Righteous Marketing

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?

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.

Back in September I wrote about the paradox of testing vs. granularization and got some great insights from my readers. Today I would like to hear how you PPC managers & companies with PPC management deals handle the paradox of PPC vs. Conversion Optimization/Landing Page Optimization.

The Paradox

Tell me if this story feels familiar:

You take over management of a PPC account and make a lot of changes that quickly improves CTR, lowers CPC and brings up the overall QS of the account. All these indicate that you’re doing a good job of improving their account. However, the client isn’t very happy because they’re paying you a lot of money but haven’t seen a bunch more sales.

Herein lies the paradox. PPC management in it’s purest form involves choosing relevant keywords, setting appropriate bids, writing compelling ad copy, sending that traffic to designated pages and testing constantly. You’ll notice this definition doesn’t put you in a position to directly affect the number you’re being judged by: sales. At the end of the day, to justify yourself you need to show that your efforts are contributing to the bottom line, but your efforts are getting filtered through their conversion funnel and/or sales process. So what do you do?

Solutions?

At my last gig we attacked the paradox by helping design better landing pages and providing conversion optimization consulting as part of the package. We did this to protect the contract and add value, but unfortunately we were probably leaving money on the table by not seeking additional compensation for our additional efforts. Yes this created some very loyal customers (who wouldn’t be happy about a 20% increase in their conversion rate and thousands more in revenue each month or twice as many leads from the same click budget?) So how do you deal with this situation?

You heard me correctly. Despite the fanboy love and media hype I intend to show you how humble PPC is better than the iPad.

The Evidence

iPad – Runs for 10 hours
PPC – Runs 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week, 365 days/year (or any combination of hours, days & weeks you choose)

iPad – Plug in through the proprietary Apple docking port
PPC – Plug into your Analytics for better metrics, connect it with your SEO and email marketing to improve copy or plug in through an API

iPad – Have a problem? Only Apple can fix it (that includes changing the battery)
PPC – Have a problem? Fix it yourself or have any company you want fix it

iPad – Name could be confused for a feminine hygiene product
PPC – Name can be misheard as “Paper Clip” instead of “Pay-Per-Click”

iPad – Maybe a few million users by this time next year
PPC – Millions of PPC ads are seen EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

There you have it folks. What would you add?

With the new year have come some fine new improvements from Yahoo Search Marketing. On January 12th Yahoo announced increased control of the content network as well as the ability to import AdWords campaigns directly into Yahoo (this should have been there years ago). They also just upped the number of negative keywords allowed from 250 to 500. These are great improvements and I’ll definitely be using them. However, this got me thinking.

Too Little Too Late?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but part of the Bing/Yahoo deal was that Bing would be taking over the PPC business and Yahoo would be doing display. Therefore, if Yahoo is just a few months from being rolled into Bing, why are they putting out so many improvements? Likely this is just the wrap-up of projects that were in process. Tying up loose ends. Also, this could be somewhat of a beta test of features that were planned for the merged “Binghoo” entity. Unlikely as it seems, it may also be Yahoo covering themselves in case the Bing takeover doesn’t go as smoothly or quickly as it’s supposed to go.

What do you think? Why is Yahoo even bothering?

Yesterday on the Official AdWords Blog, Google announced a few new features targeted directly to the fast-growing mobile search arena. I’ll give you my 2 cents and then you can go and read full post.

Target by Device & Target by Carrier

You want granular, you got it! Targeting by device will allow PPC advertisers to customize copy, landing pages and offers specifically to the device. If you’re running serious mobile campaigns this is going to be a boon. And can’t you just hear the mobile execs pulling their hair out because of carrier-specific targeting? Yep, now Verizon can run ads that only target AT&T users and vice versa. There is already a price war brewing and Google just handed both parties a bazooka.

Direct App Downloads

Have an app to sell? This will make your life so much easier. If you’re advertising for iPhone or Android apps just use the URL for the app store and Google will automatically put a “Download App” link. No more worrying about losing people on a landing page. Just 1 step and they’ve got your app in their hot little hands.

