09.06.07

Tracking multiple lead sources contributing to a sale

Posted in New to PPC at 9:25 pm by PPC Guy

Many marketers track performance and revenue based on the final sale, but overlook or don’t know how to track all campaigns leading up to that initial sale. For example, let’s say your company is well saturated on the web. You have , , , as well as SEO campaigns. As you know, there is much overlap between the above advertising channels. Analyzing each channel individually may not be favorable for certain channels, however before you start cutting your budget in curtain areas you should investigate into how each channel contributes to the performance of another channel. You may find that certain channels that you discontinued a while ago were actually exposing your products to a wide audience that wasn’t quite ready to complete the sales process. This is most apparent in banner and contextual networks.

Tracking multiple online channels that is very easy with Omniture. Omniture provides a plug in called that performs this. The integration is quick and easy and usually only involves updating your s_code.js file. You may have to request the updated javascript code from your account representative in order to implement this.

04.18.07

Google, the easiest pay per click advertising system

Posted in New to PPC at 3:19 pm by PPC Guy

MSN and Yahoo Search Marketing have much catching up to do if they are going to put a dent on Google’s strong hold on the search industry. Although MSN and Yahoo are working on enhancing their back end systems, they are not making updates as quickly as Google.

Here are just a few of the updates that Google has made in the past couple of month to .

03.13.07

Efficient way to create pay per click accounts

Posted in New to PPC at 4:20 pm by PPC Guy

Setting up a account should be a quick process. In addition, to setting up your account through the traditional , most pay per click vendors have a which allows you to quickly make account changes. This is extremely useful when with over 100 keywords. Here are a that will help you from scratch.

03.07.07

Midterm break for the Pay Per Click Guy

Posted in New to PPC at 12:44 am by PPC Guy

I’m taking a little break from land to study for my midterm which is this Friday. Please check back in a couple of days.

02.20.07

10 Good practices for starting a new Pay Per Click campaign

Posted in New to PPC at 10:53 pm by PPC Guy

Here’s a check list of best practices when creating a new campaign.

  1. Turn off content match.
  2. Set a
  3. Remove counties you cannot sell your product or service to
  4. Enable
  5. Use Google’s
  6. Create separate logins for different users
  7. Use , , and
  8. Create ads that correspond with your verbiage
  9. Create a campaign or and bid on your company name
  10. Implement in your adgroups: Here’s a list to get you started.
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02.15.07

How to get a better quality score in Adwords

Posted in New to PPC at 11:00 pm by PPC Guy

Google is updating their for by the end of this month. This is part of a series of updates that Google has been slowly implementing for the past two years. The update this time around will not add new elements to the ad ranking score, as much as change the weight that each component receives in the scoring, said Nicholas Fox, a senior business product manager at Google.

Google’s Quality score was previously based on keyword (CTR), ad text relevance, the historical performance of the keyword. Now Google is introducing the user’s experience on the landing page as another factor of Quality score.

This means that Google is going to be placing more weight on . Many advertisers are upset because they don’t understand how this will impact their advertising efforts. What this simply means is that you’ll have to invest more time in creating quality messages and landing pages. Your ad will have to be relevant to the search term and your landing page will have to promote a positive user response. A few tips to accomplish this are:

  • Place keywords into the ad text
  • Use the same keywords and messages you used on your Google ad on your landing page.
  • Test messages to get a high Click through rate

You can check you quality score by enabling the for your adgroups. You can select this column by clicking ‘Customize Columns’ in one of your ad groups. The quality label will give you a general indicator of how well your keywords are performing. Remember, the better your , the less you’ll and the higher your will .

01.17.07

Hiring the Right Pay Per Click Person

Posted in New to PPC at 10:34 pm by PPC Guy

Finding the right person for a position is difficult regardless what position you are trying to fill. This position becomes even more difficult to fill when this person will be responsible for spending your money online. Below are a few tips that will help you identify your ideal Pay Per Click candidate.

Experienced - When reviewing the resume make sure that the person mentions what sites he or she has managed. You also want to know for how long he or she has managed this account(s). Maintenance of an existing account is much easier than setting up an account from scratch, troubleshooting changes and optimizing an account. Three months of experience may not be enough. Would you let an accountant with only three months of experience handle our taxes?

Self Motivated – Once you optimize your campaigns and get an acceptable ROI, there are many other areas that could use improvement. A few of these areas are message testing, site optimization, invalid click investigation, keyword expansion and automation.

Analytical – You need someone that can plot trends in the marketplace, analyze each individual keyword for profitability and make sound estimates based on historical data. There are many things that can and will change in the marketplace including new competitors, seasonal traffic, invalid click activity and many other factors. At the end of the day you need to troubleshoot and maintain an acceptable ROI.

Terminology – People that are familiar with the industry will use industry related words in their resume, cover letter and in the interview. I’ve interviewed a few people that claim that they have previously managed a account, and when I ask them which engine they managed they hesitate for a few seconds and then reply “I managed a Google account.” People that know the industry sound confident and would immediately answer “Google Adwords” or “Adwords”. If possible, involve someone that is familiar with the terminology in an interview. Someone that actually managed the account previously would be ideal.