right projects) is extremely challenging.

Recently, I wrote all about conditioning your PPC mind to focus and execute on difficult PPC projects. When I say "difficult" in this article I really mean "difficult to execute". In theory, the mechanics of what you’re trying to accomplish (especially on a small scale) are not that difficult. However, the execution side can be extremely challenging for a number of reasons:

You’re tired of doing the same thing over and over
You’re constantly looking for the next big thing
You find it challenging to stay focused through large PPC projects
The scale of your keyword set is overwhelming and you’re having trouble building a system to scale
You and your team become complacent and slow down the pace of execution because numbers are doing really well already

In addition to my tips around search marketing leverage, today I’d like to discuss basic pay per click strategies that are easy mechanically but potentially difficult in execution. I’m going to call out some of the execution challenges behind these projects and how you can overcome those barriers. The goal of today’s article: Let’s grow your pay per click campaigns to the next level by executing on the right projects!

PPC Project 1: Consistently Deploy Keywords

Rewinding to my first day in pay per click, I can remember my checklist vividly. Towards the top of my checklist, my manager had something like this in bold: "Deploy keywords each and every day. Keywords are the fundamental driver of growth." Today, this statement is more truthful than ever. However, it constantly astounds me that very few organizations deploy keywords daily, weekly, or even monthly!

There are a number of things that get in the way. The big ones: categorizing keywords, finding the right adgroups, determining the right bids, and simply doing it! My suggestion: Build a system and then execute on it every single morning, pay yourself (and your campaigns) before doing anything else! Your system may include PPC automation, it may even include hiring an intern or two. The key here is developing the most efficient system possible and then running that system as if your life depended on it, no matter how mundane things may become. (It’s ok if you feel like that guy on LOST pushing the button over and over if the results are powerful.) Remember, numbers going up and to the right are never mundane!

PPC Project 2: Consistently Test Ad Copy

Just like keyword deployment, I’m consistently shocked by the small number of organizations that routinely test ad copy. I’m shocked even more by the small number of organizations that leverage statistical significance in their framework. Just think about it: An improvement in ad copy will not only benefit that campaigns you’re testing on, but will potentially lift all (or many) campaigns across all accounts across all search engines!

My overall advice: Develop a framework (in conjunction with your stats team or someone who’s really great at math) and execute upon it routinely. Never fall into a rut and always remember to retest old copy because trends change over time. As another huge tip (one that applies to ad copy testing but also everything else in today’s article): Never become complacent. I’ve seen it many times: The campaigns are doing extremely well and beating expectations so the team starts to take it easy, focus on non-core activities such as beta tests and meetings, and execution on core projects halts to a grind. PPC is volatile so when the storm hits, the system is broken and the team disappoints. In pay per click, even when things are good, I always like to anticipate the bad days and overcompensate for them in the present. If you always force yourself to execute on core projects (and leverage fear to fuel your execution), it is possible to always hit numbers (even when the storm hits).

PPC Project 3: Add Negative Keywords and Sites Weekly

In my opinion, it’s impossible to make broad match work effectively without the right set of negative keywords. It’s impossible to make Yahoo work without the right set of negative partner sites. It’s impossible to make content match work without the right set of negative sites. The natural solution: Add negative keywords and sites weekly. The challenge: Nobody does it. Just like the other tips, it’s up to you to build a system and execute. A system does not always need to include yourself of your team. Make the case to management that you need to expand your team or outsource certain tasks. I’m a tremendous fan of managing remote India SEM Teams.

PPC Project 4: Update Bids Regularly

I’m leaving my favorite project for last! Everyone updates their high volume keywords regularly. However, when it comes to the mid volume and low volume keywords, bids are regularly updated. Why? There’s never enough statistically significant data when you use the same time offset as with your high volume keywords. The solution: Leverage different time periods to evaluate different keywords. The challenge: You need software to accomplish this effectively. This is where many organizations stop. My challenge to you: Audit the solutions out there, think through the build versus buy decision, and make it happen! Your numbers will be thanking you!

