After a great post by Larry Kim, here’s a chance to walk through some new aspects of the Keyword Planner, the most recent upgrade and merge-sensation from AdWords. Combining the best of the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator, with new features tucked in, the Keyword Planner is your chance to up your keyword research game a bit!

And if you can’t get enough of the soothing sounds of Carrie’s voice, be sure to sign up for today’s webinar where she and fellow PPC Hero, Eric “The Voice” Couch, will go through a live enhanced migration!

This post analyzes ~$1 million dollars of that ad spend pre and post enhanced campaigns and uncovers where performance has dipped, how spend allocation has changed (due to less control) and a few takeaways we’ve learned for how to stay ahead of the competition on this.

A quick note about this data is that while CPA is up across the board this is partly due to seasonality for a few major accounts. It’s obvious though, that CPA is up on computers for Search and Display but that mobile and tablet CPA is up at a much, much larger percentages and has started to make up larger percentages of budget allocation. This is also macro data so one account with high CPA goals that has increased budget over the past few months could drastically skew these numbers.

The cliff notes are that since launching enhanced campaigns:

• Mobile CPA is up 40% (this is with negative 20-50% bid multipliers in most campaigns)
• Mobile spend is up 80%
• Tablet CPA is up 13%
• Tablet impressions, clicks and cost are up drastically
• Total CPA is up 17%
• Total conversions are down 7%

Some accounts, I will say, have seen increases in CPA but they were so far below goal that the extra sales were worth it even at the extra cost. All in all though, enhanced campaigns have been detrimental to most accounts. In many accounts we have had to opt out of mobile completely (bid -100%) and are seeing inflated CPA due to a sudden increase in Tablet traffic.

Now, here’s the data for all those super-PPC nerds who want to know what they are in for. This first section is looking at ~$1 million dollars in ad spend across ~50 accounts pre enhanced compared to post enhanced WITHOUT segmenting by network (Search Vs. Display):

Change in Primary PPC Metrics

The above table shows the change in primary metrics by device for before and after enhanced campaigns. In other words, impressions on computers has increased 5% since the migration, clicks are down 13%, conversions are down 12% and CPA is up 12%.

These numbers all lead to more budget being soaked up by mobile and tablet devices and thus while there are still impressions out there to be had for desktop, I am not able to allocate my budget to that better performing device. For example, computer clicks are down 13% but mobile and tablet clicks are both up 45% (and mobile CPC is up 24%)!!! With CPAs that have increased by 40% and 13% respectively! Yes, a 40% increase in mobile CPA and that is with mobile bid multipliers that average greater than -30%.

Change in Allocation of Spend/Clicks/Conversion After Enhanced Campaigns

This shows the changes in percentage of spend coming from mobile devices and tablet devices since the migration. The reason this is being pointed out is that you can no longer control budget allocation by device (which you used to be able to do by targeting devices in different campaigns and using campaign daily budget to control spend).

Mobile Devices

If we look at the percentage of impressions, clicks, conversions and cost coming from mobile devices (compared to desktop and tablet) we see the following results:

So this means that mobile has gone from making up 10.2% of total spend to 16.8%. And remember, CPA has gone up 40% to go with that extra spend. Sweet.

Tablets

For mobile, we can at least adjust the bid multipliers to virtually opt out of it. No such luck with tablets. Let’s take a look at what’s been happening there:

Much less alarming numbers here. Cost is up from 10.2% of total spend to 11.6% and as the very top chart showed, CPA is up 13% which is pretty close to an increase in computer CPA we’ve seen. The only real issue is that tablet CPA is 42.5% higher than computer CPA to start with. So while it hasn’t performed much worse since the migration, it is performing much worse in general and now we have no shot and stopping the damage it is doing.

Enhanced Campaigns by Search and Display Networks

 The bulk of performance change came from display. Interestingly enough, impressions are up significantly but clicks are down. Spend is up in both networks and CPA is up a staggering 38% in Display.

More specifically, Display CPA is up 67% for mobile devices! Search CPA on mobile devices is up 40%. Computer Display and Search CPA is up 28% and 8% respectively. So you can see that while CPA is up across the board, it is certainly up even more drastically for mobile devices. Lastly, tablet CPA on search remained stable but is up 60% on Display.

