• Adwords and general PPC tips
• Online marketing advice
• Facebook ads
• PPC consulting
• Opinion and comment
• Landing page help
• Product and service reviews

Gordon Choi’s Blog has also put up lists of PPC/SEO/SEM blogs over the past several years:

• Top PPC blogs – Blogs that focus on PPC topics
• SEM blogs – Blogs on search engine marketing, search engine optimization, web analytics, social media, from A-to-Z
• Top SEM blog lists – Lists from top Rank Blog, Search Engine Land, SEOmoz, Daily Blog Tips

To learn more PPC optimization tips, review:

• PPC optimization tips: Optimization for Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter and Baidu Phoenix Nest
• Google Adwords PPC optimization tips: Adwords search campaign optimization
• Google SEM tools: A full set of SEM tools offered to search engine marketers by Google.

• Google Adwords: Google offers the most comprehensive PPC platform that allows optimization and reaches the largest audience in the world.
• Bing Adcenter: Bing-Yahoo Alliance has the second largest audience reach in the US.
• Baidu Phoenix Nest: Baidu allows search advertisers to reach the China market.

Google Adwords Optimization

Optimization of Google Adwords through Quality Score and ads:

• Google Adwords Quality Score
• Google Adwords longer ad headline
• Google Adwords lowercase display URL
• Adwords dynamic keyword insertion
• Google Adwords seller ratings
• Google Adwords PPC sitelinks

Optimization of Google Adwords through keywords and keyword types:

• SEM keyword research tools
• Adwords search query report
• Google Adwords keyword report
• Adwords negative keywords
• Adwords broad match modifier
• Adwords broad match keywords
• Adwords trademark keywords

Optimization of Google Adwords through bid optimization tools, editing tools and conversion tracking tools:

• Adwords conversion tracking
• Adwords enhanced CPC
• Adwords conversion optimizer target CPA bidding
• Adwords conversion optimizer reviews
• Adwords conversion optimizer tips
• Google Adwords bid simulator
• Adwords Editor

Google Analytics allows search advertisers to monitor and track keyword performance of Google Adwords:

• Google Analytics PPC conversion tracking

All the optimization techniques for Google Adwords search campaigns include Quality Score, account structure, ad copy writing, keyword research, keyword bidding, location and language targeting, reporting, conversion tracking, and landing pages:

• Google Adwords PPC Optimization

Optimization of Google Adwords for content network (or display network) and remarketing ads:

• Adwords remarketing, retargeting to Google content network
• Optimize Google Adwords content network ads for conversions
• Adwords content targeting optimization

Optimization tools for Google Adwords content network (or display network):

• Google Adwords display ad builder
• Adwords content network site exclusion

Optimization of landing pages for Google Adwords:

• Optimizing landing pages

Google offers a full set of SEM tools to search engine marketers:

• Google SEM tools

Bing Adcenter Optimization

Optimization tools for Microsoft’s Bing Adcenter includes keyword research tools and editing tools:

• Microsoft Adcenter Desktop
• Bing keyword tools

Conversion tracking through Bing Adcenter’s built-in keyword conversion tracking tool and Google Analytics:

• Adcenter conversion tracking
• Track Bing Adcenter PPC keyword conversions in Google Analytics

Campaign transition from Yahoo Search Marketing to Bing Adcenter:

• Bing Adcenter PPC optimization, Yahoo PPC to Adcenter tips

Baidu Phoenix Nest Optimization

Optimization tools for Baidu PPC include keyword research, editing tool, and search queries:

• Baidu keyword research tool
• Baidu PPC Editor
• Baidu PPC search queries

Tracking keyword conversions and analyzing your website traffic collected through:

• Baidu PPC conversion tracking
• Baidu Analytics

Optimizing through understanding the difference between Baidu Phoenix Nest and Google Adwords:

• Baidu Phoenix Nest PPC vs Google Adwords

Basic features that are already included in Kenshoo Search:

• Keyword Expansion
• Tracking / Reporting
• PPC Management
• Crawler
• Bid Management

Kenshoo search released many new features during system upgrades between 2010 and quarter one of 2011.