Quality Score: SEO Tips For PPC Landing Pages

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 22 14

If you’ve been in pay per click search engine marketing for a while, there’s no doubt you’ve faced landing page quality score issues at least once. I’ve managed AdWords campaigns for dozens of sites. Thankfully, the majority of these sites have been multi-million-dollar category leaders with excellent landing page quality scores. However, a few of them have not been so fortunate. Today, I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts around optimizing your landing pages for Google’s quality score. Specifically, I’ll discuss a few SEO-style tips that directly impact PPC quality scores.

Tip 1: Meta Data Affects PPC Quality Score

Red Matrix

If you’ve optimized sites for SEO, you’ve definitely worked with the title, meta description, and meta keywords tags within the HTML head section. In the SEO world, these tags are extremely important – they directly affect the ad copy of your listing within the organic results. However, I’m here to highlight that these tags also affect your PPC quality score. Just think about it: The existence of targeted meta data shows Google that your landing page is part of "real" website, one that is well thought through and directly relevant to the keywords in question.

Some tactical tips: Keep your title to 8 to 10 keywords (or fewer), your meta description to 156 characters or less, and your meta keywords to 8 to 10 (or fewer). Moreover, make sure the keywords that you’re targeting are included throughout (especially at the beginning), but don’t overdo it.

Tip 2: Keyword-Optimize Your Landing Pages

I’m sure you’ve heard it time and time again: Content is king! This statement is absolutely true for PPC, just like SEO. It’s critical to not only keyword-optimize your title, meta description, and meta keywords, but also your overall landing page. You don’t need to go crazy, but it’s super beneficial to sprinkle your keyword across the page, at least a few times.

So, you have millions of keywords. Does this mean you need millions of custom landing pages? Absolutely not! My advice: Work with your engineering team to build a dynamic landing page (or a series of pages around the major themes), one that renders "customized" depending on the incoming keyword. My preference is to have a table on the back end that maps keywords to the custom, dynamic content rather than passing the content in through the URL string.

Tip 3: Leverage All Major HTML Text Formatting Tags

Another simple, yet very practical tip: Make sure to leverage the common HTML formatting tags. Some examples include <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <strong>, and <em>. The story behind this: You’re trying to show search engines that your landing page is well thought through. By including these tags, your PPC landing page becomes a well optimized SEO experience, one that shows search engines just how relevant your site is to the user.

Tip 4: Include Important Links In Your Footer

From my experience, there are several absolutely critical links that must be present in all of your PPC landing page footers: Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Site Map, and Contact Us. Google is all about credibility and transparency. By including these links in your footer, you’re being absolutely open and honest with your visitors.

If you leverage AdSense on your site, it’s actually required that you have a privacy policy on your landing page discussing Google’s use of cookies. Moreover, new FTC guidelines require Ts and Cs, Privacy Policies, and Affiliate Disclaimers to be more robust than ever. I take all of this stuff very seriously.

Tip 5: Add Alt Tags To All Images

The title of this tip says it all: Make sure your image alt tags are descriptive and relevant. It’s yet one more data point that can help Google determine the relevancy of your landing page. Of course, it’s very important to be accurate and keep your alt tags short.

Tip 6: Make Sure Search Engines Don’t Index PPC Landing Pages

So far, all of my tips have been geared toward improving the landing page quality score of your pay per click landing pages. However, I wanted to close out with a tip that will help maintain your great relationship with your organization’s SEO team.

I highly recommend coordinating closely with your SEO team, informing them of all your PPC landing pages. Most of the time, you will want to make sure to noindex your PPC pages. In PPC, it’s totally ok to have hundreds (or even thousands) of very similar pages that may differ only slightly for the keyword in question. However, such a practice in SEO is very bad, one that would be considered duplicate content. The solution: Orphan your PPC landing pages from the main site while noindexing them as well. The user will be able to go from your landing page to the main site, but a user from your main site will not find your pay per click landing pages (and moreover they will not get indexed by search engines).

5 Great PPC Campaign Initiatives

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 3 4

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!