A Handful of Enhanced Campaigns Takeaways

It’s a bit ugly in the enhanced campaigns space right now. Optimizations are difficult (you can’t pull conversion data and spend data in the same place as bid multipliers so you have to merge spreadsheets to actual measure impact of bid multipliers and make optimizations based on it), you are best off bidding -100% on mobile until you can slowly turn it up and get it running at acceptable CPA’s, Display is the hardest to optimize with the changes and the impact is very clear.

We have also found that the lower you bid on mobile the worse mobile performs. Meaning you are better opting out then going in at -50% because you only get bottom of the barrel clicks at a mobile bid that is -50% of your desktop bid.

The better structured your accounts the better results are. Those accounts that are very segmented so making ad group level bid modifiers affects fewer keywords and those keywords are more tightly related perform better from enhanced campaigns.

So what have you guys seen? Or is everyone else still holding off until the night before the migration, I mean “upgrade”, deadline?

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What if your brand and Gangnam Style could become one? No I’m not talking about some sort of k-pop extravaganza in your office, but rather the wealth of opportunity available to you on YouTube. As Google loves to point out, YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine with more than one billion unique users travelling to its video-laden shores every month. Given the size and scope of YouTube and the vast array of opportunity out there, it seems to be relatively ignored in PPC circles.

Campaign Set Up:

The first thing to note with YouTube advertising through AdWords is that you have a couple of choices as to how you go about creating your campaigns – you can do things the traditional way and upload videos into your display campaigns. However, I’m going to show you how to use AdWords’ Online Video section to focus on YouTube-specific campaigns.

Creating an ‘Online Video’ YouTube Campaign:

Using the ‘Online Video’ section of AdWords is a little different from the regular section – it’s broken out into its own tab, and stats are kept separately from your main campaigns. The reason for this is that the interface has to change slightly to accommodate the features of YouTube advertising: Cost per view, Video ad format, ad network, etc.

To see this section of AdWords you’ll first have to create an Online Video campaign. You can do this by selecting the drop-down from your campaigns menu and clicking to add ‘New Campaign.’ From here click the ‘Online Video’ option shown in the image below.

You should now see a ‘create new video campaign’ settings page, much like a traditional AdWords campaign settings screen. From here begin entering all the things you normally would – Campaign name, daily budget, geo targets, etc.

There are a couple of major differences with the Online Videos set up page that you should be aware of. First your optimization options are a little different as you now have the option to ‘optimize for views,’ which means your ads that viewers skip away from less get shown more often.

The other major departure from the regular settings page is the array of options for uploading a video ad. You’ll want to make sure your videos ads are all uploaded to YouTube – I suggest adding them to an existing company YouTube account, otherwise any account which you’re comfortable linking to AdWords is fine. Once your ads are on YouTube you can select them really easily for advertising purposes within the interface.

You can search all of YouTube for either your channel name (in our case it would be PPCHeroBlog) or for specific videos to use.

Once your video is selected you have a few different options to play with. Under ‘Ad formats & networks’ select ‘let me choose’ and it will bring up the interface as shown below:

You’ll notice you have a few different options. Along the top bar you can select where you want your ads to show. This comes down to personal preference. I generally only include YouTube, as I do my Google Display Network video advertising separately. You also have a choice as to the type of ads you want to show.

In-stream ads are the ones people most likely think of when you say ‘YouTube’ ads to them. These are ads that play before another video which a user is trying to watch.
We’ve seen the most success from these in-stream ads so far – certainly in terms of volume for views.

In display ads are in the suggested videos tab to the right of a video a user is currently viewing:

And finally, in-search ads are ones which show as sponsored suggestions when people are searching for something specific. You might want to target people searching for car reviews to show a video of your company’s latest model.

You also have a few additional options with these ads – you can create an accompanying banner ad to run alongside your video for in-stream ads, and make a choice as to whether your in-display and in-search ads go to your YouTube channel page or just to the individual video’s page.

One of the really nice things about AdWords’ YouTube advertising is the breakdown of statistics for your videos. You can use this to add some nice value for your business or clients. In the below example, I was running a test of two ads that my client wanted to use on a nationally televised campaign. We could use this data to tell them that viewers tended to engage more (12% vs 10% watched all the way through) with the first video than the second.

To pick the stats that matter to you dive into your custom columns as shown in the next screenshot. There are a wealth of new options available to us over what we had with video advertising in the non-video campaigns section of AdWords.

In conjunction with your ad preferences you are able to tie in specific targeting options too. Demographics allow you to target specific ages and gender groups, and you have access to Topics, Interests and Keywords which work much like they do in the traditional AdWords landscape. You can have multiple targeting groups associated with your video campaigns for additional insight – perhaps testing out different demographics, or different interest categories to find where you are generating the most views.