• Google Adwords
• Bing Adcenter
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• Baidu Phoenix Nest
• Yandex
• Facebook

To maximize search engine marketing’s ROI and efficiency, Kenshoo Search offers features including:

• Keyword Expansion
• Tracking / Reporting
• PPC Management
• Crawler
• Bid Management

Kenshoo Search Keyword Expansion

Keyword expansion in Kenshoo Search system:

• Create keyword lists related to your industries through Kenshoo Search. Normally you have to use SEM keyword research tools.
• Keyword expansion automatically adds new keywords to relevant ad groups according to ROI / conversion goals.

Kenshoo Search Tracking / Reporting

Keyword conversion tracking and reporting in Kenshoo Search system:

• Create customized dashboard reports including all the PPC metrics.
• Geographical origins of all clicks to your PPC campaigns are monitored.
• Path To Conversion and keyword conversion attribution – Kenshoo Search’s Path To Conversion tracks the entire click-conversion path (from the first click to the conversion) across multiple search engines. Conversion credit weights are distributed to keywords in the click-conversion path according to your pre-defined keyword conversion attribution setup.
• Allow reporting of cost-related data in multiple currencies.
• Search query report (e.g. Adwords search query report – Google is the first search engine to provide PPC search query report)
• Track multiple conversion goals and then use conversion goal values for rule-based and/or model-based bid optimization.
• Import Google Analytics goal data into Kenshoo Search for optimization.
• Universal Channels – Kenshoo Search’s Universal Channels track clicks and goal conversions for non-API enabled search engines (e.g. Tencent’s Soso PPC) and non search engine based text/display advertising platforms.

Kenshoo Search PPC Management

PPC campaign management in Kenshoo Search system:

• Data is synchronized between Kenshoo Search and the search engines’ systems, including Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, Baidu PPC and Yandex.
• Categories and Dimensions – Define dimensions and group your campaigns into categories.
• Advanced Search – Run add, delete, pause, modify or move operations on campaigns, ad groups, ads or keywords that are automatically selected by Kenshoo Search’s Advanced Search based on your criteria.
• Download/export campaign data to spreadsheets, make changes and upload/import to Kenshoo Search. Adwords Editor, Microsoft Adcenter Desktop and Baidu PPC Editor offer similar features.

Kenshoo Search Crawler

Crawler in Kenshoo Search system:

• Crawler – Updates PPC campaign data (e.g. ads, keywords) based on real-time changes to content/inventory on B2C websites. Google offers Adwords dynamic keyword insertion, but is unable to connect with inventory/content changes of your site.
• Run ad A/B testing to meet conversion goal and/or ROI criteria.

Kenshoo Search Bid Management

Run automatic bid policies on your PPC campaigns:

• Rule-based bid policy (MBBP) – Submit conversion goal values (ROI) with a set of rules (including cost, clicks, impressions, cost-per-action, revenue) and Kenshoo Search’s auto bidding system will achieve the ROI. Google offers a similar automatic bid optimization tool – Adwords conversion optimizer.
• Model-based bid policy (MBBP) – Kenshoo Search’s bidding algorithm creates a behavioral model of keywords over time, finds the ideal position for each keyword, and meets requirements to cost and conversion goals. For keywords with low performance, Kenshoo Search uses a different bidding algorithm, principle of similarity.

Kenshoo Search New Feature Releases

Here are the lists of:

• Kenshoo Search’s new feature releases

Kenshoo Search’s News

Kenshoo Search system’s progress in business and technologies:

• Kenshoo Makes PPC Complexities Easier to Manage
• Changing the Internet Advertising Game
• Kenshoo Expands Into Chinese Market with Baidu Platform Integration
• Beyond Media Global Becomes Baidu Agency

Let us look at the definitions for the major PPC metrics that are different from Google Analytics metrics.

• Click
• Impression
• Cost
• Click Through Rate (CTR)
• Maximum Cost-per-click (Max. CPC)
• Average Cost-per-click (Avg. CPC)
• Actual Cost-per-click (Actual CPC)
• Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM)
• Impression Share
• Conversion
• Conversion Rate
• Cost-per-action (CPA)
• Earnings Per Click (EPC)
• Profit
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• Keyword Match Type
• Quality Score

Click

A Click is a user action when the user clicks on a PPC ad. A PPC ad showing up above organic search results will receive more clicks than a PPC ad appearing below (e.g. bottom Adwords ad).

