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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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Slides

Stay tuned for next weeks webinar!

That’s why we’re hosting a free webinar during which we’ll be migrating an account live, from start to finish and for all to see.

Just one problem: We need an account to migrate! And that’s where you come in. Send an email to Marketing@HanapinMarketing.com to volunteer to be on a live call with a Hanapin PPC expert as they help you migrate your account!

But hurry — we have a feeling this is going to be a popular subject!

As Star Trek tells us, space is the final frontier.  As working in AdWords and BingAds tells us, betas are the final frontier.  There are things that we haven’t even thought about yet that are going on right now in other people’s accounts.  Some betas fail (like demographic targeting back in the day), others are runaway successes that are now mainstays (like remarketing), but the more that you can include your accounts the better.  (Also, since we’re talking about betas, I wanted to share that this song has been stuck in my head ever since this article was commissioned.)

Betas are a great opportunity to expand your account, but managing them can be a bit trickier.  Due to non-disclosure agreements, we can’t even talk about any of them specifically (which will be the case with pretty much any advertiser that’s involved in them).  Betas have the ability to basically turn us all into Jodie Foster in Nell, who is described by IMDb as a “beautiful young hermit woman with many secrets.”  She also has her own weird language that she made up with her twin sister or something while she was living in the forest.

Discussing and managing betas makes it really hard not to wind up like Nell and say things like the below quotes pulled from the Nell quotes page on IMDb:

If you want to grow your account and stay at the front edge of the industry, getting into all of the betas that make sense for your account is imperative, but how do you do that?

Keep Your Eyes Peeled

Screen shots are your friend.  Search well, search often and be ready to send your rep a screen grab of the neat little things that you notice or that look new.  Our reps are hard working people with tons of accounts to juggle, so there have been times where they haven’t even heard of stuff that’s going on.  If you’ve seen something, ask about it and see where it takes you.

Talk to People

This is a little weird for us people who spend all day on the Internet, but I’ve found the best source of information on things that the engines are testing is word of mouth.  You know, actually talking to someone?  And almost all of the time it’s not a beta that someone’s actually in, but they’ve heard about it and they’ll ask you if you’re in it.  Which I would never divulge because I love my reps and I value our secret beta friendship, but it does give me fodder for our next call.

You should also know that your clients or bosses are also talking to people about this stuff at conferences and at whatever else clients/bosses meet up at.  (I heard ClientBossExpoCon is going to be killer this year.  {I’m not invited.})  They’re going to hear about things, so it’s imperative that you also keep your ear to the ground.

You could also just go the super simple route and ask your rep.  After reviewing our monthly call rundown they always give the polite “is there anything else?” (that I give at the end of each call with my clients) I always remember to ask “are there any new betas that you’ve heard about?”  We love testing around here, and testing new targeting methods is one of the most exciting testing opportunities of all.

So you get into a beta.  Now what?

• Double check your settings

In almost all cases, there is something that you won’t have the ability to change on your end.  It’s going to be some sort of collaboration with you and the people on the other side (Google/Bing).  Nobody knows your account like you, so make sure to check all of those little details before pushing it live.  Don’t let something silly in the setup process translate to bad results that then make you think the beta itself is flawed.  Since the entire foundation of that campaign is being tested, all of the details have to be in place.

• Allocate the right amount of budget

While it’d be nice to think that we can all spend as much money as we want, almost all of us can’t.  Even some people with unlimited money end up running out eventually.  I setup my accounts to maximize top performers and then allocate the remainder of my budget as is appropriate across some of the more marginal campaigns (either in terms of CPL or ROAS).

Within those fringe campaigns, there is going to be one with a high spend potential that can be pulled back as needed.  I think of that campaign (or group of campaigns) as my packing peanuts.  They fill the volume I need to keep everything secure, but they can be removed if there’s something else I want to put into the box.  And a promising beta is something that I want to put into the box.

Decide beforehand what thresholds you’re going to use for your test.  Just as you wouldn’t be willing to let a keyword run for months of poor performance, you don’t want a new targeting method to run indefinitely.  Set achievable goals and make sure to cycle back often.

Also know that sometimes there isn’t volume there.  Don’t assume that a beta will be like a goldfish (or, dare I say, a betta fish) and will grow to fit whatever budget you have assigned to it.  I have some active betas that get an impression or two a day, but that’s not really something I can bank on for my lead-hungry clients.

• Be prepared for things to change

The Fluctuating Impressions of a Beta Campaign

This is a graph of impressions for a beta that I or someone that I know may or may not be involved in.  The peaks and valleys of this chart have nothing to do with changes on my end, as the campaign hasn’t received any structural changes (lots and lots of maintenance, but nothing that would fundamentally reflect the highs and lows).

