And by “social context” I mean that you think different thoughts, and are likely to respond to different bids for your attention, on December 3rd than July 3rd — or even on Sunday afternoon than on Monday morning.  In other words, seasonal events, holidays, and even the current going-ons of pop culture all have their sway when it comes to what you find relevant, interesting, and worthy of your attention.  Fireworks sell a lot easier in late June and July, after all.

So why do so few Facebook Advertisers take advantage of seasonal and current events?

Even though PPC Advertisers are well aware of the need for seasonal specialization and tweaks to ad copy and landing pages, most Facebook advertisers don’t — which is why this ad stood out from the clutter when I spied it on my home page:

Here’s what I love about this ad:

First, it’s appearing right in time for Mardi Gras season, which is simply superb timing.  If you live anywhere near New Orleans or the Gulf Coast, Mardi Gras is on your mind right now, which means this ad is a whole lot more relevant now than it would be in November.

Second, this ad combines the use of Image-based words, eye-guiding gestures, and story-appeal into one image. The large lettering jumps out at you, the thumbs up image is great symbolism for “liking” and also points your eyes to the assumed-to-be-raucous street party scene, made all the more intriguing by bokeh-based blur of the imagery. You can’t help but look at it more than once, thinking, “that’s gotta be the French Quarter, but what street?”  Or maybe that’s just me. Granted, the image doesn’t tell much of a story, but it’s intriguing enough to compel a second look, and association-rich enough to put fans of New Orleans into exactly the right state of mind to grant the city a big ol’ thumbs up/Like of their own.

Third, the copy may not be perfect, but the call-to-action is totally aligned with the image. Plus, the ad is just asking for a Like, rather than a click-through to NewOrleans.com

Now here’s the thing, NewOrleans.com is tourism site. And really, right now is NOT when New Orleans needs help getting visitors into the city. Astonishing I know, but true, nonetheless. New Orleans needs more people to visit during the off-seasons.

But the folks running the ad know that now IS the time that people have New Orleans on their minds. Now is the time they are most likely to react to the ad.  So they run a seasonal ad now to get the right to contact you via Facebook later, and then they’ll be all set when they actually have a vacation or travel package to sell in, say, October or something.

In other words, they know the power of social context on Facebook advertising success.

Do you?

So don’t limit your PPC efforts to the first conversion or sale. Use it help your prospects and customers flow further down the funnel. Here are a 4 ways you can use PPC to get more value from your leads/customers after their initial conversion.

1. Remarket to Your Conversions

If you are like most, you have realized the value of remarketing. You’ve set up a few lists, and do everything you can to stay in front of your site visitors who don’t convert. But that’s where your remarketing stops. And that means you’re only getting about half the value out of this channel.

One way to get more from remarketing is to set up remarketing lists that specifically targets those who have taken a desired action on your site, such as filling out a contact form. Then, start targeting your leads or customers with remarketing campaigns 5-days, 30-days, or even over a year after they convert on your site. This allows you to show your most relevant offers to your prospects. Which in turn can help increase conversion rates and speed up your sales cycle.

Here’s an example:

A visitor converts on your site for a free whitepaper. 10-days later you start showing your prospect display ads that offer a free consultation, 30-days after that you offer 10% off your services if they schedule a call in the next 10 days, after those 10-days are up you offer an additional free whitepaper download, and on and on.

By mixing up your offers you’re encourage that prospect to re-engage with you sooner than they may have if you would have just attempted to keep calling them week after week.

You can also take this strategy with cross-sells and up-sells. If you are an ecommerce site, you can place remarketing codes that track what your visitor’s purchase (how you do this will depend on your shopping cart structure/software.), then you can show them remarketing advertisements for related products.

Here’s a great post on how to create multiple-stage remarketing lists that will allow you to accomplish this:

www.seomoz.org/multiple-stage-remarketing

2. Bidding on Competitors

It’s pretty common for me to start checking out the competition if I see a product I like, or am pitched a service that seems worthwhile. I imagine that your prospects and customers do the same.

Bidding on your competitors branded terms is commonplace in PPC. But understanding that some of those search queries are generated by your leads can shift how you choose to market to them.

Instead of sending these visitors to your typical landing page, you may want to send them to one that compares your against your competitor. Or has a special offer for those who set an appointment with you today. You could even create a free download that gives them an insightful list of questions to ask your competition, and you, when having a sales call.

The point is, to get clever, And to understand that some of this traffic is coming from people who have already converted on your site, and are not shopping around.

