Righteous Marketing

This post was written by Matthew Umbro from http://theppcblog.com. Matthew has been in the PPC industry since August 2007 and has earned his Google AdWords and MSN adExcellence certifications. He can be reached via email at matt@theppcblog.com or through Twitter @Matt_Umbro

Mining PPC Campaign Keywords from Underutilized Sources

There comes a point in most pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns where you are much less frequently adding in new keywords. After running a campaign for several months, the “keyword well” can dry up. You’re doing all the right things – you have used all the keyword research tools, harvested keywords from your site (and competitors’), and created Search Query Performance reports – but it seems that there are no more keywords to purchase. You still want to add more keywords to your campaign in order to get a greater number of ad impressions, but you don’t know where to find them.

More keywords can be found, but the key is that you have to know where to look. The list below offers four sources for new PPC campaign keywords. It is important to note that many of the keywords you find from these sources will be niche terms and may not have high search volumes, but they will help to capture more ad impressions.

Industry Blogs and Articles

Sites like eweek.com and informationweek.com have a wealth of great information. Aside from industry news concerning several verticals, they also contain blogs from some very knowledgeable industry representatives. These sites speak to the ins and outs of the industry and will help you in your quest to find highly relevant keywords and will introduce you to new terms that are starting to be used within the industry.

Site Form Submissions

Most website forms contain a comments field. Similar to a Search Query Performance report, this field allows users to tell you exactly what they are looking for when they come to your site. For example, say you are bidding on terms related to “baseball cleats,” but a user refers to this item as “baseball shoes” in the comments field. This keyword might have never entered your mind. Now you not only have a new keyword, but a theme to expand upon.

Site Search

Many sites make use of an internal search engine, but it is alarming that not everyone reviews the queries that are being entered. By using this feature, users are directly telling you what they are looking for! Whereas keyword tools will give you estimated search volumes based on historical data, the site search report gives you hard data on what was actually searched on your site. Aside from grabbing keywords from this report, you can also use it to determine any additional pages you might need on the site.

Competitor Email Campaigns

Many companies have email marketing campaigns, and most likely that includes your competitors as well. One way to find out what keywords they are using in their campaigns is to sign up to receive their emails. You may find that they use different variations of your keywords or are using terms that you had not thought of previously. Either way, mining keywords from these emails is worthwhile.

These four keyword sources are not utilized to the extent that they can be. By digging a bit deeper and by utilizing these resources, you can find new keywords to add to your PPC campaign, which will help you to secure additional ad impressions. Ultimately, the more times your ads shows up for relevant searches, the better your chances are of getting more conversions.

Where else do you find new PPC campaign keywords?

If you’ve talked about conversion rate optimization, you’ve likely heard about Google’s Website Optimizer (GWO). And if you’re considering using GWO here is a resource you should definitely spend a few minutes with: Google’s Conversion Room blog. This blog offers “tips on tracking and improving conversions online” but I wanted to point out a specific resource.

Online Tutorials

Today’s post from the Conversion Room talks about several online tutorials from the AdWords Online Classroom. A couple titles that might be of interest to you include “Maximise your advertising ROI with Conversion Optimiser” and “Get the most from your website with Website Optimiser”. Many of the courses are available on-demand for free and they also have a lineup of live sessions throughout the month. If you need a little extra push to get your conversion optimization efforts started, take one of these courses.

Since AdWords allowed advertisers to specifically target “smartphone” users, mobile PPC has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention. So why all the fuss?

Mobile Is a Horse of a Different Color

Typical PPC ads reach users in two ways. They show up on search engine results pages (and I’m lumping in search partners here) or as AdSense ads on content pages of other sites. The user sees these ads in a standard browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari) while seated in front of a computer. They’re on the internet for a reason and you can decipher at least some intent with keywords and ad copy. This is the PPC world in a nutshell and it’s awesome for people who know what they’re doing. But mobile doesn’t fit the mold.

