Search Marketing InsiderPay Per Click, Social Media and SEO Strategies – An Internet Marketing Institute Publication

Results of our recent PPC Summit Internet Marketing Education Survey revealed:

• Respondents prefer a mix of online and in-person training
• One or two day in-person educational meetings with multiple tracks/multiple presentations won out
• Networking is an important component of in-person events for most of you
• Relevant vendors add value for 70+% of attendees
• Facebook is the most used social media site amongst those who responded, closely followed by LinkedIn, and over 80% of you are using social media
• Many of you are looking for more advanced strategies for both Pay-Per-Click and SEO

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Congratulations to Jenna, Doug and Ronald who won $60 iTunes Gift Cards for completing the survey. 

If you would like to be included in future survey, sign up for our newsletter now. 

Speaking of the newsletter, Mark from California let us know, “I run two hotels and manage my own PPC programs. I was heading towards a $250,000 spend for 2009 until I picked up a simple tip from a PPCSummit.com email newsletter: “turn off broad match.”  I checked search terms  that were triggering my keywords and found that about 35% of my clicks were not targeted and irrelevant to my adds. (The search engine supposedly had ‘“broadened” its broad match parameters.)  I believe that this “ONE TIP” will save me $80,000-$100,000 over the next year.”

Book Review by Mary O’Brien, Founder/Director of PPC Summits

Tim does a great job in this book not only covering “What” Landing Page Optimization is but also “Why” you should do it.

His book provides you with excellent guidance for analyzing your current website and determining how to make it easier for the visitor to use and do what you need them to do.

Tim has spoken for us several times at our PPC Summits and his sessions are always very interactive and well received by attendees. In the book he has a section called “Why your site is not perfect.” In person he addresses that head on in a presentation called “Why Your Baby is Ugly.”

Both the chapter and the training session provide excellent information on how to uncover the hidden problems in your site that your users are experiencing even though you may have overlooked them. Users don’t usually navigate your site the way you expect or the way you want them to, so rather than trying to drive them down your path, watch how they navigate and build your site and landing pages to meet their needs.

The book provides an extensive focus on personas, and why users behave the way they do on the web. It also explains basic concepts such as A-B split testing, ROI, and gives some examples with marketing formulas you can apply to your sites.

Tim covers testing landing pages comprehensively from an analytics perspective. No matter how pretty your website is, unless it performs and meets the needs of your audience it is practically worthless.  Tim also tells you honestly the limitations of different testing methods so that you can decide what will work best for you.

There are some good examples of sites with poor landing pages and sites with effective pages so you can get a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.  He also provides important background about the psychology and the math of testing that most people are not even aware of. This may get a little complicated for those who are newer to search marketing, but the concepts are those that every marketer needs to grasp and practice, so it provides a good grounding in some really essential stuff.

As Tim would tell you himself there is no “one size fits all” answer when it comes to landing pages. What works for one site won’t work at all for another, so you have to test and test again until you truly create a page that resonates with your audience. Of course the proof of that is whether the page is generating sales or leads, but the book also does a great job covering the metrics that allow you to discover whether the page is successful or not.

 There are parts of the book that may come across as a little “Salesy” or promotional in nature, but anyone who knows Tim, also knows that this is a just part of his persona. He is a passionate advocate of testing and tuning landing pages to get better results, and he has built a very successful business out of that philosophy and also made lots of money for his clients in the process.

If you are looking for a quick fix, this book is not for you. But if you want a deep understanding of all issues that are critical for landing page testing success, then you should definitely read this, and give it a prominent place on your marketing bookshelf as an ongoing research tool.

by Heather Schwartz, Account Executive at Anvil Media, Inc.

It’s never too early to start getting ready for the holidays whether it’s shopping if you’re a customer or prepping your strategy if you’re a marketer.  Here are some things to start thinking about the upcoming 2009 holiday season for your online marketing efforts, specifically for Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.  First let’s look into last year’s holiday season and expectations for this year to get a good understanding of the 2009 holiday landscape.