Impression

Impression is the number of times your ad is displayed to the target audience. When your PPC ad is shown, an impression is counted. Impressions are measured differently for Google Instant.

Cost

Cost is the actual advertising amount that you spend on your PPC campaigns or ad groups or ads or keywords. In PPC (pay-per-click) auction systems, cost is incurred when a user clicks on an advertiser’s ad.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks your ad receives over the number of impressions within a specific period of time.

CTR (%) = Clicks / Impressions

In PPC auction systems, CTR is used as a factor to determine quality score and calculate ad rank. One of the major ad ranking factors in Google Adwords Quality Score is CTR. The higher the CTR, the higher the ad ranks.

Both keywords and ads can have click through rates:

• Keyword CTR
• Ad CTR

Maximum Cost-per-click (Max. CPC)

Maximum CPC bid is the highest bidding amount you set at the keyword level or ad group level for the keyword or ad that you are willing to pay for a click on your ad. PPC auction systems automatically reduce the bidding amount, so you are not charged for maximum CPC but actual CPC.

Average Cost-per-click (Avg. CPC)

Average cost-per-click is the cost of all clicks over the number of clicks received by your ad. Average CPC is different to maximum CPC.

Actual Cost-per-click (Actual CPC)

Actual CPC is the minimum required bid for your ad to stay one position above the ad immediately below in a PPC search ad auction and is how much you actually pay for your ad’s click (with no more than the maximum bid you specify for your ad group or keyword). Actual cost-per-click is determined by this formula:

Actual CPC = (Ad Rank to beat / Quality Score) + USD 0.01

Google Adwords search ad auction system describes how actual CPC and ad rank are calculated.

Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM)

CPM means cost-per-thousand-impressions which is an advertising metric mostly used in display ad campaigns. Google used to only offer CPM as the pricing model for text ads running within Adwords content network.

Impression Share

Impression share is a metric that represents the share of all impressions an ad acquired against other ads that are competing for the impressions. Google provides Adwords impression share data to advertisers.

Conversion

A conversion is a user action that takes place on your website, including a purchase, sign-up, lead or pageview. PPC auction systems offers tools to measure conversions:

• Adwords conversion tracking – Default conversion tracking tool in Adwords
• Adcenter conversion tracking – Bing Adcenter’s built-in conversion tracking tool
• Yahoo Search Marketing conversion tracking – Built-in conversion tracking feature for Yahoo PPC
• Baidu PPC conversion tracking – Baidu Phoenix Nest’s official conversion tracking tool

Google Analytics allows you to track your site’s conversions with this basic Google Analytics setup followed by:

• Google Analytics PPC Conversion tracking
• Track Bing Adcenter PPC keyword conversions in Google Analytics

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the number of conversions through your ad over the number of times that your ad is clicked.

Conversion Rate (%) = Conversions x Click

Cost-per-action (CPA)

Cost-per-action (CPA) measures the effectiveness of your ad based on actions taken by your site’s visitors. An action on a site can be defined as a purchase, sign-up, lead or pageview.

CPA = Cost / Action
Action = purchase or sign-up or lead or pageview or any other pre-defined action

Earnings Per Click (EPC)

EPC is the amount your PPC advertising earns from each click.

EPC = Revenue / Click

Profit

Profit refers to the dollar amount earned after taking cost into account or is revenue less cost.

Profit = Revenue - Cost

Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI measures how much profit you make from each marketing dollar you spend on your PPC ads.

ROI (%) = (Revenue / Cost) - 1

Keyword Match Type

PPC auction systems allow you to control who sees your search ads with keyword match types:

• Broad match
• Phrase match
• Exact match
• Negative match

For Google’s keyword matching, refer to Adwords negative keywords and Adwords broad match keywords.

Quality Score

Quality score is a factor that determines your ad’s ranking in the PPC search ad auction systems. For example, Google Adwords Quality Score is calculated by factors including CTR of keywords, ads and PPC account.