Mobile users see PPC ads (and landing pages) in a much different way. First, the screen is much smaller. For some phones this means that the #1 ad on Google's SERPs is 20-25% of the space above the fold. For other phones this means that many users will never even see your ad even though you got an "impression." Second, smartphones have browsers that do all kinds of weird things. Some can handle Flash, some can't. Some have Javascript enabled, some don't. Some are full HTML browsers, some aren't. So not only could your PPC ads being shown in vastly different ways, but imagine what is happening to your landing pages. That video or Flash content may be worthless. Your images might be taking too long to download. As you can see, mobile needs to be treated differently.

Is It Worth the Effort?

The AdWords blog has a case study from Razorfish that shows a 7.5% lower cost/conversion on mobile advertising and a conversion rate boost of 9.3% for their mobile-specific ad copy. So in this situation, yes, the effort definitely paid off. If you’re still not convinced, here are the most critical areas to consider:

• Intent – Mobile users are probably looking at your site for different reasons than a desktop user. They may be looking for a phone number, address or hours. They likely won’t be going through a lot of page views (3G is fast, but not that fast) so think of what tasks that eliminates and what is left.
• User Experience – I will reiterate, smartphones are slower than computers so consider a mobile-friendly subdomain (ie http://m.linkedin.com) to serve a better user experience.
• Situation – The definition is in the name: MOBILE. These users are seeing and clicking your ads in a much different physical situation. Speak to that in your messaging.

What have been your experiences with mobile?

Recently I reviewed my New Year’s resolutions (yes, I do those) and realized that I was falling behind on my goals for Righteous Marketing. Therefore, please accept my public apology and help me rectify one of my major goals.

The Goal

I said I would post 3 times/week (which I have been doing) but I also said I would get one guest post each month (which I haven’t been doing). So this is a call for guest posts and here are some guidelines:

• Topic: Anything PPC or CRO related
• Length: 250+ words, pictures always help
• Links: Link to anything legit, I’m not picky
• Byline: Yes. Gotta give yourself some love

Last year, my most read post was a guest post, so I’m taking that as a sign that you like to see some variety. So, first things first, I need a post for March and it’s first come first serve. After that we’ll work something out (I wouldn’t be opposed to doing a couple guest post each month either.) If you’re interested send an email to robert “at” righteousmarketing “dot” com or you can reach me on Twitter here: @robert_brady.

I love reading books that talk about the psychology of buying. There is nothing more fascinating to me than the human mind. Recently I was reading and came across the concept of anchoring. I remembered the term from my marketing classes, but my experience in the internet space gave me a whole new perspective on the topic.

What Is Price Anchoring?

From Wikipedia: “Anchoring and adjustment is a psychological heuristic that influences the way people intuitively assess probabilities. According to this heuristic, people start with an implicitly suggested reference point (the “anchor”) and make adjustments to it to reach their estimate. A person begins with a first approximation (anchor) and then makes adjustments to that number based on additional information.”

In more lay terms, anchoring is comparing one price to another “anchor” price to determine how good of a deal the item is. You go to the store and see tomatoes on sale for $1.49/lb. You know that the farmer down the street sells tomatoes at his stand for $1.00/lb and therefore the store tomatoes don’t seem very cheap to you. However, another shopper sees the $1.49/lb tomatoes in the store and thinks it’s a great deal because the last time they bought tomatoes in the store they were $1.99/lb (and they don’t know about the farmer.) These two customers perceive the price differently because they have different anchors. Anchoring has a large effect on how we perceive value.

What If My Product Is Unique?

For those companies with unique products & services, your customers may have no anchor to help them see the value of your offering. Consider yourself lucky because you have the opportunity to set an anchor for them. Here are two examples:

SEOmoz.com

Just below the video and quotes you’ll see the three purchase options: Pro, Pro Plus and Pro Elite. If you want to join SEOmoz and are a cheapskate, you’ll pick Pro. However, for just a little more you could get Pro Plus and it’s nowhere near as expensive as Pro Elite. SEOmoz uses Pro Elite to set the anchor and that makes Pro Plus and Pro look more reasonably priced. I don’t have user data (but I’d love to hear from a Mozzer in the comments) but I would guess that Pro Elite is their smallest customer base. Sure they make more per customer, but even more than that, it improves the value perception for Pro and Pro Plus.

