Search Engine Marketing Pros

How to Launch Successful B2B Online Marketing Campaigns and Generate Leads Part 2

Sahaj — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:09:48 +0000

This is second and final part of launching successful B2B campaigns. You can check the first part here: Part 1.

Factor 1: Understanding the target market and the buying cycle:

Often marketing managers want to get in the bandwagon wanting to launch marketing campaigns on new channels because they see their competition is doing something similar or everybody is talking about the channel without completely mapping out whom they really want to target. i.e. Lack of preparedness in terms of understanding who their target market & their buying cycle.

If you are launching B2B marketing campaigns, make sure you clearly define whom your product/service is targeted to. Is it SMB, MID Size business, large Enterprises?

Next determine whom are you planning to target within those organizations? Often clients tell they want to target the C-level executives who sign the checks. In many cases these executives don’t go online to research. It’s their sub ordinates or assistants, low or mid ranked managers, purchase teams, consultant who research online based on the need or requirements of the organization or divisions within the organization.

Ex. A end user or low level manager might be the person who encounters the problems or issues, looks for solutions from peers within the firm and externally, researches online, identifies, qualifies, selects and requests for information from vendors. The manager will collect information from various vendors and submit it to the C-level executive who makes the final decision.

In the above case if you were targeting the c level executive there is higher chances you might not be getting leads as they are not individuals who are involved in the early research and qualification process. So you might be completely missing opportunities.
This could vary to greater degree depending upon the type and size of the organization.

Factor 2: Ad campaign message

Understanding whom you want to target helps address the messaging that goes with the campaigns. Why?

Please understand that targeting an end user, low ranked manager and C-level executive requires different messaging. End users’ needs/requirements/problems/objectives within an organization are different than that of C-level executives. They have different objectives to achieve and their performances are tied to different metrics.

Ex. A low ranked manager’s objective might be to ensure call volumes are maintained and good customer support is provided. A C-level executive’s objective might be to ensure that they can cut costs and generate more return for every dollar spent on managing the support center. Hence the message and the content have to fit the type of target user you are targeting.

If low ranked manager is the person who initiates the research online when they have a need and your messages are targeting C-level executives, then you can expect the campaigns to do very poorly. This goes a long way from ad message to content on the landing page all addressed to the specific target user. So before you plan any campaigns, make sure you’ve clearly determined the target market, the buying cycle, the various decision makers involved in the buying process (end users, managers, middle level executives and c-level executives) and how they make decisions.

Addressing these issues alone doesn’t ensure success of a campaign, but at least it set’s a strong foundation and reduces the risk of a B2B online marketing campaign performing poorly. If you guys have come across other factors not mentioned in this article please share by posting a comment.

Image was taken from 36-Marché Atwater (4) (Guérin Julien) / CC BY 3.0

How to Launch Successful B2B Online Marketing Campaigns and Generate Leads Part 2 is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

The End of AdWords A/B Testing as We Know it

Guest Author — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:49:30 +0000

The latest update to Google AdWords has PPC marketers in a collective fit of rage. In the past, advertisers had the option to serve all of their ads within an ad group served equally, Google is capping that period at 30 days. While the change was implemented to help advertisers garner as many clicks as possible, search marketing professionals have (rightly) berated Google for basing that decision on a single metric.

Google’s latest AdWords update is going to force advertisers to get a little more creative with how they A/B test creative copy

While it makes sense to help advertisers serve ads that are driving the most traffic, there’s more to a great campaign than click volume. You might have an ad that only receives 10 clicks a day, but if 8 of those clicks result in a conversion, you’re going to want that ad to continue rotating. With the new default setting, if you have another ad that drew 50 clicks a day but only converted once, you can say goodbye to the one that converts 80% of the time. Now, you can opt to have Google serve the ad with the most conversions but if you’ve got three ads with good conversion rates, it stands to reason that you’d want all three to continue getting an even serve rate.