• Centralized Structure
• Decentralized Structure
• Hybrid Structure (the Hub Model)

Centralized PPC Team Structure

• Overall PPC strategies are planned from the central
• All PPC operations are executed by the central team
• Marketing budgets are centrally decided and managed

Pros of Centralized Structure:

• All the best resources stay at one spot – All or most of the roles of an inhouse PPC team including Strategist, campaign specialist, data analyst, keyword specialist, copy writer, and web developer
• No overhead to manage regional teams and agencies
• Easy to manage marketing budgets and maximize ROI – Know exactly by spending in which regions Google Adwords will return the best results

Cons of Centralized Structure:

• Difficult to understand any local markets in depth
• Problems with campaigns that involve local languages in most European and Asia-Pacific regions – may require local search agencies for help

Decentralized PPC Team Structure

• PPC strategies are planned and executed locally
• Marketing budgets are allocated to each region
• Each region acts completely independently

An example of the decentralized team structure:

• US team in Silicon Valley manages US and Latin America Google Adwords campaigns
• UK team in London handles EMEA’s Adwords PPC campaigns
• Singapore team are responsible for the entire Asia-Pacific’s Adwords campaigns

Pros of Decentralized Structure:

• Highly efficient when executing PPC strategies
• Local teams understand the local markets better than anyone else
• Effective for regional campaigns (Europe, APAC, etc)

Cons of Decentralized Structure:

• Resources and expertise on PPC and other supportive roles in some regions (e.g. APAC, EMEA, etc) are stretched really thin
• Industry best practices and updates need to be regularly disseminated across each region
  Difficult to maintain the consistency of marketing messages
• Highly difficult to communicate across overall marketing and brand strategies

Hybrid PPC Team Structure

• The hybrid approach gets the best of both centralized and decentralized structures, when it is properly executed
• The central PPC team provides oversights and set strategies
• The central team initially builds the framework (keywords, ad copy, etc) and then let regional PPC teams to translate and localize against nuances in each market according to consumer behavior
• The regional teams execute the oversights and strategies which was initially set out by the central team based on each region’s customer behaviour

Pros of Hybrid:

• Industry know-how and expertise are disseminated across all teams
• Easy for globalization and localization – Central team has insights about the global market while local teams understand the local markets
• On regular basis, the central team can run special campaign tests and distribute results to the regional teams – This saves time and resources from the regional teams for running tests that are uncertain of any success
• Easier to coordinate with other non-PPC marketing efforts
• Regional teams manage their respective local search agencies, but the central ensures the industry best practices are applied by all

Cons of Hybrid:

• Low efficiency on communications: Regular communications are required between the central team and each regional team and among different regional teams
• Require more thorough upfront planning on marketing budgets for each region

Over the years, with the experience that I gained by working in and leading PPC teams under both circumstances (inhouse and agency), I believe when setting up an effective inhouse PPC team, the roles below must be included.

Head of PPC (Strategist)

The strategist is the leader of the PPC team, due to both his thorough overall knowledge in this field and his leadership ability. This role oversees the entire PPC operations and is responsible for the overall strategies. He/she must fully understand the corporate’s business model and is to incorporate paid search into the overall marketing strategies for the corporate.

The strategist has to be aware of the different PPC business models and should be able to manage multiple PPC projects for different client expectations.

PPC Campaign Manager / Specialist

A campaign manager works with all members of a PPC team and involves in the setup, optimization and maintenance of PPC accounts. He/she is responsible for monitoring account budgets and ensuring the correct daily/monthly spending.

Not only does a campaign manager operate with the paid search platforms, his/her possession of the “know-how” in optimization is essential. He/she should also be able to provide clients consultations and communicate with web developers and designers for creating landing pages.

Depending on their knowledge, a campaign manager may be more specialized than others in managing platforms other than Adwords. If this is the case with a team, he/she is assigned to manage for instance the Y!SM platform or the Adcenter platform. Some campaign managers are more specialized in managing and optimizing content-targeted campaigns than others.

Some campaign managers may have multiple language skills. In that case, he/she is able to provide assistance to other members of the team (keyword specialists or copywriters) when setting up non-English campaigns.

Copywriter

A copywriter is mainly responsible for creating and updating text ads for PPC campaigns. Professional copy writing can greatly improve the CTR and conversion rate of a paid search campaign. A copy is the key role to involve in ad text split testing, in which he/she is to work closely to campaign managers and keyword specialists.