Holiday Season 2008
According to comScore, e-shopping sales in 2008 were over $130 million, a 6% increase in sales from the 2007 holiday season, and among the top 500 internet retailer’s sales in 2008 increased 12%.  From this we can conclude that more people were shopping online in 2008 compared to 2007 and that larger retailer sales are growing at a faster rate.  In a study done by Coremetrics, department stores and gifting sites saw an increase in conversion rate over the 2008 holiday season, while luxury goods retailers saw a decrease in conversion rate.  Why you ask?  Because the department stores and gifting sites adapted to the economy, they offered early discounting, they changed their merchandising to feature value items at lower prices and they added buying incentives for customers, like free shipping.   The retailers who continue to change and adapt to their customers needs and wants (within reason) are the ones that will prosper.

2009 Holiday Forecast
In order to properly prepare for this year’s holiday season, some research needs to be done first.  Below are Coremetrics’ forecasts for the 2009 holiday season:
• Shoppers will be shopping earlier this year and buying value orientated, incentive driven items.
• Potential for increase in cost/order, because customers will be shopping in more sessions therefore clicking on more marketing programs.
• Targeted email and display ads will play a bigger role this holiday season.

So, here is your friendly reminder – get ready for the 2009 holiday season, consider offering more promotions, like free shipping and feature products that aren’t necessarily the most expensive on your site.  (Keep in mind you don’t want these promotions to negatively affect your bottom line, be smart about your offerings.)  Also if you’re already running PPC on the Search Network, consider running on the Content Network on sites that directly target your customers.  So, how should you get started for the holiday season?

PPC Ad Text for Holiday 2009
1. Look at your campaign history.  If you included holiday messaging in your campaigns last year, what types of ads had the highest CTR and conversion rates? For those top performing ads can you translate the messaging for this year?
2. Continually test ad text.  There are several options when it comes to A/B testing ad copy.  For the holidays, test what type of promotion increases CTR or conversion rate.  Test the headline on your ad, for example, one that includes pricing v. one that doesn’t.  Once you have collected enough data, pause the non-performing ad, copy the ad that performed better and slightly tweak the messaging to continue testing.
3. Competitive research.  Don’t forget to do some holiday recon, look at what your direct competitors are saying in their ad text.  What type of offers/promotions are your competitors offering?
4. Create a schedule for the launch of your new ads, paying close attention to the following dates:
      a. Black Friday, November 27th – only 28 shopping days until Christmas this year.  Last year’s holiday season was the start of the shorter time period between Black Friday and Christmas Day.  In 2007, this period was 32 days, which is over a 12% decrease in the number of shopping days from 2007 to 2009.  This decrease in the shopping period is influencing customer’s buying behaviors to start shopping earlier.
     b. Cyber Monday, November 30th – this day continues to be a bigger day each year, with more people shopping online.
     c. Christmas Day, December 25th – continues to be a big shopping day for people doing returns or exchanges, customers buying complementary goods, using their gift cards, buying additional gifts online and buying products that were forgotten.

PPC Keywords for Holiday 2009
1. What keywords performed well last holiday season?  Instead of setting bidding strategies based on last month’s performance, take some time to review last year’s performance and make decisions based on last year’s holiday season.  Was there a specific keyword category that did particularly well in terms of sales, will this be the same for this year?  Look to popular trends to help determine “top sellers” and manage budget accordingly. 

2.  Revisit your negative keyword list.  Are there any particular holiday related negative keywords you could consider adding to your campaigns?

3.  If you are bidding on holiday related keywords, keep an extra close eye on the CPA and ROI at the keyword level, often times these keywords are expensive and don’t show goal return.

PPC Landing Pages for Holiday 2009
1.  If your ad text has holiday messaging be sure this gets translated to your landing page.  Same goes for promotions.
2.  Imagery.  Update any relevant images on your landing page with holiday related imagery.
3.  Revisit the conversion funnel on your site; make sure the appropriate merchandising is holiday related for cross selling and recommendation opportunities.  Do you have any gifting options on your site?  Also, make sure your internal search engine delivers gifting related results to relevant inquiries.

