PPC & the Rainforest – Grow Like Crazy
Continuing on with my series about PPC & the Rainforest, I can’t describe how dense vegetation is in the rainforest. Sunlight is the scarcest resource so I was observing how various plants compete for that sunlight using various methods. The more I looked the more I thought about PPC and how hard it can be to get some exposure (sunlight) in the ever more competitive PPC world.
Strategy 1 – Grow Like Crazy
If you’re competing for sunlight, the first solution is to get closer to the source. In the rainforest this means grow taller. And do they ever…
You’ll probably notice how some trees go from the bottom of the picture to the top of the picture without so much as a single leaf in sight. Just trunk. They get sunlight by getting above the other trees and vegetation. We often see similar behavior from certain PPC advertisers.
Bid Higher = Get Sunlight
Many a PPC advertiser looks at their account and sees a problem: not enough impressions/clicks/conversions. Therefore, they do exactly the same thing these trees did. They get closer to the top. They bid higher and higher on their top terms in order to get higher placement on the page and capture the sunlight before their competitors. They equate success with being the tallest. This works great when you don’t need to cover a broad set of keywords and can focus on your top terms, but there are tradeoffs.
Look at the picture again. Remember how some of those trees didn’t have any leaves or branches in the picture? Just a single trunk extending higher and higher into the canopy. Wouldn’t a few leaves along the way help increase the amount of sunlight being captured? Similarly, you see advertisers bidding upwards of $25/click on keywords but ignoring the $5-$10 keywords in their Search Query Reports that could help provide some extra boost to their efforts.
But what about all those short trees and plants in the picture? How do they compete? That will be the topic of the next post in our series.
PPC & the Rainforest
Over New Year’s I took a little vacation to the tune of a 10-day Caribbean cruise. This trip gave me the chance to get away from the PPC world for a few days, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about PPC.
One stop was in Limon, Costa Rica and I chose to take an excursion into the rainforest. After a harrowing bus drive where I seriously questioned how a full size tour bus can navigate such narrow gravel roads we arrived at the Veragua Rainforest. First we received some education about the diversity represented in the rainforest, including poisonous frogs, sloths, howler monkeys, snakes, butterflies and so much more. Then we took a 10-minute aerial tram ride through the canopy and had a great view of the rainforest.
As you can see the rainforest is thick and no space is unoccupied. Trees grow taller and taller, ever competing for the rarest commodity: sunlight.
PPC Is A Jungle
In our parable, sunlight represents first page placement on search engine results and the quality of that light represents average position. Google does experiment with different numbers of ads on search results pages, but there is a finite amount of “sunlight” at any one time. Therefore, the competition for exposure is fierce.
What really intrigued me as I explored the rainforest was how plants competed for sunlight. There were many different strategies being employed with varied degrees of success. In my next couple posts I will discuss how each of those methods equates to a specific PPC strategy and you can learn what competitive strategy can help you compete in your jungle.
Conversion Conference West 2012 Coupon Code
For those of you trying to improve your conversion rate and get more from your website, I highly recommend Conversion Conference. I attended the inaugural event in 2010 and will be a speaker in San Fransisco this year. But I know that it can be pricey to attend conferences, so here is a coupon code that will get you $600 off if you register before January 20th (I know that’s Friday, so hurry):
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If you’re coming and would like to meet up, please reach out to me on Twitter @robert_brady or leave a comment here and I’ll email you. Thanks.
Facebook Wants You To Know How They Make Their Money
Yesterday I was browsing the Facebook and noticed a little message above my feed. The message stated that Facebook makes it’s money from ads and there was a link to learn how they do it. As an advertiser I was curious to see what Facebook was trying to tell users. Here is the page they showed me –
What Is Facebook Trying to Accomplish?
Facebook has hundreds of millions of users. They’re still aggressively trying to grow and that is hard to do when you’ve already achieved that kind of market penetration. To grow, they need to get those people who aren’t on Facebook (and there are more than you’d think) to join while keeping current users. And there are few misconceptions about Facebook that I believe this page is addressing to try and clean up their image.