Keyword Database Specialist

A large corporate’s website usually consists of over thousands of web pages of products. In some cases, a company has multiple websites and hundreds of brands. Maintaining the lists of product names with keywords becomes a full time job, as this is equivalent to building a keyword database.

Essentially, managing a keyword database is similar to managing a product database. The tricky part is that the relationship of keywords-to-products is many-to-one, and it makes maintaining the keyword lists being most updated a difficult task. To add to the complexity, the keyword specialist is to work closely with the campaign managers in providing them support in new keyword suggestions.

Data Analyst

Paid search is a numbers game. Receiving an accurate report about the performance metrics of your campaigns on a daily basis makes decision making of campaign optimization much easier.

Trend spotting is another task that belongs to a data analyst who should be able to identify unusual fluctuations of traffic and notify the campaign managers almost immediately. The campaign managers will use the data analyst’s input and assistance to pinpoint the possibly affected area, and apply actions to their campaigns.

Software Engineer

With a software engineer on board, his/her responsibilities should be to create applications / tools that will improve efficiency in campaign management. Building an inhouse performance tracking system with a fully integrated campaign management system is this role’s mandatory task. Enhancing the tools for spotting click fraud is also one of his/her tasks.

With the large search engines like Google and Yahoo providing API access, nothing is impossible anymore. Eventually, you may want the software engineer to build an auto bidding system so that your business can be more financially profitable. The involvement of campaign managers with the autobidding tool is necessary, as no matter how smart machines are, expertise and flexibilities of human are difficult to be replaced.

Graphic Designer / Video Producer

With the addition of Google’s other ad formats such as images and videos, some advertisers are setting aside marketing budgets for branding campaigns. Effective branding campaigns will require expertise in the design of videos and images. However, unless your corporation is moving big towards branding, you may want to employ graphic designers and video producers on non-permanent and contractual basis.

CTR

A well-written ad can generate more clicks over the same number of impressions. So it effectively increases click through rate (CTR). The top-tier PPC search engines all give discounts on keyword cost-per-click based on good CTR.

Conversion Rate

A well-written ad if being written in a way that connects well with the content of the landing page can improve conversion rate. After the searcher clicked your ad, he is taken to your landing page. If the landing page matches well with your PPC ad, the searcher has a higher chance of buying your products.

Quality Score

We all know that quality score applies to keywords, however, PPC ads somewhat play a part on relevancy and quality score of the corresponding ad group as a whole. So the bottom line is that your ad does affect quality score.

Efficiency

It would be more efficient for a person to have a single role (ad copy writing). This arrangement allows PPC campaign managers to focus on other important details of their campaigns which involve campaign structure, keyword management and optimization.

Scalability

Many PPC campaigns fail to grow as expected, not because PPC strategists and campaign managers do not know what to do. It is mostly because they cannot scale up the campaign as quickly and as accurately as possible. Even if you are sitting with hundreds of thousands of relevant keywords, you will still have to create thousands of ads and review thousands of landing pages. This is only possible with a professional ad copy writer working alongside the campaign managers and PPC strategist.

Final Words

The bottom line is that paid search marketing is becoming more competitive and you will require effective copywriting talents to keep up in the competitions.

PPC specialists with 2 years of experience who work for PPC agencies are likely to move to either traditional ad agencies or the client-side (aka the in-house paid search team). It is because most ad agencies and client-sides are able to easily offer 15% – 20% salary increase with a lateral move.

With the continuous improvements of algorithms and features in the PPC search engine platforms, paid search is a high-pace tactic and high-detailed profession with tight deadlines. It can also become repetitive and tedious when they are asked to manage hundreds of thousands of keywords on a daily basis. It certainly does not help when there is no definite career path ahead of the paid search specialists.

However, moving to the client-side will require the PPC specialists to adapt to profound changes including tempo, culture and locale. Moving to the traditional ad agency side will mean search is just a small part of the entire business and even the most experienced PPC specialists may be left out of strategic business planning.

One of the better options for the employers is to bring up your own PPC talents with no experience. With the help and systematic training of an experienced PPC specialist or a PPC manager, 3 – 6 months should be adequate.

For keeping the top PPC specialists, employers can promote them to more significant positions to head a team of PPC campaign specialists. Promoting them to search engine marketing managers will be another option should their knowledge qualify for the job. The latter option will allow them to oversee and manage the overall online marketing activities including both SEO and PPC.