In summary, today is not too early to start planning your PPC campaigns for the holiday season.  Before it’s too late, determine your key benchmarks and goals for the holidays.  Start testing different verbiage or promotions now so you have a leg up on the competition before the holidays hit, and if something is working in one medium try to translate that across all your marketing efforts if applicable.

I hope the above takeaways regarding ad text, keywords and landing pages get you excited for the 2009 Holiday Season and jumpstart your PPC strategy.

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Heather Schwartz is an Account Executive at Anvil Media, Inc.  Heather  graduated from the University of Oregon with a BS in Marketing and a minor in Communication studies.  Heather has been working with Anvil Media in Portland since 2008 specializing in B2C ecommerce clients such as lucy activewear, Tea Collection and Ellington Leather, developing SEO, Social Media and PPC campaigns to increase clients online visibility and ROI.

Article 2 of 3: Drive Best-in-Class Results by Integrating Your Pay Per Click (PPC) with Other Online Marketing Channels

By Mary Huffman, Executive Vice President, Ionic Media

In the first article in this series, we reviewed the workhorses of online advertising:
* Pay-Per-Click search marketing (PPC)
* Search engine optimization (SEO)
* Display advertising (e.g., banners)
* Email (to house list)

Each marketing channel has a sweet spot for the type of product or situation in which it performs best.  The same is true for the six marketing channels we are exploring in this article:
* Mobile 
* Online PR
* Blogging
* Viral /social media
* Email (to rented list)
* Affiliate marketing

In this article, we will explore relatively new media options along with tested media vehicles like email to rented lists and affiliate marketing.  At this time, the new marketing choices are riskier than the ones we reviewed last time, but there are some stand-out results that cannot be ignored (especially among the adventurers out there).

First, let’s review how the six marketing vehicles we are focusing on perform on the “Branding” vs Direct Response” two-by-two matrix.

The six marketing vehicles we are reviewing in this paper are spread out across the branding vs direct response spectrum.  Now let’s review the summary and then we can dig into the detail on each of these more newly-minted marketing vehicles.

Now let’s look at each of these marketing vehicles in more detail.

Mobile Marketing:
The mobile marketing umbrella includes a number of different marketing vehicles.  Let’s look at each one individually.

Banner/Text Ads On Phones:
* Using a mobile ad network, marketers can place display or text ads on websites viewed with phones or on content sent to mobile phones (like daily weather updates)
* Allows you to reach a young, tech savvy audience
* Also allows you to reach older audiences, though at lower volume
* High response rates currently (likely because the technology is newer)
* As mobile coupon technology improves, this will be a great way to push coupons to users who are in-store and more likely to purchase

SMS Messaging Campaigns:
* Using a mobile service provider who furnishes a short code, you can entice people to “Text sweepstakes to 22456 for a chance to win a new car.”  It is the beginning of a mobile or email communication that must be managed carefully
* Most mobile service providers have a relatively high monthly minimum cost so it is not easy to test these types of campaigns unless you go through an agency (like Ionic Media)
* While the largest population using messaging is younger, don’t count out the 30-54 year olds, as they are the fastest growing segment for mobile messaging

Mobile Search:
* Using existing search engine ad interfaces as well as those from new companies, a marketer can choose to display a paid listing within the results when mobile users make a search
* Costs little but often delivers few leads

Mobile Applications:
* This can involve either developing a custom application, or sponsoring an existing application
* The trick is aligning the brand with an application that addresses what users care about and want to do while mobile

Mobile Website:
* Note that for many of these campaigns, you need a mobile website
* Some smartphones (e.g., iPhone, G1, Blackberry Storm) can render “regular” websites pretty well
* But most phones require a scaled-down mobile site

Online PR:
* Online PR is an easy and effective way to drive more buzz about your company
* Existing press releases can be uploaded to syndication sites that drive the story across online press sites
* Each time you upload a press release, the syndication site charges a fee (up to $200 depending on the site and the package)
* This can be an effective way to drive authority for your site (lots of relatively good inbound links) which helps with organic ranking

