Pay-Per-Click Strategies for Search Engine Marketers - Part 5

We continue with our PPC special, talking to three very experienced pay-per-click operatives - Ammon Johns , Andrew Goodman from Page Zero Media and Jim Banks from Web Diversity who have all kindly agreed to share their knowledge. Continued from Part One , Part Two , Part 3 and Part 4.

Finally, we look at tips & tricks...

PD: The metrics are a fascinating area and you can dive very deep indeed in order to come up with a multitude of ROI scenarios. Reminds me of the old saying "half my advertising dollars are wasted, if only I knew which half". Well, on the web, you probably can know which half, at least as far as PPC is concerned.

OK. Onto the juicy stuff. Without giving the game away, what hot tips do you have for search engine marketers? How can they outperform the casual PPC advertiser?

AG: There are more variables involved in PPC than many realize. Maximizing your performance on all is a sure way to beat the casual advertiser.

But it must be admitted that in a competitive atmosphere, breaking apart from the pack is not easy. Indeed it may be rare.

You can "get ahead" of your competition with any of the following:

- money
- superior targeting / matching more keywords to more unique ads
- blood, sweat, toil and tears
- copywriting and special offers
- business fundamentals / differentiation / product development

There's no sugar-coating it. Businesses with good fundamentals can actually afford to use money to drive more traffic - in this case, by bidding higher and using a larger daily budget. And let's face it, that's probably the easiest route to take.

In noncompetitive areas, the road to pay-per-click success can also be fairly smooth, and you'll need less money to fuel the journey.

When you think about it, having more money to spend, or simply being "lucky" enough to be advertising into a less competitive niche, come back to business fundamentals.

All PPC advertisers - all entrepreneurs, for that matter - should read Jack Trout's Differentiate or Die, and Seth Godin's Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. It might not hurt to add Matt Ragas' The Power of Cult Branding to that list.

When all else fails... get out of the business you're in, or find a way to make it into a remarkable business rather than a very good one. Your allegiance to a particular product, industry, or way of doing things may well be holding you back.

Many of the businesses which limp along at break-even lack a profitable back-end-sales or lifetime-relationship component. They've relegated themselves to commodity status. As my father-in-law says about most any purchase (let's say central air conditioning or a cellphone plan): "Well now you've joined the club." Warren Buffett didn't take a big stake in Gillette for nothing... what a company... 4 Mach-3 blades to a pack for $9, ad nauseam. Yikes! That's got me thinking! If I could grow a decent beard I would! But since my wife doesn't let me a grow a beard, and since she bought me $200 worth of Clinique facial products a couple of years ago... well... suffice to say that even $200 worth runs out eventually, so in effect I've joined yet another club, and we're only talking about the neck up.

If your online buyers just make purchases without "joining the club," then what good are they to you? It's very stressful to have to make all those click charges up with one-time revenues. You'd be in much better shape if you could get more of them to join "your club." Of course, you'd better have a damn good reason for them to join. Some of my clients send out weekly product specials that are actually eagerly anticipated by their customers. If that doesn't sound like *your* business, maybe you should change industries!

If I had to choose a metaphor for a book about the "club" phenomenon, pharmaceutical-related images might not be too far off. Anyone doing online business right now can see how much money is being made from discount / direct meds. Repeat business is a given when you're talking about medication. If you stop taking it, the threat is, you'll go back to the way you were. Whether it's operating systems, drugs, or high-end intranets, the businesses that seem to break away from the pack are the ones that build a powerfully addictive quality right into the products. In the 1960's I believe they called it "planned obsolescence." If the shoe fits...

Without hampering any allegiances we have to our clients these are the tips we would dish out. Many of them would seem to be obvious, but it's surprising when you actually look at some competitive sectors how few of these are adopted.

However, the tips and techniques will be different according to the PPC you are using. I think it's the knowledge of the common ground and differences, as well as the allegiances the PPC's have and how many ads get shown that sort the great from the good and the lousy.

I'm going to give away (for now) one tip for each of the 3 main PPC's we use, being Google, Overture and Espotting.

Google Tip :

If you use Wordtracker to establish your keywords and you run a competition search. If the 24 hour number is greater than 100 you should both phrase match and exact match that keyword. If you only phrase match, then you will surely get the keyword locked out inside a day.

Overture Tip :

If you think of many combinations of a phrase, don't assume that all of them will be covered with the match Driver. There is often anomalies in the system and you can pick up the traffic for these variations at the minimum price. It's time consuming but very worth it.

