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Small Business PPC – Campaign Settings

June 30, 2009 By
campaignsettings

Tucked away in the Google AdWords interface you will find a very important area that many people never even think to look at, let alone actually optimize: the Campaign Settings.

Campaign Settings

Below you will see a screenshot of the campaign settings area in the new Google AdWords interface.
AdWords Campaign Settings

Audience

Locations in AdWords can be set at the national, state, and/or city level. If you’re a plumber in Omaha, you can show your ads only within a 50 mile radius of your offices.

Languages are pretty self explanatory.

Demographics are more of an advanced feature that I wouldn’t recommend for most small businesses. These settings apply only to the content network (a beast in its own right) and the system Google uses to determine demographics isn’t perfect. Leave a comment if you have questions about this area and I’ll help you one-on-one.

Networks, Devices and Extensions

You have the options of serving ads on any combination of Google search, search partners (other sites that have their search powered by Google), the content network and mobile phones. Unless you have experience and are confident in your knowledge of AdWords, I recommend you start with just Google search and search partners.

Bidding and Budget

There are a lot of options here, but I’ll keep it simple: set the daily budget you’re willing to spend and then leave these settings alone.

Advanced Settings

First, you can schedule your ads to run during a period of time (say you run your ads from June 25th to July 3rd for your fireworks site) or “dayparting”, which is showing ads only during certain parts of the day (if your product is a pure B2B play it might be wise to only show your ads during business hours on weekdays). Dayparting is most effective when used to weed out less productive times and should be based on web analytics or sales data that shows which times of day aren’t profitable.

Second, you can change the ad rotation. The default is for Google to optimize. Optimize = Google serving the ad with better click-through-rate (CTR) to maximize their revenue. Therefore I recommend you change from the default to “Rotate”. This will serve the ads more evenly and let’s you effectively conduct simple A/B tests on ad copy and landing pages.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Be smart!

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC, Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Small Business PPC – Landing Page Strategies

June 25, 2009 By

You set up your AdWords account. You made a couple campaigns with a couple of ad groups. Your keywords are tightly themed in each keyword and you have two different ads running in each. Now you can just sit back and watch the traffic (and sales) come 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. Right?

Not really.

Where Is The Traffic Going?

So far you’ve done a great job. However, there is an important factor you MUST consider if you want AdWords traffic to perform at the highest level and that means landing pages. A landing page is any page where you are sending traffic from an outside source. Your home page might be a landing page (though I don’t recommend this) or you may have specially designed a page for your PPC clicks (I do recommend this, actually I recommend more than one specially designed landing page).

The most important exercise in marketing is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think like they would think. Let’s say you are a beef rancher in Idaho looking to sell your grass-finished Idaho beef. Here is what your potential customer might be thinking:

  • Grass-fed beef sure is expensive at Whole Foods. I wonder if it would be cheaper online? [They search grass-fed beef in Google]
  • Hey, this guy says his farm is just a few miles from here and he sells direct. [Since they are within the geographic area where our rancher has ads running, they see an ad for just what they want. And it's from a local guy to boot]
  • These prices are way lower than Whole Foods. I’m going to call these guys and buy some beef. [Customer picks up the phone and calls]

What the customer doesn’t realize is that the PPC ad sent them directly to the pricing page (here), not the home page (here). Because you bid on keywords, you have a good idea what the user is looking for and your objective should be to deliver a web page that meets that expectation. This customer was looking for grass-fed beef and clicked an ad about grass-fed beef. Therefore, we go to step 2 in their thought process, which is likely the question “How much does it cost?” Different industries have different customers with different thought processes, but you need to make sure that you do one thing with your landing pages:

Give them the right information, right away, and make it obvious what the next step is (call to action).

Custom PPC Landing Pages

Initially you’ll probably do what our rancher did and simply use a specific sub-page as your landing page (ie pricing page, contact page, etc.) but as you get the hang of things you’ll realize that you can do better. The pricing page may not have a clear call to action. The contact page, though it has a contact form or phone number, doesn’t tell them about the product or service you provide. Now you should consider a custom landing page that combines those elements.

The simplest way to do this is to look at your existing site structure (likely a two-column or three-column layout) and see what space you have to work with. Keep in mind that users look at web pages left to right, top to bottom. The most important information should be below the navigation along the left side of the page (with the best stuff in the first couple paragraphs). Then I would put a call to action on the right of this content or just below this content. Then test this simple landing page. In most situations a simple landing page with only a small amount of quality content and a clear call to action will outperform any current page of your website.

