paid search quick start guide
TRANSCRIPT
Marketo, Inc.
1710 S. Amphlett Blvd. #340
San Mateo, CA 94402
Paid Search Quick Start Guide Start Optimizing your PPC Campaigns with Marketo.
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Topics
Marketo Paid Search Quick Start Guide........................................................................................................ 3
Import a Campaign from Google .............................................................................................................. 3
Managing Campaigns ................................................................................................................................ 6
Using Bid Optimizer .................................................................................................................................. 8
Managing Ad Groups .............................................................................................................................. 12
Additional Information and Best Practices ............................................................................................. 15
Where to get additional information and help:
The Marketo Guide is always available to point you to additional sources of help.
1. Open the Guide by clicking on it at the bottom-right corner of the screen.
2 & 3. You get help and share ideas at wiki.marketo.com and forum.marketo.com.
4. If you have a problem, click the "Report a Problem" link. (You can also email [email protected],
but this is the fastest way to get help.)
5. If you have a suggestion for us, please let us know by clicking the "Request a Feature" link.
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Marketo Paid Search Quick Start Guide
Marketo Paid Search will help you build and optimize your pay-per-click search marketing campaigns.
You can use Marketo Paid Search tools to optimize your bids, find and manage keywords, analyze the
results and maximize your ROI.
In this Quick Start Guide we’ll teach you how to import an existing campaign from Google AdWords and
use Marketo to optimize the campaign.
Ready? Then let’s get started.
Import a Campaign from Google To begin, you can import your existing Google AdWords campaigns into Marketo.
1. Click on the Paid Search Home tab at the top of the screen, then click Import From Google on the Paid
Search Home Page.
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Select a Campaign to Import
1. Click one of your campaigns that you want to import. This will highlight it.
2. Click Select>
Import Your Campaign
1. Use the drop down list to select the program where you will import your Google AdWords campaign.
For now, use the Default Program.
2. Edit the name of your campaign, if you wish.
3. Describe your campaign. This is optional.
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4. For now, leave the check box to turn on Marketo conversion tracking unchecked. This is only required
if you want to track PPC information in salesforce.com but do not use Marketo landing pages. For more,
see Marketo Conversion Tracking Instructions in Marketo Forums | On-Line Documentation |
Landing Pages.
5. Click Import>
IMPORTANT: When you import a campaign from Google to Marketo, do NOT edit the
campaign directly in Google AdWords. This will cause your campaigns to get out of sync,
which can lead to errors. When you import a campaign to Marketo, we will
automatically rename it in Google AdWords, e.g. from "Campaign Name" to
"Marketo_Imported_Campaign Name."
That’s it! You’ve imported a campaign from Google AdWords to Marketo. You can repeat this process to
import additional campaigns, or proceed to the next section of the Paid Search Quick Start Guide.
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Managing Campaigns Once your campaign is imported, you can view it in the Campaign Explorer along with its associated Ad
Groups.
1. Marketo Explorer provides a list of your campaigns.
2. Click on your campaign in the Explorer to open the Home Page for the campaign.
3. Marketo displays a campaign summary and that provides an at-a-glance status of your campaign.
Most of the columns are the same as Google AdWords.
4. Use the pull down list to select your date range. Don't forget to hit Go after making your selection.
Power Tips:
Date ranges that do not include the current day will perform faster, since all the necessary
information is stored by Marketo. If you select a date range that includes “Today,” Marketo will
look up current statistics from Google AdWords in real time, but this may take longer.
If your Conversion columns (Conv., Conv. %, and $/Conv.) are zero, it means you are not using
Google AdWords conversion tracking. See For more, see Marketo Conversion Tracking
Instructions in Marketo Forums | On-Line Documentation | Landing Pages for information on
how to get started.
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In addition to data from Google AdWords, this report also shows how well your campaign is
generating Opportunities. (Note: This feature is only enabled for salesforce.com customers that
have installed the Marketo AppExchange Application. Other customers will see zeros in those
columns.)
Other Campaign Tabs
Marketo includes tools to optimize your bids, set a budget, control your campaign scheduling, and target
where you want your ads to appear.
1 & 2. Paid Search and Campaign Home. We've already looked at these.