My one major problem with this at the moment is that my online video stats don’t get pulled into my overall numbers on the campaigns tab – meaning it is possible to pass over that spend and forget you’ve spent an extra few thousand in YouTube which isn’t directly shown to you when you browse your headline numbers.

YouTube Remarketing:

If, while setting up your YouTube advertising you were able to link your company account in with AdWords you have an opportunity to create remarketing lists from viewers of your videos.

On the left hand menu (shown above) first link your account. Next click on the ‘Video remarketing lists’ option and you will be presented with the following options:

This works exactly as would one of your normal remarketing lists – and you can use this with your traditional text or image ads. It’s up to you which options you choose to remarket to. Below you can see that we can pick and choose based upon whether a user had liked a YouTube video, unsubscribed (try and win them back?), visited our channel page and so on…

Hopefully this has you thinking of all the different ways you can use YouTube to expand your horizons and grow your account. For more explanation on these please see the help Google has made available:

• Create a video ad campaign with the AdWords for video tool
• Remarketing to YouTube viewers

As always let us know if you have any ideas or questions in the comments below!

This webinar will cover all of the latest Enhanced Campaigns tips and tricks, including:

• Is Google’s new Upgrade Center all you need to migrate your account, or is there further customization you need to do?
• How can you tell whether upgrading your account will be a simple process or a highly complex one?
• What do you need to do to keep your (now required) mobile bids from wildly skewing your account’s behavior?

Space is limited — Reserve your webinar space today!

This webinar occurs on Thursday, May 23 at 12:00 pm EDT.

Stores try to speak to an impulse to buy, which is called an impulse purchase or impulse buy. Impulse purchases are provoked by either seeing the product or by being exposed to a well-crafted promotional message. While it is easier for a brick and mortar store to entice impulse buys by prominently display their goods along the aisles and checkout lanes, it is more difficult for online retailers to speak to shoppers in the same way. Although the possibilities are more limited, there are things that can be done.

Paid search gives you a few options of how to turn a searcher into a customer. One of the most important things is the first contact that a user has with your company. In paid search this is most likely the ad that is showing up on search results or on social media. You want the ad copy to be very enticing.  Turn users in the research stage into someone that follows through with a purchase. This can be achieved by following best practices as the following:

• Use the actual keyword of your ad groups in your ad copy to make the ad jump out at the user as keywords will be bold in the ad.
• Include site link extensions with cross-/up-selling offers or coupon codes
• Showcase benefits of products combined with a seducing call to action
• Make use of coupon codes, percentages off and any specific sale
• Test prices in the copy of your ad and make it sound like it is a once in a lifetime deal

These are some tips of how to help a user take the first step of leading to an impulse buy. Also read tips on successful ad copy here. Once a customer finds the way to your webpage, impulse buying is a whole other story. Let’s take a look at how Amazon tries to open up your wallets once you are on their page:

I am looking for “birthday gifts for her” on amazon. So before I can even begin looking at my search results, I see a promotion to look for “gifts for Dad” which reminds me that father’s day is coming up soon and I don’t have a clue yet on what to get my dad:

Promotions and reminders of specific holidays and deals displayed on your page ensure that people remember what else they need to buy and might shop for additional products as well since they are already on your site.

Next I actually start to scroll down to look through the search results that came up. Nothing is really jumping out so far for me. But wait! Once I scrolled through the first page of search results, I see this on my screen: Sponsored Products on Amazon:

Promoting related products or special offers from within your site is a pretty easy way to call your visitor’s attention. It is also very smart as your visitor is already on your site so he might as well look around some more. However, people need to be invited to look around more so show them that you appreciate their visit and try to make them stay on your site as long as possible.
Back to Amazon. Scrolling down further on this page (yes we are still on the same page!), Amazon presents me with the following overview:

It not only reminds me of what I have previously looked for but also suggests what other people bought based on my recent history. They not only point out the products that I have previously searched for (in the hope of me coming back to it and actually buying it), they also show me similar products that other people bought. This is a good move as my search might not have been as satisfactory as I had hoped and I might have given up on finding the perfect item I was looking for. Now that I have additional items presented to me, I can just browse these with one easy click.

Now let’s look at what Amazon does right once I decided on a product.