BaseCampHQ.com

BaseCamp has some interesting variations. First, they actually make the Plus plan larger so it jumps out and call it their “Most Popular Plan.” Second, they have ordered the options with the highest priced on the left and the lowest priced on the right. Despite these differences we see the same idea of using the Max plan as the anchor. They’re actually making it more explicit since left-to-right reading will have us see the Max plan first.

How To Fix It?

Some of you may only have two offerings and you’re wondering how you can use anchoring? Say your pricing looks like this:



LotusJump Pro may be the best value, but it looks expensive compared to Basic. What if you were to add a third plan that had increased functionality and a higher price point? This would serve as the anchor and make the Pro plan look that much more appealing.

What do you think?

If you spend very long talking about conversion rate optimization you’ll quickly come across a few key players. You’ve got Tim Ash, author of Landing Page Optimization and the organizer behind Conversion Conference in May. There is the ion interactive team of Scott Brinker, Anna & Justin Talerico, Megan Leap and company. You’ve got the awesome webinars done by Flint McGlaughlin at MarketingExperiments.com and a great blog at Conversion-Rate-Experts.com. Have you ever wished you could ask the experts a question about your site? Your problems? Now you can.

Introducing #CROchat Every Thursday on Twitter

Time: 1pm-2pm EST, every Thursday
Location: Twitter, just follow the #CROchat hashtag

You know that conversion optimization would greatly help your online efforts, but don’t know where to start? This is your chance to get expert feedback from authorities in the field. Don’t miss out and I’ll see you there!

Malcolm Gladwell has become one of my favorite authors because he looks very deeply into the psychology of decision making. Last week I reviewed one of his earlier works, Tipping Point, and today I’ll give you my takeaways from his more recent title, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (disclosure: Amazon affiliate link).

The 3 Main Points Made In Blink

1. “Decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.”
2. “When should we trust our instincts, and when should we be wary of them?” The book helps you understand that our instincts can misguide us, thus helping us know when to trust and when to question those instincts.
3. “Our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.” This is the crux of expertise. Experts can make a correct decision quickly and accurately because of training and experience. Intuition can be learned.

He presents many examples throughout the book to highlight these points, but I will only mention two. First, he cites a case where the Getty museum purchased a Greek kouros after 14 months of investigation. Scientific analysis and carefully tracing the documentation of the statue indicated that the statue was indeed authentic. However, nearly every expert in the field, upon first seeing the statue, called it a fake. They described their reactions very unscientifically, saying it looked too “fresh” or that they felt a wave of “intuitive repulsion.” Hardly enough to overturn the months-long analysis right? But those first impressions were more correct than the analysis as the kouros turned out to be a fake.

Secondly, he cites the efforts of Brendan Reilly at Cook County Hospital in Chicago starting in 1996. Reilly noticed that heart attack patients were resource-intensive and the method for diagnosing heart attacks was highly unreliable. Brendan found the research of a cardiologist from the 1970’s, Lee Goldman and began implementing a simple decision tree to diagnose heart attack patients. The tree utilized only 4 main criteria: the results of an ECG, is the pain felt by the patient unstable angina, is there fluid in the patient’s lungs and is the patient’s systolic blood pressure below 100. After two years of collecting data, this method proved 70% better at recognizing which patients were actually having a heart attack.

Takeaways

With the Greek kouros, the experts needed only a couple seconds to accurately determine its authenticity (despite the findings of a 14-month investigation). If you could ask your website visitors what they thought of your site after seeing it for only a few seconds, what would they say? Would they trust your site enough to make a purchase? Do they feel your site is spammy? Give it a try. Get 5 people who haven’t seen your website, let them look at it for a couple seconds and then ask them to give their first impressions. If you want more detailed info, hit up a service like UserTesting.com to get more info.

Lastly, Brendan Reilly was able to improve the ability of doctors to correctly diagnose a heart attack by giving them a method that SIMPLIFIED the process. Doctors go to school for years, have your entire medical history and can order hundreds of tests to make an accurate diagnosis. However, at a certain point the additional information actually made them worse at diagnosing heart attacks. How much information are you giving potential customers to “help” them make a decision? How many different choices do they have? Zero in on the factors that really matter and make the decision easier for your prospects.