3. Bid Optimizer. See the next section for information about optimizing bids.
4. Budget. Set your budget to the maximum amount you want to spend, and Marketo will make sure
you don't go over that limit. Marketo uses monthly budgets.
Note: When you imported your campaign from AdWords, we multiplied your daily budget by
30.5 to get a monthly budget. If you enter a monthly budget, we'll divide it by 30.5 and upload
the result as a daily budget to AdWords.
5. Schedule. Control what times of day and day of the week your campaign runs. Determine the dates
the Campaign is active by setting start and stop dates. For more, see wiki.marketo.com/AdScheduling.
6. Targeting. Specify the networks, geographies, and languages where you want you ads to appear.
Marketo recommends that unless you have a good reason not to, you should target your campaigns to
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run only on the Google Search network (not the Partner Search Network or the Google AdSense Content
Network.) For more, see wiki.marketo.com/CampaignTargeting.
Power Tip:
If the parent Program for this campaign has a budget limit, you will only be able to set the
Campaign budget to the amount still left in the Program budget.
Using Bid Optimizer The Marketo Bid Optimizer lets you optimize campaign performance with our portfolio-based bid
optimization algorithm. You can also forecast how many leads and opportunities you will generate using
PPC search, as well as get estimates for how much spending will be required to achieve your goals, such
as a target number of opportunities.
Here, we'll give a high-level overview of how to optimize your bids to maximize the number of
conversions for a target level of spending. For a complete tutorial on using the Bid Optimizer, be sure to
see wiki.marketo.com/BidsOptimizerTutorial.
1. Begin by clicking on the Bid Optimizer tab for one of your campaigns.
IMPORTANT: If this is a newly imported campaign, Marketo may not be finished
analyzing your keyword performance. If this is the case, you will see a message
suggesting you come back in a few minutes. You should not see this message for more
than five minutes or so. (Please use the "Report a Problem" feature if you do.)
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When you first arrive at Bid Optimizer, you are in Simple Bid View.
This screen shows estimates for the results your campaign will generate each month, given your current
bids and budget. Marketo's algorithm works hard to ensure this estimates are as accurate as possible.
Clicks per month is the estimated number of clicks your campaign will generate.
Avg. CPC is the estimated cost per click you will pay.
Cost per month is your total estimated spending (equal to clicks times avg. CPC)
Conversions per month is the estimated number of conversions your campaign will generate.
For any keyword with more than five conversions, Marketo uses the actual conversion rate for
that keyword to estimate how clicks from that keyword turn into conversions. (For keywords
with fewer conversions, the Ad Group Default Conversion Rate is used.) This helps to ensure
that keywords that drive more conversions receive higher bids.
Cost per conversion equals cost per month divided by conversions per month.
Opportunities per month is the estimated number of opportunities your campaign will
generate. For salesforce.com customers, Marketo uses the actual percentage of leads from that
keyword that turn into opportunities to calculate this number (for keywords with five or more
opportunities). If the keyword does not have five opportunities, Marketo will use the campaign
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average value (assuming the campaign has five or more opportunities). Otherwise, Marketo
simply uses 10% to calculate the number of opportunities generate by each conversion.
Cost per opportunity equals cost per month divided by opportunities per month.
1. Click Edit Bid Totals. This takes you to the Edit Mode.
In this example, we want to optimize our bids to drive the most conversions possible for a target
spending of $4500 a month.
1. Select Optimize for conversions in the drop down list.
2. Set your target. You want monthly spending to equal $4500 a month, so click on Cost Per Month, then
enter $4500 in the editable box.
3. Notice your current estimated Conversions Per Month.
4. Click "Estimate Optimal Bids" to run the bids optimization algorithm.
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After the algorithm runs, you will see the estimates for your new bids. Notice whether the estimated
Conversions Per Month went up.
1. Review your new optimized estimates.
2. If you want, click on "See my new bids". This will switch you to Advanced Bid View, where you can see
the exact bid and estimates for each keyword.
3. If you want to load your new bids to AdWords, click Save New Bids.
4. If you want to keep you old bids, click Discard.
Power Tips:
Bid Optimizer also a great deal more functionality. For example, you can estimate how much
budget is required to achieve target business goals. For example, set the Conversion per Month
equal to double your current estimate to understand what it would cost to double your results.
Don’t be surprised that it costs more than twice as much to get twice the results, since keywords
have diminishing marginal returns as you increase spending.