3. Target “Do-it-Yourselfers”

Sometimes marketers and sales people do too good of a job explaining the services we offer. And that leads to some of our best prospects telling us, “you’ve been great but I think I’m going to do this myself for a while and see how it goes.”

A way to keep those leads on the line is be where they are headed right after your phone call. Search engines. And what are they going to search, “How to ________.” Or some similar search query they that are likely to perform in order to figure out how to perform your services for themselves. The good news is, with a little proactivity, you can reduce how often this happens.

Create a landing page that talks about the pros and cons of your prospect doing it him/herself. You can’t be blatant, but you can pit the two against each other, and if your services are valuable, it should be obvious that going with help is the best route.

Once you have the landing page, start a new PPC campaign targeting these do-it-yourself keywords. You’ll get some traffic in there that aren’t people who have already converted for you, which is good, but most importantly, you’ll be in front of prospects that have

You’ll also want to be on the Display Network targeting placements on information/how-to sites. That way when your prospect realizes how hard, or time consuming it is going to be to do it on his/her own, you’re only a click away.

4. Coordinate Your Nurturing and PPC Campaigns

A smart practice with email nurturing campaigns (emailing your lists, be it leads or customers, with regular sales and offers) is to coordinate those efforts with a Display Network campaign.

A few days before a marketing piece is set to go out, launch a Display Network campaign to either your remarketing list, an ICM campaign, or a topic campaign that contains the same offer. Then run it for up to 7-days after the email has sent.

You’ll gain two things from this, more conversions from the email marketing piece, and more total conversions overall.

In summary, when it comes to PPC your efforts don’t solely have to be aimed at top of the funnel lead generation or single sales. You can use it to speed up your sales cycle, increase conversion rates, and increase up-sells and cross-sells.

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”  ~ Howard Gossage

So here’s the deal, anytime you’re creating a facebook ad, you can opt for either:

• a straightforward, predictable ad — in other words, an ad that just might work for an already-interested late-stage buyers , or
• an unpredictable, interesting combination of image and copy capable of motivating both more of the late-stage buyers and possibly some of many earlier-stage, half-decided prospects.

With PPC Ads, the straghtfoward approach usually works best. If someone is motivated enough to search for your goods or services on Google, you can safely skip the intrigue and get right down to the sell.

But with display ads the unpredictable approach almost always works better. Even for (especially for!) putatively “uncool” industries.

Take PPC Advertising: what image might you first think to use in an ad for PPC Advertising Training?

• Pie charts?
• Some business graph with the arrow going up and to the right?
• Maybe a headshot of a celebrity instructor?

Probably something along those lines, right?  Or possibly you could wimp out and go with a “sex sells” approach. And anyone of those options would more than likely get average to sub-par results.

OR, you could do something unpredictable, like this:

Frankly, not only is the ad topical, in light of the October run-date, but it’s unusually interesting.  How often do you see a facebook ad featuring a hockey-masked Jason wanna-be? It’s almost impossible not to be the least bit curious about it.

In other words, the image makes you want to read the headline. And if you’re at all interested in PPC, the headline makes you want to read the very compelling body copy.

And finally, the Call to Action asks for a minimal commitment and major benefit: you don’t have to buy anything, just download a high-value whitepaper.

Who wants to bet that this ad will do significantly better than the more traditional “chart” or “Sexy” image?

So what about you?  When’s the last time you threw your audience a curveball with an inherently INTERESTING image?

One of the most underrated means of driving down your PPC costs and driving up the number of conversions you can generate through paid search is effectively grouping and segmenting your keywords.

In this article I’ll cover one means of effectively grouping keywords for pay-per click marketing: keyword grouping by purchase intent.

The aim in improving your keyword organization – via keyword grouping by purchase intent or any other means – is to help you to increase click-through rates (and subsequently Quality Scores), better manage your paid search budget, and create better focused (and higher converting) paid search landing pages.

Knowing Which Levers to Pull

As you set out to structure your keywords, you need to be cognizant of the different “organizational levers” available to you, and when to pull which:

• Campaigns – Your campaign is basically a shell that helps you to manage different Ad Groups. The controls available to you at the campaign level are:
  • Locations
  • Languages
  • Network
  • Bidding
  • Ad Rotation
  • Ad Scheduling
• Ad Groups – Your Ad Group allows you to match a list of keywords to a series of ad text variations

If you have specific location or language requirements, it may make sense to take a geo-focused approach to campaign creation. Similarly, if you are applying ad rotation or scheduling and/or network and bidding strategies in non-traditional ways that will “trump” any of the following organizational tactics. The nice thing about the following grouping strategies is that they can all be executed within a campaign; in other words, once you’ve settled on a campaign structure, you can then organize your keywords within that campaign by Ad Group using any of the following methods.