I believe that the update came out in an attempt to help advertisers boost their Quality Score, as CTR is a major factor in the equation, but anyone who focuses on their ROI cares more about the conversion metric than anything else, with good reason. A more skeptical approach to take on the update would be that this is a move made by Google to increase their profits. As AdWords is a PPC service, they make money for each click that occurs, whether or not that converts into a sale or not. On one hand, it’s in Google’s best interest to drive as many clicks to your campaigns as possible, but they also must know that if advertisers aren’t seeing sales come out of those clicks, they’re going to turn those advertisers off of the product.

Fortunately for AdWords users, this update isn’t completely debilitating. The rotation settings call for even rotation to come to an end 30 days after an edit or addition is made to the ad group. Essentially, as long as one adds a new keyword or makes a slight change to a creative every 30 days, ads can be rotated on an even basis forever.

This is a pretty well-off working solution for a large group of advertisers, but PPC managers running extremely targeted, long-tail campaigns might find that they need several months of A/B testing before the serve volume is such that they can make a decision as to which version ‘won.’ And 30 days can be too soon to make even a minor edit. What does one do in that instance?

You could always copy/paste your ads into a new ad group and pause the old ad group every month. As much of a hassle as that may be, it’s the only working situation I can think of at the moment. Although, if you’re in the mood to fight the powers that be, there’s a petition floating around to get Google to give even rotation back to advertisers as it was in the first place.

It’s tough to argue that Google hasn’t come out with some tremendously useful updates, and that they seem to sincerely be trying to create a better product but this particular development seems to benefit their already-deep pockets more than anything else. I’m looking forward to seeing what backlash may occur and how they’ll respond as the ad rotation update continues rolling out over the next few weeks.

Image source here.

Trace Ronning is the media coordinator for WordWatch. They specialize in AdWords management for small businesses. They’re passionate about helping SMBs save money while boosting the performance of their PPC campaigns.

The End of AdWords A/B Testing as We Know it is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

Is Quality Score Overrated?!

Tomatoa — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:47:38 +0000

If I get a dollar every time a potential client expresses his/her concern about keyword Quality Score, I would be rich! (But because I live in Vancouver, I would still be poor). Jokes aside, Quality Score is on the mind of a lot of AdWords advertisers.

I’m not going to explain what Quality Score is since it’s been discussed million times on the net, just read that article. What I want to talk about here is that does Quality Score really deserve that much attention compares to other aspects of PPC management and optimization?

First of all, what is a low Quality Score?

A keyword Quality Score of 2 and lower will give your keyword a “rarely shown due to low Quality Score” status. That’s bad!

A Quality Score of 3 (in general) will result in expensive first page bid requirement. To put it into perspective, a keyword with Quality Score of 3 might have, for example, a first page bid of $1, but once its Quality Score is improved to 4, the first page bid might be lowered to $0.5 – $0.4.

From my personal experiences, any Quality Score improvement above the “4 mark” doesn’t give such drastic first page bid improvement.

A lot of the prospects that came to use with Quality Score concerns have an average Quality Score of 4. They think 4 out of 10 is a fail just like if they were in school.

Usually my response to them would be: “Are you making a positive profit from your keywords? Or are you meeting your campaign objectives?” If the answers were YES, then I would tell them not to worry too much.

Of course, Quality Score can be improved by having good ad copies, relevant landing pages, decent click thru rate, etc, but more often they are just beyond the advertisers’ control due to the nature of the keywords. Meaning: if Google’s system couldn’t figure out whether or not your keywords were relevant to the search intent of the users, you will probably receive a low Quality Score.

For example: [product name] vs. [buy product name]

Both keywords are quality important for advertisers, but one has strong commercial intent while the other can be looking for information as well as for other various reasons. Their Quality Scores are possibly very different.

So what’s the general rule of thumb?

If you have an average Quality Score of 4 or above, optimize other parts of your account first. Raising Quality Score at this point takes a lot of time and effort and TIME (yes, I must emphasis on time!), and you probably won’t see any significant overall improvement. Even if you did manage to improve the Quality Score, the benefit might not justify the time and money (opportunity cost) you spent on the process.

If you have a Quality Score of 3, then yes, test your ad copies, landing pages, keyword groupings, etc. An improvement from 3 to anything above can probably save you a huge portion of your advertising budget.