Extract reports and necessary data from both the PPC search engine platforms and your own datacenter. Review the performance of your paid search campaigns by working out its ROI from the reports and data.

Stop spending on some of your campaigns or some sections of your campaigns that have not performed well during the holiday season, and pause spending those that were specifically set up to target the holiday season.

An alternative other than stopping campaigns is to reduce Max CPC of your under-performing keywords of those campaigns as a whole still performed acceptable. Also, use your experience or common-sense to pick the campaigns (based on sectors / industries) that you will have their keyword Max CPC reduced.

Pause or remove the ads that were specifically written for the holiday season and will not work well afterwards.

Plan your PPC campaign strategies for the next upcoming season. Also, launch next year’s holiday season campaign based on the experience and data you have gathered during this holiday season.

• Inside Adwords
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Adcenter Community
• PPC Hero
• PPC lab
• PPC Discussions
• PPC Super Affiliate
• The PPC Book
• PPC Search Engine Marketing
• PPC Blog by Gordon Choi

The first 3 blogs on the list are certainly the official blogs set up by Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. The rest, including my own blog, mostly provide in-depth information related to the top tier PPC search engine platforms (Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Adcenter). Some also occasionally went into discussing the smaller PPC search engines and contextual advertising.

The reasons I focus on blogging on PPC-related topics are below:

• My blog is a channel for me to get to know other PPC experts and keep closely in touch with the field.
• There are rarely focused PPC related blogs that share the techniques in-depth. Some people who want to learn and try out paid search marketing, and my blog can provide information to a certain extent.
• It is not as easy as you think to find great PPC talents, as it has been happening throughout my entire paid search marketing career. By having a PPC blog, it attracts the attention of the potentially interested candidates. Of course, it is up to them to decide whether they want to become one of us (PPC managers, strategies and experts).
• I have been doing PPC since 2002. Having a blog on my profession is a great way of branding.

#1: Cost-per-action (CPA)

You pay your PPC manager according to per action. An action is usually defined as a conversion which is most likely a sale made on your website via the traffic of the PPC campaign.

This PPC business model is similar to Pay-per-action (PPA) which is provided by Google Adwords on its content network.

#2: Cost-per-lead (CPL)

The cost-per-lead model is similar to cost-per-action except there is usually no payment required by the website visitors. Visitors to the client web site usually are required to submit some information via such as an online form.

The problem with CPL and the online form submission is that it is easy to create fraudulent submissions.

#3: Revenue Share

The revenue share business model may require great amount of trust between the client and the PPC manager. Many PPC search affiliates are willing to use this model.

The problem is that if the client has a fairly new business (or website) which is not yet well-known (or is lack of good brand-awareness), the experienced PPC managers are usually unwilling to work with this client.

#4: Profit Share

Profit share is slightly different to revenue share. With profit share, it also requires great amount of trust in the relationship between both parties. The client will have to reveal not only the actual revenues but also the actual profits. Another benefit of the profit share model can be supported by one of the researches on Vinny Lingham’s blog.

It is difficult for clients who have less known brands to get any real PPC expert to participate, as there is no guarantee of revenue for the work of the PPC expert..

#5: Percentage on Ad Spend

You may consider paying 10% or 20% (or sometimes even more) on ad spend of your campaigns to the PPC experts.

The one problem with this ad spend model is that when you own a website (or product) which will only have limited traffic (due to its business nature). For example, some paid search experts may not want to work with this model as 20% or even 40% of ad spend can be too little profit for them, if they cannot even spend over $1000 per month.

Even when traffic is high, there may not be enough motivation for the PPC manager(s) to continuously focus on optimizing your campaign.

#6: Once-off Setup

If you think setting up a PPC campaign is time-consuming, then obviously when you need your campaign being setup across multiple PPC search engines, your option may be to outsource this tedious task. If you have great knowledge on setting up, managing and optimizing PPC campaigns, your option is to have a PPC amateur setting up the campaign according to your full instructions (or specifications). All you do is to pay a one-time fee to this person.

#7: Consultation by Hours

If you do have one or more PPC managers who are good enough in setting up and managing campaigns, but you are not getting great results after some serious campaign optimization, then you may want to hire a PPC consultant. A really experienced PPC consultant usually can tell you what changes need to be made after quickly reviewing your PPC search engine account(s).