Have you tried different landing pages already? What worked best for you? Leave your experiences in the comments.

Filed Under: AdWords, internet marketing, PPC, Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Small Business PPC – Budget Limitations Got You Down?

June 23, 2009 By

The most apparent difference between a small business PPC campaign and the PPC campaign of a large company is the budget. Large companies tell their PPC manager to capture all the available clicks, many times with no real cap on spending. The small business usually can set aside a certain amount each month, say $1000, and then has to squeeze every last drop from that budget. Here is where the rules change for small business PPC campaigns.

Focus, Like a Laser Beam!

I once had a friend who had difficulty studying. He would get distracted by the cool car on the street or more interesting reading material. We developed a saying for whenever he would get distracted to help him get back on topic: “Focus! Like a laser beam!”

Lasers on a fundamental level are just really powerful lights. However, a laser is able to cut through metal because that light is being focused into a single, small beam (think of a magnifying glass and ants). When focused appropriately, even a small laser can be extremely powerful. This is how you need to run your small business.

How Do I Focus?

Remember from our last post that budgets are set on the campaign level. Therefore, if you have $1000 to spend this month and 2 campaigns, each will have a budget of $16.67/day. Seems easy enough right? Actually, this is where you need to look at your own industry to determine the best course of action. Basically you need to see where your PPC fits in these 3 categories:

  • Not Competitive – Lucky you, your niche isn’t a feeding frenzy of competition. You are able to get clicks for under $0.25 on very targeted keywords that will produce excellent leads. There probably isn’t a ton of search volume, but this fits your budget perfectly. You can set a campaign with a $5.00/day budget and capture all the clicks available. Welcome to PPC nirvana.
  • Mildly Competitive – Your main “head” terms are pretty competitive and cost your around $1.00/click. However, you find there are quite a few “tail” terms (pocatello idaho wedding photographer instead of wedding photographer) that have much more reasonable prices and will produce highly qualified traffic. Try to separate your tail terms from your head terms. Make sure your budgets capture all the tail term traffic possible, then use the rest for the more competitive head terms.
  • Very Competitive – All the terms you want to target are highly competitive. Over $1.00/click and sometimes over $5.00/click. You face an uphill battle my friend. If you can’t identify tail terms to target first, you will likely have to consolidate your budget into a single campaign with a limited keyword list. This will allow you to run effective tests in reasonable time frames. When fighting in a melee, keep your forces concentrated. Remember the movie Gladiator? Think of the first fight in the Coliseum where Maximus is taking on the chariots with just shields and spears. Stick together.

Okay, so you’ve ascertained how competitive your industry is, now the next step will be setting your keyword-level bids to match. And that is the topic of our next post, so tune back in on Thursday or subscribe to the RSS in the upper right. As usual, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Filed Under: AdWords, internet marketing, PPC, Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Small Business PPC – Writing Ad Copy

June 16, 2009 By
adwords-ad-copy

While having the right keywords in your ad group is important, writing compelling ad copy is even more crucial so your ad stands out from the crowd and gets clicked. First, let’s discuss the basics:

  • Title – 25 characters
  • Line 1 – 35 characters
  • Line 2 – 35 characters
  • Display URL – 35 characters, must be the same root domain as the destination URL
  • Destination URL – 1024 characters, users don’t see this


Titles Are The Key

The title, though only 25 characters, is the most important. Since you chose keywords that followed a theme, you want to write a title that follows that theme. Ideally you also want your title to include your keywords because if the users search term is contained in your ad, Google will make those words bold, helping your ad to stand out. In the example above you’ll see the title is “I Mess With Texas T-shirt”. This ad is shown for searches on “mess with texas” and “texas t-shirt” where the keyword would be bolded.

Focus on Benefits in Line 1 & 2

You have a few more characters in Line 1 and Line 2, but you still need to be focused. Search users, whether explicitly or implicitly, are trying to determine which of the 10 organic and up to 10 paid links to click. You need to tell them exactly what they’ll get if they click on yours. Focus on the benefits of your product. For my t-shirts, the benefit is that you get to mess with Texas and you get to do it quickly because the shirts are in stock and I have fast shipping. Not to mention that 49 out of 50 states agree that Texas needs to be messed with.

