Searching Beyond the Paid

The New Beyond the Paid

2012-09-14T08:07:00.000-04:00

Hello loyal readers! I’m really excited to announce my new blog over at www.beyondthepaid.com! Go check it out!

This website will eventually be going away, so please subscribe to my new blog so you won’t miss a single post. And I appreciate every single one of you – I wouldn’t still be writing if it weren’t for all of you.

Beyond the Paid Best Of, Summer 2012 Edition

2012-08-31T08:06:00.001-04:00

Here in the US, Labor Day weekend is upon us already - the holiday that marks the end of the summer. It's always a bittersweet time - while we all love summer vacation, it's also nice to get a break from the heat and get back to a more "normal" routine.

As you look ahead into September, it's a good time to review your PPC strategy as well. Here are a couple of links to posts from this blog that readers found helpful.

Using Keyword Level URLs in PPC

This post was inspired by a PPCchat conversation. Posts like this are some of my favorite posts to write, because it's not just my opinion - the whole PPC community gets involved. Give this one a read to learn more about why you should consider using keyword level URLs in PPC.

12 Links Every PPC Pro Should Bookmark

I find it interesting to see which posts get the most pickup on Twitter and around the blogosphere - it's usually not the ones I would have guessed. This post was one I wrote in about 10 minutes, because that's all the time I had - and it was hugely popular. It just goes to show that you don't need to spend hours slaving over a blog post every week!

So as you head into your holiday weekend, give these popular posts another read. Did you read any other great PPC articles over the summer? Share them in the comments!

4 Ways to Kill Your PPC Health

2012-08-24T07:52:00.000-04:00

Most medical experts agree that patients should take responsibility for their own health. While it’s a doctor’s job to help the patient get well, the patient needs to cooperate. When the doctor and patient don’t work together as a team, the patient’s health can suffer.

An agency/client PPC relationship is a lot like a doctor/patient relationship. Both parties are responsible for the health of the campaign, and they need to work together. Not doing so can lead to less than optimal PPC well-being.

Here are four ways clients and agencies can kill a campaign.

Diagnosing Without an Exam

Consider this scenario: Patient walks into the doctor’s office and says, “Doctor, my chest hurts. I need open heart surgery.” Doctor says “OK, let’s schedule the surgery now.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

You don’t need a medical degree to realize that the doctor in this example isn’t doing his or her job. What if the patient only has indigestion? Or what if they have bronchitis or pneumonia? Is open heart surgery going to fix either of these issues?

Yet in the PPC world, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve met with a client early in an engagement and the client says, “We need to launch a PPC campaign.” And too many PPC agencies say “OK, let’s open an AdWords account.”

The problem with this picture is that you haven’t figured out what marketing problem the client is trying to solve! What are their business goals? What are the pain points in their online marketing? What are the key performance indicators for their yet-to-be-launched PPC campaign? How will those KPIs be measured?

No reputable doctor would prescribe treatment for a patient without a thorough history and exam. Likewise, no reputable PPC company should launch a campaign without first establishing goals, KPIs, and tracking, along with a conversation about how PPC fits into the overall marketing mix.

Seeing Too Many Doctors

Most people would agree that medical specialists serve a necessary purpose. A general practitioner is probably not the best doctor to remove a tricky brain tumor, for example.

However, the doctors need to work together. They all need to understand the patient’s diseases, history, and treatment plans. When a patient runs from one doctor to the next without telling the others, it can have catastrophic results.

The same thing can happen in PPC. If too many people work on the account and don’t talk to one another, usually the campaigns don’t do very well. Or if the client makes changes to the account without telling the agency, performance can suffer.

Clear communication between all responsible parties will go a long way in ensuring that the campaign works as well as it possibly can.

Taking Medicines Because You Always Have

While there is a lot to be said for tried-and-true medications, sometimes they stop working. Either the patient gets better and doesn’t need the medication any more, or their body stops responding to it. Regular checkups are needed to make sure the current medications still make sense.

In PPC, regular meetings between the agency and client will help ensure that the campaign and marketing tactics are still working. For example:

Don’t bid on the same keywords for years at a time without reviewing them to make sure they still work and make sense.
Don’t settle for the same ad copy month after month without testing something new.
Work together as a team to continually question and review the current marketing plan and make sure the prescriptions are still working.

Not Telling the Doctor What Medications & Supplements You’re Taking

This is a common issue in the medical world. Patients either knowingly or unknowingly don’t tell their doctor what medications they’re taking, and this omission can have serious consequences. Medications can work together, or they can work against one another – and some combinations can be deadly!

Similarly, it’s not uncommon for PPC clients to forget to tell their agency about:

Sales or promotions taking place in other channels that could affect or benefit from PPC.
Products that are no longer available.
Website pages that have been changed or removed.
Shifts in overall marketing strategy.

Usually, the client isn’t being malicious – they really just forget to tell their PPC agency about these things. Yet these omissions can keep their PPC campaigns from achieving optimal health!

If you’re a client, be a good patient. Provide your agency “doctor” with a complete history and marketing picture. Communicate with them regularly.

If you’re an agency, be a good doctor. Ask questions so you understand the client’s marketing goals and KPIs. Communicate with them regularly.

By working as a team, you can ensure that your PPC campaigns stay healthy!

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Search Engine Watch on February 14, 2012.

Using Call Extensions in PPC

2012-08-10T08:13:00.000-04:00

When you think about PPC, you think about the online world: online searches, online ads, and online websites where a conversion happens. The offline world often doesn’t factor into the picture of PPC.

Of course, though, the offline world still exists, and business happens there on a daily basis. Since the dawn of PPC, businesses have tried to find a way to cross the chasm between online and off.

One way to do that is by using call extensions in your PPC ads. In a nutshell, call extensions are a Google Adwords feature that allows your phone number to appear automatically with your ad copy – without using precious space in the ad copy itself.

The cost for using call extensions depends on the device used to perform the search. For mobile searches, call extensions appear at no extra charge, and the advertiser pays the normal CPC when the phone number is clicked to call. On desktop and laptop computers, advertisers need to use a Google phone number, and there is a minimum charge of $1 per call. You get a lot of cool analytics when you use the Google numbers, though – we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Wordstream has a great post covering all the basics of call extensions, so I won’t repeat all that here. For a closer look at where call extensions might show up and what they look like, check out this post from PPC Hero.

Let’s talk about where the rubber meets the road with call extensions: evaluating results. As with a lot of new and shiny objects in the online world, a lot of advertisers get really excited about the fact that the feature exists, without thinking about whether the feature makes sense for their business and helps them get closer to their goals.