Blogging:
* Using easy-to-install blogging software, a marketer can create an on-site or off-site blog where one or more people can chronicle their thoughts and opinions
* A good blog with lots of followers can drive organic ranking and therefore organic traffic
* To ensure good pickup, blog often and reach out to potential readers to become loyal followers
* This marketing vehicle takes a commitment to the activity.  Blogs should be updated at least once a week and better to be updated every other day or even everyday.  That takes a high level of commitment

Viral Marketing:
* Viral marketing is a catchy name for an ill-defined group of marketing tactics.  For example, all of the following would be considered viral marketing:
     * An on-line widget that lets you upload photos to turn your friends into dancing elves a la Chorus Line
     * A video of claymation bunnies frolicking in New York City to advertise the Sony Bravia television
     * An email message you send to a friend with Bob Dylan holding up cue cards that display your message and which    ends with a plug for his latest album
     * A video of preppy white boys doing a rap about throwing a tea party (to advertise Smirnoff)
     * A widget with a man dressed in a chicken suit who performs whatever action you command him to (Burger King’s Subservient Chicken)
     *  These are all wildly popular examples of viral campaigns.  There are 2,356,744 other campaigns that companies tried to make popular but did not, in the end, “go viral.”  Note: That number is approximate and might be off by a lot
     * MarketingSherpa reports that the most experienced viral marketers report that only 50% of viral campaigns break even and only 1 in 80 are home runs
     *  So, the message when you are starting a viral campaign is to be creative, turn to the experts and run 80 campaigns at a time so you can get one home run (that would work, right?).  Actually, just be thoughtful when you are planning your viral campaigns and watch your costs as most do not deliver on the hype

Email to Rented Lists
* Historically this medium has delivered poor performance to marketers
* It can be used effectively to drive awareness and action if you carefully select the list provider of the leads

* When looking for a rented list to email with your message, check for the following:
* How was the list assembled?  Did they scrape websites or did people sign up for a special offer for information one individual at a time?
* Is the list single or double opt-in?  Double opt-in is the gold standard.  If it is opt-in, what do the people think they opted in for (information from a certain vendor, information for a series of vendors in a category or a chance to win a long-past sweepstakes)?
* How old are the names on the list?  If everyone opted-in to the list within the last 30 days, you should be willing to pay more than if the list was built over 5 years ago
* How often do they mail to this list and what are the response/opt-out rates?
* Consider a co-branded email campaign with another, more established brand.  Use that brand’s email list and send a dedicated email that has an implied endorsement from that brand

Affiliate Marketing:
* Affiliate marketing includes the broad reach of affiliate networks such as Commission Junction as well as working closely with a small number of “super affiliates” who carefully drive leads and sales to your business
* Working with affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and ShareASale makes affiliate recruitment easier (as they have hundreds of thousands of members) but you have less control over the quality of the affiliates and the messages they are putting out to your target market in your name
* Creating super-affiliate relationships with a handful of sites is more work but can deliver a better end result in terms of volume and quality of leads/sales
* And the bounty is often a key driver here.  If you are willing to pay more per lead or sale, more affiliates are going to give you more attention and drive more volume

While these six marketing vehicles are not the online marketing staples from the first article in this series, there is a lot to be said for testing these media.  Each medium listed above requires either time or money to make it happen.  For any given company only two are likely to be a strong fit with the target market of that particular product.

In the last in our series on the online marketing landscape, we will be looking at how to intelligently integrate your PPC marketing with other online vehicles for maximum effect.

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Mary Kingsley Huffman is a co-founder and Executive Vice President at Ionic Media, a firm with deep experience driving bottom-line results for clients using search and online marketing. Previously, she was Director of Marketing at Overture Services where she was responsible for the acquisition marketing and communication departments, leading all advertiser acquisition efforts and customer communications. Prior to Overture, Mary was an Engagement Manager in the London office of McKinsey & Company, specializing in marketing solutions. Mary has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from UCLA.

By Mary Huffman, Executive Vice President, Ionic Media

Article 1 of 3 Series: Drive Best-in-Class Results by Integrating Your Pay Per Click (PPC) with Other Online Marketing Channels

It is a mistake to rely solely on PPC as your go-to  marketing channel to drive the success of your business.  While effective, PPC cannot always deliver great results when your brand is unknown, your product is commoditized or you are in a crowded field, for instance.  Smart marketers understand the online marketing landscape and know which levers to pull given their market position.  This article is the first in a series of three articles which will describe the online marketing landscape and provide some tips on driving revenue with PPC and other effective marketing vehicles.