To fully paint the picture, imagine this scenario:

Your company develops iPhone apps and you just developed and app that increases your gas mileage (everyone is gonna want this). For the US you can set your device targeting to iPhone/iPod Touch to prevent bogus impressions and clicks from lowly Android and Palm OS users. You then target AT&T and Boom! Each click is going straight to the App Store so you’ll get insane conversion rates.

How else could this be used? I’d especially encourage any international ramifications if you’re out of the US.

Yesterday on Search Engine Land, George Michie wrote an excellent piece describing why the long tail of PPC is most definitely worth managing. I agree wholeheartedly and just wanted to chip in my $0.02.

Message Match & Intent

The first point that George debunks is the idea that you don’t need to worry about all those tail terms because your broad-matched head terms are picking them up anyway. While this may be true, the more accurate messaging (both in the ad and the landing page) will produce a more qualified lead or more sales. Face-to-face salespeople are always customizing the message based on what the customer lets them know. You know what the person searched, so do something with that information!

Tools

For the inexperienced PPC manager, the time requirement for maintaining a good tail strategy is often the biggest hurdle. While experience will help, properly leveraging certain tools is vital to your success. Here are a couple to start out with:

• Search Query Reports – The new AdWords interface made this super easy. Go to the Keywords tab and then select the drop-down box labeled “See search terms…” Click the “All” option and Voila! You have a keyword report of the actual terms triggering your ads. Find top-performers that you don’t already have in your keyword lists and then give them a little extra TLC.
• Excel – This is the benchmark by which all PPC tools are mentioned. You don’t have to be a wizard, but the basic functionality of Excel will allow you to digest a lot of information much more easily.
• Keyword Tools – Google has a couple flavors (the search-based keyword tool and the old keyword tool), Wordtracker has one and there are plenty more. Use these to help you find new keywords that you might have missed otherwise.

What tools do you use and how do you use them?

For today’s post I’m going to borrow from Charles Dickens a bit. You will be visited by 3 PPC tips; the PPC past, PPC present and PPC future.

• PPC Past – Our ghost of PPC past is Kate Morris who wrote this exceptional post about dayparting using Google Analytics. This is a step-by-step guide that will reveal important data to help you know what time of day justifies additional (or any) spend.
• PPC Present – Our ghost of PPC present is the Official AdWords blog, posting about the recent change to the display URL policy on subdomains. However, Brad Geddes thinks they still didn’t get it quite right.
• PPC Future – Our ghost of PPC future is Mike Churchill of SEM Clubhouse writing about the new Yahoo PPC Network distribution option. Proving that it’s better late than never, Yahoo finally gives advertisers more control over content network impressions and bids (though I wish they would have also bumped the number of Domain Blocks up since 500 isn’t enough sometimes).

Say you’ve been working hard with your AdWords account and you feel good about your results. CTR on ads and keywords is good. Conversion rate is okay, though not stellar. Where can you look for further improvement you think? Look in your analytics.

PPC Bounce Rate

To find your PPC bounce rate, log in to your analytics account. For most of you that will be Google Analytics (which I’ll be basing this post upon) but any analytics package worth its salt will have this data. In GA you’ll want to go to click on Traffic Sources in the left nav and then select Search Engines. For this example I then select Google in the main content section and then filter it to only paid traffic by clicking “paid”:


Now you’ll see just the performance of your AdWords keywords and we want to focus on bounce rate.

What It Tells You

As you can see, this keyword has a bounce rate near 90%. But what does that mean? It can mean a couple things:

• Wrong Stage – The purchase process involves numerous stages from interest to research to actual purchase. If the keyword is often used by prospects in the research phase and you’re putting them on a purchase page, you’ll likely see a high bounce rate.
• Broken Promises – The most likely explanation is the simplest; your ad piqued their interest, but the landing page didn’t deliver. They expected one thing and got something else.
• Multiple Meanings – Many words have different meanings. Toto can be a fancy Japanese toilet, Dorothy’s dog from the Wizard of Oz, or a famous rock band. Look at your keyword reports and put some negative keywords to work.

What else does PPC bounce rate tell you?