Be sure to review the entire Bid Optimizer tutorial: wiki.marketo.com/BidsOptimizerTutorial.
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Managing Ad Groups Next, click on one of your Ad Groups in the Campaign Explorer. In addition to the Ad Group Home, you’ll
be able to use Marketo to write and test ads, check on keyword performance, and optimize bids at the
ad group level.
1. Ad Group. Click on one of your Ad Groups in the Explorer.
2. Ad Group Dashboard. Displays a summary of the status of your Ad Group.
3. Settings. Set your Ad Group default values for bids, conversion rate, and landing page. See
wiki.marketo.com/AdGroupDefaults for how these are used.
4. Ads. Create new ads, check on performance of current ads, and test ads against each other. See
below for more.
5. Keywords. Analyze how well your keywords are performing over any date range. See below for more.
6. Bids. Optimize your budget and bids for this ad group. This tab behaves similarly to the Campaign Bid
Optimizer (Advanced View), except for the fact it operates only on this ad group instead of the entire
campaign, doesn't have a budget constraint, and always optimizes for conversions. For details, see
wiki.marketo.com/AdvancedBidViewOverview.
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Ads Tab
The Ads Tab is where you create, edit, and test your paid search ads.
1. Click on the Ads tab.
2. Make sure you are in Performance View (for now).
3. Change the date range for your report from the pull-down menu, if you like. Marketo will try to only
show ads that were Active in the Date Range selected (though for newly imported campaigns this may
not be possible).
4. Click on the Actions drop down menu next to one of your ads. The following actions are available:
Edit Ad. This brings up the Ad Edit tool, where you can make changes to any element of the ad.
Delete Ad. This will delete your ad.
Pause Ad. This will temporarily stop your ad from running.
Clone Ad. This creates a new ad by copying the existing ad, and brings up the new ad in the Edit Ad tool.
This is a great way to quickly create new ads. (You can always create a brand new ad by clicking
"Create Ad" in the toolbar.
Promote to Champion. Learn more about Ad Testing for information about this.
Power Tip:
Marketo makes it easy to be more rigorous about A/B testing your ads. This is done using the
Test View. To learn about using Test View, see wiki.marketo.com/AdTesting.
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Keywords Performance Tab
Click on the Keywords tab to see how your keywords are performing.
1. Click on the Keywords tab across the top.
2. Use the pull down list to change the date range for the report. Don't forget to hit Go after making
your selection.
3. To edit a bid, click on one of your bids in blue with underline. Type in your new bid. The bid won't be
saved to AdWords until you hit the Save button (see #7).
4. Click on any column header to sort by that column.
5. Next to the CTR and Conv % for each keyword is a small confidence indicator. This tells we think the
number is statistically significant yet. Mouse over the indicator for more details.
6. Download the entire table to Excel, if you like.
7. If you have changed any of the bids, the Save and Cancel buttons will light up. Press Save to load your
new bids to AdWords, press Cancel to reset your bids to the way they were.
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8. If you want to edit / add / remove keywords in this Ad Group, you do that by editing the Active Basket
attached to it. Click on "Go to Basket" to jump quickly to the Active Basket. Check out the Marketo
Word Lab Quick Start guide for more on using Baskets to find, organize, and manage keywords.
Additional Information and Best Practices To dive deeper into Marketo Paid Search, be sure to check out the Marketo Word Lab Quick Start.
If you want to learn more about best practices for Pay Per Click marketing, here are some great links:
How to Optimize your PPC Campaigns in Four Hours a Week: Practical routines for how to use
Marketo to manage and optimize your campaigns in just four hours per week.
Account Optimization Tips from Google: A great intro into what you need to do to optimize
your pay per click performance. (Check out these other articles in the AdWords Learning Center
while you're at it:
Basic Features of AdWords
AdWords Standard Edition Account Structure
Ad Groups and Keywords Overview
Creating a Text Ad
Cost Control
The Insider's Guide to AdWords (PDF)
Google AdWords Tips for Success: Seven tips from Google AdWords for improving the quality
and performance of your account – without raising costs.
How to Lower Your AdWords Minimum Bid: This article is much more useful than it's title
suggests – it really tells you in practical terms what you need to do to diagnose and optimize
your campaign.