When you manage a large AdWords pay-per-click account with tens of thousands of keywords, you learn to appreciate anything that can save you time.  When you make a strategic decision, like to cut budget or work to improve CTR for better account quality scores, you want to do it quickly. Get in, get out, get on with your day.  Thankfully, AdWords has developed a lot of functionality to do just that – and many of its features revolve around slicing and dicing data, aka Filters.

I often use third party tools for campaign and bid management (and I won’t give away all the ingredients in my secret sauce), but here are a few of my favorite filters available to all advertisers through AdWords.

AdWords Editor (AWE) Advanced Search

AdWords Editor has been making our lives as pay-per-click marketers easier for years now, and one of my favorite tools is Advanced Search.  You can save searches that help you quickly drill down to campaign elements that you might want change, pause, increase/decrease bids, or use as a starting point for expansion. At the top of AdWords Editor next to the search box is a link to Advanced Search.

This is an example saved Advanced search looking for keywords with zero clicks.  Name it, save it for re-use, then you can select it as your View in AWE any time. You can use this view across tabs:  keywords, placements, ads, ad groups, etc. and across AdWords accounts.  Other Advanced Search views that I use are:

• Zero Conversions
• 1+ Clicks
• QS <=4
• GDN Campaigns
• CTR <1.0, Imp>500
• Avg Position>5
• Disapproved

You’re mostly only limited by your own creativity. Most common metrics are available as criteria and it’s fun to select multiple criteria to see what floats to the top (or in the case of poor performers, what sinks to the bottom.) Note: you can only save up to 8 custom advanced searches to re-use in AWE views, so choose the ones you use most often or can use as a base to fine tune with column sorts.

AdWords UI – Keyword Filters

You don’t need to be in AdWords Editor to use Filters to work your PPC magic.  In the Keywords tab in the AdWords web UI, you can create and save lots of different filters that can help optimize or improve an account.  Just go to the Keywords tab and open Filters.

Below are just a few of the many ways you can set up keyword filters. (Personally, I would never have all of these criteria in just one saved filter; this is just to show some possibilities for filters you might find helpful.)

_After your filters are set up and saved, you can adjust the date range and optimize from there.  Quick changes can be made right in the UI, or for more involved edits you can download selected items, make your changes in Excel, and then upload into AdWords Editor (or into your third party management tool).

Now that you’ve got your keyword filters set up and saved just the way you like them, you can go to the Ads tab and do the same thing.

AdWords UI – New Home Dashboard

Recently AdWords launched a new version of the Home dashboard that allows you to use Google-created Modules or customize your own Modules based on your Saved Filters. (Don’t worry – if you love the previous version of the dashboard you can still toggle between the old and new versions, at least for now.) For the example below, I created a saved filter for keywords with quality scores of 4 or lower. Then I can select that Saved Filter to display on my Home tab dashboard every time I log in.

Once you have custom modules set up, you can click “View Saved Filter” for each module from the Home tab, and go directly to the appropriate Campaign, Ad group, Keyword or Ad filter, and do what you need to do to get the job done in just a few clicks.  Pretty smart, pretty efficient.

While much of data analysis in pay-per-click marketing is science and statistics, there’s definitely an art to setting up and using filters for your AdWords account.  There’s also an art to how you name campaigns or ad groups so you can set up useful filters. Also, filters can be VERY account specific.  A reasonable filter for one advertiser might be ridiculous or just irrelevant for another. With experience, you’ll definitely get a feel for the filters that work on most campaigns and then can mold them for your account’s unique needs.

Spending a little time testing some filters out and playing around in Editor and the AdWords UI can save you tons of hours in the long run. Trust me. The less time I have to spend downloading CSVs and then manipulating columns in Excel, the better.

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Lisa is a data driven online marketing enthusiast and Senior Client Manager at Point It, one of the Pacific Northwest’s largest search marketing agencies. Lisa leads a team of account managers on a large global brand account.  Lisa has a deep background of online retail marketing, traditional advertising and market research experience, for large and small b2c and b2g growth companies.

It is very easy to get caught up in the day to day, you start your week off Monday morning with your coffee in hand and you even get into the office a little earlier than expected, then all of a sudden it is Friday afternoon and you haven’t done any new keyword research for your PPC campaigns. Is this an ideal scenario? No. Is this a realistic scenario? Yes. Is this hurting the performance of your SEM campaigns? Most likely!

When it comes to your SEM campaigns there are several 101-type action items you need to perform every single day of the week to ensure killer results. Unless you’re a dedicated PPC manager, there are probably some to-do’s that slip with your PPC campaigns like negative keyword research and keyword expansion. Here are some tips to help *semi-automate (*”semi” because a little bit of brain work is still required) and streamline those critical PPC tasks, making it easier to stay on top of your to-do list while improving your campaign’s performance.