Obviously, if your business isn’t equipped to generate conversions over the phone, you shouldn’t use call extensions. Even if you are equipped, it’s crucial to think about dayparting: are you running call extensions at 2am when no one is there to answer the phone? That’s probably not a good user experience, so daypart your campaigns accordingly.

OK, so you’ve ensured that you can convert over the phone and you’ve dayparted properly. How do you tell if this is working or not?

Well, there are several considerations. First off, unless you’ve purchased a system to tie phone orders into your web analytics platform, your phone conversions won’t show up there. You’ll need another way to track them. If you have a good phone tracking system already, and you’re using a unique phone number for PPC (which you absolutely should do), then this shouldn’t be an issue.

But not all businesses have such a fancy phone system. While it’s a lot harder to get accurate conversion data without that, you can still tally sales manually. This requires phone rep cooperation, but it can be done, especially if the reps are incentivized properly.

So you’ve decided to use a Google forwarding number. What great data do you get in return?

Well, it’s pretty cool, actually. Go to the Dimensions tab in Adwords and select “Call Details” for your view.

Then, export your report. You’ll end up with the following fields by default:

•    Start time
•    End time
•    Status
•    Duration (seconds)
•    Caller area code
•    Phone cost
•    Call type
•    Campaign

Pretty cool, huh? From there, you can analyze whether these calls were worthwhile, at least from a location (area code) and duration standpoint.

By converting seconds to minutes, you can chart the call length for easy analysis, like this:

So if you’re a B2B advertiser with a long sales cycle, and your goal is to generate consultative phone calls, a call duration of less than 1 minute (60 seconds in the report) is probably not good.

There are many other analyses you can perform with this data – and it gets even more powerful when you marry it with your own call center reports. The point is, if generating phone contacts is one of your goals, you definitely should be using call extensions.

How have you used call extensions in your campaigns?

10 Resources for New PPC Pros

2012-07-27T08:05:00.001-04:00

Over the past 18 months or so, I’ve had the pleasure of writing a series of articles for Web Marketing Today on PPC Basics. If you haven’t been over to the WMT site lately, give it a read – there are a lot of articles and video interviews with pretty much all the thought leaders in search.

Anyway, the PPC Basics series is a culmination of 10 years in the search biz, all distilled for your reading pleasure! So if you’re new to PPC, or are in the midst of training a new hire, take a look and let me know what you think.

How Paid Search Fits into Your Marketing Mix

Keyword Research

Account and Campaign Settings

Keyword Match Types

Ad Copy Development and Testing

Bid Management

Quality Score

Evaluating Data

Dayparting

Geo-Targeting

PPC: Still Alive and Kicking

2012-07-06T07:58:00.001-04:00

There seems to be a bit of a fad going around lately. Apparently it's all the rage to go around saying that PPC is dead.

A few months ago, some fool who isn't even a PPC pro came out saying that PPC is dead, and we should all be doing social media. I put that rumor to bed with a post of my own: PPC Is Alive and Well, Thank You.

Well, clueless marketers just can't get enough of proclaiming the demise of PPC. Just yesterday, another idiot decided to use the "dead PPC" rallying cry as a thinly-veiled sales pitch for - get this - PPC management services.

Yes, someone actually thought it would be a good idea to announce the time of death of one of the services they're peddling. Wow.

And this came on the heels of Google announcing billion-dollar earnings for Q2.

All this talk of death and destruction reminds me of this post, and the awesome aftermath.

We're not dead yet, folks.

12 Links Every PPC Pro Should Bookmark

2012-06-29T08:05:00.000-04:00

Every day, there is a plethora of great PPC info shared across the web: on blogs, in social media, and in forums. Most of it falls into the “that’s interesting” category, but nothing more.

Periodically, though, a post or tool is so good that I bookmark it and refer back to it often. Here is my list of the 12 links every PPC pro should bookmark.

Modified Broad Match Tool from Acquisio: This tool enables you to paste a list of keywords, tell it which ones you want to add the broad match modifier, and spits them out with a keystroke. It’s a huge time saver and I use it at least weekly.

SplitTester: A tool to quickly get statistical significance & confidence levels. Great for PPC ad testing.

WebShare’s split testing tool: This tool combines CTR and conversion rate to tell you the overall winner of an ad test.

145 PPC Must Do’s for 2012 from PPC Hero: This was a New Year’s post that was actually very useful. I’ve been working my way through the list for the past 6 months. Not every tip will apply to every PPC account, but if you’re looking for new optimization ideas, this is the place.

Excel Hints for PPC from SEOptimise: PPC’ers live in Excel, so we’re always hungry for more Excel tips. This is a good bunch of hints.

Excel Formatting Tips from Search Engine Journal: If your reports look like they were done by a 5th grader, this post will help you fix that.

Excel Tips & Tricks from PPC Associates: Yet more awesome Excel tips for PPC’ers.

Ion Interactive’s Landing Page Checklist: I refer to this often when advising clients on landing page best practices.

PPC Task Checklist from PPC Hero: A great list of PPC tasks that will help all PPC pros, from novice to expert.

Google Analytics Advanced Segments Shares from Jill Whalen: A neat list of advanced segments that you can copy and use in your own Google Analytics accounts.

Google Analytics URL Builder: A good way to make sure your custom URLs for Google Analytics are formatted properly.

Auditing PPC Accounts Without Account Access from Fathom: A recent blog post to help PPC’ers over a common stumbling block: auditing a PPC account when you don’t have access to the account itself.

And there you have it – 12 must-have PPC bookmarks! I know there are more out there, so share your favorites in the comments! I’ll compile them into a future blog post.

Editor's Note: The link to the Ion Interactive Landing Page checklist was incorrect and has now been corrected. Thanks to commenter Max Miller for pointing out the error!

Using Keyword Level URLs in PPC

2012-06-22T07:57:00.000-04:00

In PPC, we have almost unlimited choices in how we structure our accounts. The flexibility is one of the reasons why I love PPC: every account is different, and we can tailor the structure and settings to meet each advertiser’s needs.

One such customization is keyword-level destination URLs. Both Adwords and adCenter, as well as nearly every 2nd tier PPC engine, provides the option to specify destination URLs at the keyword level, as opposed to the ad level (the default for most engines).

Astute readers may be wondering why keyword-level destination URLs are even necessary. After all, if you’ve structured your account properly, with small, tightly-themed ad groups, you shouldn’t need to use distinct URLs on your keywords, right?

In general, that’s true. However, there are situations even with small ad groups where keyword destination URLs make sense.

This was the subject of a recent impromptu discussion on the PPC Chat hashtag on Twitter. John Lavin (@Johnnyjetfan) asked why anyone would use keyword destination URLs if the account is structured well. The answers were, as usual, informative. Here is some of the feedback, and my commentary.

I have one client who uses them for their internal tracking (non-GA). So I have special URLs for each keyword.