One of the biggest reasons that Google and Bing roll things out via beta first is because they’re still figuring things out.  That process involves making changes to their systems, which can really change performance around on our end.  Know that heading into any beta and be prepared accordingly.

Betas are a tremendous way to expand your account, but you have to do it slowly and it takes a lot of help from the good people working at the engines.  Over that last 10 months in one of my accounts, two of my top six campaigns in volume are betas or former betas.

Betas are a great chance to expand your account (and also impress your clients), but they are exceedingly difficult to manage since we are contractually prohibited from discussing them with other people.  Stay on top of the industry to know what’s available, and once you’ve been allowed behind the velvet rope make sure that you act appopriately.  Be prepared for change and learn along the way, and then when it’s released to the open market you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.

Thankfully, the option to set a target cost per conversion using many-per-click is now available for campaigns on the Conversion Optimizer. It’s actually pretty easy to set up, but Google’s help center wasn’t too clear about where to go, so after a brief chat with Google’s customer support we’ve listed the steps below.

First, if you are new to Conversion Optimizer, or currently don’t have it active, there are a couple of steps you need to go through. First, if your campaign is eligible to use the Optimizer you should see a notification like this in your account:

An easy way to check this is to go into your campaign settings and scroll down to ‘bidding and budget’ and then ‘bidding option’. If you don’t have enough data to use the Optimizer you’ll see this notification:

To be able to use the Conversion Optimizer your campaign will need to have had at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days. Without this it won’t have enough data to make good decisions for changing your bids to hit your target CPA.

Essentially the Optimizer works using a complicated algorithm that judges when to increase and decrease your bids in order to bring you the maximum possible number of conversions. It looks at the historic Conversion Rate and Cost per Conversion by device, location, and time of day and makes adjustments based on these factors. For this reason you should be aware, particularly in a ‘post-enhanced campaigns world’, that you can’t use Conversion Optimizer while having bid modifiers set for these things. If like me you just spent a day getting all your geo-bid modifiers in order then this can be slightly frustrating.

Once you are confident you’ve found a campaign with plenty of historical conversion data, you can go ahead and turn on the Optimizer. You should see something like this in your account:

I normally go with Target CPA as my goals are generally campaign wide. This just means that if your max CPA is $80, Google will bid down all keywords with CPAs over $80, whereas for a target of $80, Google will sometimes keep some keywords over $80 if the campaign averages out to $80 CPA. I always set my target CPA to my campaigns particular goals – rather than based on historical numbers, which the above screenshot is offering.

You should now see something like this when you go into your Keywords tab within the now ‘Optimized’ campaign:

That’s all well and good, but it’s kind of a pain for me. My client sells insurance, and 2 separate policies being sold to the same person are worth more than just one policy being sold. In other words, I really need to use many-per-click conversions to set my target CPA bid. For years I’ve been getting round this by working out the average difference between my one-per-click and many-per-click conversions and making my target CPA (one-per-click) that much higher. This doesn’t stand up to scientific rigour though as some keywords will have a special adeptness for converting multiple times. My old method just took it as a blanket increase.

To implement the switch to using many-per-click conversions as your primary metric, you’ll need to go to your Tools and Analysis tab and then select ‘Conversions’:

From here go into the Settings tab:

You get presented with the option of selecting your primary Conversion bid metric. In my case, I’m switching this from 1-per-click to many-per-click. Click save and your Conversion Optimizer is now set for your desired conversion type.

Finally, go back into your keyword list and double check to make sure that your new bids are showing as many-per-click. You’ll want to adjust these from your previous 1-per-click levels.

And there you have it! Hopefully this will convince a few of you using many-per-click conversions like me to give the Conversion Optimizer another shot – I know I will be. If you have any experiences with CPA bidding or comments on the article, feel free to share below!

There are a lot of layers within individual companies, no matter how large they are, and odds are (there are always exceptions!) you won’t be consistently reporting your PPC work to the sole owner of a company who has no one else involved and speaks to only you. Even if it starts off that way, hopefully you grow the revenue from what you’re doing enough to grow their business/team…see where I’m going?

No matter what the situation may be, as a paid search account manager, you need to be prepared to get called in by whoever your direct report is for a meeting with all the C-level executives at your company or the one you represent. Why? Because you’re the man on the ground! If that upper echelon wants to start talking details – you’ve got a huge opportunity on your hands and now is NOT the time to blow it because you can’t explain the value of what you do! Maybe it isn’t Celebrity Apprentice-level serious (please read my sarcasm, there), but it is a shot for you to earn your spot and you don’t want to waste it.