1. Negative Keyword Research using the Search Query Report

Don’t spend your money on keywords that are not relevant to your business, not only are you wasting money but you may be hurting your brand image by having your ad displayed on unwanted search queries. Look to your Search Query Report to find the keywords visitors used that lead to a click-through on your ad. Now that AdWords has this report directly tied into the interface you can add negative keywords to your campaigns easier than ever. AdCenter also has a version of this report called the Search Query Performance. Since the AdCenter report can only be accessed through the reporting center and not the interface, schedule the report to be emailed to you once a week to make it hassle-free. It is important this task be executed on a weekly basis, if you left this as a monthly action item you could be losing hundreds of dollars.

2. Keyword Expansion using the Search Query Report (again!)

Not only is the Search Query Report helpful for negative keyword research, but the insights you gain can be invaluable for keyword expansion. If certain keywords start reoccurring in the report that are relevant to your business, let the testing begin! Why not build out new ad groups and start testing new keywords. This is an opportunity to learn about new trends and jargon your target audience is using and start capitalizing on them. Within a week you can determine if the expansion is successful and choose to build it out further or pause the expansion if it isn’t generating conversions.

If you start seeing several opportunities for testing, create a testing schedule and implement a few expansion opportunities at a time, budget allowing. Managing this on a weekly (if not daily) basis is a great way to gain ground over your competitors, be the first one to target new industry trends. Sometimes the physical task of building out the new ad groups for testing can monopolize your time, but Google has updated existing tools and released new ones to help you with keyword expansion.

3. Semi-Automated Keyword Expansion with the Opportunities Tab

There are two additional tools in AdWords, besides the Search Query Report, that will help you with keyword expansion and ad group creation.  The first is the Opportunities tab in the AdWords interface. In this tab you will find a list of bid and keyword suggestions based on three different goals: increase traffic, balance cost and traffic, and maintain or decrease cost. Upon your review of the suggestions you can choose to directly upload the keywords or bid changes to your ad groups. In the past a lot of these suggestions have been irrelevant to my account and it was more work to comb though the suggestions then to do the research on my own.

However, Google has added a rating system into the tool, so you can tell AdWords if the suggested term is irrelevant to the specific ad group or to your entire account.  If you identify a keyword as irrelevant, Google will learn this and not recommend the term in the future, which makes the tool more helpful and allows you to concentrate on only targeted ideas.  By using the Opportunities tab to identify new keywords to test, your job may not be automated, but Google is certainly putting the information and recommendations right at your fingertips.

4. Using the Contextual Targeting Tool to Streamline Keyword Expansion

The second tool, now available in all AdWords accounts, is the Contextual Targeting Tool. While the tool may be meant to help you create granular ad groups for the Display Network, who’s to say you can’t use it for the same purpose on the Search Network. If you haven’t already played around with this tool, you are going to love it! You can find this user-friendly tool under the Reporting and Tools tab in AdWords and all you have to do is type in your keyword suggestion(s) you are looking to target.

Next, the tool will automatically group similar terms into themed ad groups. You can choose to expand the ad group, making it more granular, by clicking on the “Expand” button to the right of the suggested ad group, shown in the below screenshot. The tool even incorporates max CPC recommendations for Search and Display and allows you to export in AdWords Editor format. Having tightly themed ad groups will allow you to do a better job of including your keywords in your ad text, in efforts to increase your CTR and improve quality score. The Contextual Targeting tool helps *semi-automate the process of grouping keywords into ad groups and significantly streamlines your management time.

AdWords is providing you with the tools to efficiently manage your SEM campaigns, the Search Query Report, the Opportunities tab and the Contextual Targeting Tool are just three on the list. While these tools help *semi-automate some of the most important PPC tasks like negative keyword research and keyword expansion your judgment is still needed.  Test these tools out (if you’re not already doing so) or use them in a new way and see how they streamline your daily management to allow you to tackle other items on your weekly to do list.

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Heather Schwartz has been working with Anvil Media, a Portland based SEM agency since 2008 specializing in B2C ecommerce clients such as lucy activewear and non-profit clients like The Nature Conservancy, developing SEO, Social Media and PPC campaigns to increase clients’ online visibility and ROI.

The holidays are officially over. Whew. For eCommerce businesses this typically means a return to normalcy and a sharp drop in online sales. As such, this is actually a perfect time to reflect on the last few months of holiday-driven PPC activities and start planning for Holiday 2011.

Wait, start planning for December NOW? In January!? Absolutely! Everything you struggled with, wished you’d planned more effectively, questions you wished you’d asked, things you wished you hadn’t done – these are all fresh in your mind now. So instead of washing your hands of Holiday 2010, take a few minutes to debrief and think about how your experiences will impact the coming year’s PPC activities.