Melissa’s comment: Some clients use proprietary tracking systems other than Google Analytics (GA). In many of these systems, parameters must be assigned to each keyword in order to pass that data to the analytics system. Therefore, individual keyword destination URLs are necessary to get keyword-level data.

Sometimes we have keywords that don't fit the mold of the landing page and don't get enough volume to warrant a complete ad group.

Melissa’s comment: While I’d probably still put those keywords in a separate ad group, this is yet another valid reason to use keyword destination URLs.

Happens often w/ Ecommerce where descriptive/feature words are better off sending customer to a point closer to the cart.

Melissa’s comment: Absolutely.

You can also pass special variables to the landing pages on a keyword by keyword basis.

Melissa’s comment: This is another fantastic use of keyword destination URLs. For instance, you could use a URL parameter to pass a code or keyword that would then dynamically appear on the landing page.

Another advantage is you can amend your destination URLs anytime without having your ad trigger a review.

Melissa’s comment: I hadn’t thought of this – and I like it! Lately I’ve found that the editorial review process for ad copy is taking far too long, so anything I can do to avoid getting stuck in that purgatory is worth it!

As you can see, there are several instances where keyword destination URLs make a lot of sense, even when account structure is sound. Many thanks to the PPC Chatters who made this post possible:

Johnnyjetfan
Chriskos
Askppc
Markkennedysem
Realicity
AndrewBaker72

Have you used keyword destination URLs in a new and different way? Share in the comments!

Editor's Note: I inadvertently left off one of the comment contributors, Andrew Baker. I apologize for the oversight! You're on the list now.

Picking a PPC Landing Page

2012-06-15T08:16:00.001-04:00

Countless articles and blog posts have been written about setting up and managing PPC campaigns. From keyword research, to ad copy development, to account structure, to networks, geotargeting, and on and on, there’s a plethora of info about dealing with the inner workings of the various PPC engines.

In all that detail – and let me be clear, all that detail is critically important – it’s easy to forget that keywords & ad copy are only the first step in a long journey to a conversion.

I’ve heard it said that the best PPC campaign in the world can’t fix a crappy website or a crappy landing page. And I’m here to help you choose the right landing page for PPC success.

Choose the most relevant page for the query.

The most relevant page is almost never going to be your website’s homepage. The exception to this would be branded terms that don’t give any additional info about what the searcher is looking for. So if the search query is “brand X,” then the homepage is better than deeper pages that may not be relevant to the query.

But most search queries aren’t that vague. Nearly every non-branded query is going to give some idea of what the searcher wants (and if it doesn’t, maybe you shouldn’t be bidding on it!).

Use this info to choose your landing page. If the query is broad, you may want to use a category page as the landing page.

Let’s take the example of a clothing retailer that sells designer jeans: Nordstrom. (If you were at my Intro to PPC session at SES Chicago, this will sound familiar). If the query is “designer jeans,” then don’t send them to the home page:

Instead, you’ll want to send the visitor to your jeans category page:

Often, though, the query is more specific. People might search for “women’s seven for all mankind jeans,” for instance.

In those cases, give the user what they searched for! Land them on the “Seven” category page.

Granted, they’ll still need to do some browsing on your site to find the exact pair and size they’re looking for, but it’s certainly better than dropping them on your home page, which may not even mention the product they looked for!

I know that once you see these examples, it seems obvious – yet I see countless PPC campaigns that either send all their traffic to the home page, or use a category page for specific queries (or vice versa). Your visitors already performed one search - don’t make them search again! By picking the right landing page, you’re giving yourself the best shot at getting that sale or lead.

Auditing PPC Campaigns - My SMX Presentation

2012-06-08T07:45:00.000-04:00

Well, another SMX Advanced has come to a close. The conference always goes by shockingly fast, with so much great information sharing and networking going on.

This year, I had the honor of presenting in the Auditing PPC Campaigns session. Each presenter on the panel discussed a different aspect of auditing campaigns for better performance. It was a fun session with lots of info shared.

With that, here is my presentation from SMX Advanced. Enjoy!

SMX Advanced - Auditing PPC Campaigns

View more presentations from MelissaMel66.

How Not to Use DKI, Part 2

2012-05-25T08:05:00.000-04:00

Dynamic keyword insertion is one of the great features of PPC. Dynamic keyword insertion, or DKI, allows the advertiser to automatically insert the bidded phrase into ad copy. This can provide a huge boost to ad relevance and CTR, but it can be easily misused and over-used.

I’ve written before on how not to use DKI, and you’ve probably seen some pretty crazy examples of it yourself.

There’s another common misuse of DKI that I’ve seen during PPC account audits that bears discussion. It’s not egregious like the common DKI fails, but rather, an honest mistake that can have a negative impact on PPC ROI.

Don’t hide your USP in DKI.

I’ve frequently seen unsuspecting advertisers hiding their USP, or unique selling proposition, in DKI. For example, let’s say you’re a retailer promoting a big, limited-time sale. You’d rightly want to include “Limited Time Only” in your ad copy – after all, it creates a sense of urgency and should increase your CTR.

Unfortunately, though, it’s not uncommon for these advertisers to hide that feature behind DKI! The ads look something like this:

{KeyWord:LimitedTime Only}
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

On the surface, the ad looks great – after all, one of the key points is in the headline, right?

Wrong.

Remember, DKI inserts the bidded keyword, and only uses the default text (the part after the KeyWord: command) when the keyword is too long to fit.

Let’s say this advertiser is bidding on the branded term “joes store” and the non-branded term “buy red widgets.” The actual ads would then be:

Joes Store
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

And

Buy Red Widgets
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

In both instances, the “limited time only” call to action is gone! DKI has effectively watered down the offer.

How can we make these ads better and still use DKI? It’s pretty simple. And this is how DKI was really intended to be used. Remember, keywords can be inserted anywhere in the ad copy, including display URLs. It’s not limited to the headline.

So in our example, instead of this:

{KeyWord:LimitedTime Only}
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

We’d do this for brand terms:

Limited Time Only
Huge Sale on Red Widgets: {KeyWord:at Joe’s}
Shop Online Today & Save!

And we’d do this for non-branded terms:

Limited Time Only
Huge Sale! {KeyWord:Red Widgets} at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

As you can see, good account structure is critical for this approach to work. If you have branded and non-branded terms in the same ad group, it’s nearly impossible to write DKI ads that make sense. But if you’ve taken the time to create small, tightly-themed ad groups, incorporating DKI is a breeze.

When used properly, DKI is a useful tool that can really make your ads stand out. Just don’t hide your USP in it!

Have you used DKI in a unique and successful way? Share in the comments!

Why Musicians are Good at PPC

2012-05-18T08:24:00.000-04:00

Ready for yet another ranty post? Too bad! After the past couple weeks of craziness in the PPC world, I need to cleanse the palate. Thus, a post about one of the other loves in my life: music.

Many of you know that I’ve been a musician most of my life. I sang in church when I was tiny, then moved on to the recorder and a brief and relatively unsuccessful stint at the piano before settling on the clarinet in 6th grade. I continued with music in college as a proud member of the Spartan Marching Band, playing the alto sax. I still play in both the MSU Alumni Band and local community bands. I can’t begin to enumerate the joy and opportunities that music has given me.

As with many of my blog posts, you’re probably wondering what the heck this has to do with PPC. In my 10 years in the industry, I’ve discovered that many of you are fellow musicians. Some of you are really darn good at it. Some of you have even made a living at it for a while.

To me, that’s awesome and fun. Beyond that, though, I recently read an article that explains why so many of us are into music. Scientific studies have shown that musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people.

The article states that “Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere.”

The researchers in the article also found that “the musicians gave more correct responses than non-musicians on the word association test, which the researchers believe may be attributed to enhanced verbal ability among musicians.”

Sound familiar?

Music is basically one big dichotomy. It’s full of mathematical concepts: from the time signature to counting rhythms to even the musical scales themselves – all of these have mathematical theory at the core.

But listening to music played mathematically is awful. Think about a song that’s plunked out on a computerized synthesizer: the notes all sound the same, and there are no changes to the volume or rhythm. Booooo-ring, right?

In order for it to be meaningful, music needs feeling. The interpretation of the tune is what makes it pleasing to hear – whether it’s a classical piece played by an orchestra, or a hard-driving rock and roll song. If the musicians didn’t play with feeling, nobody would care. It takes both the left-brained meter and math and the right-brained creativity to make the song appealing and effective.

The same thing goes for PPC. The reason not everyone succeeds at PPC is often due to the lack of either left-brained or right-brained activity. I’ve seen people who are great at math and analysis struggle with writing good ad copy. And I’ve seen super-creative people, many of them artists in their own right, struggle with the data overload that’s native to PPC.

It takes ability in both hard data and creativity to really knock PPC out of the park. I think this is why so many of us are musicians, too. We’ve learned to, or have an innate ability to, combine math & statistics with a creative streak and make magic out of it – and that draws us to PPC, where these abilities are strengths.

Of course I know that not every good PPC’er is a musician. And certainly not every great musician would make a great PPC’er (or would even want to try it!). Somehow, I can’t picture Eddie Van Halen sitting down at a computer and writing PPC ads. But I bet Neil Peart would be great at it.

What do you think? Are you a musician-turned-PPC’er? Or vice versa? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Adwords Support Needs A Better Bra

2012-05-11T08:16:00.000-04:00

I know I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve written about the less-than-optimal changes to Adwords, including near match and the rotate ads fail.

I started this week thinking things couldn’t get any worse. Surely we’d hit rock bottom and were on our way up.

I was wrong.

Last week, I was hard at work on my first-of-the-month to-do list: client reporting, and updating ad copy tests. For as long as I’ve been in agency PPC, I’ve evaluated and updated ad copy tests on at least a monthly basis. It’s a good practice, right? Especially in view of the recent “near rotate” fiasco?

Not so fast, bad guy.

We have a global client with campaigns for every country and region of the world. Although the basic message for their ads is the same, I’m sure it won’t be surprising to hear that minor nuances in ad copy can have different results in different parts of the world. Anyway, I updated all their ad copy tests and moved on.

Or so I thought.

When I checked the campaigns the next day, I noticed that the US campaign traffic was down a bit. Well, I didn’t get too worried – after all, we all know that days are not data.

A few more days went by, and I checked the campaigns on Monday. I was in for a shock.

US campaign traffic had screeched to a halt. Mind you, this is a branded campaign for a long-term advertiser with an average quality score of 10. At first, I thought the new ads might be stuck in editorial review, which seems to be happening more and more lately.

But alas, the ads were just stuck on the “other” ad position, instead of the top where they had been. And CTR & traffic tanked as a result. Quality scores and everything else were still ok, so I figured there must be something else going on.

Well, of course we don’t have an Adwords rep for this client, for whatever reason. (Eliminating agency reps is yet another tear in the elastic of Google's support.) So I called the general support number.

What a nightmare.

I related my story to the rep right off the bat – basically telling her the exact same thing I said here. She agreed that something was amiss, and promised to get back with me.

Later that day, I got an email reply. It said, and I paraphrase: “I took a look at your account, and it looks like your ads are mostly appearing in the Other position, which is why your CTR is down. Here’s a report illustrating this. I suggest you raise your bids to get things back on track.”

Seriously?!?!?

One, I told her that I’d already run that report. I knew that’s what had happened. But I didn’t know WHY it happened. Two, how in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks can my quality score drop that much overnight?? The ad changes were very minor – just a tweak to the second description line – and this is a long-standing branded campaign for the brand owner. I smelled a rat (or something even stinkier).

So I wrote back, basically telling her all that, and also telling her that I’d tripled my bids as soon as I saw the problem (BEFORE I even called Google), and still traffic was nil.

Two days later, I hadn’t heard anything. So I called support again. The rep I spoke to that time told me that the original rep had gotten my email and was looking into it further.

Yet another day went by before I heard back. The reply? “There might be a temporary drop in quality score due to the ad changes. Just give it a few more days.”

ARE THEY KIDDING??

Here’s a client whose traffic from their most important region of the world has gone to crap, and they want me to wait? And does quality score really drop with minor ad changes? Does that mean that our quality score is reset every time we change ads? Does historical quality score count for nothing? And how is that going to work now that we have to change our ads every 30 days just to keep them rotating evenly?

After I got this reply, I decided to try a crazy ACE test. I set the test to 50/50 and set the experimental bids at $108 per click. Yes, over $100 per click. And this is for brand terms with an actual CPC of well under $1 prior to this disaster.

Guess what?

Traffic is back!

And no, we’re not actually paying $108 per click, but the average CPC is up about 10x from what it was before. It’s still early days, and I’m hopeful that I can back the bids down to a more reasonable level in a short period of time.

There’s a nagging voice in the back of my head, though. And it’s shrieking “MONEY GRAB!”

Postscript: I just got an email from Adwords Support. It says "I see that the number of clicks this campaign received today has increased quite a bit from days past." Nothing like stating the obvious.... Wow. I'm speechless.

PPC Isn't Dead, But I Wish Google Were

2012-05-04T09:28:00.002-04:00

OK, maybe that's a little harsh. If Google were dead, a lot of us would be out of jobs, myself included. But the last two changes they made to Adwords have me mad enough to spit nails.

I already wrote about the near match fail that was announced last week. Apparently the hue and cry over that announcement wasn't loud enough for Google, because this week they announced near rotate.

The outpouring of hatred for this announcement was unbelievably loud and clear. No one asked for this, and no one wants the change!

There's been so much coverage that I won't go into any more detail here. The purpose of this post is a call to arms. If you're as teed off as I am about this change, please sign the petition protesting the change. As of this writing, there are nearly 350 signatures from PPC'ers all over the world.

Join us in telling Google just how badly we think this will kill our PPC test results. Sign the petition today!

PS, credit for the idea for this post title goes to Dr Pete for tweeting a similar post title idea. Thanks for the inspiration!

Two PPC Wins and a Fail

2012-04-27T08:01:00.000-04:00

This week brought a flurry of PPC announcements from Google. Of course, this isn’t unusual – PPC is known for being fast-moving and constantly innovating, with Google leading the way. Like many of the PPC advances of the past, this week’s list brings both good and bad to the industry.

Win #1: Adwords Account Labels

On Tuesday, Google rolled out a neat feature called Account Labels. With Labels, you can organize account elements into custom groupings to facilitating the slicing and dicing of data.

This is basically pivot tables on steroids. The example Google gives in their blog post is grouping products across geo-targeted campaigns. Say you sell Nike sneakers, and you replicate campaigns across geographies. Labels will enable you to group and summarize stats on Nike sneakers across your account so you can evaluate results on a larger set of data.

Labels are a pretty neat feature, and I’m already planning to implement them in one of our international client’s campaigns.

Win #2: Quality Score Transparency

Ever since it was introduced in 2007, PPC managers have lived and died by quality score. Countless hours and thousands of blog posts have been devoted to optimizing quality score.

And yet, quality score has been somewhat of a black box. We all know that click-through rate is the most heavily-weighted factor in quality score, but there were also the ubiquitous “other factors” that Google didn’t specify.

And furthermore, Google didn’t tell us a lot about what was wrong when we earned poor quality scores. We were just told keyword relevance is “poor.”

Now, Google’s giving us more transparency into quality score factors. They’re supplying more detail on what elements need improvement: CTR, ad relevance, and/or landing page.

Pretty cool – more info is always better!

Fail: Near Match

For years now, PPC’ers have complained about broad match gone wild. Just yesterday I was reviewing some search queries for VoIP keywords, and apparently Google thinks that’s the same thing as “voice recognition apps” and “cheap prison telephone voice”.

But, at least we have phrase and exact match to counteract the silly broad matching. Right?

Wrong.

From Google’s Inside Adwords blog, “Starting in mid-May, phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.”

Are they kidding?!? What research are they doing? Maybe they’re looking at their own search query reports and deciding the matches are close enough?

This move hasn’t exactly been popular with PPC pros. An informal and unscientific poll of the PPC Chat group on LinkedIn reveals that 68% of PPC’ers are against the change (registration required).

While I do see the benefit of this change in certain situations, to me it’s yet another money grab by Google. Like many other default settings in Adwords, this one will slip by the novice PPC managers and mom & pop folks trying to manage their own accounts, and they’ll wonder why they’re not getting the ROI they expected.

The good news is, there’s still time to opt out. You’ll find the option under campaign settings in the Adwords UI. The bad news is, there’s no bulk edit, so each campaign has to be opted out manually, one by one. And there’s no option for this in Adwords Editor yet either. Coincidence? Maybe.

What do you think of the recent Adwords announcements?

HeroConf – The Class Reunion of PPC

2012-04-20T08:05:00.006-04:00

On Monday, about 100 PPC pros converged in Indianapolis for the first annual HeroConf, put on by the great folks at PPC Hero. Being the first conference, none of us knew exactly what to expect, but there was a sense of anticipation and excitement in the air in the PPC community during the days leading up to the show. Everyone was looking forward to a conference focused solely on PPC.

HeroConf didn’t disappoint. It was a day jam-packed with PPC goodness, covering everything from account structure to mobile to remarketing and tons more. The sessions were insightful, and the speakers were a who’s who of paid search.

Yes, I spoke 3 times and moderated a lunchtime roundtable, but this isn’t meant to be a brag. I am humbled to have been included in such stellar company. As I sat on the Q&A panel at the end of the day, I honestly couldn’t believe I was up there with 2 of the people from whom I learned PPC back in 2002 – Brad Geddes and Andrew Goodman. The days of me harassing them with questions on the search forums are behind me, and they’ve both become good friends. Still, it was an awe-inspiring experience.

Because of the small size, the best part of the conference for me was the networking. I think I got to personally speak with nearly everyone in attendance, which is unheard of at the major shows. At the meet and greet Sunday night, I met old friends for the first time – people I’ve hung out with every Tuesday at noon EST for PPC Chat. It was a total blast, and I stayed up too late both Sunday and Monday, but it was worth every second of lost sleep!

After last year’s SMX Advanced, I wrote a post saying the show was like homecoming. Well, if SMX Advanced is homecoming, HeroConf was a class reunion – the group you were always closest with and knew the best. The camaraderie and knowledge-sharing was unmatched – I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed at a show, especially one where I was speaking so many times! Usually that’s a recipe for all-day nerves, but I felt totally comfortable because I knew I was among friends.

It would take me all day to list all the amazing PPC people I met at HeroConf, but I do want to give a special shout-out to a few who made the conference especially meaningful to me.

To Melissa Ferrigan, who was a friend before I was even doing PPC, I’m so glad you were there to share it with me.

To Matt Umbro, it was totally awesome to share the stage with you at the Account Structure and Q&A panels, and to geek out on PPC over drinks.

To James Svoboda, I really enjoyed hanging out at IND. Thank you for turning the usually-mind-numbing time waiting for my flight into a fun chat!

And finally, to Michelle Morgan, my PPC little sis, I had an absolute blast swapping stories and rants with you. I knew we’d hit it off, because we already had on Twitter, but I felt like we became true BFFs at the show.

And to everyone else I met, know that I feel blessed to have chatted with you. I can’t wait for next year’s show!

My Top 3 PPC Posts of 2012

2012-04-06T07:52:00.004-04:00

The first quarter of 2012 is in the books (already?!?!?), and a lot has happened already in the PPC world. Here are the top 3 posts on this blog for the year to date.

3 Unfulfilled PPC Wishes from 2007

This was a fun post to write, and it got the attention of PPC pros on Twitter and beyond. What's funny about this post is that I wasn't even going to write it because when I had the idea, I didn't think there were any unfulfilled wishes from 5 years ago. I was wrong.

A 12-Step Program to Improve Your CTR

This SEW rerun accomplishes something that not every blog post can: timeless tips that can help all PPC'ers. Just when I think "oh, everyone already knows that," a post like this reminds me that we can all use a refresher course from time to time.

The top post for 2012 so far, by a landslide, was this one:

PPC Is Alive and Well, Thank You

There's nothing like a good controversy to get the attention of the entire PPC community. This post was spurred by an idiotic post from a so-called social media expert who claimed that PPC was dead. Judging by the reaction I got to my post, she was, well, kinda wrong.

And there you have it - the top 3 posts of 2012 so far. What are some of your favorite PPC posts from around the web?

Breaking: Sitelink Conversion Data Now Available!

2012-03-30T14:31:00.003-04:00

A few of us on PPC Chat noticed today that conversion data is now available in the Adwords interface for sitelinks and ad extensions! Data can be segmented in all the normal ways, including by time, top vs. side, click type, and network.

This is a huge leap forward for Adwords in terms of giving PPCers the data they need to optimize not only ads & keywords, but sitelinks as well.

For more info and up to date findings, follow the #ppcchat hashtag on Twitter.

How Online Marketing Is Like Fine Dining

2012-03-30T07:51:00.001-04:00

Online marketing has been all the rage for 15 years now, at least. From the beginning of public adoption of the internet, success measurements have varied. In the early days, it was all about “hits.” Then it was all about site visits (unique visitors). At some point, the more savvy online marketers started worrying about conversions.

And yet, in 2012, I’m often surprised to hear clients coming in saying “we need to do PPC” or “we have to get out there in social media.”

Why is this bad? Because they’ve chosen the tactic before they’ve set goals and mapped out a strategy.

Have you ever been to a really fancy dinner where each place setting has 3 forks, 2 spoons, a couple knives, and a seemingly endless number of plates? And have you sat there at the table wondering which water goblet you should drink from, and worrying about which fork or spoon you should use for the first course?

I’ve been there, too. But what I’ve noticed about these fancy meals is that 9 times out of 10, it becomes plainly obvious which utensil you should use once the first course actually arrives. If it’s soup, you use a soup spoon. If it’s a salad, you grab the outside fork. If it’s seafood in the shell, you’ll pick up the little seafood fork (I don’t eat seafood, so forgive me if I haven’t used the right analogy here!).

The point is, once you know what your goal is (eating soup vs. eating a salad), the right utensil becomes obvious.

Online marketing is the same way. Marketers spend an inordinate amount of time debating which tactic they should start with: PPC, SEO, social media, email, website optimization…. and often they can’t agree on what makes the most sense. In the meantime, their sales are struggling to get past the appetizer course.

A better approach is to think about your goals. Is increasing sales the first order of business? Are you looking for awareness for a new brand or product? Are you selling inexpensive products or services to consumers, or are you an enterprise solution provider selling to CEOs with a 12-month sales cycle? Is your website ready to capture sales or leads, or does it need work?

All of these factors will affect which tactic you choose. Many online marketing tactics work together, and it’s great to integrate as many tactics as you can within an overall strategy. But before you get to that step, it’s critical to establish your goals and determine how those goals will be measured. So even if your goal is clear from the beginning, if you don’t have tracking and analytics in place, how will you know if you’ve achieved it?

So the next time you’re debating a dip in the waters of PPC, SEO, or social media, put down your fork and think about your goals first.

PPC Is Alive and Well, Thank You

2012-03-23T08:00:00.005-04:00

Earlier this week, an article in Social Media Today caused a bit of a stir in the PPC community. The article was titled The Death of Pay Per Click Advertising – a link-bait-y headline if ever I’ve seen one - and it's a doozy.

Putting aside the fact that the article was published on a social media site (seriously??), let’s break down each and every fallacy in the post.

Fallacy #1: Advertisers Don’t Recoup their Investment

The article states that “there are clear signs that it is dying out as a lone marketing resource. For example, recent research has revealed that just 18% of SMEs using Google Adwords actually recoup their investment (Source: YouGov).”

First off, there’s no link to the YouGov “revelation,” so I find myself questioning whether it’s even true, or whether it’s taken out of context. But anyway… let’s assume it’s true.

I actually wouldn’t be surprised if only 18% of SMEs are recouping their investment. That’s because these SMEs don’t know what they’re doing. PPC has evolved into a complicated program that takes training and expertise to get good ROI. It’s not something that Mom or Pop Jones can just run themselves. This is why it’s critical to hire a PPC professional to run your program, whether it’s in-house or agency.

I’d be curious to see how many professionally-managed PPC programs are recouping their investment. I bet it’s way more than 18% or we’d all be out of business.

Fallacy #2: PPC Is A Short-Term Play.

This is the one that really got the goat of a lot of PPC’ers: “PPC can deliver results when it is used for a short-term, highly targeted campaigns (sic), but used in the long-term it often becomes costly.”

I’m choosing to ignore the terrible grammar in that quote, by the way.

At gyro, we have many clients who have used PPC for years. Many of these clients have recently shifted dollars from traditional media to PPC, precisely because it’s been so effective for them compared with other channels. The same was true in my previous position at Fluency Media – we had clients who were approaching the 10-year mark in PPC who were still making money on every sale.

Are these all just flukes? Hardly. And to say that PPC delivers lower returns than content marketing (another claim in the article) is just ridiculous. Yes, SEO often delivers a higher volume of traffic and leads than PPC, but does SEO convert as well? In my experience, the answer is often no.

Fallacy #3: PPC’s Purpose is to Drive Traffic.

“PPC appears to offer a simple solution - paid ads to drive people to your website.” Um, what? So none of the PPC campaigns I’m running are driving conversions – they’re all about traffic. Yeah, right. I’m not even going to gratify this statement with a response.

The article goes on to say that “PPC is focused around gaining high volume results and often comes with confusing data and analytics on visitor numbers.” I honestly have no clue where the author got this idea. Most of the PPC campaigns I’ve run in my 10-year career in the industry have focused on reducing overall traffic volume while increasing overall conversion rate. No one wants to pay for a bunch of unqualified visits.

A well-run PPC campaign will often contribute little in terms of overall website volume, but will contribute a disproportionately high percentage of conversions. I’ve run PPC campaigns that represented only 20% of overall site traffic but 80% of total conversion. Doesn’t sound like “focusing around high volume results” to me.

Fallacy #4: PPC Is Brand Unaware.

“PPC is purely about the ad and about capturing the interest of window shoppers. With no brand awareness or value proposition around it, the PPC campaign tends to attract window shoppers who are focused on cost rather than quality.”

This is just wrong on so many levels. I’ll concede that many PPC campaigns are indeed focused on promoting low-cost offers. It’s called customer acquisition. This happens all the time in traditional media – what do you think coupons, sales, clearance events, and weekly circulars are all about? These, too, promote low-cost deals to attract the customer. So is the author saying that traditional media is also a huge fail?

And if you're running PPC ads without a value proposition, you're doing it wrong.

Furthermore, the author fails to consider impression-heavy PPC advertising such as display and social media ads. If these tactics aren’t brand aware, I don’t know what is. Facebook PPC, in particular, can drive millions of targeted impressions at a very low cost and can nearly create a brand from scratch – all by using PPC.

In the second half of the article, the author talks about how PPC should be used. Many of her points are valid: be strategic, build loyalty, test for the best – this is all good advice. But there is one more misconception worth calling out.

Fallacy #5: Advertisers Should “Increase Cost Per Conversions.”

When I first read this, I thought it was a typo. But then the author says it again a couple paragraphs later: “include a plan to increase your Click Through Rate and Cost Per Conversion for rewards from Google.” (emphasis mine)

Who on earth is trying to increase their cost per conversion? If you find this advertiser, give them my phone number. I have a few words for them.

The Bottom Line

PPC isn’t dead. That is, unless you run your campaigns the way this author tells you to.

A 12-Step Program to Improve Your CTR

2012-03-09T07:41:00.005-05:00

It's common to hear veteran search marketers at conferences and in social media talking a lot about PPC conversion rate -- so much so that those new to PPC may think that conversion rate is the end all.

Conversion rate is important, to be sure. I'd even say it's very, very important. But before a PPC ad can generate a conversion, it needs to generate a click. PPC ads are no good if no one clicks on them.

If you're new to PPC, or if you want to improve your click-through rate (CTR), here's a 12-step program to help you.

Step 1: Bid on Relevant Keywords

PPC beginners are often tempted to bid on high-volume keyphrases that are only marginally related to their business. Take, for example, a hotel/casino that wants to bid on "Texas hold-em." While people indeed play this game at a casino, it isn't relevant if the goal is to sell hotel room nights.

Don't fall into this trap. Searchers have gotten sophisticated. If your ad isn't relevant to the search phrase, they just won't click on it and your CTR will suffer.

Step 2: Bid on Specific, Not General, Keywords

This is related to Step 1, yet is slightly different. Taking the hotel/casino example, you might be tempted to bid on "hotels." While this term has significant search volume, it's too general and is unlikely to drive many, if any, clicks.

Step 3: Use 2, 3, or 4 Word Keyphrases

Years ago, one-word searches like "hotels" were common. Nowadays, searchers have become more specific in what they search for, and it's common to see search queries with four or more words.

Jason Tabeling wrote an informative article with research showing that CTR was highest on keywords containing two, three, or four words. Our experience has been similar: one word is not specific enough, but more than five shows diminishing returns.

Step 4: Create Small, Tightly-Themed Ad Groups

Tightly-themed ad groups make it easy to write relevant ad copy that will generate clicks. A common rule of thumb is 10-15 keyword phrases per ad group.

This ensures that your ads will be relevant to the search phrase, and increases the chance of a click. This in turn will help drive a good quality score.

Step 5: Include the Keyphrase in Ad Copy Whenever Possible

If you've set up your ad groups as described in Step 4, this should be relatively easy to do. Search engines bold the search phrase in both organic and paid results, so including the keyphrase or keyphrases in the ad copy ensures they will be bolded, which helps your ad stand out. Ads that stand out get better CTR.

Step 6: Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) is a feature that automatically inserts your bidded keyphrase into your ad text. It's a great way to make sure Step 5 above happens.

That said, use DKI with caution: make sure you're not inserting misspellings or other awkward phrases into your ad copy!

Step 7: Include a Price in Your Ad Copy

An old adage in classified advertising says that if you don't include a price in your ad, people will assume you're selling something expensive.

Calm those fears by including the price in your ad upfront. Even better, include the price in the ad headline -- it'll attract attention and clicks.

Step 8: Include Action Words in Your Ad Copy

Including action words (e.g., exclusive, limited time, online only, 1-day sale, etc.) adds a sense of urgency to your offering. Adding urgency encourages click-throughs.

Step 9: Include Symbols in Your Ad Copy

If applicable, include symbols such as ©, ™, ®, and even the plus sign (+) or ellipses (...) can make a significant difference in CTR. Symbols make your ad stand out on the page.

Step 10: Use Ad Extensions

Google offers several different types of ad extensions: Location, Phone, Products, and Sitelinks. Take advantage of them. While these don't display on every search, you'll take up valuable screen real estate when they do show up.

Step 11: Be Creative With Your Ad Copy

Let's face it: There's not a lot of space in PPC ad copy. With only 25 characters for a headline and 70 for a description, it's tempting to put "just the facts" in your ad copy and forget about being creative.

Don't! When I've tested ad copy that I thought was too "wacky" to be effective, I've often been surprised by the results.

Remember, PPC often generates results in a short period of time, so if an ad isn't working, you can always pause it. You might even try an ad like this:

Step 12: Engage in Ad Copy Testing

Ad copy testing is one of the biggest benefits of PPC, yet I'm always surprised by the number of advertisers who don't take advantage of it. The most successful PPC advertisers are continually testing and refining ad copy -- take a page from their book and set up your own tests now!
Go ahead -- give a few of the 12 steps a try!

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Search Engine Watch on March 23, 2011.

PPC Networking - The Fun Begins

2012-03-02T08:48:00.003-05:00

Welcome to March! The long, cold winter is nearly over, and we anxiously await the longer days and melted snow…. Oh, wait – we’ve barely had any snow, at least here in Michigan. But who doesn’t get excited about the coming of spring?

I get excited about spring because it means search conference season! Actually, every season is search conference season nowadays, unlike 5-10 years ago when there was really just SES. But in the spring, it’s easier to travel, and it just “feels” more like conference season to me.

As I write this, SMX West is wrapping up. I didn’t attend that show – the west coast is a long trip for me, especially in February when the weather can be iffy (although, as mentioned earlier, it ended up not being so iffy). But a lot of people clearly did, as evidenced by the Twitter fail whale caused by the volume of tweets from the conference. By all accounts, SMX West was full of good content for PPC pros.

On the heels of SMX West, SEMs will head to the East Coast for SES New York, happening March 19-23. Although I won’t be attending this year’s SESNY, the conference has a special place in my heart – it was the first SES I ever attended, way back in 2003 when it was still held in Boston. In a way, that’s where it all began for me. SES is always a good show, and this one promises to be no different.

And then in April, the good folks over at PPC Hero and Hanapin Marketing are holding the inaugural Heroconf on April 16 & 17. I’m super excited about this conference, because it’s the first-ever conference focused solely on PPC. The PPC Hero team has assembled a superstar lineup of PPC speakers, including some of my “idols” like Andrew Goodman and Matt Van Wagner.