Keep the following tips in mind every day and you’ll be more than ready if you get called in to show your stuff to the C-suite:

• Take responsibility for your mistakes. Wait – aren’t we talking about proving value, here?! Yes, and that is exactly my point. There is nothing more frustrating to an incredibly smart group (or individual) in charge than completely glazing over your failures and only discussing the wins. You already did a great job! There is plenty of that to talk about! Acknowledge any tests that did not work, as well as what was learned from them. Verify and validate any concerns and confirm how the failed optimization will be tracked to keep it from being repeated down the road. Certainly don’t spend the bulk of your conversation here, and let’s hope there isn’t a lot to discuss anyway, but don’t skip over it. It shows you’re aware and understand how every move you make can affect the overall bottom line for their company.

• Don’t necessarily get ‘granular’ right off the bat. For starters, this should be a fairly well-prepared-for meeting, so I’m making a little bit of an assumption that you know going in just how much detail and specifics are being requested. If you weren’t given exact information, consider the overall purpose for which the meeting is being called. Dependent on whether this is an introductory meeting for internal team members, a quarterly review, annual business planning session or another company-specific type – the expected deliverables are much different. Certainly ask those who have requested the meeting how much detail they want, and let them know it’s because we PPC people are nerdy and can talk numbers for hours with them if they want! Based on what they get back to you with, make some decisions (keeping in mind an upcoming point) about how deep the data you present needs to go by metrics, timelines, comparisons, etc.

• Relate what you’re doing to THEIR ultimate metric. Dependent on which group or individual you’re speaking with, always think of them as You 2.0 – as in they have someone they are more than likely answering to, even (maybe especially) if they own the place and they’re answering to the bills in the mail and balance in the bank account. This is what I was alluding to before, where you may not need to talk click-through rate on this particular occasion. Does it take more than a few sentences for you to explain how CTR funnels in to total enrolled students per semester? If the answer is yes and you aren’t in the meeting to specifically discuss ad copy message testing across campuses (these are very specific examples), then don’t spend a great deal of time discussing it. You’ll lose your candid audience and by the time you get to the win, they’ll be asleep. Be prepared to discuss those things (they could be reading PPC Hero just to test you…kidding!), but if that is all you have to talk about, you’ve likely missed the point and aren’t showing your total value.

• Take NOTES/Follow UP/Follow THROUGH. Please, oh my goodness please, do not go to a meeting with anyone you work for (directly or indirectly) and NOT take an instrument for note taking. Something will certainly be said that is worth coming back to later when you can focus on it more, and if the author of that thought remembers later and you didn’t…oops. Based on your notes and the discussion, follow up after the meeting with a rundown of those notes, action plans, timelines, etc. and get that follow up in the hands of the meeting attendees (again, directly or indirectly). You absolutely have assignments coming out of this meeting, so when things are completed or at the next scheduled meeting date, present the completed projects and start back at step one.

If you can maintain this kind of presentation style and consistency when given the opportunity to prove the value of PPC to a group of C-level executives, you’ll be given much more opportunity down the road to continue improving that value.

Tell us about some of your experiences! When you’ve been in one of these situations, how did you prepare? How much information were you given ahead of time? Were you surprised or caught off guard once in the meeting? And ultimately – how did it go?! Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below and thank you for reading!

Account expansion can be a tricky business. That’s why this week, we’re all about teaching you some of the ways you can make your accounts (and profits) grow. Whether it’s new campaigns, new platforms, new bid strategies, or new keywords, you need to have a plan in place for how you want to expand. Last week, we wrote about best practices for long tail keywords. Today, we’re taking it one step further with an easy 4-step process to keyword research.

Tip 1: Identify when to add in new keywords.

There are a few telling indicators for when you have a great opportunity to add in some new keywords to your account. Note: If you’re one of those few PPC professionals blessed with infinite budgets, the answer to “When should I add in new keywords?” is “Now, always and forever.”

That being said, for budget-limited accounts, here are some scenarios that warrant further keyword research:

• Increased budgets - If you’re not limited by overall impression share, adding in some new keywords is a surefire way to spend more of your hard-fought budget.
• Add them in by request – For example, new product launches, keyword themes, and modifiers that your client/boss has expressed direct interest in going after.
• Competitive Research. This can be done either via third-party sites like SpyFu, or just crawling your competition’s website. The point of this process is to discover your competitor’s top-performing keywords and products, and then building out keywords around those ideas and phrases.
• Search Query Reports. The most direct form of keyword research, where you can mine your SQRs for conversion trends and obvious keyword gaps.

Outside of the above-mentioned reasons, it can be useful to examine your account and simply ask yourself “What’s missing?” You might be surprised by the common words and phrases that have been overlooked in the day-to-day rigors of account management. If you have the manpower, I highly recommend letting someone else take a look at your account for that exact reason. After years of working in the same account, you might think you’ve exhausted all of your expansion opportunities – but a fresh set of eyes may prove you wrong.

Regardless, once you’ve identified a need to grow your account with some new keywords, you have some options:

Tip 2: Use all of your available tools to perform comprehensive keyword research.