In the first two articles in the series, we will explore the following marketing channels:
*  Affiliate
*  Blogging
*  Display (e.g., banners)
*  Email (house and rented lists)
*  Mobile
*  Online PR
*  Pay per click (PPC)
*  Search engine optimization (SEO)
*  Viral/social media

Then in the final article, we will describe how to integrate your PPC marketing with other vehicles to drive better results than one vehicle alone would deliver.

Let’s first look at how each of these marketing vehicles compares to the another on driving branding goals (building awareness and interest but not necessarily trial or purchase) and driving direct response (DR) goals such as visits, downloads, sales, etc.

Email (to a house list), PPC, SEO and mobile marketing are generally the most effective DR channels.  They are best at driving traffic and sales in the most controllable way.

Online PR, blogging and viral/social media can do a lot for driving awareness and interest but are less likely to drive measurable increases in sales and revenues.  Make no mistake, though, these more brand-building marketing vehicles have an important job of raising awareness and driving interest.  Awareness and interest are the foundation of success for sales.  Without these elements, you can be left sitting in your office wondering why no one wants to buy your wonderful, ground-breaking product.  Pssst…they don’t know about it.

Display is balanced between DR and branding.  So too are affiliate marketing and email (to a rented list) marketing, although they are generally harder to make as effective as other channels.

Let’s dig in and review the strengths and weaknesses of four of the most-used channels: PPC, SEO, display and email to a house list.  Here is a handy summary chart that you can use as we review each marketing channel in more detail.

Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing (PPC)
*  Can be a laser-focused traffic and sales driver
*  Develop a keyword list that numbers in the tens of thousands (not in the tens or hundreds)
*  Write ad copy in the context of the other ad copy that may appear on the search results page
*  Ensure your landing page is relevant and meets the needs of the user (based on the user’s keyword)
*  Test everything…constantly
*  Best used for: Products/services with some inherent demand.  Your PPC results will be disappointing if no one is   searching for what you offer

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
*  As much art as science
*  The goal with SEO is to raise both the relevance of a webpage to a given keyword as well as increasing its authority. 

This translates to extensive on-site work as well as off-site link building.
*  The ROI for SEO can be in the thousands of percents – it is well worth the effort
*  Best used for: anyone with a website who wants to build traffic levels in a cost-effective way.  Note: it takes several months to begin driving traffic so you need to be in it for the long term (e.g., 12 months at least).

Display (e.g., banners, rich media, video)
*  Banners have a bad reputation for delivering few sales and being priced based on impressions
*  Look again, as banners come in many more shapes and sizes and some of them can now do tricks (e.g., expand on roll-over, peel off a page, allow for in-banner video or in-banner form completion, synchronize so two banners on a page can work in tandem to communicate a message)
*  New tracking techniques allow you to measure the “assists” from banners so you can see how many users viewed a banner several times and then later searched for the product and bought something from your site.  The assist value of banners can be very high and is easily overlooked if you do not set up the tracking correctly
*  While clickthrough rates for traditional banners remain at less than 1%, the new formats and new tracking mean that banners can be a huge activity driver if the creative and call-to-action are compelling
*  The ROI from display advertising can vary.  We have seen instances where banners were MORE effective than a PPC campaign when a product was not yet in high demand and we needed to increase awareness
*  Best used for: products/services with lower awareness or interest, and those offerings that benefit from visual explanations and/or more explanation

Email (House List)
*  Generally delivers the best ROI as recipients are familiar with your product/service and may be previous purchasers
*  Typically inexpensive since the only costs are usually creative development and actually sending the email
*  Best used for: anyone with a house list.  Do not let your house list age and wither without using it to drive additional revenue with re-sell and cross-sell efforts.  If you do not have a house list, begin building one (perhaps by using the other channels described here).  Test continuously to improve performance on metrics like bounce rate, view rate, open rate, clickthrough rate (by link) and conversion rate.