Grouping Keywords By Purchase Intent

Basically, the idea behind grouping keywords by purchase intent is to create a campaign and Ad Group structure that maps closely to the way people actually research and purchase products. You can do this by segmenting your keywords by modifiers.

Modifiers are basically adjectives that are appended to a core keyword and reveal an additional layer of intent. Some great examples of modifiers that reveal purchase intent are:

• How-to – This is an informational modifier; people searching for “how to” do things are typically either just looking for information, or are very early in the buying cycle. These searchers are still “browsers” looking to learn more about their potential purchase.
• Compare – People looking to compare products are also on the lookout for information, but these fit more closely to the “shop” stage of the buying cycle; by asking for a comparison of different products the searcher is revealing that they’ve narrowed their choices and would like to learn a bit more about two products.
• Buy – This is clearly a transactional modifier, and the searcher is obviously ready to purchase something: they’re in the “buy” stage of the buying cycle.

You can then use these modifiers and others like them to create a high level keyword hierarchy:

The above image is our software, but you could easily use Excel to create this architecture for your paid campaign. You’ll work through the keyword organization a bit like this:

• Purchase Stage – This is the initial container you’ll use to house different modifiers (browse, shop, or buy).
• Modifiers – Here you can create a segmentation around a specific modifier: for instance how-to, what is, etc.
• Semantically grouped sub-segmentations – Once you have a “how-to” bucket, it’s not enough to just throw all of your keywords into a campaign or ad group based solely on the fact that they share a modifier. You then have to dig even deeper to create more specific segmentations within your modifier groups, like “buy a bird” versus “buy a cat” pictured above.

SEO Book has a great worksheet with a list of modifiers you can use as a series of seed lists to help map your keyword strategy to different types of intent: http://www.tools.seobook.com/keyword-worksheets/keyword-worksheet.xls.

So What Does All this Allow You to Do?

By organizing your keywords based on purchase intent, you’ll now have campaigns and Ad Groups that map neatly to buyer intent. This improves your ability to:

1. Measure performance based on the stage of the query – Look at cost and conversion data based on each stage in the buying cycle. You’ll get some particularly interesting data by investigating newly released AdWords search funnel data to see how people are interacting with your ads at every stage of the buying cycle.
2. Message to each stage with specific ad copy – By creating really granular segmentations based on buyer intent, you can write very specific ads that speak to searchers. This means increased click-through rates, improved Quality Scores, and lowered costs per click.
3. Design a unique landing page experience for each type of searcher – Similarly, you can create landing pages and landing page experiences that speak directly to the searcher. Customize offers, page length, and messaging on your landing pages to answer specific objections, speak to specific pain points, and deliver custom benefit statements

Of course, this is just one means of segmenting keywords: what approach do you take to organizing your keywords for PPC?

About the Author

Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing at WordStream, a provider of pay per click software, The Free Keyword Tool, and advanced PPC tools for researching, organizing and grouping large numbers of keywords for greater PPC campaign relevance and higher Quality Scores.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Chrismahanakwanza! Whichever holiday you celebrate, one thing is for certain – the end of November marks the beginning of the official holiday shopping season. As part of our week-long holiday shopping expose, today I’d like to share with you tips on laser-targeting potential customers with your bidding strategy! Whether you are assessing keywords and the buying cycle, or diving head-first into demographic targeting, there are plenty of ways to find customers who are past researching and are ready to buy right now.

Bid for the Buying Cycle

Understanding the buying cycle is an important part of any form of advertising. Your messaging changes with each passing phase, from research to shopping to the actual point of purchase. If the messaging changes, why shouldn’t your bidding strategy?

The basic gist is this – generally speaking the buying cycle follows the chain of keywords from the head through to the long tail. Customers who are researching will use general, non-branded keywords when searching (i.e. laptop computer). Those who are shopping may step it up and start using a particular brand (i.e. Apple laptop computer). And finally, when the customer is ready to BUY RIGHT NOW, they’ll start using brand names and product specific keywords (i.e. Apple MacBook Air Laptop). Your bidding strategy for the holidays should in essence follow this buying cycle. Your highest priority, and bids, should be on those keywords at the end of the buying cycle!