If you have a quality of 2, well, this is tricky. You really have to investigate whether this is due to bad account health or inherent ambiguous user intent of the keywords. If it’s due to bad account health, then of course optimize away. If it’s the latter, well, just suck it up and leave it. As long as you are still making a profit, then you are fine. If you are losing money because of keywords with low Quality Scores, then pause them and move on to something else.

Pitstop Media offers ROI-based internet marketing services. If you need help with PPC management or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We’ve helped companies reduce their paid advertising cost by as much as 48% and increase AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. See our internet marketing case studies.

Is Quality Score Overrated?! is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

How to Launch Successful B2B Online Marketing Campaigns and Generate Leads Part 1

Sahaj — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 01:13:03 +0000

B2B Online Lead Generation Campaign Performance

One of the main challenges of B2B marketing managers is launching successful online marketing campaigns and generating leads. Often I come across marketing managers who launch online marketing campaigns generating poor results and complain the channel is not that effective. After working with quite a few of B2B campaigns, it’s obvious that the issue is always not with the channel.

I want to speak in particular about 3 factors that play a key role in success or failure of campaigns but are often overlooked.

Factor 1: I am driving traffic to the website but the marketing campaign is not generating results

Marketing manager launches well planned campaigns but gets poor results. They think that the campaigns are a failure. Really? Look at the analytics data for visitor engagement on the website and it has truth all over it.

It’s 2012 and still there are lots of firms who don’t realize that website is a key component of the online marketing cycle. It’s been written about already a lot. Driving qualified traffic is part of the campaign but only when you successfully engage them through the website, do you get good results. How can you successfully engage them?

By offering what you promised through your advertising messages. Establishing trust and credibility is also important as business buyers are not meeting you in person but are looking at your website. Some of the obvious things you should consider but still missing in many websites are as follows:

B2B Website Best Practice - Easy To Spot Contact Info

Easy to find phone number and email address to contact you. (check the above image)
Consistent messaging across various elements of the marketing campaign from ads to landing pages.
Well designed website/landing pages with your target market in mind.
Content not about how great your product is or what it can do, but how it can help address the problem/ need of your target market.

B2B Website Best Practise-Lead Gen Forms

Lead generation forms: Either websites don’t have it at all or have them with too many sections to fill out. Clearly determine the minimal information that you require to qualify a lead and just ask for that through the forms. Often companies ask for too much information and they get too few who fill it. Make sure to have forms on all relevant pages.
White papers & case studies are something business buyers tend to look at early stages of the buying cycle to determine how you solved/addressed a similar problem. You can also ask for the visitor’s contact information through a lead generation form in order to provide access to white papers & case studies. You can also advertise for specific keywords and direct them to whitepapers & case studies.
Webinars – live and recorded. You can also advertise your webinars through banner and paid search as well promote it through Twitter to your followers.
Blog – did I say blog? Of course, and I assume you know what to do with a blog. This is just to remind you.

B2B Website Best Practice - Live Chats

Chat software – launching a live chat application on your website is a low cost investment which helps engage buyers more actively, providing them with information much faster which helps reduce their research time improving buying cycles. Also it offers an opportunity to get their contact information much faster. The best ones I know of are Liverperson and Bold Chat.
Product/service videos
Client testimonials (text with images, video)
Clients’ list
Promote any and all Industry related organization memberships, certifications, qualifications, citations by industry authorities, awards etc. as this helps improve trust and credibility.
Management profiles: Business buyers also look at the management of the company before engaging further. The management profiles helps to ascertain how qualified the individuals who are running the business and helps improve trust and credibility. You can include LinkedIN profiles if you have them

Bonus Tip

Whenever you plan to redesign/rebuild the website, consider addressing the onsite SEO to ensure the redesigned website is in compliance with search policies, guidelines, best practices and algorithm updates.

Also identify the most important keywords you want to rank for organically and have relevant content created when redesigning the website. You don’t want to invest time redesigning a website and then finding out that you need to make content and programming changes to improve your chances of ranking. If you do, then you’ll be wasting time and money.

