Session Description: This was a talk on how to take your PPC to the next level.

1. Apogee Results

2. Apogee Results

3. • Leake@ApogeeResults.com
• @Marketing_Bill
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

4. • ABT (Always Be Testing)
• Titles, Descriptions, Tagging
• Keywords
• Landing pages / conversion
• ABM (Always Be Measuring)
• What matters?
• How are you measuring it?
• ABA (Always Be Asking)
• What else can I learn from this?
• ex/ PPC drives SEO keyword selection
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

5. • Are your campaigns on Autopilot?
• Has performance flattened?
• Is spend on an upward tick?
• Do you feel your agency is taking you for granted, or
• If in-house, how much time is being invested by your team running this?
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

6. • Define, Objectives, Metrics, Baseline, and Gap
• Make the Time
• Culture of Testing: Ad Copy & Conversion Optimization
• Run Google search query reports. Trim out irrelevant impressions and add
negative keywords
• Further tweaks to increase quality score
• Try new stuff
• Vehicles and formats w/in Google
• New networks (Bing, Google etc…)
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

7. • Get it right at the beginning
• Sales and marketing alignment critical to this exercise
• Strategic planning worth the investment
• What is victory?
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”
- Lewis Carroll
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

8. • How are you going to measure this?
• Are your analytics tools working?
• Where are you today?
• How does today compare with where you need to be?
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”
- Lewis Carroll
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

9. Conversion ROAS &
Impressions CTR
rate CPA
9

10. • Just like working out, this takes a time commitment
• There is no single magic pill - schedule it, honor it, make it so
• Left-brain time: Try some options that work for you …
• An hour a day
• Two hours, two times a week
• Thirty minutes at the start of each day
• Right-brain time: Schedule in chunks
• A half day once every two weeks
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

11. • The fastest path to better results is often right in front of you
• Rewrite your ad copy
• Test it
• Test it again next month, and next month, and…
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

12. • Include a call-to-action
• Download the Report!
• Use powerful words
• Innovative, Unforgettable, Revealed, Revolutionary
• Focus on the benefits
• 3 months trial, works 50% faster, free trial, etc.
• Include targeted keywords
• Consider dynamic keyword insertion
• Test different approaches
• Ask a question, use sarcasm, tell a story, etc.
• Test minor changes
• Word order, punctuation, capitalization, etc.
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

13. • Test to to increase conversions or conversion rate...
Landing Page – Version A Landing Page – Version B
CTR: 1.97% CTR: 4.02%
Conversion rate: 5.88% Conversion rate: 2.12%
13

14. • Heuristic (aka rules of thumb)
• Top ten lists
• Checklists
• Best practices
• Persona-based
= QUALITATIVE
• A/B & Analytics
• Multivariate
• Google
• Adobe / Omniture Test & Target
= QUANTITATIVE
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

15. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

16. • Improve relevance, CTR (think about the quality score!) and ROI
• Brainstorm negative keywords before launching campaign
• Frequently run search query reports to incrementally add campaign negative
keywords for directly irrelevant keywords
• Add negative keywords on both campaign and ad group level to improve
performance by increased control of what keyword and ad is being triggered
when mixing match types
• Utilize match types for negatives to maximize campaign effectiveness (be wary of
negative broad matches)
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

17. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

18. • Improve relevance with tightly
themed keywords and ad groups
• Frequently break out top performing
keywords into own ad
groups
• This will improve your ad’s Quality
Score by improving both the
relevance, and the click-through rate
(CTR) by virtue of keyword level
optimized copy.
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

19. • A high quality landing page has...
• Unique content
• Relevant and Useful content
• Transparency (explicit on the nature and intent of your business)
• Navigability
• Quick load time
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

20. • Speedier sites provides happier visitors that convert better
• Also directly impacts the quality score and cost-per-click
• ...it will also benefit your SEO on Google ...)
• Get free analysis tools from http://code.google.com/speed/
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

21. “Any AdWords advertiser can use remarketing to reach users as
they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content
Networks. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based
on their past interactions with your website.”
- Google AdWords Blog, 25 March, 2010
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

22. • Create a list of user events under the Audience Tab. Then take the provided
tracking pixels and add it to your action pages. This list will be used when setting
up your Adwords campaign.
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

23. • Allow some time to build data and then setup an Adwords campaign:
• Set up a normal campaign using content networks ads
• Upload/ Create your content networks ads ( visual display ads typically
perform better than text, but test)
• At “Audience” tab select your remarketing list.
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

24. • Ability to retarget users who you’ve already paid to visit your website
• Helps mitigate the “limited search inventory” problem so typical to b2b
categories
• Cost-effectively extend reach so that suspects and prospects see you “all over”
the internet, and are suitably influenced and impressed
• Stay “top of mind” all throughout the research and consideration process
• Repetition leads to overall higher conversion rates from online ads
• Efficiently spend limited $$ on highly qualified visitors versus general public
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

25. • Over 500 Million Customers
• Relatively low competitiveness (compared to Google)
• Phenomenal ability to target
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

26. Don’t Forget BING!
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

27. Presentation Title
Month 2012

28. • Once you have something figured out, it is probably about to change on you
• There are many roads to Rome
• Hubris (pride) is the beginning of humiliation
• What works for someone else, might not work for you
• Follow me @marketing_bill or email me leake@apogeeresults.com
SEO: Not Even Remotely Dead
October 2012

29. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

30. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

31. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

32. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

33. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

34. • Define the objective/challenge
• Develop a hypothesis to test
• Select test components
• Set up test (software or service)
• Analyze the data
• Implement the ideal design
• Continue to test against benchmark
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

35. • Landing page layout (colors & fonts)
• Imagery (banners, logos, people, etc.)
• Icons (navigation & CTA buttons)
• Headline
• Copy (messaging, bullets, short, long)
• Call-to-action
• Forms
• Pricing (discounts/promo)
Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

36. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

37. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

38. Take Your PPC to the Next Level
November 2012

39. • Start with a simple, proven template
• Make unique value propositions clear
• Keep copy short and sweet
• Utilize short forms liberally
• Include trust marks
• Incorporate chat/click-to-call
• Test price-based messaging ($, %, #)
• Segment your visitors
• Test multi-step pages to identify weaknesses
Presentation Title
Month 2012

40. Apogee Results