In case you are still in an eggnog induced state of lethargy, here are a few ideas based on my experiences that anyone can use to help ensure PPC efforts during 2011 lead up to the strongest holiday season yet.

1. Focus on Generating Reviews in 2011 – If you sell a product or service online, then your PPC ads may be eligible for Google’s Seller Rating Extensions.

Example of Ad with Rating

This ad extension can appear in ads for retailers that have at least 30 aggregated reviews recognized by Google, which aggregates reviews from a number of online sources. Ensure your business name and URL are consistent across all of these sites – this is how Google matches your AdWords ads to these reviews. Having a Seller Rating Extension can set you apart from other advertisers and generate a lift in click through rates due to the trust that the star rating conveys. Come holiday time this can be a key differentiator, but if you are a small retailer it may take some time to build up enough reviews to qualify. In your post-transaction correspondence, start encouraging your customers to go online and post reviews.

2. Analyze Promotion Performance, Start Testing – It may sound obvious but promotions are a key element in PPC year round, not just at holiday time. Unless you don’t have any competitors online, shoppers are almost always going to do some pricing comparisons and they often factor in shipping costs. By doing some number crunching and testing now you can understand how a free shipping offer, for example, can help or hurt your business. Know what promotions you can offer without killing your profit margins but that will still be attractive to potential customers.

3. Budget Now, Plan for Growth – Many businesses are setting budgets for Q4 now. Understand how much you spent and how much you could have spent in 2010, factor in growth and earmark that total for your 2011 budget. Growth projections will be industry and business dependent, but a 10% lift year over year could be a conservative baseline.

4. Get Comfortable with Google’s Automated Rules – Though still in limited release, Google’s new Automated Rules feature can take some of the stress out of PPC management year round, not just at the holidays. There are many ways that advertisers can leverage Automated Rules, but the biggie for me right now is scheduling ads. Many advertisers have promotions that start and expire promptly at midnight. Use this tool to automate the pausing of expiring ads and the activation of new ads so that you don’t have to be babysitting your campaigns at all hours of the night. Take the time now to test this tool and get comfortable with it so come holiday time, you can schedule your ads and take off for that island in the Caribbean.

5. Planning Site Updates? Not After October 31^st. – This is less PPC specific, but a word of advice from someone who has seen things go terribly, terribly wrong at the absolute worst time possible – do not plan any site updates during the holiday season. Get all of your testing and optimization done before October 31^st, make sure your landing pages work, your product pages and shopping cart are in top form and that your site can handle the influx of traffic that can come at the holidays. Set this expectation now with your IT and Marketing teams and save yourself a lot of heartache in 2011.

I know it is tempting to come back after a whirlwind of PPC activity in December and rest on our laurels in January, but trust me: a little bit of reflection and planning now will pay back tenfold later in the year. Happy 2011!

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Leisa Hall is an Account Director at Anvil Media, Inc. – a full service search engine marketing agency in sunny Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs Search Engine Marketing strategy for B2C clients ranging in size from start-up to Fortune 500.

When marketers create budgets for paid search campaigns, a question that sometimes comes up is “do we really need to spend money bidding on our own brand name?”. The short answer is, yes, it’s generally a good idea to bid on your own brand name. It might seem redundant if your brand already dominates the search results page organically, but there are some compelling reasons to support a branded paid strategy.

Here are just a few reasons to consider bidding on your own brand:

1. Get more total click-throughs from the search results page
2. Defend your turf, dominate the page
3. Manage your brand’s reputation
4. Create additional opportunities for messaging

More total clicks from the search results page

Studies we’ve conducted have shown that typically links and ads together on the page will attract more total clicks when the brand is dominant on both the organic and the top ad space. Yes, the paid clicks may come at the expense of some organic clicks, but overall click volume increases. With an optimized paid campaign, this strategy can be very cost effective.

Defend your space on the page

Bidding on your own brand can be a good defensive strategy to reduce competitors’ exposure on the same page, by taking up more space with your brand and pushing other results down the page, or even off the page altogether.

Managing your reputation

Had some bad news or bad publicity? Got an uncomplimentary organic result showing up on the search results? A paid ad is a chance to voice your response and meet the challenge head on, with specific and timely messaging.

Take advantage of another opportunity

If you are bidding on your own brand and placing an ad on a page where your brand is already represented organically, use that opportunity to provide a deeper engagement. A recent example on Google US for the search term “Samsung tv”, provided an example of this. Samsung shows up well in the organic results, but they used the top ad spot to promote a special “Black Friday” offer that was timely, and more direct for some shoppers than drilling down through the Samsung web site.