Final Words

If you are creative enough, sometimes it may be better to combine some of the above business models. For example as a client, you may want to pay a once-off setup fee and then CPA as the ongoing model. You may also combined revenue share with the hourly consultation fee if that suits your requirements. The bottom line is that you want to get the most out of the efforts of your PPC manager(s) and at the same time you want to fairly compensate the experts so that they are fully motivated to manage and optimize your campaigns.

With my experience of previously managing multiple paid search projects, PPC is becoming more competitive in 2007. A campaign that is being setup incorrectly or optimized ineffectively can often cost you a fortune.

• Managing Marketing Budgets
• Taking Financial Risks
• Making Marketing Decisions
• Deciding Performance Rewards

Search Agency Model

The client supplies the marketing budget in which the agency needs to spend on the search marketing campaigns per month, so there is no financial risk on the agency. The agency is often happy to charge a monthly fixed amount on the budget spent.

Often with this model, the client is the party that makes the marketing decisions. Depending on the client’s marketing goals, it can be to increase sales, to improve brand-awareness, or to do search arbitrage.

The client even has the right to enforce the agency to start with a list of potential keywords which is chosen by the client, though it may not be the best list of keywords in terms of conversions and sales (if the goal is not purely branding). Also, the client can enforce the agency to advertise on behalf only a set of selected products (or services), which may be highly profitable to the client in terms of profit margins.

The advantage is that the client can closely control the agency in terms of marketing spend. The client often can decide how much the agency should deserve to be paid. Also, the agency has advantage of communicating closely and regularly with the client regarding new promotions and marketing strategies that will take place and may affect the agency.

The disadvantage of this model is that the agency can often put very little efforts in keyword research and other optimization of the campaigns. As long as the agency can finish spending the monthly budget on a few high traffic and high cost-per-click keywords, the target is accomplished.

Search Affiliate Model

The search affiliate takes full risk on the financial side, as the marketing budget is pre-determined and self-funded by the affiliate. The search affiliate works on a performance-based goal usually such as revenue share on a fixed period of time (cookie period) or a fixed payment on a per sale basis (pay-per-sale).

The advantage to the client is that, the performance-based model forces the affiliate to be adventurous and expand the keyword lists towards the longer-tail. This long-tail approach will gradually lower the marketing cost, and eventually the affiliate will often recover more than sufficient financially to re-invest in more rounds of keyword expansion.

The disadvantage is that the client has no clue how much exactly the affiliate earns (as the affiliate is not required to disclose the marketing spend to the client). The leaves some important questions to the client as the affiliate has been growing on revenues: Should the revenue share be increased, decreased or the same in the coming month?

Besides marketing budgets, the client often has no real control over how many keywords, on what search engines and what products (or services) the affiliate advertises. Also, the client has no right to control when the affiliate should or should not spend to advertise.

• Campaign planning, strategy and implementation
• Conducting research, collating and reporting on competitive data, targeting, keyword research
• Setting up, trafficking and tracking of media campaigns
• Creating campaign optimization rule sets
• Campaign monitoring, data analysis and optimization
• Financial management of paid search campaigns
• Forecasting of financial performance

Having the qualities below will be advantageous:

• Knowledge of paid search marketing and affiliate marketing industries and/or experience in running and managing PPC Campaigns, specifically on Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing & MSN Adcenter Advertising Platforms
• One of these language skills: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Polish, or Russian
• Analytical, numerical, systematic and creative aptitude
• Extremely high attention to detail

Anyway, I have categorized the possible talents into 5 different source types:

• Have you worked as part of a PPC ‘In-house team’ of a business?
• Have you worked in a search marketing agency?
• Have you worked in both mentioned above?
• Do you have no PPC experience, but have some Internet marketing background?
• Do you have no PPC experience nor Internet related background, but have potential?

Those who have worked as part of a PPC ‘in-house team’ (or business)

Companies that have their own PPC in-house team usually are either of very large size or are in some specialized sectors (e.g. financial services, etc). The PPC guy is a real specialist in the sector of business with fairly good PPC experience.

If he (or she) happens to work for a large company, the environment can be a little more complex which should have allowed him (or her) to sharpen some important inter-personal skills.