This is the first screen I see after clicking on the item. It’s an easy and quick up sell.  And even if you do not want to buy all three items, one line below Amazon showcases what other customers bought when choosing this item. This particular tactic might be a little bit more obvious in the below example:

Here it not only shows you additional necklaces or charms but it also points out to add earrings to make your gift complete. In the above screenshot you can also detect an additional eye-catcher, “The Amazon Necklace Store.” It is sneaky of Amazon to present this link to you right here. I am sure even if you don’t immediately click on it, it spurs your curiosity and you might end up clicking on it after all.  One more thing on this page that I want to point out:

Special offers and product promotions are proposed right below the image of the product and stand out via font size and text color.

Once you decided to buy the item without any additional purchase and you hit the ad to cart button, Amazon again tries to recommend a few more things to you:

Four different category sections speak to your emotional side of the brain rather than your rational. While this might be a little bit too much for your own business, you could still at least try to recommend a few additional products that add on to the already selected item(s) in your cart. Throwing in an offer, special or sale also doesn’t hurt.

These are just a few examples of what Amazon does to help speak to your emotions and make you buy something that you weren’t probably looking for. What could other strategies be to further impulse buys on websites? Are you using any? I would be very interested in your tactics and how they are working!

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It’s no secret that more and more small businesses are showing up on the web to capitalize on advertising opportunities, including Pay Per Click. After all, with yellow page usage declining, SMBs and even larger businesses need to fill the void that print advertising has left behind. With PPC having such low barriers to entry, it’s a great way for small businesses with limited advertising budget to get their feet web with internet advertising. It’s quick to market, and when done the right way it can drive high quality leads at a low cost per lead. So why do I hear many of my prospects tell me “We tried PPC and it didn’t work for my business.” What’s the problem? Well, one of the problems may be double serving and national brands finding loop holes in Google’s Terms of Service.

Double Trouble

Double serving is something Google claims to take seriously to ensure that advertisers are not taking up more ad real estate than they should be. How detrimental would it be if national companies with deep pockets could afford to pay for all ad positions on a search results page? It would essentially wipe out small businesses from the PPC scene unless they decided to pay a premium they simply cannot afford. We’re already seeing evidence that Google’s double serving policy may not be as concrete as we think.

Put yourself in the shoes of a small business in the pest control industry for example; how would you feel if your biggest competitor who happens to be a national brand was double serving in your local market?

Majority Rules…Right?

Google stated in Q4 of 2012 that they have over 1 million advertisers, and the majority is small businesses. With rising costs in PPC, whether due to an increase in advertisers and/or the upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns, don’t you think Google would take double serving seriously to make sure the majority of their advertisers don’t experience a double whammy increase in cost per click? I’m not saying national brands are the only double serving offenders, but they can potentially do more damage to an entire local business market if ad space doubles and triples in cost due to some loopholes in Google’s policy.

How Are Advertisers Getting Away with Double Serving?

It appears that certain loopholes exist within the policy. These could be whether the sites (with common ownership) offer a different level of service/support, % difference in price, difference in product offerings, and/or a slight differentiation in brand. A certain combination of these exceptions will exempt you from Google’s policy, and you’ll then be the occupant of 2 positions in Google’s prime PPC real estate.

Here’s an excerpt from the policy:

Google would be well served to tighten this policy and remove the double talk in an effort to create a level playing field. They would end up with more advertisers and less people saying they tried Google AdWords and it didn’t work. After all, it is easier to keep a happy advertiser than to win back one who was dissatisfied.

So the only time they “see” your ad at all is when they scan the page. And this means that your best bet for “grabbing” your prospect’s eye is an image. Pictures we can pick up in a scan. Headlines and body copy not so much.

So visually prominent colors work best. Emotionally galvanizing imagery works best. And images that are easily comprehended when shrunk to a 120 pixel by 80 pixel size work best.

Want an example?  Check this out:

No, this image is not ideal, but it definitely catches the eye.

It’s not ideal because it misses out on using visually prominent colors. Why go with a black background when you could use a deep red?

And the small writing on the image is wasted as it is absolutely indecipherable.

Finally, the white border on the image is represents wasted space that could have been used to enlarge the core image.

But despite these shortcomings, the imagery remains brilliant because it:

a)  Is immediately identifiable and understandable even when miniaturized, and

b) Remains emotionally galvanizing at that small size

As for B, I’ll just say that the emotional power of the imagery comes from the symbolism and leave it at that.