Relevancy of Google Ads Affects the Whole Page

The new option on some Google searches to see up to eleven ads at the top of the search results page could put even more emphasis on the need to make sure ads are relevant. Our studies have clearly shown that if the ads are not deemed relevant to the intent of the person searching, they tend to discount all the results on the page – yes, even the organic results. Your wonderful organic listing could also get pushed down below the fold, so placing a branded result in the ad section can mitigate that problem.

Recent Changes to Google Results

Recently, Google have made a number of changes to how they present their search results pages. In case you’ve lost track, here’s a quick list:

• Google Instant
• Google Instant Previews
• Google Places
• Google Places with Hotpot
• Google Product Search with Local Inventory Count
• Google Ads (formerly known as “Sponsored Links”)

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Karl Hourigan is a Digital Marketing Strategist with Mediative. Mediative is one of North America’s largest integrated digital marketing companies. Their results-oriented marketing network is supported by industry thought leaders and a data-driven platform.

An industry best practice for structuring a paid search campaign is the implementation of highly targeted and relevant ad groups. This is a part of the ‘before the click’ process that can easily be controlled and maintained. If this is not happening you have bigger issues than what the rest of this discussion is about. That being said, separated out into its own stop along the entire value stream, the paid search campaign is a relatively easy thing to manage and manage well. However, as we will see, the paid search campaign is in the middle of the value stream and can only sustain long lasting success if the upstream and downstream processes are completely aligned to serve the customer with the best user experience.

Upstream From the Paid Search Campaign

Before a paid search campaign can take form and become effective a search team needs to have certain basic information from the client who is further upstream in the process than the paid search team is. The following are key points about how to be most effective and what to avoid further upstream from paid search.

1. Goals and KeyPerformance Indicator’s (KPI’s) - To begin, clients should have a good idea as to why they are getting into the paid search game or how they’d like to grow their current paid search program. Clients should know the goals they want to achieve, their KPI’s, and their tolerance/risk for testing in order to learn. Paid search experts can help set expectations and guide clients in understanding what the potential may be for reaching certain goals, however, the initial goal setting should come from further upstream. Since both parties are working toward the same end results, ideally these are collaborative goals agreed upon by the expanded team before implementation or optimization happens.

2. Messaging Information- If the paid search program has already been implemented or is in the process of being developed, one of the most critical components of a paid search campaign is the text ad. And it’s just not the relevance of the text ad for Quality Score or how targeted it is, but more so in what the text ad messaging offers. Is there a generic call to action or is there some amazing discount or benefit that only your client can offer potential customers?

In some cases differentiated messaging can be found on a client website that can be worked into the ad creative copy. In many cases, on large e-commerce sites where there are hundreds of vendors and thousands of products, hunting and pecking for sales, discounts, and offers is not an efficient use of time. These offers, sales, and discounts should be made available to the paid search team in the form of a merchandising calendar so pro-active planning can occur.

3. Internal Communication- At times there are internal communication issues outside the paid search team that occur farther upstream that can have a significant negative impact on the success of paid search. Whether it’s an in-house paid search team or an agency there can be multiple layers of people and departments involved. If those parties farther upstream fail to communicate effectively, the lack of communication can trickle farther downstream and limit the effectiveness of the paid search team. This not only adds stress to the relationship between the paid search team and the departments farther upstream, but in effect, when the lack of communication and alignment reaches the paid search team and they are left to work with limited information this will have a negative impact on potential customers – the people you are trying to convert.

The impact of upstream goals, information or lack of information can vary but can mostly be managed to a certain level of success. If upstream processes are not fully aligned with everyone involved, the sustainability of long term growth may be at risk.

Downstream From the Paid Search Campaign

As part of the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of a paid search initiative, there are a couple of ‘post-click’ components that occur on the website that have an even greater significance on the success and growth of the account than those farther upstream in the process.

1. Does the Website Work/Are the Landing Pages Valid – This downstream process is the most critical in the mix because this one comes closest to customers you are trying to convert. First and foremost your website should work 100% of the time. Beyond that it should be user friendly providing the best experience possible for customers. Once customers have decided that your paid search ad matches closest with what they want to buy or it provides a solution to their questions, you are on the way to providing a high level of satisfaction for customers.

Not only should the website work and that its usability and navigation be at its prime, but the landing pages selected must be functioning and relevant. In reference to the large paid search program above, if you tag keywords and/or ad creatives with destination URLs it is critical to have open communication (from farther upstream) as to when those URLs change due to inventory levels or other website structure changes. If the landing page has been updated or the product no longer exists and there is not a redirect in place until the paid search URL can be updated, customers landing on error pages or some other random page is never a good thing. This not only impacts customers’ experiences, but also can have Quality Score implications.

