If you can anticipate traffic changes, you can swiftly make decisions that will increase your account’s effectiveness. Don’t wait for the traffic to change, predict the future of your PPC accounts.

Great advice. However, while I was reading this I wondered to myself, “What about new advertisers who don’t have any historical data?” It’s an impossible task to create informative trend lines from scratch! How do you know when a performance spike will occur for your business? There are a few quick and simple ways that novice advertisers can gather up data to plan for seasonality and traffic spikes.

Offline Data

For this point I’m going to assume that the business in question is established and that PPC is a new endeavor. As you’re going through the steps of planning for your PPC campaign, pull as much offline data as you can. When have sales/leads been at their highest? When do your current customers respond best to your products/services? Does business increase or decrease for the holidays? These are basic questions that could go a long way to creating an online marketing plan. If customers in your brick and mortar store buy more products in say, July, than any other month, it’s a safe bet that online customers will function in a similar fashion (there could be differences, but I’ll cover that at the end)! Plan on working harder in “that month” to be sure you dominate the PPC landscape when customers are eager to buy.

Competitive Research Tools

Tools like Compete.com and Quantcast.com exist for a reason – and this is it! Research, baby! Figure out who some of your top competitors are, and plug their URLs into these tools. Carefully review the peaks and valleys in their traffic. Do the high points (or low) correlate to a specific holiday? Do they all peak at the same times throughout the year? Use this data to create a plan for boosting your PPC during those times to gain an advantage.

Keyword Search Trends

The other big free research tools at your finger tips lie in Google Trends and Google’s Insights for Search. Both of these tools give keyword level search volume data from Google. If you don’t you’re your own historical data, this is about as close a second-best that you’ll find! Type in your most important keywords and review the trends. The same logic applies – when you see a search volume spike, that’s where you should be planning to pull out all the PPC guns in your arsenal.

While offline data, competitive research tools and search volume trends can give you a solid framework for planning on boosting your PPC for seasonality – there really is no replacement for honest-to-God historical data. Your offline data could be completely skewed compared to how search customers will act, in which case this is a lesson only history can teach. Additionally, seeing traffic stats and search volume data don’t necessarily translate into conversions – again a lesson only history can teach. No matter what, I must thank Brad for writing his article (still wish I’d written it though). Good luck to everyone as you create plans for your PPC campaigns in 2009!

1. Keep a log: My first recommendation before you even begin managing PPC accounts is to keep a log of all your activities and changes you make to your account. In Google you can view your change history, however in Yahoo and MSN you must rely on your own notes to determine what you did two weeks ago that may have affected the account today. We use an online program called Basecamp. It’s free (to an extent) and allows you to create messages, to do lists, milestones, track time, submit files and more.  It’s how we at Hanapin write down and track all of our changes within our PPC and SEO accounts. This way, when there is a problem, you can go back to your changes log, and review what could have affected a negative change in your account.
2. Timing is everything: The first step I would take in determining what caused a problem in my account is the timing of the event.  You can run reports in Google, Yahoo and MSN to determine whether the lack of clicks/leads happened over a span of a week, a few days or a couple of hours.  (However only in Google can you run a report on hours of the day to get that detailed information.) Once you determine the timing of the event, keep digging further.
3. Campaign, ad group and keyword reports:  So, let’s say the problem occurred over a span of 2 days.  Run a campaign report for those two days, the week before those two days and the week after those two days.  Try and pinpoint which campaign saw the largest decrease in clicks/leads.  Once you pinpoint the campaign, keep going and drill down further to the ad group level, and then down to the keyword.  If you can find the source of the problem at the ad group level or keyword level, you can determine if your cost-per-click had decreased over that time or if you ad position had decreased over that time.  That may signal a change in ad group or keyword bid.
4. No longer available or 404 errors:  Sometimes I’ll find a significant drop in leads from a particular ad group or keyword from a product or service expiring.  If you run an ecommerce site make sure your individual products are still active and available for purchase on the website.  Sometimes I’ll even find a loss in leads due to a page mysteriously 404′ing on my clients site. The best way to prevent this kind of problem is to use a program link checker which is free to use.  The link checker will allow you to enter your website URL and it will check all pages within that URL for broken or not found pages.



5. Google Analytics:  Using Google Analytics is also a great way to drill down on particular keywords and comparing them to different time frames. You can run a report and when you go to select the date range there is an option to choose ‘compare to past’ where you can select two different date ranges and compare the performance of your keywords within those two date ranges.  This way you can see if there has been one keyword or a group of keywords that have declined in performance over those two periods of time.



