Archive for September 2011

I recently caught up with Andrew Webber of SEO Maverick to talk about PPC Advertising. Andrew has some great insights into how PPC (pay per click) works and how to maximise the benefits for your business.

What is PPC advertising?

PPC stands for “pay per click” and is the pricing model that most search engine marketing ads are sold through. Advertisers who promote their products and services using pay per click ads are only charged if a potential customer clicks on one of their advertisements.

How is PPC different from other forms of advertising?

Pay per click advertising is one of the most targeted and measurable forms of advertising. There are not many forms of advertising that allow you to put your ads in front of potential customers at the exact time they are actively doing research or looking to make a purchase.

What are it's advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages: Highly targeted and extremely measurable. Easily see return on investment, overall ad spend, and which ads are performing the best.

Disadvantages: Can be time consuming to set up correctly

Is Adwords the only PPC provider you need to worry about?

If I was just starting out I would absolutely focus just on Google Adwords first as Google has around 90% market share in Australia for search engines. The return on investment for setting up a campaign on the Bing/Yahoo platform wouldn’t be there so I would focus all of my efforts on the Adwords platform to begin with.

Obviously once you start seeing some success in your Adwords campaign, then you can start to look at the Bing/Yahoo platform and see whether you can make some inroads in that market.

Facebook also offers PPC advertising and can be a very useful platform.

Who else offers PPC? How do they differ from Adwords?

Bing/Yahoo are the other major provider in the search marketing space with their AdCenter platform. Their interface and tools are not as user friendly as Adwords at this stage.

The Facebook PPC platform differs as it allows you to segment your ads based on some really detailed demographic, age and interests information. This means you can target your ads directly to very niche markets based on things you know they are interested in.

Can every business benefit from PPC advertising?

I think so. Whether it be for lead generation, selling a product or service, or general branding I think most businesses can use it as a low cost solution to marketing and customer acquisition.

Which types of businesses does it suit most?

Pay per click suits the big markets like insurance, banking, finance and real estate as it is easy to measure costs vs return on investment.

But there is definitely a large scope for smaller local businesses to put together PPC campaigns such as dentists, physios or other health products that have a long average customer life cycle.

Is it difficult to manage an Adwords account? Could the average small business owner do it successfully?

No it isn’t particularly difficult. It takes a bit of forward planning but most businesses know their markets very well and intuitively know what types of things their customers would be searching for.

The first thing they should do is take a look at their analytics and see what keywords are currently driving traffic to their website, and then plug some of these into the Google keyword tool to discover some other variations.

I think most business owners can easily create their own campaign. I would recommend opening up a spreadsheet and writing down all the different product and services and organise them into common themes or clusters of related products and keywords.

Start small – but keep adding to this list as you go along and you have some seriously good segmentation and data in no time.

What aspect of managing an account takes the most time?

The initial keyword research and segmenting these keywords into small ad groups is definitely the most time consuming part. From there, making sure you test different bid prices, match types, negative keywords and ad copy is what takes time.

Once an account and campaigns are set up, can they be left to run on their own or do they have to be maintained?

Generally it is advisable to keep an eye on your bid prices to make sure you’re not paying too much for your clicks. Also testing new ad copy variations can have a significant impact on click through rate and conversions.

How much should a business expect to pay to have their account managed by someone else?

Percentage of ad spend or a flat management fee are the most common forms of account management fees. It really depends on the scale and complexity of the campaign and the value to the client.

What benefits can an Adwords professional deliver that a regular business owner can't?

Setting the campaign up in a structured way using the correct match types, ad variations and tight keyword groups. Having the knowledge on how to structure a campaign and use different targeting parameters can give a much higher ROI than if a business owner set it up themselves.

I’ve seen several businesses set up campaigns with one ad group, one ad copy and 500 keywords. We separated this into much tighter ad groups around keyword themes and were able to increase click through rates, lower cost per clicks and increase conversions within the first day of running the ads.

Is there a minimum ad spend recommended?

A few hundred dollars to test the market is usually a good place to start for smaller businesses. There are plenty of free adwords coupons out there that can give you $50, $75 or even $100 to start off your campaigns.

I find its usually a good idea to use a few hundred dollars just to test the market to see what the general competitiveness is and what the most popular keywords are going to be.

What is 'Quality Score?' What is it used for?

Quality score measures the relevance of the landing page to the keyword and ad copy. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your costs and the better your ad position.