Don’t Neglect the URLs

There are two different URL boxes. The first is the display URL that is shown with your ad. While the root domain must match the destination URL, you can fudge a bit for a little extra benefit. Say your landing page is www.mysite.com/contact.html. That would be an okay URL, but I suggest you spice up the display URL to say www.mysite.com/Keyword. Again, this will help your ad stand out by showing people that you actually have a page for their keyword (even though they just go to www.mysite.com/contact.html). Don’t be fooled into thinking that you just put your homepage URL in the display URL field.

Run 2 Ads at a Time

One last point. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS run at least 2 ads in each ad group. Use a little bit different title or different copy in Lines 1 and 2. Then you can compare the two ads later to determine which is working better.

Okay, you’re almost there. Now you have a keyword list and 2 ads written for your first ad group. Next we’ll show you how to take care of billing, budgets and bids.

Filed Under: AdWords, internet marketing, PPC, Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Small Business PPC – Keyword Research

June 4, 2009 By
keyword-tool

As a small business owner or employee, you’re always looking for ways to expand your business. Most likely you have a website and you’re heard about Pay-Per-Click(PPC) advertising on Google or Yahoo. You decide that it would be great if you could put your advertising in front of internet users right when they are searching for your product. But what are your potential customers searching for?

Do Some Keyword Research

The key is to find keywords that are related to your business AND that are being searched regularly. A great tool to find out how much your keywords are searched each month is the Google Keyword Tool. You can type in a few sample keywords that you think are related to your business, or, if you choose the 2nd radio button, you can put your own URL in the box and Google will tell you what keywords it thinks your website is related to.

As an example we’ll pretend I’m an Idaho florist, so I think it makes sense that people might be searching for “Idaho florists”. So I type it in.




And I get some results, but I want to see all the data Google has. I select Show All from the drop down:



And now we see some good information:


So What Does This Mean?

First we notice that there are over 2,000 local searches for idaho florists. That’s 67 potential customers every day. Then we notice that a lot of searches include the name of a city (ie rexburg idaho florist or nampa idaho florist). Hmm. We probably should look for cities close to my mom’s florist shop or this isn’t going to work. “Florists in Pocatello Idaho” only gets 12 searches/month, but someone I can help this person. Write this one down. Actually, what if we run the search for Pocatello florist instead?



As you can see, now I’ve found some terms that get more searches AND these are people looking for a florist in the area. BAM! Take some time and run a few of these searches. Write down the best terms because these are one of the primary ingredients for our small business PPC campaign.

Filed Under: AdWords, internet marketing, PPC, Small Business Tagged With: , , ,

Is PPC Ineffective for Small Businesses?

June 3, 2009 By

Whenever I see a blog post, article or book about PPC (usually Google AdWords) two facts are inevitably mentioned. First, PPC lets you advertise to millions of people right now and second, just $5 gets you started in the next few minutes. The idea is alluring, but is it just a siren’s song?

Why PPC May Not Be For You

PPC is a tool, and like most tools not everyone should use it. Just like you wouldn’t start your riding lawn mower, put it in gear and then jump off to go do the trimming you don’t want to start using PPC, set the budgets and then go do something else. Ask yourself a couple of simple questions:

  • Do I have the expertise to install the conversion tracking code?
  • Am I willing to monitor my account at least weekly?
  • Is there a simple page, with a clear call to action, on my website where I can direct this traffic?

If you can answer yes to all three of these questions I recommend you set up a Google AdWords account and get started. If you answered no to any of these questions, you will need help. Most internet marketing agencies offer PPC management services (the agency I work for, Vizad, can start you for as low as $250/month) and Google has a ton of resources in their AdWords Help Center.

This provides a good starting point to our discussion on PPC for the small business, but I will be spending the next couple weeks blogging about how small businesses can modify their strategy and tactics to compete with the big boys in the PPC game. Please subscribe to my RSS feed here so you don’t miss out.

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, internet marketing, PPC, Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Google Desperate for Revenue. Now Offering AdWords “Expert Advice”

May 21, 2009 By

A few months ago people believed that Google would be immune from the recession. Not only has that been totally wrong, but Google has been taking various steps to increase their ad revenues (broadening broad match, putting ads in Google Finance and News, etc.) and keep investors happy. Yesterday Google took it to another level.

Get Expert Advice From Google

I came across this new offering at Search Engine Land, but didn’t believe them until I saw this screenshot. As you can see, the Google is offering expert advice on AdWords for new users in the US and Canada with a budget over $250/month.

