Tips to Energize Your PPC Campaigns
With more and more catalogers transitioning online, search marketing, in particular pay per click (PPC), has become essential to their marketing plans and budgets. At last week’s Search Marketing Expo East conference in New York City, a panel of search experts led a discussion on how to revive a failed PPC campaign. Here are some thoughts/observations/tips gleaned from that session.
* Many sites aren’t lacking for traffic, noted Alissa Ruehl, manager of paid search services at the online marketing services firm Apogee Search. But for the most part, it’s irrelevant traffic. The first step is to find irrelevant search terms in Google’s search query report. Then, when you find these terms, use them as negative keywords in all search engines, Ruehl advised. Try testing keywords in multiple match types on Google, she added. For Yahoo, adjust advanced match settings. These techniques can reduce unqualified traffic by 50 percent or more.
* Joanna Lord, senior SEM strategist for the travel shopping comparison site OneTime.com, listed four steps to survive a failed PPC campaign.
1. Isolate the problem. Keep detailed team-based records (e.g., daily agendas, updated calendars); maintain an internal database (e.g., TWiki, Yammer, Basecamp); and hold regular meetings to be aware of each others’ changes. “The best thing about our industry is a lot of the tools are free,” Lord said. “Use them.”
2. Consider the context. Are you a seasonal business? Has anything changed in regard to your competitor’s budget? Were there any tool, application or search engine changes that could’ve affected your results? Any industry movement, mergers, buyouts, etc.? “Look beyond any internal issues you’re dealing with,” Lord said, to see if an external factor has affected your campaign.
3. Determine a plan. Buy some time by day-parting, turning off some keywords for a period of time, Lord advised.
4. Execute. Don’t change multiple variables at once, Lord said. If you make a change, test it, analyze the results and then repeat with another variable until you find your answer. “You’re never going to be 100 percent sure why something isn’t working,” she said. And when you find what you believe is the root of your problem, set reasonable expectations post-execution.
* “To build a [PPC] campaign from the ground up, you need architecture, strategy, patient execution and testing,” said Andrew Goodman, founder and principal of the online marketing services consulting firm Page Zero Media. Goodman cited the following warning signs that your PPC campaign is destined to fail: no market for the product, can’t get a consistent strategy from a client, a shift in your key performance indicators, client cites unverifiable data, among others.
If your campaign is suffering from broad keywords and weak ads, high bids for keywords to rescue the account may not be worth it, Goodman advised. In many cases, it makes more sense to start a new account, he said.
* Data to examine when evaluating the success of your PPC campaigns include impressions, clicks, conversions, index data, keywords, referral data, query data, year-over-year data, value per click and others, said Addie Conner, director of search marketing for CourseAdvisor, an online research directory for postsecondary education, career training and professional development. “Be sure to understand how your keywords are tied in with your inventory,” said Conner. “Look at your year-over-year data, check out all the seasonal data and use this data to improve your forecasts.”
Conner also advised the audience to do a cost/benefit analysis of your campaign’s creative. “What matters more to your business?” she asked. Calculate the volume of traffic vs. its quality; clickthrough rates vs. conversion rates. And beware of landing page changes, she cautioned, “They can have unanticipated results.” You need to test to understand the impact of a landing page change, and if need be, revert back to the original version if you don’t get your desired result.