Addressing these issues helps lay a strong foundation in terms of your business online presence and helps improve the success of your marketing campaigns. I’ll talk about 2 more factors in the next post in a few days. Also you guys post comment on issues that you’ve come across when executing a b2b online marketing campaign that are often over overlooked.

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rderobe/

How to Launch Successful B2B Online Marketing Campaigns and Generate Leads Part 1 is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

How to Use SEO and Behavioral Targeting to Generate More Leads

TraiaN — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:21:29 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is a guest post and the views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of pitstopmedia.com. The author, Brandusa Gheorghe, is the Community Manager for PadiCode, a B2B company specializing in tools to increase website conversion rates.

Have you ever considered using SEO for more than… search engine optimization? Let me tell you how we use it for lead generation through email marketing. The process has five easy steps, and it involves a special lead capturing tool, behavioural targeting, personalization and constant improvement. Let’s begin, shall we?

1. The Optimization

SEO is like an online fireworks display. While using it, our site tells the web “I am here, look at me!”, hoping to attract visitors it’s way.

But this isn’t everything SEO can do. We also use it as a way to find out who our visitors are and what they want, before they complete any forms on our website.

For example, someone searching for “email marketing price” is probably a person who already decided they want to start an email marketing campaign. They are looking for information on things like prices, extra features and special offers.

However, someone searching for “email marketing” is a person looking for general information on email marketing. So they might be more interested in an awesome blog article than in a page listing prices. They are also far more likely to become newsletter subscribers, if the content is fantastic, that is.

2. The Content

I’m quite certain you already know this, but I’m going to say it anyway, just in case: content is king.

We most certainly want our visitors to stick around, so we do our best to give them great content. Therefore, if our visitors are searching for “email marketing”, they’d better find some awesome and recent content on… wait for it… wait for it… I promise it’s worth the wait… on email marketing! You didn’t see it coming, did you?

Let’s assume for a moment that some random site already has great content, how does it go about introducing the newsletter to a new visitor?

One way to do it is to have a subscription form on each page. After you place it there, all you have to do is wait and hope your visitors will be interested enough to subscribe. Tempting, right?

Yet there is a better way. We employ our own PadiAct, a tool that uses behavioral targeting for offering a newsletter invitation at the best time and place (on a certain website, that is; it isn’t stalking people all over the web!).

3. The Behavioral Targeting

How does PadiAct work? Basically, it looks at what visitors are doing on a website, and it shows a newsletter invitation to those more likely to become long-term subscribers and leads. For example, someone reading 5 articles is more likely to become a subscriber than one reading only one. And someone spending 5 minutes on a website is more likely to become a lead than someone spending 5 seconds.

Now, PadiAct doesn’t do everything on it’s own, we have complete control on our campaigns, and so do our clients with their campaigns. We can personalize everything, so we choose different options for each of our various campaigns. And when it comes to SEO, we target visitors taking into account the keyword they searched in order to arrive on our site.

This way, we can personalize our subscription invitations. For example, someone who searched for “A/B testing” will get a different message that someone who searched for “lead generation”. And if we want, we can time each message differently, because on PadiAct you can choose after how many seconds/pages a certain message appears.

However, the timing is a particularly sensitive issue when it comes to pop-ups. Let me explain. Because you (or rather PadiAct) already know how each visitor arrived on your website, you might be inclined to time your pop-up message one second after those visitors appeared on your site. If that’s the case, please take a deep breath and reconsider.

Why?

Well, first of all, the pop-ups that appear right after you entered a site are really annoying and can make visitors avoid your business.

Second, if the visitors don’t get a chance to see anything, how would they know if they want to subscribe or not? Best case scenario, they will just close the pop-up and forget about your newsletter altogether.

And third, inviting everyone with a pop-up is even worst than just having a subscription form on each page. It’s like having a party and inviting everyone on Facebook to come – it can only end with a huge mess.

4. The Newsletter

After people subscribe, we use SEO to further personalize your newsletters. As we already know what attracts users to our website, we build different lists based on common interests (the search keywords), and send them different newsletters.

For example, the newsletter written especially for people interested in SEO will emphasize the latest articles on the subject – with big headlines, pictures and an abstract. All the other articles will be presented only with a headline and a link to the website.