2. Proper Implementation of Web Analytics Tracking & Tags – We all know paid search and all other online marketing channels are usually inaccurate within an acceptable range. That’s just the nature of this industry. For some reason website analytics tagging is the search industries bane of existence and inevitably problems occur when web analytics site tagging is not implemented correctly the first time. The other problem is when URL tagging parameters are not used correctly and used as a temporary work-around to fix a problem farther upstream instead of fixing the root cause of the problem. These types of downstream problems create additional challenges in reporting and decision making farther upstream in the process.

Regardless of upstream or downstream from paid search, the entire value stream should be considered as a total system.  When all of these processes are aligned there is a greater opportunity for success of the paid search account. The alignment of the entire value stream also builds trust between all those involved creating a more productive team for long term sustainability.

Let us know what you think — fee free to add your comments, ideas… below!

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Matt LeVeque is the Founder & President of SEM Science Consulting, LLC and Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

Google AdWords can have numerous benefits if planned, executed, and monitored properly. There are also pitfalls to be avoided. This article will cover important things to avoid as well as effective steps for implementing an effective AdWords campaign.

Step 1: Define attainable goals

A team seeking to maximize the use of AdWords will identify and articulate realistic goals, which might include:

1)    Increasing donation volume

2)    Recruiting more volunteers

3)    Raising brand awareness

Step 2: Appeal to the relevant geographic and/or demographic targets.

An effective campaign should speak to a defined market. For tracking purposes, duplicating or moving around keywords once “up and running” should be avoided. A feature called Ad Scheduler can be set up using either Accelerated or Standard Delivery (evenly delivered ads throughout the day).

Step 3: Develop tightly-themed Ad Groups

The more relevant the ad text, the higher the CTR (click through rate), the Quality Score and the Page Rank that will be achieved. As for Ad Text Optimization, place catchy calls to action and inter- capitalize your display URL.  For instance, instead of having www.marketingbydeepak.com show http://www.marketingbydeepak.com/.  In addition, rotate various ads and you can track individual performance.

Step 4: Research keywords

This requires serious consideration; an organization can benefit from using the Google Suggest Tool to find relevant keywords.  Trying to think like the target demographic may result in coming up with keywords from the User’s perspective.  Be sure to look at all match types – broad, phrase and exact.

Step 5: Landing Page Optimization.

Most people have shared the frustrating experience of clicking on an ad only to be led to page that has nothing to do with the product/service searched for.  There are numerous resources available on Landing Page Designs online.

The bottom line is that the marketer can have great goals, campaigns, ad groups and keywords; however, if these cannot be converted to close the sale, the effort has been fruitless.

AdWords Campaign Cautions and Pitfalls
Earlier, it was mentioned that there are pitfalls to be avoided. Chief among these is: Google AdWords cannot be done alone.  AdWords is only one aspect of Social Media, which is a marketing tactic.  Any business or organization seeking to leverage the social media tools, at a minimum, will establish a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook and show up in organic search results in addition to running AdWords.

Statistics indicate that, when people do searches, 75% of the time they click on the organic content found within the search engine results page (SERP).  Only 25% click what they see on the sponsored links section.   Users tend to trust the organic content more because of the independent review.  An organization that shows up in both areas has a great deal in its favor!

Branding should not be underestimated.  An organization that is well-branded and enjoys good press is more likely to perform better than an up-and-comer.

Remember to use Keyword Research, the Google Suggestion Tool, and to brainstorm with your Team or others to generate novel ideas.  Even funny-sounding search terms can yield surprising results!

Campaigns that are up and running can benefit from the reporting features and Google Analytics to monitor and track campaign performance.  Every so often, adjust a campaign by eliminating low performers, refining keywords, and ads themselves.  Repeat this process often.

As with other aspects of your ad campaign, budget how much to spend on AdWords.  Calculate enough allowance for your industry.  Competitors may jump in and bid up the price for keywords.  Determine a realistic ROI. Team members should take the time to read your reports and work with AdWords as seriously as they would a direct mail campaign.

What are the challenges you face with your AdWords campaigns? Please add your comments below.

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Deepak Gupta is VP of Marketing for Help My Resume, a Florida-based non-profit and is the Principal of Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group. Prior to jumping into the inbound marketing world, Deepak worked in database marketing and analytics where he developed marketing initiatives for brands like the Auto Club, State Farm, UPS, Hooked On Phonics, Comcast, AT&T, World Wrestling Entertainment, ESPN, Nickelodeon and other related brands.

The countdown to Christmas is on and the holiday shopping season is now in full swing, with Cyber Monday just barely in the rear view mirror. The good news is that there is still a lot that can be done to take advantage of the increase in consumer spending this month, whether you started planning in July or are just now thinking about how to grow sales this holiday. Here are 5 tips and tricks that any Pay Per Click (PPC) advertiser should consider when maximizing AdWords for the holiday sales rush.