Here are some of my favorite tools to use for my personal keyword research. While you go through these tools, give this a try: I’m not one to write down exact queries. Rather, I take notes on themes, phrases, and qualities to combine later on in Excel as a way of getting maximal keyword coverage.

• Google Keyword Tool -This is the gold standard. If you make use of nothing else, use the Google Keyword Tool. It provides you with global and local monthly search statistics, competition level, and you can narrow down your search estimates by match type, geotargeting, and device type. You can crawl your website for keyword ideas, or crawl someone else’s site too. They’ve recently expanded the functionality of the keyword tool, by making the new…
• Google Keyword Planner – New to the world of PPC, this is a more robust form of the Keyword Tool. It has all the same functionality as the original tool, but with additional filtering options (“Hide keywords in my account”? Hello, beautiful). It also provides you with an average CPC for each suggested term, as well as a handy list of Ad Group ideas to further guide your research. A note: don’t actually add in keywords or ad groups directly from these tools. They’re helpful for suggestions, but do the actual planning and buildout in Excel. Here are a couple screenshots of this new tool in action:

The initial interface – here you can select your filtering options before being taken to the planner results.

An example of the results you’d find on the Keyword Planner. If you’re curious about the actual “best plasma tv”, then let me tell you about my television…

• Google Search Bar Autocomplete - A quick-and-dirty method of examining new potential keywords. Go to Google, give it a try and see what comes up. If it’s new or not in your account, consider building out some new ad groups around your discovery.
• Search Query Reports – Naturally.
• WordNet – A more academic approach to keyword research, this is an online dictionary and thesaurus that will help you find synonyms and other terms to plug in to your keyword research. Not a major resource for research, but it can help with the occasional insight here and there.
• Wordtracker – A paid tool. This can be useful, but I’ve included it more for the sake of completeness. I haven’t been able to find anything in here that I couldn’t find on the Google Keyword Tool.
• Wordstream Keyword Niche Finder – Another paid tool, though they do allow a few free searches before hiding behind a pay wall. Long story short, this can be helpful in sorting through keyword themes and ideas to build out your keyword expansion. You get a lot of the same functionality in the “Ad Group Ideas” tab of the Google Keyword Planner (for free, at that), but this is a little more exhaustive. It all depends on if you want to pay or not. Here’s a shot of it in action:

The sorted niches on the left are more helpful than the queries, so take notes.

These next three I’ll lump together for the ease of discussion:

• Your website, marketing materials, and marketing language.
• Competitor websites, marketing materials, and marketing language.
• Forums and customer reviews.

Really, the idea behind these research methods is to examine the language and jargon used by the people most familiar with these products and services – the makers, competitors, and consumers. Depending on your familiarity with the industry, they might talk in ways that you, as a layperson, may not know.

Now that you’ve compiled a boatload of keyword research, my personal next step is…

Tip 3: Excel and the judicious (and/or excessive) use of templates.

Basically, the idea behind this part of the keyword research and buildout process is to combine the themes you’ve researched in the previous step in to new combinations of potential converting keywords through the use of templates in Excel. Now, as we’ve pointed out, there are some diminishing returns to this part of the process – don’t go too crazy. But the logic is this:

If “best widget” and “widget 2013″ both convert, then it stands to reason that “best widget 2013″ might also convert. If “blue widget” converts, then you can also try “best blue widget 2013″, so on and so forth until you end up with “top lavender widgets in 2013″. You can then plug and play your keyword research in to your excel spreadsheet, quickly building out new ad groups and campaigns as fast as you can hit Control + F.

Not at all comprehensive, but you’d then copy and replace “blue” with each other color. If they were TVs, that might read plasma, LCD, flat screen, high definition, etc.

Basically, make use of the keyword phrases, themes, and modifiers you’ve discovered in the research phase to build out your keyword lists quickly and effectively.

Tip 4: Measure the projected impact of keyword additions.

There’s a little fuzzy math involved in this phase, but you can estimate the impact of your keyword additions by reverse engineering clicks, cost, and conversions from the Google Keyword Tool.

Take the estimated local monthly search volume for your selected keywords – either singularly or in total. Take the CTR of your closest analogous ad group, the average CPC as provided by the Keyword Planner (or the same ad group, or the Traffic Estimator), and the conversion rate of your selected landing page.

This was almost spot-on to the actual impact.

Doing this, you can get a rough approximation of the impact of these added keywords in terms of clicks, cost, and conversions. This isn’t a perfect estimate, but it’s always been surprisingly close to the actual results in my experience.

Oh, and this should go without saying: save your work! Keep these templates and spreadsheets on hand. You never know when you’ll need them again.

This is the method that I’ve used time and time again to great success – but it’s really just a suggestion. Give it a shot and see how it works for you! If you’ve got any other hidden tips and tricks to find those stellar keywords, let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading!