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Classifying PPC Marketing? Is It An Art Or A Science? Part Deux

2009-11-04T13:47:58-05:00

In my second and final installment of “Classifying PPC Marketing? Is It An Art Or A Science?”, I will dig a little deeper into the “weeds” of PPC Geekdom to try and identify which tactics and techniques of PPC should and will always be a Science as well as others that are reserved for the Artist respectfully. However, we all must acknowledge one thing. Regardless of anyone's biased opinion, there is one constant that everyone can agree on and that is PPC requires both Art and Science in order to have a better chance to achieve a successful outcome. Did you notice "better chance?" Well that is because there are many other factor that are in play that go way beyond Quality Score and CTR%.

So with that said, in continuing my discussions with Craig Danuloff, President of ClickEquations and Marc Poirier CEO of Acquisio, I surrounded my next segment of Q&A around the specifics of what areas of PPC deserve more attention to Science and others which should just be left to the Artist. In response to the question "Can you tell our audience what element of PPC should always be considered a science?" Craig believes that working methodically and focusing on the key metrics of PPC are the best path. He also mentions that his company ClickEquations has developed what is called 'High Resolution PPC' which basically breaks the search management process into three phrases:

Targeting the right people
Valuing your keywords, and
Satisfying prospects.

According to Craig "Nearly every step in the targeting stage (selecting and organizing keywords) and the valuing stage (tuning keywords, negatives, match types, and bids) is largely measurable and repeatable.
Even the testing parts of the satisfy phase are highly scientific - working methodically to find the best ad copy and landing pages. All of these steps iterate based on all the measures search professionals rely on – clickthrough rates, impression share, quality score, ROI, etc. "

On the other hand, Marc's focus is not so much on the tactics of PPC, but more of Multivariate or A/B testing of landing pages. Marc states "Well, testing (multivariate or a-b testing) is closely related to the scientific method. You hypothesize something, then you test and measure, and the results of your test tell you whether your hypothesis was supported by the test. But the variables which we test are usually be inspired by the marketer’s gut instinct. However, performance tracking and analysis (conversions, roas, roi, etc) is also a very rigorous process, and there is simply no creative element involved here...

Now that we've touched on the Scientific side of PPC, lets now talk about the Artistic side. For this creative-minded Aquarius who enjoys thinking outside the box at all times, I have soft spot for the creative side of everything, especially PPC. Moreover, when I asked both Marc and Craig about their thoughts on the Artistic side of PPC, they were both pretty much aligned in their thoughts. Both of them highlight on the fact that writing effective Text Ads as well as effective and persuasive content for Landing Pages requires a strong creative side. For example, Marc states "I think the writing process which goes into creating text ads or landing page content is more of an Art than a science, but because it can be influenced by the results of tests, it is not necessarily a purely creative process, but it is definitely more creative than scientific."

According to Craig "Coming up with keywords can have a creative or imaginative aspect to it, although the bulk of that work can and should be done more methodically. Attracting people and persuading them to take action - the job of ad copy and landing pages - can benefit from true creativity, but in this case the artistic merit must be tested and measured and cannot be accepted on purely subjective grounds."

In conclusion: The idea of whether PPC is more of an Art or a Science honestly depends at which level you are practicing with PPC and how you visualize the work that you do for a client or your company. Writing good text ads that generate sales/leads could be considered just words by some. On the other hand, looking at analytics data and finding potential "goldmines" could also be considered an Art. All in all, all that matters is that the PPC Advertiser is happy and there is plenty of potential for ongoing optimization and strategic thinking.

Semgeek Quote of the day: "Getting someone at Google to give you a straight answer on their future intentions is purely Art." - Marc Poirier, CEO Acquisio.com

On that note, I want to personally thank Craig Danuloff of ClickEquations and Marc Poirer of Acquisio for their participation in this article series.

Classifying PPC Marketing? Is It An Art Or A Science? Part 1

2009-10-19T14:02:56-04:00

Ok, let's be honest, we all know the answer is going to be BOTH. However, we must ask ourselves, what's the secret sauce that makes it more successful. Is it the seasoned experience and "outside the box" creativity or is it by default? Over the years, PPC has matured so quickly that it’s almost difficult to remember what it was like to simply “bid your way to the top” with Goto.com (Yahoo) or to understand or even pronounce this new search engine called Google. Now, roughly 10 years later, this once little piece of the online marketing strategy is emerging as the predominate money proving ROI machine where companies are spending billions of dollars to make it easier for people to spend their hard earned money.