1.       Budget Wisely. For many online retailers, traffic and sales volume can go through the roof come holiday time. This is because more people are searching and more of those searchers have the intent to buy. Don’t let your ‘regular’ budgets limit your profits. If you are obtaining or exceeding your ROI goals, there is no reason to keep your campaign budgets capped! This is one of the easiest ways to increase your PPC profits this time of year.  Review your campaign budgets and ROI and where it makes financial sense increase those daily campaign budgets to levels that ensure your ads aren’t missing out on impressions.

 In AdWords, you can look to the metric called “Lost IS (budget)” (“IS” stands for “Impression Share”) to tell you how much traffic you might be missing out on. In the AdWords interface, edit the columns of data you are viewing and select this metric. If your “Lost IS (budget)” is 25%, then that means that you could be receiving 25% more impressions if your budgets were 25% higher.

2.       Plan Your Promotions, Have Ads at the Ready. Make the management of your holiday PPC efforts effortless – by having all of your promotions laid out for the holiday season, you can also ensure that you have PPC ads ready to support those promotions. By creating ads ahead of time and including the ads in your campaigns on “Paused” status before the promotion is live you allow time for the ads to be approved by editorial and limit the risk of any lack of visibility when your promotion goes live. I generally recommend adding new ads a week in advance just to be sure there aren’t any editorial issues. Then when it comes time to promote your sale or special offer all you have to do is switch your old ads off and flip your new ads on.

 3.       Know Your Competitor’s Deals. Holiday shoppers are a fickle bunch – always looking for the best deal. This is why it’s so critical to make sure your promotions are just as attractive as your competitors. Be sure to consider the total price of the transaction, including shipping. A comparable “30% off regular price” will not be as enticing if your standard shipping is $10 and your competitor is offering reduced or free shipping on top of the 30% off price tag. Monitor your competitor’s ads and websites and have the flexibility to adjust your promotions accordingly.

 4.       Leverage Sitelinks. Many retailers have a lot of different promotions, offers and sales taking place this time of year – and with only a very limited amount of space in the typical PPC ad, it can be difficult or impossible to make sure searchers are fully informed. The AdWords ad extension called “Sitelinks” can add up to 140 additional extra characters to your text ad space. Add up to ten Sitelinks per campaign that call out, for example, your Free Shipping offer, Clearance Sale, New Products, lowered prices on specific products in your inventory, or Gift Guides. AdWords will display up to four Sitelinks in an ad at a time. Sitelinks will not only help to make your promotions visible, but your ads themselves are often more visible and can generate high click-through-rates.

 In this example, Moonstruck Chocolates is using Sitelinks to merchandise a variety of holiday-related product offerings. A range of price-points are included in order to speak to a range of shopper’s budgets.

5.       Plan for Promotions After December 25^th. This is something that retailers often forget about – some of the biggest shopping days of the year are actually AFTER Christmas. This is driven by gifts that shoppers received such as gift cards, cash or products such as a Wii that will require the purchase of additional games and accessories. Post-Christmas shopping is also driven by deal-seekers heading out in droves to take advantage of all of the clearance sales that traditionally take place at this time. Be sure to promote your post-holiday sales in PPC; don’t just revert to your ‘regular’ ad messaging. Make your website’s Clearance or Sale section extra prominent, but be sure to keep tabs on inventory – if pickings are slim, then users can get frustrated and leave the site without making a purchase.

Even though the holiday shopping season is quickly counting down, PPC advertisers still have time to grow sales and profits. Make it a happy holiday for your PPC campaigns by implementing any or all of these five easy tips.

Let us know what is working or not for your holiday AdWords campaigns. Feel free to comment!

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Leisa Hall is an Account Director at Anvil Media, Inc. – a search engine marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs Search Engine Marketing strategy primarily for B2C clients ranging in size from start-up to Fortune 500.

When creating a pay per click campaign, marketers commonly focus on things like keywords, match types, cost per click bids, organizing the campaign into ad groups, target cost per acquisition, and other mechanics of PPC campaigns. But in concentrating on the setup and execution of their pay per click campaigns, too many marketers don’t spend enough time thinking about their PPC landing pages – some don’t even setup customized landing pages at all!

So here are the top landing page mistakes to avoid when creating pages for your pay per click campaigns:

1) Not having a landing page. I know I already mentioned this, but this is the single biggest mistake you can make. Many marketers who are first getting into PPC advertising think it’s adequate to drive traffic to their website. Get people to your home page, and they’ll know what to do, right?

Wrong. When people are typing a search into Google, Bing, or another search engine, they are looking for an immediate answer to a specific query. If they click on your ad, they’re expecting a question to the answer they asked – now. They’re not going to dig through your website to find what they’re looking for. Customized landing pages answer the question the searcher was asking quickly and directly.

