Acquisio’s Amazing Remarketing eBook

Have you heard of remarketing? How about site retargeting? These are some seriously hot topics right now in the world of online marketing. Site retargeting, now available in all Google AdWords accounts, allows you to serve display (or text) ads to users who have visited your website. The applications are incredible. Just think: You can now deliver a special offer to someone who got all the way down your conversion funnel but stopped one step short. Or, you can target someone who visited your homepage but left to compare prices on other sites. It’s a truly amazing technology, but one that could also be confusing!

Today, I am thrilled to share with you the most comprehensive guide on site retargeting I have ever seen, the guide that will teach you everything you need to know! Our friends at Acquisio, the leading performance media platform for agencies, have done it again! Today, I’ll be reviewing Acquisio’s free 13 page remarketing eBook titled Using Remarketing To Drive Increased Display Ad Results.

What You’ll Learn About Site Retargeting

Acquisio has a long history of putting out amazing eBooks, whitepapers, and webinars. Some of my favorites include Acquisio’s Display Advertising eBook and Acquisio’s Facebook Webinar. Their brand new remarketing eBook, however, takes it all to the next level. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:

The eBook offers an amazing, comprehensive guide to setting up your first AdWords site retargeting campaign, with eight steps. Even better, each step includes a screenshot. This really is the best how-to documentation I have seen on site retargeting.
Acquisio offers clever ad copy and landing page ideas, catered to site retargeting campaigns. I especially enjoyed a neat SnapTotes case study.
I learned about advanced topics such as frequency capping and building interactive creatives.
The eBook closes out with really cool ideas that will get you thinking. Just one example: Site retarget visitors who converted one month later, in an attempt to get further sales.

So there you have it, one of my favorite eBooks of all time. I highly recommend downloading Acquisio’s Remarekting eBook. After entering some really quick info, you will get a link to the eBook in your email, just moments later. It’s super easy!

Image of Acquisio Website © Acquisio

Marin Software’s Free Guide To Facebook Ads

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 11 4

I’m a huge fan of Marin Software and have personally leveraged this amazing SEM platform to manage multi-million dollar campaigns. Not only does Marin have an amazing platform and team (including Matt Lawson who I interviewed here on PPC Ian), but they have been offering some seriously great whitepapers – for free! Last time, I reviewed Marin’s Optimization Beyond Bidding whitepaper. Today, I’m absolutely thrilled to review Marin’s brand new whitepaper: The Search Marketer’s Guide to Successful Facebook Ads.

Highlights From Marin’s Facebook Ads Whitepaper

There’s no doubt about it: Facebook Ads are taking off. Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or a corporate marketing professional, Facebook has become critical to the success of any marketing program. For this reason, I highly recommend downloading Marin’s free whitepaper. Here are some of my favorite highlights:

Marin’s whitepaper is free and super easy to download it. You can download right after filling out some really easy info (no email confirmation required).
Marin interviewed the largest Facebook advetisers around and compiled their tips and tricks into an easy to digest format.
You’ll learn how to leverage your existing fan base to build powerful paid campaigns.
You get to tap into an exclusive Razorfish case study, one of the top online marketing agencies around.
Marin shares a really neat root analysis concept, a creative and algorithmic way of generating new likes and interests.
In addition to tactical tips anyone can put to good use, Marin discusses some of the amazing Facebook features available in their application (with screenshots): Audience segmentation and creative rotation.

So there you have it! One of the can’t miss whitepapers of 2011. I highly recommend downloading The Search Marketer’s Guide to Successful Facebook Ads. I’m going to leave you with an awesome quote from Marin’s whitepaper: “Consumers exposed to a brand’s social media content are actually 50% more likely to click on paid search ads and 1.7 times more likely to purchase through search.”

Image in this post © MarinSoftware.com

Acquisio’s Free Facebook Advertising Webinar

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 22 13

I have some truly helpful tips for you today about Facebook advertising. As you may know from my recent post about three ways to drive more Facebook fans, I’m really into Facebook right now. Facebook is hot and whether you’re looking to drive more “likes” to your fan page, capture leads, or even drive conversions, it’s truly the beginning stages of the game when it comes to Facebook (think AdWords 4-5 years ago). My recommendation: Learn as much as you possibly can about Facebook and run with it! To help you follow this advice, it’s with great excitement that I highlight Acquisio’s Pre-Recorded Facebook Advertising Webinar in today’s post!