6. Tracking issues: Another thing to look out for is tracking issues.  If there is any change in your PPC URL tracking that can significantly influence your PPC traffic in either positive or negative ways. This is why it’s critical to document any change you make, especially if you have several people working on one account.  If someone makes changes to the tracking for a particular ad group or campaign, then you probably will see a difference in PPC traffic/leads.  The best way to determine if there has been a change to your PPC tracking is to URL a URL report over a period of time and compare that data from different date ranges.  Another tracking issue could be that your conversion tracking code could have been removed from your landing pages. This has happened to me before when a client was making changes to the site and unknowingly cleared out the tracking code.  This would be a rather noticeable change in leads coming in, unless you only receive a few leads throughout the month. Always double check your tracking code on your landing pages yourself!

Diagnosing problems within an account is about drilling down further and further until you feel you have successfully found what happened to cause the problem.  If you have done your research and still can’t find the source of the problem, it’s always a good idea to introduce a colleague to the situation and get a fresh perspective on what the issue may be.

• It’s been an on-going question since the Google Quality Score took place: Do conversion rates effect your quality score? Finally, an update from Google recently released said that conversion rates in fact do not have any effect over your quality score. Their article also went on to say that some people went to extreme measures to create landing pages with fake ‘easy’ conversion actions to create high conversion rates.
• When managing PPC accounts long term, it is way too easy to get stuck in a rut!  This post discusses this phenomenon and offers some helpful solutions for keeping your PPC accounts fresh.  Tips include setting goals, getting back to the basics and reviewing your campaign’s core KPIs.
• If you use Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter only - this post is for you!  In many cases, it makes sense to use vertical PPC search engines.  While job board search engines were used in this example, the parallels work for any vertical.
• In December, Google announced that they would be ending the preferred cost bidding test. Remeber, as of Jan. 26, 2009 this bidding option will no longer be available. If you utilize this tool, you need to alter your accounts accordingly.

We are looking for your answers to these questions:

• What are the some of the most common mistakes you see when inheriting a pre-existing PPC account? What was the previous PPC manager doing “wrong”?
• What are some of the best tactics you’ve used to optimize and expand a pre-existing account?
• Where can you make the biggest progress at the fastest pace?

We’d love to hear from you! You can drop us a line by clicking right here! Thanks!

The standard procedure for setting up invoicing for a Google AdWords account requires a few steps. Not every client is eligible for invoicing. Google typically considers extending monthly invoicing to advertisers who have a minimum spend during the three most recent consecutive months with AdWords. This minimum monthly spend is approximately $1,500/month. Here is the usual process to initiate invoicing:

• You provide Google with your legal company information for review and approval by Google. In some cases, Google’s finance team may request that you send your company’s audited financials (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement and/or references) for further consideration.
• Google reviews your request, and sends you a confirmation or declination email.
• If approved, you’ll need to respond in acceptance to the confirmation email. Your credit line is determined at Google’s sole discretion.
• Once you respond to accept the terms offered, your account will be switched from your current payment type to monthly invoicing within two business days.

This means that each time you launch a new account, you need to run this new account on a credit card for the first 3-4 months (depending on your spend) and then set up invoicing. Sure, this sounds easy enough. But it is a hassle to complete this process every time you want to open a new AdWords account.

However, you don’t have to go through this process if you are launching new PPC accounts that are billable to the same corporate client.

If your company regularly launches new AdWords campaigns, and you want them all to be on invoicing as they launch, here is the solution:

1. Set up an MCC (My Client Center) specifically for this client.
2. Link all of this client’s AdWords accounts to this MCC so that they are all in one easily accessible place.
3. Submit an invoicing request for this MCC. If your credit is in good standing with Google, your application should be approved easily.
4. Once your invoice application is accepted, then all of the clients within this MCC are contained on the same invoice.
5. AND every time you open a new account, but you want it to be billed to the same company and same address as the other accounts, you can just open this new account and link it to this company’s MCC.
6. For this new account you will not have to start with a credit card for a number of months, and then submit an invoice application. You get to skip all of it.

Your monthly AdWords invoice will contain seperate lines for each account with a total for paid advertising spend for each month. Keep in mind, this works only for companies that are launching mutiple AdWords accounts and wants all of them to be on invoicing. If you fit this profile, this solution may save you and your accounting department some time and headache when it comes to invoicing.

Language before Location

When you create a campaign and ad group in adCenter, you will be asked a series of questions under the “Target your customers” section. The first (and only required) setting is “Distribute your ads by language and market.” This setting is based on the language your ads will be written in and the market your ads will be distributed through. For most of you – this will be English – United States. In other words, the ads will be written in English and distributed throughout the US.

MSN is very clear that this setting “does not prevent people outside the market from seeing your ad.” By default, a new campaign is set to “display my ads to all customers.” Meaning your language and market decision will guide your ads – but technically anyone can see your ads. This is important to note if you have a US-only PPC campaign. If your products can only be sold in the US, you must move onto the “Target your customers by location” section and choose the US accordingly.

The most important note about the language and market settings is that this is a one-time decision! You choose the language and market when you create an ad group – and it is permanent. If you want/need to target other languages/markets, you have to create a new ad group to do so.

