WordStream & Hanapin Marketing (PPC Hero) Present:Good Intentions Gone Wrong: 7 Worst Practices in PPC

Larry Kim, Founder & CTO, WordStreamSean Quadlin, Account Manager, Hanapin MarketingSept 13, 2012

• Even the best of best practices can have unintended side effects!

• Top 7 best practices gone wrong and common mistakes to avoid

• Questions & Answers

Today’s Agenda

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Speaker Introductions

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• Sean Quadlin – Account Manager at Hanapin Marketing and

Writer for PPC Hero

– Manages clients ranging up to $130,000 in PPC spend/mo.

– Focuses primarily on lead generation

– PPCHero.com is the leading site for PPC Strategies, News and Information

• Larry Kim – Founder, CTO, WordStream, Inc.

– Been doing PPC & SEO for 10 Years!

– 5 Years ago, started WordStream

– We’re the provider of the 20 Minute PPC Work Week and the AdWords Grader

Take Part in Live Blogging on Twitter / Google+

• Include the hashtag #ppcblunders in your Twitter tweets, Google+ status updates, etc.

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Live-Poll Question 1

Question: How would you describe your Search Marketing results? #ppcblunders

a) I’m new to Search Marketing

b) Who knows – I don’t measure my results

c) Disappointing – I expected so much more from PPC

d) Satisfactory – I’m seeing return on my investment into PPC

e) Stellar – PPC is my most successful lead/traffic generating channel

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Live-Poll Question 2

How long have you been involved with Search Marketing? #ppcblunders

a) Less than 1 Year

b) 1-3 Years

c) 3-5 Years

d) 5+ Years

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Live-Poll Question 2

How long have you been involved with Search Marketing? #ppcmetrics

a) Less than 1 Year

b) 1-3 Years

c) 3-5 Years

d) 5+ Years

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Good Intentions Gone Wrong: 7 Worst Practices in PPC

1) Always Be Expanding (Your Keyword List)

You want every impression possible

-Regularly scheduled expansion

-Browse the opportunities tab

-Add in keywords your competitors are bidding on

Over time your ad groups got out of control

-What’s your average number of keywords per ad group?

-Your quality scores are dying slow deaths

8ExpandingE

Perform Regular Keyword Research

Look for keywords, not expansion• Regularly schedule research

• Just because you did research doesn’t mean you have to use it

• Any new keywords you add deserve their own ad groups

– Won’t anyone think of the quality scores?!

Two main ways to accomplish this:• Keyword tools. Use them wisely.

• A calendar. Cycle back and remove stuff that never catches on.

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Quality Scores!?

2) Overreliance on Industry Expertise in Keyword Research

In conducting keyword research, we can sometimes overly rely on industry terms specific to our business.

For example, here at WordStream, we sell PPC Management Software, so we bid on various industry terms such as:

• PPC

• AdWords

• Pay Per Click (etc.)

• SEM

• Search Engine Marketing

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Many Small Businesses don’t use the industry-standard PPC terminology!

For example:

• keyword ads

• click marketing

• search ads

• Etc.

How to discover the keywords you haven’t thought of already?

• Mining Search Query Data

• Surveys

• Intelligent Keyword Expansion Tools (such as WordStream)

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3) Wait for the Data to Tell the Story

So much of PPC is about testing and finding the right thing

• Whether that’s bids, benefits, calls to action, landing pages, whatever

Performance is relative

• Even when testing has a possible result, there are confounding factors

• Other tests, site changes, seasonality, whatever (again)

PPC People are Smart

• They like to quibble over stuff

• Any confounding factors that you missed will surely be pointed out by your peers/co-workers

It can be PARALYZING.

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Be Confident in Your Testing and Move On

There are tools available to help• http://www.splittester.com/

Find a sample size that works for you

• Move too soon, you’ll get a bogus result

• Wait too long and your tests will never end

You know your account. Put that knowledge to use.

• You can’t have a 100% confidence level after every test

• If you waited long enough for the data to accrue, your variables would really change

• You need to have forward movement in your account, so sacrifice certainty for progress

• Aggregate Your Data Where Possible

• Google tried to do this for us by changing the ad rotation settings. We didn’t let them, but they’re still onto something.