53 Minutes of Free Facebook Advertising Tips

This webinar truly delivers. I honestly can’t believe it’s free. Presented by Merry Morud, expert Facebook advertiser from aimClear, this pre-recorded webinar delivers 53 minutes of helpful tips. The first two thirds of the presentation cover a very well thought out agenda with the final third covering questions from attendees. I learned throughout the entire presentation! The questions from the audience were stellar. Some of my favorite parts of the presentation:

Ad Fatigue: This is a real issue with Facebook advertising. Ads will quickly achieve millions upon millions of impressions. Their useful lifespan can quickly end with click through rates plummeting (and CPAs accelerating). I’ve personally experienced this issue first hand running large campaigns on Facebook and couldn’t agree more with Merry’s tips for overcoming ad fatigue. Many of Merry’s points are tips I have employed first hand, and the rest are tips I will be trying soon!
Workflow Efficiency Tips: Let’s face it, Facebook is a new platform and lacks the overall efficiency of AdWords. It can take quite a bit of time to get campaigns live and sometimes things can feel a bit “backwards” for new advertisers. Merry steps in and provides a number of workflow efficiency tips that will save you hours.
Make Your Images Pop: The image component of your Facebook ads are of paramount importance. I’m thrilled to have learned of a new, nifty tool that will help me make my images “pop” even more.

Interested in the overall agenda? Check out the image at the bottom of this post (and then click it to watch the pre-recorded webinar).

Acquisio Is On An Amazing Roll

Have you heard of Acquisio? They’re an amazing performance marketing platform that helps agencies save time (and money), optimize campaigns across search engines, derive insights (and beautiful client reports) from advanced reporting, optimize bids via highly sophisticated algorithms, and so much more. I’m a huge fan and recently interviewed Marc Poirier, CEO of Acquisio, here on PPC Ian. I even met up with Marc at SMX West a few weeks ago.

In addition to providing an amazing platform, Acquisio has been leading our industry in terms of their free educational materials. They teamed up with Search Marketing Now and sponsored this Facebook advertising webinar, after all. In addition to this particular webinar, I highly recommend checking out their two recent whitepapers: Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model and Why Display Matters To Search Marketers. I reviewed both of these whitepapers here on PPC Ian and both are totally free, just like the webinar.

So, there you have it! I’d love to hear from you guys. Have you been advertising on Facebook? Is it working for you?

All Images In This Post © Acquisio.com and SearchMarketingNow.com

Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 14 5

I’m excited today to share an amazing free eBook with you, Acquisio’s Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model. I’m really excited about this eBook and highly recommend it because it really got me thinking. In today’s PPC landscape, it’s imperative to understand agency pricing models. Whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder, looking to hire an agency, or even looking to start your own agency, this eBook will prove invaluable.

Cost-Based and Performance-Based Agency Contracts

Acquisio’s Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model discusses two types of agency pricing models, cost-based and performance-based models. Each of these models can actually get quite complex, there are 5 different types of cost-based agency models and 4 different types of performance-based agency models discussed in the eBook. The eBook covers some really interesting topics including: the agency perspective, the advertiser perspective, and the pros and cons of various models.

I’m here to say that it’s more important than ever to understand SEM agency pricing models. Why? First and foremost, the agency career path is a great one. (You can learn all about the agency career path in my post about three different PPC career paths.) Second, it makes a lot of sense to hire an SEM agency, even if you have an in-house team. It’s all about leverage in paid search and SEM agencies provide just that! Third, SEM agencies are a great business and you may even want to consider starting one yourself. This whitepaper will provide great information to start modeling out your own SEM agency business.