However, the true problem with this is in-house team are usually small. Ideally with a large business and assuming the business has over 30 web properties, a team from 5 to 6 people should be able to handle. In some small businesses, a single person is the PPC team. With this type of environment, it is never easy for your PPC guy to grow in experience as there is simply lack in competition and co-operation.

Those who have worked in a search marketing agency

Comparing to a PPC guy from an in-house team, normally an expert from a search marketing agency is slightly less expensive and has a bit more solid experience to offer. He (or she) usually gained his (or her) experience from working with various types of clients in different sectors (For example, travel and retail).

Also in the same company, there are more employees specialized in paid search marketing, this means constant competition and collaboration in the same (or similar) skill-sets will only drive up skills of one another.

Those who have worked in both

The advantage of having this type of PPC expert in your company is that he (or she) would already be extremely experienced due to the exposure to large variety of clients including both internal and external clients. Those clients who may be in different sectors including travel, retail, financial services, education and more. This expert can give you a large range of business insights and directions besides his expertise in paid search marketing.

The one problem is that he (or she) can be extremely expensive. However, the person may worth his price, if you desperately require a guy with both experience and insights to drive your business to the right direction.

My own experience

About myself, I have experience from initially working in an in-house team of a business (in one of the very specialized sectors) and then in a highly performance-driven search marketing agency (affiliate) company servicing multiple sectors. The experience that I gained in both places allowed me to build up my in-depth knowledge both in PPC and a large variety of sectors.

As your paid search marketing business grows, you may have no time to personally manage the PPC campaigns of your clients. You may have to shift your focus to manage the relationship of your clients or the multiple projects that your PPC campaign team is running. Some really good leaders on paid search marketing are able to manage both efficiently and effectively.

In my last couple of years of either personally managing PPC campaigns or managing multiple PPC projects by outsourcing to PPC team members, I discovered that below are the key points that you should focus on, whether it is to manage a client relationship or to manage multiple projects involving a PPC team:

Setting the Goals

Goals (or targets) must be pre-defined and agreed upon by both parties (your client and your business) before any PPC campaign should be launched. A goal must be set to within an achievable level. Not every client will let you know what his online sales figures are, but you can set some reasonable targets such as:

• Improve the conversion rate by 30 percent in 3 months.
• Increase sales figures by 10 percent each month for the next 6 months.
• Increase the number of leads by 50 percent.
• Decrease the campaign marketing cost by 20 percent in the next 4 months, but maintain sales volume.

Certainly, you do not want to over-sell to your client a target that you may not necessarily be able to meet. If you do that, you risk your reputation as it will create a false impression to your client that your business does not have competent skills on PPC management.

Managing Marketing Budgets

As a project manager yourself, you are often given a marketing budget by your clients. You will have to communicate with your PPC team on how this budget should be spent. For example, it may take 6 weeks for your team members to grow a campaign to a relatively large size (in terms of number of keywords). This is one of those reasons you may want to include in your budget estimation.

Also, you want to spend the client’s marketing budget so that it can achieve the maximum effect for the campaign. For instance, you want to have your team pre-defined the keywords that will make the most out the campaign in terms of sales. In this way, every click sent to your client’s website will not be wasted.

Communicating with Your Clients

In reality, no matter how good you are with PPC management, occasionally you and your team do not necessarily meet some of the goals. The reasons can often be short of resources, lack of time, or even lack of understanding of the industries of your clients. Constantly communicating with your clients is very important and will allow you to grow your knowledge in your client’s business.

Maintaining Business Ethics

Integrity is vital in building a great relationship with any client. Be honest to your client with everything you do to whether it is to add 10,000 keywords that will allow the PPC marketing campaign to spend an extra $2,000 per month, or it is that you may have some human resource constraints to meet certain targets on time.

Also you should not want to disclose highly confidential information of one of your clients without permission, even it may enable you to improve the relationship to another client with potential.

Final Words

As PPC is becoming more competitive in 2007, it is not sufficient when you and your team have great knowledge and experience in PPC marketing and management. It is when you can manage your paid search marketing projects in terms of setting achievable targets, managing the budgets, communicating with your clients, and maintaining business ethics, you will become highly competitive.