What do you think?

PS Another book from Malcolm Gladwell that’s worth a read is Outliers: The Story of Success (disclosure: Amazon affiliate link), an interesting look at aberrations from the trend and what we can learn from them.

Now I have truly seen it all. Last week Google announced that they would be renaming the Google Ad Planner (their tool for making media buys on targeted sites) the DoubleClick Ad Planner. So why am I making a big deal about what seems to be a very trivial name change?

Google Dropped Its Own Brand Name

Google loves to hear it’s own name. Froogle sounded funny, so they renamed it Google Product Search (despite the longer name.) Gmail in the UK? Nope, it’s Google Mail (partially because they lost a lawsuit too.) They even have their own cell phone now, the Google Nexus One. They love putting their name on everything, so when they take their name off of something, it makes me wonder.

Possible Explanations

1. The tool isn’t doing well and they don’t want a failure to tarnish the Google name.
2. DoubleClick raised a stink and wanted some love. Maybe the purchase isn’t going as smoothly as we thought?
3. Google’s brand doesn’t carry much weight in the display industry (and DoubleClick does). Hard to believe, but entirely possible.

All of these are a little out there, so what do you think? Why did Google drop their branding from Ad Planner?

A couple weeks ago I registered to attend Conversion Conference West 2010 in San Jose May 4-5. Ironically, this is the first conference to focus entirely on online conversion, even though that is the success metric for most websites. So what do you get?

• 26 sessions, all focused on getting you more conversions
• 40 expert speakers
• 3 keynotes (Tim Ash, Bryan Eisenberg & Jakob Nielsen)
• One-on-one “expert office hours”
• Birds-of-a-feather lunches
• Network with the best conversion minds in the industry
• A great expo hall full of sponsors and exhibitors (shared with eMetrics conference for even more bang for your buck)

If you haven’t noticed, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is going to be a big trend in 2010. The worst of the recession may be passing, but companies still have their belts tightened and need to squeeze more out of less. Hence, CRO is the natural choice to get more from your email, your PPC, your SEO and every other marketing effort that gets people on your website.

How To Register

Simply visit the registration page here, and you can use the promo code CCW550 when you sign up to get $100 off. Sign up before April 10 and save a couple hundred bucks with their early bird pricing. Let me know if you’re going so we can meet up!

Perhaps I’m a little slow on the uptake here, but why does Google have three different keyword tools? The oldest of the three (to my knowledge) is the External Keyword Tool here. This is the tool I’ve had bookmarked in Firefox for years. However, a while back Google launched the Search-Based Keyword Tool. This represented a branch in the product development more than evolution since the search-based tool was intended to take “actual Google search queries” into consideration when looking at a URL or list of keywords & phrases. Then, a couple weeks ago I saw a tweet mentioning a new Google keyword tool that was only accessible from a link in AdWords. I have been using it quite a bit over the last couple weeks and I’m quite impressed.

The New Google Keyword Tool

Understand that I use the term “new” liberally because the official AdWords blog post about this if from September. So it’s new to me (in my defense, they say it’s in beta, so I like to think my account just didn’t get access until recently). You can read the official post for the details, but here is why I think this tool is too cool for school.

• Great Filtering – On the left sidebar you’ll see that you can check/uncheck the different main keywords to weed out less relevant threads. You can also display broad, phrase and exact match searches AT THE SAME TIME!
• Sorting – Now that you can actually display all 3 match types together, sorting by total search volume, or average CPC, will quickly give you a high-level snapshot of the opportunity.
• Competitor Research – Here’s a little trick for you to try. Take the URL of a competitor and put it into the “Website” box. Include all match types and then sort the list by relevance (drop-down box above the keyword list, right side). This will show you what Google thinks are the most relevant keywords on your competitor’s site and how much search volume they’re potentially getting.
• Self-Analysis – Now put your own URL into the tool and run the same process as above. Are you sending Google the right message?

P.S. When you first bring up the tool you’ll only see columns for Keyword, Competition, Global Monthly Searches, Local Monthly Searches, and Local Search Trends. The “Views” drop-down box will show you the other 9 columns of info you’re missing out on.