The quality score is calculated every time your keyword triggers one of your ads and is determined by several factors. These are just a few:

• Landing page quality
• Historical click through rates
• Keyword relevance to ad copy and landing page

Google has a great resource on quality score and how it impacts your campaigns
performance.

How can you improve your Quality Score?

Having smaller and more specific ad groups with less keywords that match closely with the ad copy. Creating specific landing pages for each keyword group can dramatically improve quality score which in turn will lower your cost per click and increase your ad position.

What's the difference between Google's display network and their regular search results ads?

This page outlines extremely well the differences in Google’s different advertising options. Here is my take:

Display network as defined by Google: “Text, image, video, or rich media ads are targeted based on themes in your keyword list, rather than specific keywords”

The regular search network results are the sponsored links you see on a Google search results page and are ads targeted based on what search terms users type in.

Do the two mediums require a different strategy?

It’s always advisable to run separate campaigns - one for just search, and the other for the content network. The content network allows for interactive ads such as videos and images that are not offered on the search network.

Obviously the ads that you will use will be quite different depending on what you are trying to achieve.

What kind of businesses/ads are best targeted to internet devices?

Local businesses such as restaurants or cafes as many local searches on mobile devices are done when looking specifically for a local service

Is location an important targeting factor to consider? How canlocation targeting be used to improve a campaign?

Absolutely. Having the ads only displayed for your particular area is vital. You can do this by city, suburb, state or GPS region. This way you can create broader themed campaigns around a keyword that are only displayed to people who are searching from a given location.

This means you don’t need to rely as much on keyword location modifiers such as “adelaide cafe, melbourne cafe” to have your ads displayed. Instead you can buy “cafe” and have it geotargeted to anybody searching for that who is located in Adelaide.

Is it easy to track PPC performance?

Extremely easy. In Google Adwords automatically ads a tracking string which makes it easy to see the data in Google analytics. The Google URL builder is something you can use to track your campaigns as well – a very useful little tool.

In competitive markets, which aspects of PPC advertising become more difficult to manage successfully?

Managing bid prices and working out the optimum amount to pay clicks based on your conversion rate and return on investment as opposed to the click through rates.

Are landing pages important for improving PPC performance?

Extremely important. A lot of PPC campaigns drive visitors just to the homepage with no real clear call to action for that specific search.

Having specific landing pages tailored to particular keyword groups that heavily promote the call to action can improve conversion and ROI dramatically.

How should your website be set up to maximise performance?

As mentioned above I think having specific ad groups for related keyword groups with several different versions of ad copy can have a huge impact. Custom landing pages for different groups of products or services is extremely important in maximising performance as well.

What can you do to reduce competition?

More specific ads, geotargeting and use negative keywords.

What are five things small business owners can do to best take advantage of PPC advertising?

1. Use one of the free advertising vouchers from Google
2. Set up a small campaign based on a couple of local keywords and use to determine market size, competitive and potential – then use this to power your SEO efforts
3. Use it to drive customers to your site and sign them up to your mailing list
4. Use in conjunction with your Google places page to dominate your local area
5. Start right away!

How does PPC relate to SEO?

PPC can be excellent for researching volume, competitiveness and cost of a particular market or keyword. You can use this real data to determine which keywords you should target in your SEO campaign.

How do PPC and SEO costs and returns compare?

PPC gives immediate returns and can show exact ROI numbers - very quickly and easily. The returns are definite but you are limited to the markets you are currently competing and buying ads in.

SEO returns are harder to quantify, longer term and more closely tied with your branding and strategy. However, it is a more defensible strategy as if you have strong organic traffic not just from Google but from other websites, this can improve brand value, increase customer retention and allow you to charge higher prices.

I don’t think one is better than the other – they are both different ways to market your business!

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Thanks very much to Andrew Webber for agreeing to be interviewed. You can learn more about Andrew's company; SEO Maverick at their Company Profile in our Internet Marketing Directory.

I recently caught up with Chris Schwarz from The Search Guys to talk about Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Chris struck me as someone who really knows his stuff and he was able to give me really great answers to all my questions. [my questions are in bold]

What is PPC advertising?

• Form of online advertising with a cost model of an advertiser paying per click and directing traffic to a website

How is PPC different from other forms of advertising?

• It’s more targeted
• The Pay Per Click cost model is unique

What are it's advantages and disadvantages?