Maximize International Exposure

Because this language and geo-targeting process is such a mess, you have to adopt a specific approach to ad group creation with international PPC campaigns. The first thing to realize is that MSN adCenter only recognizes English and French when writing ad texts. After that, you will need to figure out what combinations of language/market and geographic location will work best for you.

One client that I work with targets the entire world – but they do this in English (not the best, I know). So, to maximize this client’s exposure in adCenter, for every ad group I create – there are actually 4 ad groups needed.

1. Language/Market – English-United States, Location – all countries
2. Language/Market – English-Canada, Location – all countries
3. Language/Market – English-UK, Location – all countries
4. Language/Market – English-Singapore, Location – all countries

Now this is just one example where I am trying to maximize my ads’ reach through the 4 English language options in adCenter. You can of course go much more granular by choosing any of those 4 Language/Market options and then dividing up even more ad groups with specific locations (and set an incremental bid for those locations, too)! And if you’re really feeling industrious, you could write ads and landing pages in French and open up 2 more Language/Market options.

So, if you’re looking for an international PPC boost for MSN adCenter, there you have it. I’d be interested to read how everyone else targets international markets with MSN. Leave me a comment!

In my view, many of these people have a damned good reason to stay clear of PPC…

There’s no faster, easier way to lose money.

Alright, I’ll concede that PPC is a pretty simple way to unload some cash. If you blindly set up a PPC account with little concern for researching the medium and best practices, than yes – you can lose money. But that’s just it – this statement isn’t giving credit to the SMB owner who approaches PPC intelligently, performs his/her research and has a plan in place. But as stated in the article’s introduction, small business owners are not stupid. To quote one of the article’s comments, “They usually are very savvy…” To me, this notion that small business owners will simply waste their money is a short-sighted scare tactic.

Dabbling in search is dangerous.

Mmhmm. And what’s your point? Nothing in this paragraph tells me why search is dangerous. I see that $500 a month won’t get you far. I see that a small sample size of data will make it difficult to test campaign variables. I can’t argue with either of those points, but tell me – how does that make search dangerous? Working for an agency (if you didn’t realize it already, I’m not an SMB owner) I actually manage an account that has a $500 monthly budget. I know how far that goes – and it has the potential to garner multi-million dollar deals. It all goes back to approaching PPC intelligently with a strong sense of research and planning. The small business owner who managed this account before me actually did a decent job of managing this account – he merely came to us looking for help qualifying his traffic and amplifying the effectiveness of his landing pages.

As for the comments on testing, I find this frustrating. OK, so the data pool won’t be as deep for the SMB owner – how or why should that detract them from giving PPC a shot? The big-dogs will have heaps and heaps of data to really hone in on what works best for their business. But why does that automatically mean that it’s dangerous for small businesses to use PPC? For anyone touting that search is dangerous – I’ll leave you with this: owning and operating a small business is dangerous. Owning a business, implementing a successful marketing strategy… all of these things carry an element of risk. You can’t succeed if you don’t try.

There’s very little low-hanging fruit left.

I’m with Steve (the article’s author) that the “let’s make PPC search seem easy” message is out of place. PPC is not easy. Anyone who states otherwise is a fool! And once again, I can’t argue with “there’s very little low-hanging fruit left.” YES, more people are advertising. YES, PPC is hard work. YES, you’ll need a usable, conversion friendly website. YES, you’ll have to do your research. Anybody with a decent head on their shoulders would say, “Yes, that makes sense. If I want to reap the PPC rewards, it won’t be easy and I’ll have to work hard to get the results I want.”

I would also offer up a counter-argument. Most of the reports regarding search engine usage implies that more, and more, and more people are using search engines. The common, every day user is getting better at developing useful search queries (long tail, whoohoo!). And truth be told, the search landscape is diversifying.

Just take local search for example (which is a small business wonderland). The same day this Search Insider article was published, Matt McGee discussed the rise of local search queries at SmallBusinessSEM.com. Search engine users are developing the skills to more easily find what they’re looking for. SMB owners in turn can very quickly and efficiently develop geo-targeted PPC strategies to capitalize on these trends. And many more small business owner/advertisers can make tremendous strides by following the PPC basics – and will see good (maybe even great) results. Again – it’s all about the research and approach taken with PPC.

***

As far as MSN’s hand-holding tool is concerned, to that I say, “meh.” I, too, am often wary of the search engines providing jumpstart services to novice PPC managers. Sometimes these tools/services come from an honest place, other times there’s an element of brainwashing to grow an army of advertisers who will do what they’re told. But enough of my paranoid ramblings - back to the article in question. To sum up, the points made in this Search Insider article aren’t necessarily wrong. Where I see fault is in how the information has been presented. It comes off as “just because PPC is not easy, you shouldn’t do it.” That’s the wrong message to send to small business owners! They’re a smart bunch of people, and they instead should be given practical advice on getting started: Do your research. Know your goals. Create a plan. Stick with the basics. Be smart and be patient.

We wish everyone a happy & safe holiday season!