Acquisio, The SEM Platform of Choice For Agencies

I wanted to close out today’s post by giving a quick intro to Acquisio, the company behind this awesome free eBook. What is Acquisio all about? They are the SEM platform of choice for SEM agencies. If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m a huge fan of SEM automation. I even wrote my own 12 page SEM automation buyer’s guide. When you’re an agency, automation is more important than in any other situation. It’s simply not possible to scale and give all your clients the level of service they require without the right platform. That’s exactly where Acquisio steps in.

Want to learn more about Acquisio? I highly recommend checking out my exclusive interview with Marc Poirier, CMO and co-founder of Acquisio. When you’re done with that, you’ll also want to check out Acquisio’s display advertising eBook. Last, but definitely not least, I can’t say enough about Acquisio’s new eBook: Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model.

Acquisio’s Awesome Display Advertising eBook

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 7 13

I’ve been in search engine marketing since 2004, with a huge focus on pay per click. I’ve been very fortunate to round out my skillset in email marketing, blogging, SEO, display, and other marketing channels. You might be thinking, how could I possibly learn all these skills when pay per click is so crazy in its own right, managing multimillion dollar corporate budgets? Really, it comes down to a few simple strategies:

First, I got out there and went for it. I formed my own web publishing operation, IJL Productions LLC, and have since developed over 50 websites that benefit thousands of visitors each and every day. This has been my main method of learning all about SEO, email marketing, and blogging.
Second, I’ve spent a significant amount of time networking with the different teams at the companies I’ve worked for. This has been an amazing way to learn display, SEO, email, and so much more. Often times, simple networking has turned into collaborative projects where myself and my team have gotten a first hand opportunity to work on interdisciplinary projects!
Third, I spend a significant amount of time reading whitepapers and eBooks. It’s amazing these days the types of insights you can learn from eBooks.

In the spirit of my third strategy for building out a well rounded online marketing skillset, I’m very excited to share with you Acquisio’s FREE eBook about Why Display Matters to Search Marketers. I recently discovered this amazing eBook and have learned quite a bit about display marketing from it. The online marketing landscape is truly changing and it’s a very wise investment to learn all of the different online marketing channels. Check out Acquisio’s eBook and you’ll be well on your way to learning about display!

What is Acquisio?

I’m a huge fan of SEM automation. As you may know, I recently wrote a free 12 page whitepaper all about buying the right SEM automation application for your organization. It all makes perfect sense in my opinion: Without leverage and automation, you cannot possibly scale with efficiency.

That’s were Acquisio steps in. This cross channel performance marketing platform is one of the absolute best platforms out there for tracking your campaigns, reporting, day-to-day management, automation, optimization, and so much more. Whether you’re a large agency, small agency, or even direct advertiser, you’ve just got to investigate Acquisio as part of your SEM platform strategy. Acquisio’s executive team is comprised of well known SEM industry gurus such as Marc Poirier, co-founder and CMO, who are circuit speakers at industry events such as SMX (Search Marketing Expo) and SES (Seach Engine Strategies). I’m certainly a huge fan of this platform!

Why Download Acquisio’s Display Advertising eBook?

I highly recommend downloading Acquisio’s free eBook about why Display Matters To Search Marketers. I thoroughly enjoyed this eBook for many reasons. The following three are just a flavor of my takeaways:

I went away from this eBook knowing that I absolutely must continue to perfect my skills in display advertising. My career in online marketing relies on it! In many verticals, pay per click is becoming increasingly competitive. There are only so many keywords you can buy. You can’t bid higher than position number one. You can only optimize your ad copy and landing pages so much. I see a point where it may become difficult to grow paid search for certain established verticals/advertisers (beyond the overall growth rate of the Internet). Display offers an awesome complement to paid search and a brand new frontier for incremental growth. (As a side note, I highly recommend SEM platforms such as Acquisio if you’re facing a plateau in your own search marketing program. Online marketing platforms can unlock new efficiencies and opportunities that are not possible with manual campaign management!)
I really enjoyed learning all about recent improvements to Real Time Bidding (RTB). Basically, display is becoming more and more like paid search in terms of bidding (and in some respects even more complex and exciting). How cool is that? What a great frontier for pay per click professionals!
Last, I went away from this eBook with a structured plan (7 steps) on how I can get more involved in display. I’m going to take this plan with me to work tomorrow and start putting it into action. Currently, many organizations are planning for 2011. What a great time to leverage Acquisio’s tactical display plan for your company’s benefit!