As far as I can tell the service is being offered free of charge (typical Google style), but don’t mistake this for altruism. I’ve worked with Google optimization specialists and they are masters of creating tons of ad groups (all very tightly themed of course) with fairly generic ad copy (helps CTR) to “help” you get better traffic (read “spend more money with AdWords”). In the end Google just wants to get more of your money by helping you find more keywords, get more impressions, buy more clicks, and boost their revenues.

Are PPC Mgmt. Agencies in Trouble?

Some will try and make this seem like Google is cutting out PPC management agencies to line their pockets. While I recognize their argument, I’m not too worried. I’ve seen what Google optimization specialists crank out and it’s average at best. Good management agencies will continue to outperform this type of service. Your cousin doing PPC management in his mom’s basement? He might be in trouble. In the end this is just another “free service” to keep Google making bank.

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: , , ,

Is Baidu PPC Worth the Trouble?

May 12, 2009 By

Yesterday Hitwise released their latest data showing that Google has captured nearly 73% of search volume in the US. However, in China the big dog is Baidu. So if your business is looking to tap the Chinese consumer market for international sales, you might want to consider doing PPC with Baidu.

Baidu Basics

The first and most important thing to realize with Baidu is that there is no English interface for the site or PPC. If you want to do your PPC in English I recommend sticking with Google. Second, though Baidu looks eerily like a Google clone, they are still behind on the behind-the-scenes processes that make Google so easy to use. You can’t upload changes via CSV or even copy/paste. All changes must be made manually. This will really slow you down, but Baidu is very generous with support is one-to-one. Every advertiser has an account rep to help with bidding, setup, etc. (too bad Google doesn’t do that). Bidding is done in RMB.

For me the jury is still out on Baidu. I know the search engine catches a lot of flak for the amount of pirated content they serve in their results (it is China after all) and working only in Chinese makes it difficult for a lot of potential advertisers. However, with the size of the Chinese market and the dominant position Baidu occupies I will continue to investigate. Do I have any Baidu users reading today? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Filed Under: PPC Tagged With: ,

How Much Should PPC Management Cost?

April 9, 2009 By

Imagine a small ecommerce website. They started selling widgets 2 years ago and have had positive sales growth every quarter. About a year ago they started using AdWords, adding Yahoo and MSN a few months later. The “marketing guy” has been managing the accounts and the budgets have been growing at an alarming pace. They decide its time to look at hiring an agency to manage their PPC, but what is a reasonable quote? How much should PPC management cost?

How You Pay

Before discussing how much it should cost, we need to look at how agencies charge. It’s not all apples to apples out there.

  • % of Ad Spend – This is the most common billing method out there. Basically an agency charges a percentage (say 7%) that they get paid for their services. For example, you spend $10,000 on clicks, they bill you $700.
  • Pay-For-Performance – A much more novel approach; almost like a partnership or revenue sharing agreement. Payment can be a % of sales, % of profit, or a flat fee for each conversion. If you understand your cost structure and lifetime customer value, this method can work nicely for both parties.
  • Flat Fee – Just what it sounds like, a flat monthly fee based on your account size and complexity. Great for budgeting because you know exactly what PPC management will cost each month.

But Which Is Best?

Like every question in life, it depends. % of Ad Spend is the most common because it is based on old-school media buying principles and is the easiest. However, I feel this is the worst option for 2 reasons. First, when comparing agencies you inevitably base your decision on price without factoring in quality. Second, the agency’s motivation isn’t aligned with your motivation. For the agency to make more money, they just have to pump up your spend (with little regard for results).

Naturally this leads us to Pay-For-Performance. Make the agency a stake-holder by aligning their pay with a metric like leads or revenue. This can work fantastically if you have good analytics and know your margin/cost structure/lifetime customer value. However, be warned that if your site isn’t converting well or you don’t give the agency a large enough piece of the pie, they may lose interest in your PPC and put you on the back burner. Or they may do a great job and drown your business in a flood of leads and sales (and they’ll go crazy if you tell them to slow down).

A flat management fee provides a middle ground. The fee is set, allowing you to stick to your budgets. The agency is motivated to improve because they know that next months check only comes if they delivered results this month. As you may have guessed, this is the billing method my agency employs and we’ve had good success. What has been your experience?

Filed Under: internet marketing, PPC Tagged With:
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