PPC Strategies for the Big 3 Search Engines

Your search engine marketing strategies will include the big three search engines (i.e. Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Bing Adcenter).

To do well with the big 3 search engines:

• Understand Google Adwords Quality Score, standardize your Google Adwords PPC Optimization, and manage with Adwords Editor.
• Manage/optimize your Bing PPC with Microsoft Adcenter Desktop.
• Before seeing your Yahoo traffic all migrate to Bing, overcome your Yahoo Search Marketing problems and avoid Yahoo PPC automatic account optimization.

Keyword Research and Keyword Management

Create keyword lists for search targeted campaigns and content targeted campaigns:

• Use SEM keyword research tools to build your search campaign keyword lists, and estimate your keyword cost with Google Adwords Bid Simulator.
• Ensure the keyword list consists of all your trademark keywords and make use of Adwords PPC site links.
• Start with broad match keywords, review the search query report, and make good use of negative keywords to save cost.
• Create Adwords content targeting ad groups / keywords with Google Wonder Wheel Tool, and discover Google content network websites in your industry/category with Google Ad Planner.

Track Conversions

To monetize through search engine marketing, the ability for big brands to track return-on-investment (ROI) will become far more important than before. Google offers free PPC conversion tracking tools for search engine marketers who will not be spending budgets on “paid” conversion tracking software.

• Setup Adwords Conversion Tracking to track your website’s goals (i.e. leads and/or sales), and review Adwords reports regularly.
• Run Adwords Geographic report to review your campaigns’ performance in different cities/regions/countries.
• Use Google Analytics to track your PPC conversions from Yahoo Search Marketing, Bing Adcenter, Baidu PPC Phoenix Nest, and the 2nd tier PPC search engines.

Optimize Keyword Bidding

Keyword / ad group bidding is/are another areas that can no longer be done manually in an efficient way. Google offers Adwords Conversion Optimizer, a free keyword bidding tool. Follow Adwords Conversion Optimizer tips before using this bidding tool.

Use one of the auto-bid / portfolio bid management software from Efficient Frontier, Marin Software, Search Force or Kenshoo, if you prefer “paid” software and services. Paid bidding software allows you to manage/optimize all your different search engine accounts (Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Adcenter) in one system.

Optimize Landing Pages

Use dynamic keyword insertion to improve your ads’ click-through-rate (CTR), and optimize PPC landing pages to:

• Improve your site users’ experience
• Increase your websites’ conversion rates

Diversify your marketing channels, but select the right channels

If you have been a big buyer on display ads, start reviewing the performance of all your banners and stop spending on those that have been under performing.

Find fast growing web sites that provide ad spaces that are truly worth spending your advertising budgets. Leverage from social media, video and viral marketing.

Complement PPC with SEO, and vice versa. Leverage from the keyword long tail by using SEM keyword research tools.

Partially or totally cut spending from the second tier PPC search engines that have been generating poor ROI.

Use social marketing to boost SEO, combine several online marketing channels, and blend PPC into your overall marketing strategies. Leverage from Google’s Universal Search.

Be as creative as possible!

Focus on your website’s users, especially the most valuable users

A successful PPC campaign is about using the right combination of keywords, ads, and landing pages.

• Improve usability of your web site – SEO is Usability for your users, so as PPC
• Improve PPC copywriting – Ensure the marketing message on your PPC landing page is consistent with the marketing message of your PPC ad
• Optimize your PPC landing pages for higher conversion rates
• Run A/B testing using Google Website Optimizer

PPC can be used to identify the patterns and behavior of your most valuable customers. The common scenario for most of the websites is that 80% of the sales are driven by 20% of customers. Focus on the “higher value” traffic and generate more conversions.