Espotting Tip :

If you add your keywords using the bulk submission spreadsheet, then each gets allocated to it's own campaign. Ideal for tailoring the keyword/title/description or adding a tracking URL to each keyword, but a nightmare if you need to suspend the campaigns over the weekend.

I understand the reasoning behind the providers not giving the facility to suspend the campaigns at the push of a button, but occasionally sites get taken down for maintenance, and it would be nice to know your not racking up clicks while it happens. Not everyone would be a 9-5er, and if people are responsible and plan in advance you should be able to book downtime.

One thing that will certainly happen sooner or later with campaigns is that you will have to take rival bids and competitor actions into account in your strategy. The first time that this is likely to happen is when you first bid for a specific search term and find there is already a rival bid.

It is vital to know enough about your own ROI to accurately determine what your absolute maximum bid per visitor for each search term can be without diminishing your profit per sale. This is something your own tracking of results must tell you and without accurate data you should always play safe. Assume a 1%-2% conversion rate unless your data shows otherwise.

Your competition may very well not understand this marketing model or their own ROI and so may outbid you to the detriment of their own business. This can be hard to take at the time, but there are plenty of failed companies to show that those who understand, and maintain allegiance to, ROI win in the longer term.

Never be drawn into overbidding which would eat away at your profit margin. If another company does outbid you, remember the value we showed earlier of choosing more specific search terms, which most companies don’t think of. You have an unfair advantage of this knowledge – use it.

While still talking of competition, it is important to regularly review your bids, your competitors and your overall search placement. Your competitors owe you no allegiance, and will not drop you a line to tell you when they have outbid you so it is important that you review your own campaigns frequently.

One of the most important reasons for regularly reviewing your campaign is that a competitor may suddenly cease to compete for a certain search phrase. This may enable you to drop the amount of your own bids considerably without loss of position. Remember you only need to be 1p higher than the next highest bid. Anything more means that you are throwing away profit.

Without naming names there are countless examples where you can find the number one bid at around 30p, while the number two bid is at 8p. The owner of the number one bid is spending 22p per click more than needed. This represents an overspend of 375%. I noted this long before auto-bid was added by Overture, and have no reason to assume it has stopped now that auto-bid simply hides the true costs per click.

Bidding Wars

Generally bidding wars are bad for both competing bidders. Bidders who do not fully understand the ROI of their search terms may pay far more than they are worth.

Even though a smarter bidder may have reached the ceiling bid he is prepared to run to, he may sometimes deliberately bid higher to force the less wise competitor into a massive overspend. To do this he would push the bidding price up for just one or two days (budget allowing) and then drop his bid back down to the minimum required to be in second place.

Many companies forget to drop their bid after this kind of bidding battle. Therefore, a smarter bidder has a good chance of having that competitor continue with the massive overspend indefinitely. In fact, since many companies allocate a total monthly budget to their account, the above tactic may cause the account to become depleted before each month is finished. When an account is depleted, all listings for that account are removed until the account is once more in credit.

In the best-case scenario, where a close competitor is overbidding for a large number of search terms, the tactic described above could potentially result in the competitor’s monthly spend being reached in just one week, causing his listings to disappear entirely for the remainder of each month. In other words, he would be number one for one week, the smarter competitor would be number one for three weeks of the month, and the overbidding competitor is spending far more each month for this.

Bid tactics to minimise time-wasters

One of the biggest headaches of PPC listings is that many people using certain search terms may be looking for something quite different to what you had expected when you decided to use that search term. However, if they click your listing, you have to pay for it, even if they buy nothing.

You can use the Description of your listing to mention any limitations, such as if you were only supplying the UK market, for example. This can help prevent clicks from people who simply will not buy because of such limitations (e.g. shipping costs).

A variation on this tactic is to deliberately choose Titles and Descriptions that do not attract clicks, but make a positive brand awareness statement. In this way, you can ensure that many people see your company name at the minimum of costs. Remember, with PPC you only pay for the click-throughs – all the eyes that see your listing but do not click are ‘free advertising’. Google have a minimum click-through target to reach before your campaign is dropped, however, so bear that in mind.

That brings us to the end of our Pay-Per-Click masterclass. I'd like to thank Ammon, Jim and Andrew for sharing their wealth of knowledge. I hope you gained a bit more insight into the world of PPC. Perhaps we can do this again some time soon :)

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