• Advantages: Highly targeted, super quick results
• Disadvantages: Can be expensive, can have a lower ROI (than SEO), easy to set up but difficult to master

Is Adwords the only PPC provider you need to worry about?

• No, I'm sure there’s hundreds of PPC networks out there. Adwords is 100 times larger than all of them combined though.

Who else offers PPC? How do they differ from Adwords?

• Both Facebook and Linkedin offer PPC which are content targeted ads as opposed to keyword targeted. This usually results in a lower click through rate relative to Adwords.
• Search advertising is direct response marketing (deleted bit about facebook being branding, it can be direct response as well. The Adwords display network is about branding)
• Facebook ads work better for social advertising, for example gaining likes to a Fan Page rather than directing people to a website, then those people can be marketed to later from the fan page

Can every business benefit from PPC advertising?

• Not right for every business.
• Products that have low margins are difficult
• Competitive markets are difficult because the market is saturated. In these markets it comes down to being more intelligent and innovative than your competitors. We’ve seen businesses change their whole business model just so they can get that extra 1% margin and nudge out their competitors.

Which types of businesses does it suit most?

• Higher margin business will generally have better success than low margin business (all else being equal)
• Business who are not afraid to try new marketing strategies

Is it difficult to manage an Adwords account? Could the average small business owner do it successfully?

• It varies greatly.
• A large E-commerce store with hundreds of products is much more difficult than a small business with only a few products.
• Small businesses owner’s can take over the PPC account once set up with some training. Handing over a bigger account is much more difficult.

What aspect of managing an account takes the most time?

• Structuring the campaign, creating the ads and selecting the right keywords
• Testing and optimisation is also ongoing

How much should a business expect to pay to have their account managed by someone else?

• $300-$400 / month for a small account (typically 50-100 keywords)
• Lead generation websites are generally cheaper, while E-commerce site are more expensive. There’s no upper limit if it works.
• Adwords has a large number of ‘products’ such as the display network and remarketing, a large account manager can continually test and optimise these other Google Adword products making them have a higher management fee

What benefits can an Adwords professional deliver that a regular business owner can't?

• Better campaigns.
• Years of research and experience.
• There’s much more trial and error for the small business owner.
• We’ve found that most business owners will set up their campaigns from a ‘one-dimensional’ approach and not really understanding the Adwords platform as a multi-dimensional marketing tool. They always miss the simple settings as well (turn of display network in your search campaigns!)
• There’s lots of information out there for those who want to learn, Google offers lots of support too

Is there a minimum ad spend recommended?

• $25/day at least ($750- $1000/month)- less makes results take longer to come back.
• Adwords advertising is entirely a data driven problem. You want to get data back as soon as possible so you can improve your ads and campaigns.
• The same numbers apply if someone was doing it themselves.

What is 'Quality Score?' What is it used for?

• Quality score is a measure from 1-10 of the quality of a keyword in relation to the rest of a campaign.
• The purpose of quality score is to make the ad experience better for the user.
• Quality Score is the most important part of an Adwords campaign.
• Business owners don't tend to know what quality score is and will overlook this very important variable
  

Why is it important to have a good 'Quality Score?'

• Google will reward you for a high Quality Score with lower costs per click and higher as positions
• If you have a higher quality score than a competitor, you can effectively have a higher ad position AND be paying less per click

How can you improve your Quality Score?

• Improve the click through rate
• Improve the relevance of the keyword to the ad and the landing page
• Structure your entire Adwords account more logically to be mirror your website structure.
• Everything affects quality score. Campaign and landing page relevance and keywords are the most important.

What's the difference between Google's display network and their regular search results ads?

• Search results are displayed on Google's SERPs and their partner’s websites e.g. Hotfrog.
• The Display Network allows advertisers to deliver text ads, image ads and video ads to third party websites which have elected to be a part of the network.
• Google delivers most of its ads through the display network
• For example, ads popping up over Youtube videos are ads on the display network
• There’s also mobile ads which are shorter text ads and they can be shown in various different place including in games

Do the two mediums require a different strategy?

• Yes. User intents differ so our strategies must differ. Search is more targeted so you can target your ad to their intent.
• Ads on the display network are targeted by the content of the page. They generally have a lower click through rate. These ads are generally more useful for a branding strategy- similar to Facebook and Linkedin.
• The display network targets ads either by keywords on the page or by choosing a ‘theme’ of website to target. Website themes are assigned by Google.
• Trial and error to decide which is best.
• It’s important to test - measure everything. If a website is not delivering well you choose to not have your ads display there
• You can also use ‘negative keywords’ or 'negative sites' to identify websites you don’t want to have your ads appear on.
• There are three keyword targeting options, ‘broad,’ ‘phrase’ and ‘exact’ match. We never use the traditional broad match for our keywords, there's plenty of neat tricks you can use by combining keyword targeting options.
  