• Identify the keywords that have been driving high conversions and/or large profit margins – Track your conversions and traffic by using Google Conversion Tracking, Google Analytics and other third party analytic systems.
• Increase the CPC bids for those keywords or use Adwords Conversion Optimizer
• Improve the ad copy for those keywords
• Optimize the landing pages

Shift towards new markets

If the sales volume of your target market is shrinking, move to target a new market. Most companies in the developed western countries believe China is the new market. Ensure your marketing team:

• Knows the cultural differences when selling to Chinese
• Is aware of the language barriers when selling through the China market
• Understands whether your business will be scalable in the Chinese market
• Focuses on quality and be customer-oriented, so try to understand the Chinese consumers before selling your unmodified American-customized products to them!
• Figures out the China PPC strategies

Many companies have been negatively affected by last year’s economic downturn, and one of the first casualties during the time of financial crisis is marketing spend. Even as the most cost-effective marketing channel – search engine marketing’s spending fell 8% in the US. Before setting advertising budgets for 2009, companies for the first time in nearly a decade started to severely scrutinize search marketing’s performance.

This is definitely the right time to manage your marketing spending according to your revised business goals. After all, search marketing is not an expense, but an investment.

Shift from off-line to online marketing

For companies that have been spending aggressively on mass marketing (for example, TV commercial ads), it is time to cut back and review the performance.

For companies that can rely entirely on online channels, it is the perfect time to shift completely from traditional marketing channels to online – especially to search marketing. In doing that, companies should start:

• Outsourcing search marketing to experienced search marketing agencies or individual experts
• Building an inhouse PPC team slowly and from scratch
• Structuring a global PPC team, with the end goal to save operational cost

Leverage from your competitors’ loss

Your competitors’ biggest loss will be your biggest gain when you use the economic downturn as an opportunity for growth.

In 2009, it is the time to recruit some of the most experienced PPC specialists when your competitors are starting to cut expenses and have laid off their online marketing experts.

It is the time to buy ads at a cheaper price – If your competitors have cut search marketing spending, you should increase (or at least maintain) yours. You will be surprised that many competitive keyword inventories are now available at lower costs.

Focus on performance-based search marketing

It is the time to focus entirely on return-on-investment from your marketing budgets and figure out the most cost-effective PPC business models.

Sophisticated bidding algorithms will help to optimize monetization of your PPC campaigns. By integrating your PPC campaigns into systems like Omniture, Kenshoo, SearchForce or Efficient Frontier, it will allow you to:

• Streamline the set up of your new PPC campaigns
• Optimize your spending by auto-pricing your keywords based on their individual performances
• Review and analyze your PPC performance on all levels across all major search engines
• Manage your long-tail keywords more efficiently
• Identify and minimize PPC click fraud

Google continues to dominate in search

Even 2009 may seem like a bad year for search engine marketing, Google still managed to gain significant search market share among all other major search engines in 2008. It will depend on whether this vigorous growth in search volume can compensate the loss in advertising revenue.

Regarding advertising platforms, Google will further pull away from Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter by regularly introducing new features and innovations to Adwords.

Educating your potential clients and making PPC campaigns ROI-sustainable

Many potential clients may still not realize how their overall business strategies will be benefited from incorporating a cost-effective paid search marketing campaign. It will take time for PPC agencies to educate their potential clients. One of the methods is to show them the success stories of other clients they have worked with. Good numbers always make good evidence.

Once your potential client reckons the importance of paid search, your PPC campaign will only exist when it is funded by your client. If your client has almost unlimited budgets, it is great for you. If your client is not willing to spend, there is not much you could do.

However, it will be a different story when both your client and you can work the campaign towards a return-on-investment (ROI) model. If the campaign can break-even on ROI or even make profits, your client will be more willing to fund the PPC campaign. When both the campaign spending and the profits are scalable, there is no reason why your client should not invest more.

On top of the above, ad agency companies that can run paid search campaigns cost effectively should consider offering their clients services on commission based models. I have previously explained the different PPC business models.

Recruiting new talents and keeping your key members

Paid search is still very much a new profession, especially outside of the US. This makes hiring experienced PPC managers a challenge. Keeping your top PPC staff members is also an ongoing challenge. Hiring anyone having over 3 years of PPC management and optimization experience is difficult, and almost all of them are very expensive. Depending on their levels, most of them are able to involve in variety of online marketing strategic decision making.