Know Thy Customer

Everyone talks about the phrase, “Know Thy Self.” That’s great and all, but when you’re trying to get people through your door on Black Friday, or through your online shopping cart on Cyber Monday, “Know Thy Customer” seems so much more important. Hopefully, you’ve already given this some thought. Who is the intended audience for your product or service? Men or women? Baby-boomers or teeny-boppers? Knowing who you’re targeting is half the advertising battle!

Now that you know who you’re targeting, it’s time to pull the PPC levers to make the magic happen. Both Google AdWords and MSN adCenter have tools for targeting searchers via demographic data. There are subtle differences between the two, which I will cover here briefly:

MSN adCenter

• Microsoft utilizes demographic data as reported by Windows Live IDs and applies to traffic on Live.com, MSN.com and other search partners.
• At the ad group level, you are given the opportunity to set incremental bids (percentage of current bid) which will increase your bid based on age and gender (or geographic/time variables too).

Google AdWords

• Google’s demographic bidding option is a component of the Content Network.
• Demographic data is reported via Ad Sense publishers (i.e. social media account info, etc.).
• The demographic bids are a percentage above the current Content bid for each campaign.

Use these tools to really zero-in on your best customers – the ones that are the most likely to convert into sales. Be that in-store or on your website!

Hopefully, these tips will help you to better target your customers this holiday season – and in turn, increase revenue. Your bidding strategy should always be focused on delivering ads to potential customers who are ready to buy, but seasonality dictates that you stand up and take notice this month. Good luck!

This week we’ve been walking many miles in our customer’s searching shoes. We have learned how to write ads that answer your customer’s questions; how to anticipate when your customers will be searching for your services; how to discover new keywords using reports and analytics; and how to use general terms to generate brand awareness. We have one more mile to walk! Today I am going to discuss how to use long tail keywords to target searchers when they’re to buy!

First, let’s cover the basics: the long tail is composed of keywords that are three or more words in length. These keyword phrases have lower search traffic but are highly-targeted to your audience. How does a searcher end up using a long tail keyword to find the right product, and how can you take full advantage of this customer who knows exactly what they want to purchase? Here’s a quick rundown (a little searching story):

1. Ted has had enough of his malfunctioning keyboard (the shift key on the left side has fallen off, and the ‘Y’ and ‘P’ keys have to be slammed to work at all). He embarks on a search for a new one. At first, his search is broad and he types in ‘keyboards’ as his search term. He just wants to see what is out there.
2. Ted clicks on a few links (paid and organic) and decides that he wants a wireless keyword so that he doesn’t feel so bound to his desktop. He tightens his search by typing ‘wireless keyboards.’
3. After Ted explores his search results for ‘wireless keyboards’ he has decided that Logitech has the best selection for what he needs. Once Ted has reviewed Logitech’s website he determines that he wants a “fancy” keyboard: the Logitech G15 LCD keyboard.
4. Ted knows what product he wants to buy and he wants the best deal. He runs a search on “Logitech G15 LCD keyboard” to review his options and make a purchase.

When using the long tail to target searchers who are ready to buy, you NEED to be in front of Ted when he searches for “Logitech G15 LCD keyboard.” Sure, Ted might be the only person who runs a search for your long tail keyword that day (or even that week!) but he is exactly the person you’re looking for. So, you know WHY you need to be in front of Ted, but HOW do you get there?

Yesterday, Amber touched on how to generate brand awareness during the early stage of the buying cycle (when Ted is doing his initial research). Here are 4 tips to fully utilize your long tail keywords:

Your account structure should be ready for Ted: Once you’ve reviewed your website and you’ve made a list of the products you have to offer, you need to organize your PPC campaign structure accordingly. You need to dedicate an ad group to each product you plan to promote through paid search. Why? This way your keywords and ad texts are as highly-targeted as possible.

Tell Ted you have what he’s looking for, and why he should buy from you: This goes hand-in-hand with account structure. Once you’ve broken down your ad groups into specific products, you need to write ad text that specifically mentions your products and keywords. When Ted searches for “Logitech G15 LCD keyboard” he is more likely to click on the ad that exclusively says, “We sell Logitech G15 LCD keyboards.” With this strategy you’ve told Ted WHAT you have; you also need to him WHY he should buy it from you and not your competitors. Don’t forget to mention at least two benefits of doing business with you in your ad text.

Be highly visible when Ted is ready to buy: Now that you’re targeting Ted using ad text that is highly relevant, you need to make sure that you’re ad is visible when it counts. As Amber mentioned yesterday; bid less aggressively on general keywords in order to maintain awareness. But you should bid more aggressively for your long tail keywords. You want to be right in front of Ted when he’s ready to buy.