Also, we add social media buttons to make it easy for subscribers to share our newsletter. One thing to keep in mind is that people share interesting and useful things. So we keep our messages away from selling propositions. Instead, we use white papers, cool resources, how-to articles, videos and other free but useful content.

5. Repeat and improve

The way to a successful email campaign using SEO is constantly improving it by trying new things. After we finished a campaign and measured the results, we try split testing our subscription invitations and see if we can get better results the second time. Or we simply add more or different keywords.

Did you find this article useful? What is your experience with email campaigns based on SEO? Please tell me your opinion in the comments below.

How to Use SEO and Behavioral Targeting to Generate More Leads is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

Search Marketing Does NOT Equal to Marketing

Tomatoa — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:40:53 +0000

As I was browsing last night, I came across two familiar words: marketing & advertising. Like a lot of people, I wasn’t able to tell their obvious differences right away, and to be honest, I almost believed they are one and the same and interchangeable.

So, I ended up gooling the difference between them, and here is a quote I found from about.com:

Advertising is a single component of the marketing process. It’s the part that involves getting the word out concerning your business, product, or the services you are offering…The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement…

The complete article can be found here.

After reading the article, another question popped into my head: Why do so many business owners think search marketing IS marketing?

To me, search marketing, like advertising, is just another component of the big marketing pie. But there are so many business owners out there who believe that once they started a PPC or SEO campaign, their marketing effort is completed.

This is a very dangerous idea to have!

Taking examples from the quote above, a complete marketing plan requires market research, product pricing, etc. Similarly, search marketing plans should be teamed with website optimization, identifying ones unique value proposition, competitor analysis and much more.

For example, if a business offers very limited products, has bad pricing, non user-friendly website, and so on, it doesn’t matter if PPC and SEO can the business the most relevant traffic with high purchase intent, the business will probably not make as much sales as they expected.

Business owners have to understand the fact that SEO is only responsible for bringing relevant traffic to the website through improving the website’s position on Google’s SERP. Whatever the visitors choose to do once they reach the site has nothing to do with SEO.

PPC might have a little more influence on the visitor behaviors by using its 70-character text content. But again, they are only 70 characters, don’t expect them to sell the product for you.

So, who’s responsible for selling the product? The business owner!

Every business owner, before entering a search marketing contract, have to make sure their sites are running efficiently, having good content which provides all the information that visitors might be looking for, user friendly and offering great products (at least have enough content on the site to persuade visitors that they offer great products.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer of search marketing and it is definitely an excellent (and cost efficient) way to bring in traffic or “get the words out”, but don’t mistaken it as a magical tool that would do all the MARKETING works for you.

Even the world’s best PPC practitioner can’t help you sell a bag of trash with just 70 characters, unless they are trash from Kim Kardashian. (I know, bad celebrity choice for this joke. Next time I will use Snooki…better?)

Search Marketing Does NOT Equal to Marketing is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

How to Properly Manage Exact Match Keywords in AdWords

Tomatoa — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:07:34 +0000

Today’s short article is going be a quick tip on, as you may have already guessed from the title, how to properly manage an exact match type keyword list.

This sounds like a no brainer, doesn’t it?

Actually, it usually is a no brainer especially when you are creating your keyword list from scratch and having exact match keywords is as easy as…duh…setting the keyword match type as exact. But many times, we create exact match type keywords by picking out specific search queries that perform exceptionally well compare to other search queries that are triggered by a phrase or broad match type keywords. Adding these well performed search queries as separate exact match type keywords allows us to manage their bids more efficiently and we can even create targeted ads that are specially catered for them.

For example, let’s say I have this keyword “electric guitar” in phrase match as one of my keywords in my Electric Guitar ad group. When I pulled the search query report, I discovered that four search queries had triggered my keyword. They are:

electric guitar lessons
buy electric guitar
electric guitar for sale
electric guitar bags

Out of these for search queries, I then realized that the search query “buy electric guitar” gives me the most conversions and has much better ROI compares to the others but is at a lower than optimal position on the Google SERP. The logical thing to do is to raise the bid to get more clicks, right?