2) Not having CUSTOMIZED landing pages. If you’re running a large pay per click campaign or multiple PPC campaigns, chances are you are covering a multitude of keywords and have numerous ads. If possible and appropriate, you should be setting up customized landing pages with different offers that are aligned with the ads and keywords used in individual ad groups and campaigns.

This can help improve your quality scores for Google AdWords, which, in turn, can help bring down your cost per click. By ensuring your landing page offer and wording are closely aligned with your ads, you should also improve your conversion rate.

3) Not having a conversion goal. Too many marketers do setup landing pages, but fail to setup a conversion goal. What is a conversion? Simply put, a conversion is when a visitor to your landing page takes the action you want them to take.

This could be downloading an ebook or white paper, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar, and so on. If there isn’t an action you’re trying to get visitors to take, why are you paying to get them to your website? Tracking conversions lets you know how effective your PPC campaigns are. Make sure you define what your conversion is and setup conversion code on your landing pages to track when visitors complete your defined goal.

4) Not tracking return on investment. While establishing a dollar value for conversions can sometimes seem arbitrary, doing so can help you manage your PPC campaigns and determine whether or not they are cost effective. While the dollar value of some conversions might be easy to calculate (buying a product, registering for a paid webinar), others can be more difficult (signing up for a newsletter or downloading a free white paper).

Do your best to realistically calculate the value of your conversions and use this to compute ROI on pay per click campaigns.

5) Not testing, testing, testing. Another major mistake many online marketers make is failing to constantly test and improve the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns. There are many landing page optimization tools out there to help you do this.

If you’re not continually testing and optimizing your landing pages, you’re letting potential customers get away and leaving money on the table. Testing different offers, landing page designs, copy, and images can help you improve the conversion rate on your pay per click campaigns.

Everybody has been new to Internet marketing at some point, but that doesn’t mean you have to repeat the same mistakes as everyone else. Instead, learn from the common pay per click landing page mistakes explained here.

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Jason Mikula works as a freelance search engine marketing and social media marketing consultant.  Jason has experience working with pay per click, search engine optimization, and email and web marketing.

Online marketing today is not quite what it used to be. Just a couple of years ago, the combination of SEO with PPC seemed to be the final word in serious online marketing. With Social Media gaining ground in recent years, more and more channels and communities are accessible to users where they prefer to ‘hang out.’

Users are researching blogsphere & community websites for checking out reviews of products they want to buy, find solutions to their problems, or just share their views on subjects that would interest most marketers in reaching out to them. Most users feel that peer groups tend to offer a more unbiased and genuine reviews about products.

Facebook’s traffic alone is inching close to Google’s traffic and is growing at a much faster rate than Google’s traffic. Twitter’s traffic is in the vicinity of Yahoo’s & Bing’s traffic put together. Smart marketers need to put their content in front of these potential buyers, right where they hang out.

The increase of Social Media usage, as against traditional marketing channels like SEO & PPC, is also throwing up several uneasy questions –

• Is SEO losing its effectiveness, becoming obsolete or already dead?
• Will PPC become more expensive? Will it continue to serve its original purpose?
• Will companies divert part of their PPC budgets into SEO & Social Media Marketing?
• Is Social Media just a fad? Can Social Media really serve as a serious marketing vehicle? Should one have a defined and serious Social Media Marketing strategy?
• Will Social Media continue to grow at the same pace or is it reaching its saturation?
• What will happen if search engines like Google make more radical changes to their algorithms?
• Should one have a common or a complimentary marketing message across SEO, PPC & Social Media?
• How should SEO, PPC and SMM dovetail into your online marketing strategy? What role should each play? What kind of performance can one expect from each of these marketing vehicles?
• How does one decide how much budget one should allocate to each media?

Today’s marketers need to take a fresh look at their marketing strategies when they plan their media mix of SEO, PPC, Social Media and other vehicles to deliver their marketing message. Conventional promotion techniques and approaches need to be innovated to get powerful results and fight competition.

One can no longer think of SEO, PPC, and Social Media Marketing in isolation. You need to have a holistic approach in planning the media mix, keeping in mind the power as well as limitations of each media. The role of each media should be deployed in such a way that they fill gaps of the other. One needs to use each medium for what it is best suited to individually accomplish, given its distinct advantages. Ideally, SEO, PPC, and Social Media should together serve your common business goals.

Online Marketing Objectives

Before you can go about planning how each marketing medium should be used, it is important to first outline your specific short-term & long-term marketing objectives. Getting clarity on your marketing objectives is key to setting a roadmap for your resource deployment and budget allocation to SEO, PPC and Social Media. SEO usually works well to serve your long-term objectives, while PPC and Social Media Marketing can be used to achieve both short-term and long term marketing objectives.