What kind of businesses/ads are best targeted to mobile internet devices?

• Local businesses.
• If you are going to send traffic to a website on a mobile device then it should be mobile optimised.

Is location an important targeting factor to consider? How can location targeting be used to improve a campaign?

• Yes, very much so. There are four targeting settings- location, language, device and network
• You should target the area where your audience is
• You also might use different strategies for different regions, e.g. different capital cities. Maybe Melbourne has an event coming up that you can incorporate into your ads.
• Location targeting is ultra specific, you can go down to the suburb and even the street level
• Location targeting is a good way to get more highly targeted leads as well as a higher click through rate (CTR) and higher quality score which leads to a lower cost per click (CPC)

Is it easy to track PPC performance?

• Yes. Very easy to track everything.
• Tracking codes can sometimes be difficult for E-commerce sites.
• Third party payment systems, such as Paypal, make it difficult to track the user throughout the payment process
• Tracking is available within your Adwords account which can also be hooked into Google Analytics for more comprehensive data
• You should analyse your data regularly, we analyse ours weekly

In competitive markets, which aspects of PPC advertising become more difficult to manage successfully?

• Adwords is a hugely complex, multi level and multi variable optimisation problem
• In competitive markets it becomes important to optimise every aspect of a campaign to get the highest return for the lowest cost.
• Its more mathematical

Are landing pages important for improving PPC performance?

• Yes.
• There are two parts to the equation, the website side and ad side
• Many things can be done on both sides to improve the ROI of the campaign
• On the website side its all about conversion rate.
• You should always send traffic to a specific landing page rather than the home page. This could be a product or category page or a sales page. I prefer to use a simple landing page and stay away from long form sales pages.
• You can also do split testing to test different ads against each other, you can use third party software for this
• Google also has a service called Google website optimiser which allows you to send traffic to two different variations of a page and determine which page produced the best conversion rate

How should your website be set up to maximise performance?

• Goals should be clearly defined
• Make sure the message on the website matches the ad

What can you do to reduce competition?

• Research your competitor’s offers and their ad copy
• Focus on improving your quality score

What are five things small business owners can do to best take advantage of PPC advertising?

1. Compelling offer and call to cation
2. Landing page the replicates the message
3. Conversion tracking setup
4. Keyword research using a keyword tool and/or competitive research software
5. Give it a shot! It's costing you more money not to try Adwords.
   

How does PPC relate to SEO?

• PPC is much more of an exact science. SEO is more weaved, more of an art form
• Google makes 80% of its revenue from Adwords

How do they complement each other?

• Keywords research. You can assess the profitability of keywords quickly using PPC then target them using SEO
• With both PPC and SEO success you can dominate a market
• They can steal profit from each other, i.e. someone can click on a paid ad even if you’re ranking well organically
• Having said that, I still think its a good idea to bid on brand keywords because they’re very cheap
• 'Ad Extensions' for Adwords allow you to get extra information into, and take up more space in the SERPs than you can get with an organic result. This can double your PPC CTR. There are four types:
• Site links to navigate to deeper pages from the results
• Google places linking
• Phone numbers
• Google shopping integration to give images of products in the search results

How do PPC and SEO costs and returns compare?

• It varies
• PPC has tighter margins and returns. It gets results quickly and is easy to measure.
• SEO is harder to measure but if you can do it well it results in much higher returns

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

• Re-marketing is an interesting feature that allows you to re-market to people who have already been to your website. This generally results in a higher conversion rate because they people are pre-qualified.
• Mobile ads can also include click-to-call phone numbers which are easy to track. One thing that can be more difficult to track is when people see your phone number in an ad or on your website and then call you, giving you no indication where they got your number from. It’s possible to get a dedicated phone number in order to track these types of leads. A separate number costs around $50 a month plus call costs – from our experience, for lead generation, phone calls leads from Adwords can be up to 50% of total leads.

End Interview

Thanks again to Chris for his generous donation of time and knowledge and thanks to The Search Guys for having me at their office. You can read more about The Search Guys' services at their company profile in our Internet Marketing Business Directory.

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