Well, the search queries are all tied to one single keyword, I can’t really raise the position of one search query without raising the others, so what I can do here is to add a new exact match type keyword “buy electric guitar” to a new ad group, let’s call the ad group Buy Electrical Guitar.

Most people would just stop here and call it a day, but that’s not all!

After creating the new keyword and ad group, now I have two keywords that can be potentially triggered when someone searches for buy electric guitar – “electric guitar” in phrase match and [buy electric guitar] in exact match.

How do I know which keyword will be triggered?

Well, I can’t and Google doesn’t give a clear answer for this kind of situation. So, the best solution to this is to add the negative exact match type keyword [buy electric guitar] to the ad group Electric Guitar. This way, when someone searches for buy electric guitar, only the exact match keyword will be triggered and the phrase match keyword will be blocked by the negative keyword.

Doing this allows you to have precise control over which keyword you want to be triggered, and isn’t the whole purpose of adding exact match type keywords to have more control?

Something to think about, isn’t it (or not)?

How to Properly Manage Exact Match Keywords in AdWords is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

Types of URLs that Might Cause Error When Excluding From Content Network

Tomatoa — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:19:23 +0000

When running Automatic Placement campaigns, it’s important to filter out domains or pages where your ads are showing and gaining clicks but not getting any conversion on a regular basis.

You can find out which site your ads have been showing by visiting the Networks Tab and click on the “show details” option right beside Automatic Placements.

AdWords UI Networks Tab

You will be given a list like the one below.

Automatic Placements Domain Level URL List

You can see that I’ve already excluded some of the domains from the list of sites that I wish to show my ads on.

The image above is only showing listings on domain level. You can view which pages within a domain your ads had been shown on by using the See URL List drop down menu. The page level URL list will look like this:

Automatic Placements Page Level URL List

Looks very similar to the domain level listings, but are broken down further into individual pages under a domain.

Here is the tricky part (and the purpose of this article…yes…after 160 words and three images, I’m finally getting to the point…): You can only exclude URLs that are at most two-level deep!

What does that mean? For example:

www.domain.com/levelone/leveltwo (this is fine)

www.domain.com/levelone/leveltwo/levelthree (this won’t work)

Now, something even trickier!!

Even though AdWords only allows URLs that are two-level deep to be excluded, but if the URL has a .xxx (xxx can be php, html, jsp, etc) in the end, then the two-level rule does not apply, for example:

www.domain.com/levelone/leveltwo/levelthree/level four/levelfive.html (this will still work…go figure)

So, the next time you are excluding URLs, make sure you filter out the ones that wouldn’t work, otherwise you will get an error message saying “Placement URLs must be provided in a valid URL format” and you must remove those invalid URLs from your to-be-excluded list before you can complete the exclusion process.

Types of URLs that Might Cause Error When Excluding From Content Network is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

(Not So New) Google Policy Update That Most Advertiser Should Be Aware Of

Tomatoa — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:00:20 +0000

Last year, Google introduced a new policy that requires landing pages which engage in information harvesting to include a privacy policy on the website. Advertisers that don’t comply with this new policy may run the risk of having their websites suspended by AdWords.

There are three requirements that advertisers have to follow under this new policy change:

1. Clear, accessible disclosure before visitors submit personal information

Our existing policy requires you to clearly describe how any personal information you solicit will be used. Soon, we’ll require that your description must also be easily accessible before site visitors submit their details.

2. Option to discontinue direct communications

In the same description of how personal information will be used, you’ll also be required to describe how people can opt out of future emails, phone calls, or other direct communications.

3. SSL when collecting payment and certain financial and personal information

Many websites use what are known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections to encrypt sensitive information that travels between the user’s browser and the website’s servers. To help ensure user safety, AdWords policy will require all advertisers to use SSL when collecting payments and certain financial and personal information (like bank account and social security numbers).