Image of Acquisio homepage © Acquisio.com

WordStream’s Free Quality Score Toolkit

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 23 10

I’m very excited about today’s post! I’m going to discuss one of my all time favorite Internet marketing systems, WordStream Moreover, I’m going to discuss their amazing quality score toolkit which can be yours absolutely free! It seems like more and more companies are giving away free whitepapers and eBooks these days (and I can’t get enough of it). Well, WordStream takes it a step further and offers an entire quality score toolkit – comprised of a whitepaper, cheat sheet, video, and quality score worksheet – all for free!

What Is WordStream?

If you’ve been following PPC Ian for a while there’s no doubt you’re aware of my SEM automation obsession. I have discussed a multitude of SEM tools in past posts and even wrote a free whitepaper about evaluating SEM applications for your organization. What is WordStream? WordStream is an Internet marketing application that automates and adds immense process to keyword generation, keyword review, keyword grouping, ad copy writing, and much more.

The tool has taken the industry by storm! From my perspective (someone who has used the vast majority of the SEM tools out there), WordStream tackles a truly unique and exciting problem, one which few other tools properly handle. Said another way, I recommend coupling WordStream with your other SEM bidding/management solution if you have one. Below are just a few of my favorite aspects of WordStream (definitely not a comprehensive list, just a few highlights):

Adding structure and workflow to keyword review and grouping, WordStream ensures you always have the right keywords in the best possible ad groups. In turn, this translates to optimal click through rates and therefore lower CPCs.
WordStream is all about workflow. It conveniently organizes the manual activities of keyword review, keyword grouping, and ad copy writing into prioritized queues. You can work through the queues yourself or easily delegate/outsource. Once you’re done, WordStream works wih search engine APIs to upload your work.
WordStream ensures you continuously improve your search engine accouts. Are you adding new, relevant keywords to your account daily? Are they in the right adgroups with the right ad copy? How about custom ads?
It seamlessly integrates with your site, leveraging organic traffic to generate PPC keywords.

What’s In WordStream’s Free Quality Score Toolkit?

As you can tell, I’m a huge fan of WordStream! I’m also a huge fan of their free quality score toolkit. So, what exactly do you get in the toolkit?

First and foremost, you get an amazing 18 page whitepaper all about Google’s quality score. The whitepaper explains the importance of quality score, how you can improve your quality score, and how you can leverage WordStream to improve your quality score. I recommend reading this first as a great introduction to WordStream.
Second, you get a one page quality score cheat sheet. This is a super one pager that you can pass around your organization. Its a great way to educate your management team, should they have any questions about quality score.
Third, you get an amazing mastering quality score video.
Last, you get a sophisticated quality score worksheet that analyzes your Google AdWords account.

I highly recommend downloading WordStream’s free quality score toolkit and learning all about how WordStream can take your SEM team’s game to the next level.

Optimization Beyond Bidding Whitepaper

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 26 7

I’m a huge fan of whitepapers! In fact, I just wrote a FREE 12 page whitepaper all about buying SEM software. It actually took me nearly an entire day to write, edit, and publish that whitepaper so I have a ton of respect for anyone writing great PPC whitepapers. Today, I’m excited to share with you a great new FREE whitepaper I just discovered, Marin Software’s Optimization Beyond Bidding.

What Is Marin Software?

Before I discuss this great whitepaper, I wanted to first take the opportunity to introduce Marin Software. Marin software is the leading pay per click search engine marketing software solution. It’s the package of choice for corporate search engine marketing organizations. Recently, Marin Software announced that over one billion dollars worth of annual spend is managed by their system. That’s simply amazing.

Want to learn even more about Marin Software? I highly recommend reading my exclusive interview with Matt Lawson, VP of Marketing at Marin. Want to learn more about Marin and other amazing SEM tools? Check out my recent article about my favorite four SEM software solutions.