With the change in the perception that these software companies are implying that PPC is just a numbers game and a matter of bid management or Analytics is a little worrisome for this SemGeek because it asks the question “Is PPC becoming more of a Science that an Art?" For many PPC Gurus, the idea of automating search marketing would traditionally leave us all feeling a little uneasy as it appears to be jeopardizes the integrity of all of the years spent “re-defining” the industry as well as downplaying the creativity of how talented search marketers make their client’s successful online.

On the other hand, using data in a more scientific approach in order to understand what is working and not working in our PPC efforts is priceless. In this two-part series, we will get some expert insight from the top PPC Software companies on how they view Paid Search as either an Art, a Science or both.

When talking about whether PPC in this context, it can often become a double edged sword” to be able to differentiate the two. For this Search Marketer, who has been working in the “weeds” for so many years I have been trained to believe that holistically it requires both to be successful. On the one hand, there is an obvious science behind the algorithms which power the platform, and there is also a level of smart business and creativity to reach qualified consumers and persuade them to get engaged and that make that all important conversion, hence validating the value of PPC. To reinforce and expand on this, Marc Poirer, CEO of Acquisio states that “I think it’s marketing, and as such, there is creativity involved because you need to understand human behavior; and there are hard numbers, because there is money at stake. Further, with paid search, there are literally hundreds of variables that can impact your success. If I had to decide between art or science, I would definitely say it’s more of a Science than an Art”.

On the other hand, according to Craig Danuloff, Founder and President of ClickEquations, INC, he believes that is mostly all scientific on how we should approach PPC. For example, he goes on to say “There is far more science than art in the operation of paid search campaigns, although I'm not that most people practice it that way - I think much of the folklore about PPC suggests that it's an art and so many people treat it that way. I believe it's a science because for the most part the operation and algorithms work in provable and repeatable ways - if you do 'A' then 'B' is going to happen every time. And the way to learn this is through study and investigation or experimentation. There are a few creative aspects to the process, which must be used in the experimentation, although I'd probably not glorify them as art.

The relationship between keywords and search queries, the impact of match types, the calculation of Quality Score and ROAS/ROI, and the attribution of revenue across multiple visits, are all examples of knowable repeatable elements of PPC. Writing text ads and designing landing pages are creative activities, but ones to which formal testing and measurement can be applied to calculate a quantifiable value - we don't need an artistic eye to judge good ad copy, the CTR will tell us.“

Now that we touched on the 35,000 foot view of PPC from a software company perspective, lets shift gears to focus on the area of best practices.To get this conversation started, I posed the question to Craig about his view on how they classify PPC best practices based on simple “Statistics and Words” or a more “Creative and Holistic” approach. According to Craig, he believes that “there is a truth to the way the search engines work, and there is an approach to managing paid search that aligns with this truth. It’s knowable and provable and repeatable. It seems that many of the so-called ideologies out there lack this grounding. The church of 'keyword expansion' for example tends to lack a grasp of how keyword matching really works. The church of 'position 1 or 2' fails the math test. The church of 'relevance' or 'holistic' is the most faith-based of them all.There's no substitute for sharp strategy in PPC. Which segments should you target? Which products should you promote first? Should you build out the search network or the content network first? That kind of planning is based in good data, but your own human intuition and experience still have to rule.

Search is the only advertising channel I can think of where people tend to first target super broadly and then very reluctantly pare back only when it's proven incontrovertibly that any segment or portion of a segment doesn't or won't work.

We'd suggest an approach to targeting that starts with the people most likely to convert - based on both interest and intent. In most cases this would be brand-based searchers, or other highly specific segments. Expanding from strength, establishing beachheads and then growing them, is a far more profitable approach than the spray-and-pray that's so common in the industry.

As far as search and content, there is no universal answer but regardless of which is first, they must be treated and managed as if they're entirely distinct channels which they are. There is no reason to expect any similarity between them in effort or results.”

In the upcoming article "Classifying PPC Marketing? Is It An Art Or A Science? Part 2", we will continue our discussion Marc and Craig as they will provide more interesting feedback on what specific elements of PPC should always be considered an Art as well as which ones should always be considered a Science.

I would like to personally thank Craig Danuloff of ClickEquations and Marc Poirer of Acquisio for their participation in this article.

Win a FREE Pass to Pay Per Click Summit | Chicago Nov. 4-5, 2009

2009-10-06T16:26:57-04:00

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