But the first part is worth exploring a bit more, because the clarity of the image comes from something that storyboard artists call “Silhouette Value”.

Silhouette value means that one can still understand what a “character” is doing, even if you filled his figure in with black. If you turned your picture into black and white silhouettes, would you still be able to understand it? Would the important stuff still be clearly communicated?

Obviously the fat guy in the image IS a silhouette, so that’s preety easy to answer, right? But if you give a moments thought to it, the artist took some care to pose the fat guy figure so as to convey maximum information frrom that silhouette, right? He’s not just overweight, he’s obese, as his bulging belly suggests. And he’s not doing much about it, either, as the “guzzling” pose implies.

But what about the thin man insde the silhouette? Does he follow the same rules?  Sure! Here’s what he looks like, when turned into a Silhouette:

You can still tell that he’s thin and ahtletic and you can also intuitively grasp that he’s struggling to get out, by the way his legs and arms are pushing against the fat guy’s boundaries.

And even though you can’t see it in this edited version of the picture, it’s an especially nice touch that the thin man’s left hand is blocking the drink that the fat man is trying to pour into his mouth.

So anyway, that’s a nice handy test for your images that can tell you how well they’ll grab the attention of a prospect even when shrunk down to a small format — take a look at their Silhouette value.

1.) Display Planner for Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting has come a long way, baby. We now have keyword by keyword data, so the functionality of managing contextual Display campaigns is much more similar to Search. But, contextual targeting is only as targeted as you make it. While targeting super general keywords like “necklaces” might totally work in Search for your account, that could open up a whole world of spammy ickness on the Display Network. So, here are a few ways to get great results by segmenting your contextually targeted campaigns:

• Pair contextual keyword lists with placements.

Use the GDN planner (which is now available in your interface as well) to find placements based on all kinds of stuff like site category, audience, or even using keywords. For instance, if you sell a supplement that body builders use, look for sites they use. Even better if you can find site they use to research information about supplements.

You can see that I added, under “site content” to look for the keyword “supplement” and under “topics”, I picked “bodybuilders”. Then, the ad planner spits out a list of sites they feel match my requirements along with stats about the sites. It’s then up to me to figure out which sites really match what I’m targeting and seem like legit sites.
After compiling my list of sites I want to target, I’d get my contextual keywords together. These keywords will make sure my ads are targeting the pages on these sites that I want to target. So, instead of targeting all of BodyBuilding.com, my contextual keyword list will make sure I only target pages on that site that are about supplements. This lets me target my key demographic while they are actively seeking information about the type of product I sell. Bada-Bing!

• Use contextual keywords to target the type of site that converts well for you.

If you’d rather cast a wider net than just hand-picking placements to target, use keywords to target the type of site you want. I’ve found sites that show the users is still in the research phase work well. Using a keyword list to target review sites should do well. Keywords like “supplement review” or even the specific product you sell and review should target reviews of that product. Doing lots of placement reports to weed out the bad placements will be important, though!

• Contextually target sites talking about competitors that you convert well for.

If you’ve found you do well in Search when people search for a competitor, perhaps because you have better price points or a more conversion optimized site, then use this strategy on the GDN! Setting up a contextual keyword list with your competitor’s brand

name will target sites about your competitor. Make sure to call out the key features that make you better than them in your ads! Placement reports will be important here as well!

2.) Image Ads

It may seem like a beginner’s tip to make sure you’re using image ads in all your display efforts, but it can make a huge impact on your account and not everyone uses them. Check out this analysis I did between text and image ads in my campaigns:

There’s also dynamic images for Display, which are pretty cool. Here’s Google’s little spiel about this ad innovation in AdWords. Here’s the rundown of what it does for your account:

• Link to your Google Merchant Center, which will automatically keep products featured in your ads up to date.

• Show different stuff to people based on whatever you want, automatically. For instance, show an ad that uses the Yen and is written in Chinese for people located in China. Show the call-to-action “Use our lay-away program, now” to people on sites with the keywords “frugal”, “save money”, “budgeting”, etc.

• Dynamic Remarketing! You can show people the exact thing they were looking at before leaving your site. Even show them what’s been abandoned in their cart and offer 10% off if they just come back and buy it!

There are all kinds of cool features to dynamic image ads for Display. Some of them are just time savers, but others can really improve performance. All reports I’ve read about dynamic remarketing is that it brings anywhere from decent to amazing increases in conversion rates. Using dynamic ads will give you a chance to show the exact right thing to the exact right person (considering you’ve set everything up well).