The following personal and financial information are covered by the new policy:

Full name
Email address
Mailing address
Phone number
National identity, pension, social security, tax ID, health care, or driver’s license number
Mother’s maiden name or birth date in addition to any of the above information

In addition, AdWords policy will require the following information to be transmitted securely over an SSL (https:) connection:

Credit and debit card numbers
Bank and investment account numbers
Checking account numbers
Wire transfer numbers
National identity, pension, social security, tax ID, health care, or driver’s license number

For example, if your landing pages require visitor to submit their email address in order for them to download either demo software or whitepaper, etc, you better watch out!

Why do I choose to bring up this old post now?

Well, even though this “new” policy has been out for almost a year, but Google hasn’t been strictly enforcing it (yet). Once in a while there will a be a few innocent advertisers that got their sites suspended from advertising and most of them couldn’t figure out what the problem was because Google never made any big announcement about this new policy. AdWords Help certainly does not help in this case (ironically)! Most advertisers will just get referred to the general policy page without any clear indication to which policy they’ve violated.

So I’m bring this up as a warning to all lead generation advertiser out there, if you see a big red “SITE SUSPENDED” status in your account, this can very possibly be the reason.

Also, Google follows a very strict guideline on what they deem acceptable or not, so here is a tip for those of you that are in a hurry to implement this new update:

Have a link to your privacy policy page near the “submit button” of your form (I got this one from talking to a Google representative. Even though I already have the privacy policy tab on the very top of every page, she still think it’s not visible enough and required me to include another link somewhere around the submit button. Oh wait, did I mention Google is very strict?)

(Not So New) Google Policy Update That Most Advertiser Should Be Aware Of is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!

Advanced Keyword Bidding Strategies for AdWords

Sahaj — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:30:18 +0000

AdWords advertisers are often faced with the challenge of determining whether or not to advertise for their AdWords campaigns keywords which have clicks and costs, but no conversions. Without knowing the value of the keywords, an advertiser can unwittingly:

Overbid on specific keyword terms – Not knowing its value might lead to wasted advertising dollars and unqualified traffic.
Underbid or pause specific keywords – Not knowing its value might lead to limited exposure for advertised keywords, resulting in missed conversions and revenue

This article discusses two options to determine the value of these keywords and better manage your AdWords campaigns, resulting in qualified traffic, conversions and high ROI. The two options are:

Tracking Engagement Metrics goals using Google Analytics and AdWords
AdWords Search Funnel report

Tracking Engagement Metrics goals using Google Analytics and AdWords

Google Analytics has improved its goal tracking, allowing advertisers to track Time On Site and Page/Visit. These metrics highlight the level of user engagement on your website for the keywords you are advertising through AdWords and other search engines. These metrics can be used to determine the value of the keywords you are advertising for.

The advantage of Goals is that they can be imported into Google AdWords. That means that you don’t have to access your analytics data separately to determine the performance of keywords. Secondly, seeing the keywords (along with CPC and other visitor engagement metrics) tracked as goals allows you to more easily determine your keyword performance and to manage bids.

Step 1: Ensure your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts are linked. Check the following link for more info: http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55507

Step 2: Determine the base line or reference value to be set as goals for these engagement metrics using:

Your own top performing keywords’ engagement metric values
Website averages
Industry averages (obtained from Google or 3rd party data)

Also, determine the dollar value for the respective goals, based on your business data.

Step 3: Log in to your Google Analytics and select the Goals tab. You will find the various goal types. Google Analytics gives you the option to set up multiple goals, so you can set both Time On Site and Page/Visit, and their goal values as previously determined.

Google Analytics Goals

Step 4: Log into your AdWords account, click on Tools and Analysis, and select Conversions.

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking

Step 5: Under Conversions, select Import from Google Analytics and import the respective goals into AdWords.

Importing Goals in to AdWords

AdWords pulls data from the day you started importing Analytics goal data. This means that you won’t get any previous (historical) data. Now you can use the imported data to determine which keywords brought in qualified traffic by analyzing the engagement goals – Time On Site and Page/Visit.

In general, the higher these metric values, the more valuable the keywords are. But this may not always be the case, depending upon your business and website objectives. So verify them; use this data wisely to determine the value of the keywords with no conversions, and bid effectively.