My Key Takeaways From Marin’s Whitepaper

Optimization Beyond Bidding is absolutely packed with great information, 16 pages of great information. My favorite part of the whitepaper: It’s the perfect mix of strategic and tactical. This is very important in the corporate world. It’s not enough to simply execute and grow the numbers. You also have to explain the strategy behind it all! Some of my favorite highlights:

Lunch at Tres Agaves San Francisco with my friends Robby and Chris from Marin Software

The whitepaper defines the exact mathematical equation behind your CPC (as a function of quality score and also bid of your competitors). I’m always getting questions about this at work, it’s an equation you definitely want to have handy.
It offers several tactical workflows for optimizing your quality score and ROI. My tip: Print these out and post them on your cube. These are workflows you want to live by!
Optimization Beyond Bidding identifies the reasons you should focus on exact match as opposed to broad and phrase. This methodology has been core to my personal paid search philosophy for many years and is extremely powerful.
Offering real world case studies, Marin’s whitepaper ties its tactical tips to your personal business situation.
The whitepaper is sprinkled throughout with handy statistics that will help you in communicating strategy with your executive team.

So, what are you waiting for? Go download your FREE copy of Marin’s Optimization Beyond Bidding whitepaper. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

SEM Automation Buyer’s Guide Whitepaper

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 12 24

Hey Everyone,
Today is an exciting day! I’m officially launching PPC Ian’s Whitepaper Series. Today, you’ll have the opportunity to download my FREE 12 page whitepaper all about buying SEM automation software. I’m launching my SEM Automation Buyer’s Guide, the culmination of years of very hard work in the SEM technology arena. Want to download my free whitepaper? Read on! Instructions follow at the end of this post, it’s easy…

SEM Automation Software

SEM Automation Buyer's Guide

There’s no doubt about it! I’m the biggest fan of SEM automation software. Over the years, I’ve had the huge pleasure of building several in-house automation tools. I functioned in a product management role to build scalable campaign management technologies. The benefit in all of this: I learned exactly what it takes to succeed in the world of search marketing software!

Later in my career, I quickly noticed that the solutions available on the market evolved tremendously. Today, they’re far more cost effective, practical, and advanced compared to the in-house route. These day’s I’m a big proponent of buying instead of building, and was directly responsible for buying a major SEM platform at one of my recent companies. (You may wish to check out my recent video on the build vs. buy decision). The crazy part of all of this: I’m not the only one who has arrived at this conclusion! This year alone, I’ve coached at least 10 different corporate SEM teams in their SEM software audit. It seems like everyone is in the process of evaluating SEM software right now!

My Whitepaper Will Help You Buy The Right Search Marketing Software

So this all brings me to the topic of my whitepaper. When it comes to SEM software, I’ve really seen it all and done it all! I have added huge value to numerous SEM teams this year, coaching them through their buy decision. However, I’d like to scale even more and help even more search marketing teams. As such, I created an incredibly comprehensive resource for those of you evaluating SEM automation software. In 12 pages, I share my proprietary framework for completing an unbiased audit of the major SEM applications out there, arriving at the perfect decision for you and your company. Regardless of your current situation, I highly encourage you to download and read my FREE whitepaper. It will save hours of work while taking your career to the next level. If you really want to stand out as a leader in your organization and make the right software decision, my whitepaper is definitely worth your time!

PPC Ian Whitepaper Series – Sign Up Now!

The really exciting part of this all? My SEM Automation Buyer’s Guide is the first whitepaper of many. My eBook highlighting my Top 5 SEM Career Tips has been a huge success. It even landed one PPC Ian reader several job offers. As a result, I decided to launch my whitepaper series. Download my first whitepaper and you’ll automatically receive all future whitepapers directly to your email inbox. Moreover, you’ll periodically receive PPC Ian updates. It’s easy! Simply enter your first name and email and you’ll receive my whitepaper in just a few minutes. Already on my email newsletter list? My whitepaper list is actually new so you’ll want to sign up again!

Thanks so much for your support! I can’t wait to hear what you think about my new whitepaper!

Sincerely,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)