One of the solutions is to always keep one very experienced PPC guy in your business, and have him led your paid search team or your online marketing team (depending on his experience). The team should consist of less-experienced and the non-experienced members who will learn from him and grow in experience and knowledge in PPC and other online marketing channels. If this is to be incorporated into proper training programs, new PPC specialists will be produced regularly.

Balance between servicing your clients and optimizing their campaigns

As your business is becoming more client-centric, your team will be spending more time on servicing the needs of your clients. As PPC professionals, you may be asked to provide all sorts of information to your clients regarding to their campaigns. This can become overwhelming when you have to manage multiple PPC projects of multiple clients.

It is important to have a balance, so that you do not neglect the really important aspects in PPC campaign management. Depending on the objectives of the campaigns, it can include optimization on campaign structure, keyword selection, actual CPC reduction and campaign expansion.

Both your client and you want to have things done professionally, cost effectively and time efficiently. One of the best ways is to provide your clients weekly performance reports, and to communicate on a weekly basis. Quarterly or monthly meetings can also be set up to discuss long term objectives and how they can be achieved.

Improving ad copy writing, finding alternatives to raising keyword CPC, and monitoring click fraud

Great ad copy writing can considerably improve the click-through-rate and conversion rate of your paid search marketing campaigns. It is important to apply professional ad copy writing.

If you are seeing continuous inflation on keyword cost-per-click (CPC) of your search targeting campaigns, one of the alternatives is to consider shift more of your marketing budgets to content targeting. In general, average CPC of content targeting campaigns is less expensive than that of search targeting. However, it is important to improve the quality of your content targeting campaign so as its conversion rate.

As long as there is paid search, click fraud is not going to completely disappear. The point is that how you will save your marketing costs by effectively monitoring and spotting possible click fraud situations.

However, competitions in the pay-per-click industry have become tougher over the years. I expect everyone in the field will encounter more serious challenges in 2007. Here are the 5 reasons.

Reason #1: People tend to move towards where the money is

By looking at Google’s increasing revenues from its successful paid search platform Adwords, people could get false impressions. They often think by understanding some basic tricks on PPC and by investing a fairly small capital, they will make huge profit from their investment. However the truth is that there could be many advertisers trying out on paid search, and only the ones who truly understand pay-per-click will make profits consistently.

Reason #2: Bid management systems are getting smarter

You may find your competitors are catching up on you by using improved bid management systems, whether the tools are on subscription based or self-developed.

The major PPC search providers (e.g. Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN Adcenter, Baidu and even Ask.com) have all included click-through-rate (CTR) in their ranking algorithm calculations. Due to this reason, old PPC systems will be re-developed and upgraded. It is generally very expensive to create your own technologies, but serious companies in paid search marketing will invest more on either developing new systems or polishing their existing bid management tools.

Reason #3: Your competitors have gained experience

Now your competitors have smarter systems, they will then hire experienced and smarter PPC experts. Great strategies and decisions can only be made by smart experts. I have never seen a single paid search campaign completely relying on the computers to make decisions, not even when the algorithms are perfect.

Reason #4: Keyword click price inflation is to continue

The cost-per-click (CPC) prices on most of the competitive keywords are still to raise. This is caused by the effect of bidding wars from many advertisers, without any desire to be cost effective and competing in the same “keyword” space. These are the few of the many reasons that CPC prices will raise:

• Marketers who have large budgets and do not have to watch the revenue on investment (ROI).
• Brand marketers who simply bid high to protect their brands.
• Advertisers who are required to reach some seasonal sales targets.
• Multi-channel retailers who are selling from both offline and online.

Reason #5: Click fraud

Click fraud has always been a big concern to the entire paid search industry, and it is happening all the time. It will cause you a great deal of advertising budget, if you don’t watch out for it!

Major search engines do have their own ways to prevent and detect click fraud. However, they will not disclose these methodologies to prevent the real click fraudsters from easily finding ways around it. There are other ways to spot click fraud to some certain extends.

Advertisers can always try to ask for refunds from search engines provided they have submitted solid proof of evidence. However, many in-house PPC managers are reluctant to do so, as their campaigns lack a comprehensive click fraud detection system. In this case, they may want to seek help from companies that are specialized in managing paid search campaigns for clients.