For example, SEO can be deployed to steadily build website traffic for your main key phrases but may require considerable time and resources to get good results. However, SEO can achieve quicker results for your long-tail keywords with minimal efforts. It is also cost effective to promote ‘non-commercial’ product-relevant keywords, which may not boost instant sales on your website, but is good to get potential buyers interested in your product and may eventually convert into sales.

PPC is ideal for promoting special offers, seasonal sales, geo-targeting, new product launches, direct website sales, lead generation, website page content A|B split testing and getting traffic for your ‘head’ or competitive keyword phrases that result in conversions. Essentially, it is best to invest in PPC where time is of essence and the results can be commercially measurable.

Social media promotion can play an effective role in building customer relationships, interactivity, providing customer support services at reduced cost, get direct customer feedback on your products, your services and your website. It allows you to build communities, positively influence existing communities and steer a positive peer review of your products.  Social media also works well in affiliate development, engaging new marketing partners, hiring key people, channel development, brand image building, creating brand visibility, online reputation management, and lead the users to useful online resources, information and reference material on your website.

Of the three stages of the buying process –

a) research stage where the customer is researching on the possible products or solutions

b) when the buyer firms up his buying decision and

c) when he is ready to make the purchase

- SEO and Social media can work cheaper to serve the first two stages, while PPC can serve as a ‘go-getter’ to grab the buyer in the third stage.

In this multi-part article, I shall evaluate several of the aspects listed above. We will try to understand the unique advantages of SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing and how each of these marketing vehicles can work in coordination to deliver maximum mileage for your marketing dollar. A well planned marketing strategy based on clearly laid out objectives not only enables you to measure the success of your campaign but also secures your investment for a long term and helps you remain ahead of the competition.

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Atul Gupta is the Co-Founder & CEO of RedAlkemi.com, a company specializing in Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. Atul is a thought-leader in Online Marketing industry and has been working in this field since 1996. His company has helped over a thousand clients succeed in their online businesses. Atul is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has published several articles about SEM industry.

Any single-metric-based approach is dangerous, but some are more deadly than others, especially in some contexts.

When you’re doing Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing as an Affiliate Marketer, you want to have a clear understanding of how the Earnings Per Click (EPC) is being calculated. EPC is a metric that is being widely used by affiliate programs and affiliate networks. In fact, while there is no across-the-industry uniformity on displaying other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of affiliate programs, EPC is one of very few metrics that is being disclosed to you — even before you join an affiliate program — by most affiliate networks out there.

Here’s an example of how this looks on Commission Junction:

While on the surface, EPC looks like a great “benchmark” metric, but it can be quite dangerous when taken at face value. There are two things PPC marketers shouldn’t do with the EPC data:

1) Do Not Understand EPC Literally

“While  this  abbreviation  was  originally  coined  to  stand  for an affiliate program’s average affiliate’s EPC, you want to be 100% clear on how exactly it’s being calculated. In fact, in the vast majority of cases EPC now means Earnings Per 100 Clicks, and not per single click. The formula used for calculating EPC in the majority of affiliate marketing contexts is: EPC = Profit ÷ Clicks × 100. Therefore, in the above screenshot AT&T affiliate program’s 3-month EPC, which is $88.65, should be read as: “$88.65 is what an average affiliate earns through the AT&T’s program on every 100 visitors sent to them”.

But wait! That’s not the only thing you want to understand about EPC! Point #2 is even more important:

2) Do Not Budget Your PPC Campaign(s) Based on EPC

When setting your PPC bids, you have to be especially careful with how you use the EPC data. One of the costliest mistakes is to merely divide the EPC figure by 100, and budget your marketing campaign setting the result of this basic arithmetic operation as the amount you’re willing to pay per click/visitor.

Let’s take this health insurance affiliate program as an example. Below is the information you will see on it (prior to joining it):

The program’s 3-months’ EPC is $16.56. Dividing this number by 100, we will arrive at an average affiliate earning of $0.16-$0.17 per click.

Here’s the part you do not see (top 10 affiliates’ EPC in the program):

Do you see how different the amounts are in every case? They range from $5.45 to $292.24 in earnings per 100 clicks, but you don’t know this when you’re looking at the average; and the individual affiliate’s EPC data is only available to the merchant.

There are also other important factors that you do not know (about the program, and affiliates in the program), but the above example illustrates the point well.

Averages are good to know, but always tricky, and should be treated as such. Never base your decision on any single metric, regardless of the context, and especially if this metric is an average.

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Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AMNavigator.com, a graduate of the University of Cambridge, author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” (2007), “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes” (2008), contributor to “Internet Marketing from the Real Experts” (2010), international speaker, and regular contributor to a number of industry’s publications. He is an acclaimed expert in affiliate marketing and an award-winning affiliate manager. Feel free to contact him directly with any questions on affiliate management.