I am honored to have been invited to speak at this conference – I’ll be speaking twice on Monday: Account Structure at 10:30 am, and Managing Large Budgets at 2:30 pm. I’ll also be on the Q&A panel at 6:15 pm. Whew! It promises to be a great couple days of PPC networking and knowledge. If you’re a PPC pro and haven’t registered for HeroConf yet, what are you waiting for? Do it now!

Following HeroConf, the summer SEM conference season kicks off with SMX Advanced in Seattle in June. This is one of my favorite conferences – it’s smaller than the big SES and SMX shows, and the content is all advanced – no beginner topics allowed! Seattle is a great city, and the conference is super fun.

I know it can be tough to break away from the daily PPC grind to attend a conference, and they’re not always cheap. But just like any profession, PPC is constantly changing and evolving, and its practitioners need to stay up to date on the latest tools and techniques. I can’t think of a more open and sharing industry to be in, and I have conference networking to thank for my last couple jobs in SEM. It’s really worth it to attend!

What conferences are you excited about in 2012?

Better Blogging in Less Time

2012-02-24T07:49:00.005-05:00

If you're friends with me on Facebook, or if you follow me on Twitter, you're probably aware that I saw Van Halen in concert in Detroit on Monday - in the front row! I've been a fan of theirs since the early days, and this was my first front row experience. It was amazing. My husband took this picture, along with about 100 other awesome photos, at the show.

The big deal about this tour is that it's following the band's first album with David Lee Roth in over 28 years. As part of their new foray into social media, the previously closed-mouthed band has published several video tidbits that are really cool and fun for the fans.

Some of my favorite tidbits are the interviews with the 3 founding band members. In one, the guys discuss how the process of making an album has changed over the years.

(What does this have to do with blogging? I'm getting there - stay with me!)

One thing that's different now is that instead of cutting the vocal track by singing the entire song all the way through, the vocalist will sing one phrase at a time, over and over. Then the producer chooses the best take from the 20 or so takes of that phrase.

In the video clip, the guys make the observation that the first 3 takes are almost always the best. David Lee Roth says these takes are the most spontaneous, "before you think yourself past genius."

That quote spoke to me. It's the same with blogging. I've had a lot of people over the years say to me, "I don't have time to blog. I can't think of anything to write, and then it takes too long to write it."

I tell them to sit down at their computer, think of a topic (any topic), set a timer for 15 minutes, and write. If you can't get at least a draft of a post in that time, it's not blog-worthy. Beyond 15 minutes, you've thought yourself past genius.

This goes for anything creative: blogging, photography, music, speaking at conferences, ad copy writing.... The list goes on. The first take is probably going to be your best one. So if you've always wanted to blog but thought you didn't have time, start writing now - before you think yourself past genius.

And if you're interested, here's the whole VH interview clip; the genius quote is almost at the end, around 12:00.

Personalized Coupons and the Science of Demand

2012-02-17T08:08:00.004-05:00

As marketers gather more information about their customers, direct marketing gets more interesting. The amount of customer purchase data available nowadays is staggering.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the personalized coupons that print out along with your receipt at the grocery store. And many of you have probably received personalized coupons in the mail, as well. I know I do – I’ve started to get coupons in the mail from Meijer, where I buy most of my groceries.

On the one hand, this is really cool – no more clipping coupons from the newspaper inserts! Personalized coupons for stuff I actually buy – how awesome is that?

But there’s a problem. The coupons are clearly based on past purchase behavior.

Why is this a problem, you ask? After all, don’t you WANT coupons for stuff you’ve bought before?

Yes and no. Here’s an example. A few weeks ago, I bought a new laundry basket for my son. I’d guess most of us buy laundry baskets only once every few years. But what shows up in my mailbox last week? A coupon for $2 off a laundry basket – and the coupon expires in 30 days, no less. Nice try, but no dice.

I’ve gotten tons of coupons like this. Coupons for cereal I just bought – and I have to buy 4 boxes to get the savings. Even with teenagers in the house, we don’t eat THAT much cereal. Coupons for zip-top bags that I just bought by the hundreds. You get the picture. I don't have enough storage space for all the stuff these retailers expect me to stock up on.

So what does this rant have to do with search? One of the things I love best about search is that it fulfills customer demand at the right time. No one searches for laundry baskets AFTER they just bought one – they search BEFORE they get ready to buy. THAT’S when I want the coupon. I want it before, not after!

It seems to me that it wouldn’t be that hard to do. I know Meijer has years of purchase history on me, because I’ve shopped there forever. And honestly, as big brother-ish as it seems, I’d rather they review my purchase history, figure out the patterns, and send me coupons at just the right time. How hard can that possibly be? Until retailers figure this out, we search marketers have it made.

Local Paid Inclusion, aka SEM Industry Histrionics

2012-02-03T08:47:00.005-05:00

For whatever reason, the SEO and SEM community loves a good scandal. 7-8 years ago, when I was relatively new in the industry, it seemed as though there was a scandal every week: black hat SEO, cloaking, forum catfights.... it was crazy.

As the industry has matured, the kids have settled down. The daily shouting matches between SEOs have been reduced to a couple times a year.

This is one of those times.

A couple weeks ago, Bruce Clay, an industry stalwart and well-known white hatter, announced a new service called Local Paid Inclusion. In a very brief nutshell, this was going to be a service that, in partnership with Google, Yahoo, Bing, and major directories, would offer advertisers guaranteed paid placement at the top of local search listings.

Seriously? Who, in this day and age, would fall for this?

Anybody remember the old Real Keywords scam? Where advertisers could supposedly pay this shyster company thousands of dollars per year for "guaranteed #1 listings on up to 30 keywords," when in reality the Real Keywords scamsters were just buying PPC ads?

No respectable SEM fell for that back in the day, and I'm honestly beyond shocked that Bruce Clay fell for something like that today. I've met Bruce several times over the years, and he has always been the pinnacle of reason, intelligence, ethics, and professionalism - almost a paragon that others could only hope to imitate.

Why, then, did he let himself and his company get involved in this huge kerfuffle???

And the bigger question, at least in my mind: Why are SEOs so dramatic? When's the last time anyone in the PPC industry caused this kind of stir? Can you even think of one time where a PPC industry luminary got involved in something so shady that it caused all their peers to start hanging them out to dry on Twitter?

Don't get me wrong - I still have a lot of respect for Bruce and the things he's done for SEO and SEM. I have a lot of respect for the work most SEOs do. And it sounds like there may have been some substance to Bruce's announcement. But clearly he jumped the gun, which is shocking given his experience and business acumen.

The way the SEO industry reacts to stuff like this never ceases to amaze me. What do you think about all this? Share in the comments!

For another interesting take on this issue, check out this Wordstream Blog post.