- Ads are annoying – Okay, maybe not a misconception. But while users may not like ads, the reason is simple – “Ads help keep Facebook free”. So while they don’t want you to bail because of the ads, they do want to set the expectation correctly. You get Facebook for free, so don’t complain about the ads.
- Ads are creepy – I’ve talked to many friends who mention that ads are targeted so well it’s creepy. This leads them to believe that the advertiser has some type of secret knowledge that allows them to show such a pointed ad. This leads them to believe that Facebook gave them that secret knowledge. Facebook is trying to let people know that they have control over ads and they can stop seeing them by simply clicking the little X on the ad (a great idea in theory that doesn’t work as well in practice)
- Nobody clicks on ads – Everyone thinks that they don’t click on ads. My bet is that they do, but don’t realize/remember it. I’ve run too many campaigns on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I know people click ads. Lots of them. And they buy stuff after they do.
So basically, Facebook is trying to educate their users on why ads are there, how ads are being served and the potential benefits (yes, I said benefits because clicking ads can be a good thing). I’d love to see how many visitors clicked through to this page. Facebook?
Friday Special: DIY PPC Tips
The team up at PurePPC.com has offered up the following tips for the do-it-yourself PPCer:
Nearly seven in 10 retailers expect their online retail sales to increase at least 15 percent this holiday season from last year, according to Shop.org’s eHoliday survey. The survey also found the average holiday shopper will do 36 percent of her shopping online, a four percent increase from last year.
Statistics like these have companies scrambling to increase their online advertising presence as they anticipate the biggest shopping season of the year.
Pay-per-click advertising, a type of online advertising that occurs mostly on search engines and directs users to the advertised company’s website, allows businesses to make their ads appear when potential customers search for specific keywords. The keywords act as triggers for the advertisements, which, when clicked, lead the user to a website related to the original search term.
Many businesses have started pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns as they have realized the potential for profits from it. However, because it is such a complex field, agencies specializing in pay-per-click management, such as Utah-based PurePPC.com, have emerged and offer pay-per-click services to companies to lighten the workload.
“Most people realize they should be doing PPC, but don’t know much about it,” said Todd Julien, president of PurePPC.com. “We run into cases like this all the time.”
So PurePPC.com offered a couple tips to these do-it-yourself types:
- Use specific messaging to differentiate the ad from others. Use two or three terms to make the phrase specific and unique.
- Have goals, a budget and conversion tracking — PPC campaigns without conversion tracking have no way of measuring success. Never spend any money without it. Consider using Google’s free code for conversion tracking.
- Monitor geographic success. Google offers a tool called The Dimensions tab that allows users to track PPC campaigns by region. If a campaign is not generating sales in a particular region, exclude it. Conversely, if a particular region generates high sales, consider creating a second campaign to target that region and language.
- Have sensible landing pages for ads. If the ad promotes women’s shoes, be sure it links to the website’s page for women’s shoes. This may seem like common sense, but surprisingly, there are many ads that don’t have logical links to the pages they advertise.
- If all else fails, use an agency. PPC is a tricky art that can be time-consuming and costly if the user doesn’t have the necessary skills and knowledge to run a campaign. Agencies specializing in PPC have the know-how and resources to drive a time and cost-efficient campaign.
“If people follow these tips, while they are basic, they can elevate their PPC campaign to the next level,” said Tim Gilson, vice president of sales for PurePPC.com. “PPC is a powerful marketing tool and with the right methods implemented, it can drive revenues for companies and give them a forerunner presence online.”
PurePPC.com provides full service pay-per-click management and consulting services to clients all over the world. Unlike other PPC agencies that dabble in multiple services, the team at PurePPC.com focuses on delivering the best results through pay-per-click marketing. PurePPC.com has managed millions of dollars in PPC spend and has saved its clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing costs.