There are some technical aspects of getting into this program that you’ll need to meet, so contact your Google rep to discuss.

Other options for dynamic ads come from third party services. Fetchback & Ad Roll are two services that provide retargeting services outside of the Google Display Network & also use dynamic retargeting. These options are great if you can’t get into the Google program for some reason or if your client wants a much larger audience to retarget to.

3.) Betas & New Features

It’s hard for me to keep up with what’s still in beta, what’s not, and what-in beta-I can talk about. One thing I know that’s no longer in beta is Similar Audiences.

This feature targets people on the Display Network that are similar in interests to those that you select. In the example above, I used those that had converted through remarketing as a similar user list.

There are other super cool features that are working really well for me, that I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to talk about. But they all have the same objective of getting you Display traffic more qualified, so get in touch with your Google rep about betas you could get into!

So far in this series we’ve discussed utilizing betas and keyword research to expand and grow your paid search accounts, with some additional stuff on Display and video still to come. Guess what happens to your budget if and when you implement any of those methods? Your budget increases! But guess what else? There are totally other ways to increase your PPC budget! I know, I know – I’m blowing your mind.

Back to the matter at hand, many account managers will tell you it isn’t hard to increase budgets; it’s hard to increase budgets and maintain ROI. So for the purposes of this post, I’d like to walk down the path of how you make the smartest budget growth decisions to maintain that ability to continue growing the account in to the future.

Full net or small bucket expansion?

Really what I’m talking about here is how much growth you’re allowed, just in case you need to get approval from a supervisor/director or client in situations where you aren’t managing your own account. You can either spend the time to determine all the areas of budget expansion potential, present them to the necessary parties, and then allow them to pick and choose where to push spend. On the other hand, you can approach the client or director and let them know you believe there is opportunity and ask what kind of budget allowances you could have as long as you show them some specifics before moving forward. I’ve seen both strategies work, and seen both blow up in the account manager’s face. This is going to have to be your call, based on what you know of the situation you’re managing.

 Then, based on whether you asked for an amount up front or were approved one for specific segment testing, etc…

How many actual dollars are being invested in the expansion?

Again, this step will be somewhat dependent on how you got the additional budget in the first place. Your client or supervisor may have determined the amount based on possible expansion areas you outlined before, in which case you’ve probably been given the number itself already. They may have also given you a clearance for a specific amount of additional budget before you presented them anything, which again would eliminate the need for this step.

However, if you’re the account owner or you weren’t given a specific spend amount by the client or your supervisor, you need to decide now how much you want to expand and set a trackable dollar amount. It’s tempting to say, “We’ll just spend as much as we want until it stops producing!” Certainly that strategy has worked for many accounts, but I prefer a more controlled expansion – that way I can very easily compare and contrast return as the account grows incrementally.

Now where can I put this…

One more time, this step could be controlled by how you have the expanded budget in the first place. Your client or director may have told you where the money had to go, or you may have presented where it was going to get it at all.

If you’re in charge or if you’ve been given the task of determining areas of opportunity, here are a few places to check:

** Push more successes: make sure you’re maxing out daily budgets for your highest producing campaigns. If any of them are showing as “limited by budget,” look here first.

** Where you’ve never been: this could be a new engine altogether (maybe you’re only in Google and want to give Bing or Facebook a shot), or a specific network attack in a given engine. So for example, you’re running on the Search network via Google, but haven’t looked in to any Display-based traffic. You wouldn’t have to run head first at a full Display campaign, but rather dig down to a couple ICM or Topics targets to start.

** Increase positioning: if you’ve got some keywords that are producing leads within goal CPAs, look at their average position historically alongside that positive performance. There may be opportunity to increase bids on similar terms just a bit, creep up in to a higher position and begin pushing more leads/sales (watch it, though; I’ve seen this have the exact opposite effect, as well).

** Use one of our specific series tactics: Sean discussed betas and Eric already gave you some awesome information about finding new keyword opportunities. Amanda and Sam still have stuff coming for you, too…add that with the few things I’ve listed out above and you should have a pretty solid list to check in to!

Tell us about your experiences! How have you worked previously to expand an account’s budget? Were there particular areas or segments you saw great return from, versus those that failed miserably? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below, and thanks again for reading!

Join Hanapin Marketing’s Sean Quadlin and Wordstream’s Larry Kim as they discuss 10 simple things you can to increase your CTR right away!

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Stay tuned for next weeks webinar!