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4) Copying Your Competitor’s Ads

A popular best practice in ad copywriting is to “spy on competitor ads”:

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Don’t Forget What Makes Your Company Special

For Example, Your:

• Guarantee

• USP

• Offer

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Ad Text Example

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1. Urgent

2. Unique

3. Useful

4. Ultra- Specific

Example

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Example #1

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Text Ads Tools:

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5) Focus Your Efforts On Where They’ll Make the Biggest Impact to CPL

In PPC this basically boils down to: focus on Google

• It has a huge portion of the market

• We use its interface more than any others

• We search on Google, so why wouldn’t we focus our efforts on it?

For Cost-Per-Lead Clients, Google is what determines the success or failure of a month

• If we’re reporting on CPL, the work needs to be done in Google. It’s where we spend most of our money.

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5) Focus Your Efforts on Where You Get the Most Return

Bing, Facebook, Ad Exchanges and Other Venues Might Just Have the Best ROAS

• Track this stuff – find out what has your biggest return

– Tag URLs, use Analytics, find a third party vendor

• Google ROAS: $3.83; Bing ROAS $7.79

In Addition to Tracking, What Else to Do?

• Immersion Therapy

– Force yourself to spend time in there

– The more time you spend on it the more you will get used to it

Don’t Leave Leads Out on the Table (with all of those snakes)!

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6) Use of overly broad negative keywords

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• Negative Keyword Research is Obviously a Critical Task.

• But it has to be done carefully!

Beware excessively broad negative keywords

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• What happened:• A campaign level negative for ‘uniforms’ was accidently

added into a campaign that was themed around selling custom baseball uniforms.

• One excessively broad negative keyword wiped out everything!

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7) Make Sure You’re Bidding to First Page

Do you want all of that keyword research to go to waste?

• You expanded your keyword base for a reason

• Maximize the amount of clicks you can get on your desired phrases

• Blah, blah, blah

Look, You’ve Heard All This Stuff Before. Bidding to First Page Makes Sense. You Should Do It.

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7) Make Sure You’re Bidding to Your Desired Average Position (which is almost always going to be on the first page)

All “First Page Bids” are not made equal.

• Sometimes Google’s estimates are wrong.

• This keyword has an average position of 2.2

• The ad group it’s in has an impression share over 85%

• We were only paying $7.11/click

• Suggested bid = $100.00

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7) Make Sure You’re Bidding to Your Desired Average Position (which is almost always going to be on the first page)

Are you TERRIFIED? You should be.This one stood out because the suggested bid was so high.

• What about these statuses with smaller increases?

• What about when your competition is also bidding up to first page automatically?

• Doesn’t it make a bit more sense to bid to average position?

What you need to do in your account:

• Set your bids to avg. CPC of related existing keywords in your account

• Watch closely and adjust accordingly

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Bonus Best Intention Gone Wrong – The 8th Habit

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Never trying anything new (playing it safe, not experimenting)

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• Less than Half of SMB’s have made a single change in their AdWords account in the last month!

• Some due to general confusion, laziness, and fear of breaking something.

• This is a significant missed opportunity for ROI.

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Summary: 7 PPC Best Practices Gone Horribly Wrong

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A. Best Practices are great but have the potential to do great damage if poorly implemented as we have illustrated

B. Hopefully by having reviewed some of the most common pitfalls and PPC traps, you can avoid un-necessary PPC suffering

C. For best results:– Try WordStream’s 20 Minute Work Week, or

– Get the experts at Hanapin Marketing to manage your account for you!

Live Poll Question #3

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Q: Would you like…

• A free AdWords account audit and help in understanding your score with a certified AdWords Professional

• A free trial/demo of WordStream PPC Advisor

• A free one-on-one solutions blueprint/account assessment with Hanapin Marketing (for accounts with over $20,000 / month in spend)."

Your Questions

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Thank you for attending WordStream and Hanapin Marketing’s webinar on: Good Intentions Gone Wrong: 7 Worst Practices in PPC. #ppcblunders

Don’t forget to sign up for a Free Trial of WordStream:

http://www.wordstream.com/ppc-free-trial

Sign up for a Free Account Assessment from Hanapin Marketing

http://www.hanapinmarketing.com/solutions-blueprint-sign-up

Or contact us : Larry Kimlkim@wordstream.comhttp://twitter.com/larrykimSean Quadlinsean.quadlin@hanapinmarketing.comhttps://twitter.com/seanquadlin