These four marketing channels (PPC, SEO, display and email to house lists) are the workhorses of online advertising.  Consider them (and more importantly, test them) carefully before you eliminate one from your marketing mix.

In the next article in this series, we will review the other online channels (mobile, online PR, blogging, email to rented lists, viral/social media and affiliate marketing).  The final article in the series will provide tips for how to integrate these various marketing vehicles effectively with PPC.  Our goal is to make the integrated marketing plan deliver more than the sum of the parts.

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Mary Kingsley Huffman is a co-founder and Executive Vice President at Ionic Media, a firm with deep experience driving bottom-line results for clients using search and online marketing. Previously, she was Director of Marketing at Overture Services where she was responsible for the acquisition marketing and communication departments, leading all advertiser acquisition efforts and customer communications. Prior to Overture, Mary was an Engagement Manager in the London office of McKinsey & Company, specializing in marketing solutions. Mary has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from UCLA.

By Mike Nierengarten, Online Marketing Consultant, Anvil Media Inc

The MCC

MCC’s or My Client Centers were originally created for third party agencies with multiple clients to monitor client accounts from a central location.  Google has since recognized the value an MCC can hold and has since described an MCC as “ideal for large advertisers” in the What is My Client Center section of AdWords help (but apparently not enough to change the name to something that makes sense for advertisers).

Despite Google’s endorsement, the MCC remains an underutilized tool in most search marketers’ arsenal.

The power of the MCC is that it provides an extra level (or levels) of segmentation and makes large accounts much more manageable. 

The Power of the MCC

In any pay per click (PPC) account, account structure is exceptionally important.  Segmenting keywords into well-defined ad groups and ad groups into well-defined Campaigns allows marketers to better associate ad text with keywords, thereby creating more relevant ads.  A hierarchal account structure also allows marketers to better analyze subsets of the overall account by dissecting specific sections of the account.

Three levels of structure – Campaigns, ad groups, and keywords – works well for the average PPC account, but what do you do if you are selling 10,000 unique products in 500 unrelated categories geographically targeted by region?  The answer is to create a hierarchal structure more than three levels deep.

This is precisely the power of the MCC – the ability to add more levels to the PPC account structure.

Multi-Tiered MCC’s

For large-scale advertisers who target hundreds of thousands of keywords, a regular old MCC may not be enough.  Multi-tiered MCC’s may be the best solution.  Multi-tiered MCC’s are essentially master accounts of MCC’s and provide another level of depth. 

Using multi-tiered MCC’s, marketers can control the level of segmentation, adding new levels as necessary (hence, segmenting to the nth degree).  A multi-tiered MCC for a toy store, for example, could segment specific toys by current promotion, category, age group, and country where the toy ships and, using Google AdWords reports, can easily pull statistics for each level.

Avoiding Infection

Beyond simplifying account management and analysis, MCC’s also avoid cross-infection of Quality Score (QS).  A keyword’s or an ad’s Quality Score directly impacts other keywords within an account. Because the competitive nature of paid search varies from region to region and category to category, marketers may experience a wide range of Quality Score implications. 

For example, cost-per-click (CPC) in New Delhi is much cheaper than CPC in New York.  If a marketer were to create a Campaign that targets both India and the United States, Quality Score may suffer as marketers overbid for positioning in New Delhi but underbid for positioning in New York. 

Again, MCC’s and multi-tiered MCC’s can resolve this issue.

Summary
MCC’s and multi-tiered MCC’s provide marketers the opportunity for advanced segmentation.  Advanced segmentation allows for better analysis of subsets of ads and keywords, the ability to separate accounts based on geographic region, product category, promotion, etc., and avoid cross-contamination of poor-performing keywords.

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Mike Nierengarten is an Account Executive with Anvil Media Inc. in Portland.  Mike began work with Anvil in 2008 and has managed paid search accounts for a wide range of budgets and clients including an email marketing service provider, online school, and online psychic network.  Previously, Mike worked for Direct Entertainment Marketing, a lifestyle promotions company based in Las Vegas, where he managed social media and promotions for clients such as MGM Nightlife and Harrah’s.