Search Funnel Report

Google AdWords attributes conversions to the last keyword, and doesn’t attribute any conversion value to other keywords that helped lead to the final conversion. Let’s say you offer B2B lead generation and marketing automation services. Business buyers spend time researching for their needs and finding solutions to their problems, using multiple search queries over a period of time before contacting the vendor.

In the example below, the buyer starts his research with a general search query based on his needs/problems, discovers marketing automation, investigates further, and finally converts for the keyword phrase Marketo Consultant:

lead generation best practices
marketing automation
marketing automation software comparison
marketo marketing automation software
marketo consultant

AdWords attributes the conversion to the last keyword only, which is marketo consultant. As an advertiser, you will tend to bid high on the keyword that converted based on AdWords data. What about keywords that have generated clicks and costs or impressions, but no conversions?

How do you determine their value and bid more effectively?

Search funnel report helps advertisers understand how your target market searches for products and/or services, offering detailed conversion funnel data. You can use this report to determine the value of numerous keywords within your campaigns that didn’t generate a direct conversion, but did assist in the conversion process.

These reports also provide valuable information to help you understand your target market’s buying cycle (not discussed in this article). Following are the steps to download and analyze search funnel reports to help determine whether or not to advertise on non-converting keywords.

Step 1: Click on Tools and Analysis within your AdWords account. Select Conversions, and then click on Search Funnels.

Google AdWords Search Funnel

Step 2: Click on Assisted Conversions within the search funnel navigation.

Google AdWords Search Funnel Assisted Conversions

Step 3: You have two tabs – Click-Assisted Conversions and Impression- Assisted Conversions. Click-Assisted Conversions are keywords with clicks on your ads that assisted in conversions, while Impression-Assisted Conversions are keywords with impressions with views of your ads that assisted in a conversion.

AdWords Search Funnel Click-Assisted Conversions

Set the report detail to display keyword level data, and select the Click-Assisted Conversions tab. Also set your conversion history window to 30, 60 or 90 days, depending upon the buying cycle of your products/services. If you are a B2B advertiser with long buying cycles, then chose the appropriate date range. The report shows:

Keywords, along with their match types.
Last click conversions – The last keyword that a visitor searched for and clicked on your ad prior to converting.
Last click conversion value – The actual value of the conversion generated by the keyword.
Assisted Conversions – The keywords that either initiated or aided in the buying cycle.
Assisted Conversion Value – This is the actual conversion value (set by you or dynamically captured), multiplied by the number of assisted conversions.

Download this report and filter out last click conversions, since you want to determine the value of the keywords that didn’t have any conversions. Sort the keywords by Assisted Conversions. Determine how often these keywords assisted in conversions, and their conversion values.

Determine the keywords’ cost per click (CPC), and compare them with their assisted conversion values to determine if your bids are optimal. Use this as a reference, and decrease or increase your bids accordingly. Repeat the same process, this time selecting Impression Assisted Conversions.

Impression assisted conversions have value, as the keywords were actually searched for by your target market, although they didn’t click on respective ads. Determining why these keywords and their respective ads didn’t get clicked can help you gain insight into the purchasing behavior of your buyer, and to improve your ad copy for the related keyword terms.

Also, use the impression assisted conversion values to bid on keywords that have assisted impression but no clicks, instead of pausing or removing them without a proper analysis.

Please note that search funnel report only includes keywords that aided in a conversion. So if you found keywords missing in your search funnel report that were present in your AdWords account with costs, that means those keywords didn’t aid in any conversion.

Also, ensure that you have already checked these keywords’ engagement metrics for Analytics goals. Now that you have checked your keywords against goals and assisted conversion data, you can remove keywords that are costing you advertising dollars, but not helping to generate conversions.

This approach should enable you to more effectively manage keyword bids, helping realize better returns on the advertising dollars.

Advanced Keyword Bidding Strategies for AdWords is a post from Search Engine Marketing Pros
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC and SEO services. If you need help with your search engine optimization projects or with pay per click management and/or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We've helped companies rank on the first page of Google in a short period of time for highly competitive terms, and we've reduced paid advertising cost by as much as 148% while increased AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us rank your website on the first page, too!