Don’t waste Ted’s time; take him directly to what he’s searching for: If Ted is ready to buy a Logitech G15 LCD keyboard, and he clicks on your ad that specifically says that you have that kind of keyboard, you better take straight to that product page within your site. Don’t take him to a general keyboard page, or a search function for him to find it himself: take him straight to the product he wants! Ted has done has done his research, he’s ready to buy!

When managing your PPC campaign, keep in mind how long tail keywords fit into the grand scheme of a user’s search pattern; and plan to specifically target these searchers who are ready to buy! Now go make some sales!

As mile 4 in our ‘Walk a Mile in a Searchers Shoes’ series we’ll focus on how to fit general keywords into a profitable campaign. General keywords can at times get a bad rap in the PPC world. They don’t convert as well as specific or long tail keywords, and they typically cost more since they drive large amounts of possibly untargeted traffic. However, it’s important to have general keywords in your PPC account, and in this post I will discuss the best ways to fit them into a profitable campaign.

Definition: General keywords are typically defined as one or two phrase keywords. Example: keyboards or wireless keyboards. Long Tail keywords, which are the opposite of general keywords, are keyword phrases containing 3 or more words. Example: sony wireless keyboard or H239 sony wireless keyboard.

For clients with a smaller budget, eliminating general keywords is a good idea. You’re likely to eliminate unqualified traffic and decrease your spending. But for most companies having general keywords in your PPC account is necessary.

Why it’s important to have general keywords: The core benefit of general keywords is for branding purposes, more so than generating actual conversions or traffic. By having general keywords in your account, people who are looking for products/services but aren’t ready to buy yet, will see your ad and click-through to your site to compare pricing or available services. Your company name is just as important in the beginning research phase as it is in the buying phase to a customer.

If you do not create brand awareness early on, how will a customer know to buy from you when they’re ready to make a purchase?

Grouping of General Keywords: The best way to fit general keywords into a profitable campaign is to assign them to their own ad groups. All keywords should typically be grouped according to their themes and phase in the buying cycle. General keywords should go in one ad group and long-tail keywords in another. This allows you to focus your ad text and bidding strategy more specifically to the buying cycle for your customers.

Bidding Strategy: Since general keywords generate a lot of traffic you’ll want to bid less on these terms. You may show up in lower ad positions but at least you will still be in front of your customer. The point is to be there as an option for the customer.

Ad Text Strategy: For general keywords it’s best to be informative to your potential customer. You could include copy such as, “Compare Pricing”, “Get More Information Here” or “View Available Services” to reach out to people who are in their research phase. These phrases are also very action-oriented and may help improve your click-through rate. To learn more about action oriented ad text click here.

Now the customer has researched your site, among others I’m sure, and has put you on their possibility to buy from list. You’re in the customer’s mind and hopefully they’ll come back to you to purchase. To learn more on the research and the buying cycle of customers and paid search, click here.

First a quick reminder of what constitutes a buying cycle:

1. According to Kevin Lee at ClickZ, the traditional cycle is Attention, Interest, Conviction, Desire and Close.
2. Search Engine Guide simplifies the cycle by one step, listing it as Awareness, Consideration/Research, Decision and Purchase.
3. Not to be outdone, Yahoo! takes the buying cycle down to these three steps: Research, Shop, and Purchase.

No matter how you slice it, it is very important to realize that the customers looking for your product or service are at different stages of the cycle. It is key to realize that your PPC campaigns need to focus on all aspects of the cycle from your campaign organization down to your keywords.

People enter a market for most products or services at a variety of stages in their personal buying cycle. If you target only those people who have done their research and are ready to buy, right now, you will miss the majority of your market.

What I would like to offer up as a suggestion is that you actually optimize your PPC campaigns around the buying cycle. How does one go about this, you ask? Simple! Focus on your keywords, ad texts and bids.

Keywords and Ad Text
The complexity of a keyword most often is in direct relation to its place in the buying cycle. General, one-word search terms are going to target those customers in the early research phases. When you get to the 3 and 4 (or larger!) keyword strings, these are targeting customers who know what they want and are ready to buy.

Optimize your PPC accounts around these ideas. By doing this you can create relevant ad texts for each phase of the buying cycle. But ad texts are not the only string you can pull.

Bids
It should be a given that you want your ads to be present from research through purchase. However, high ad positions may not be as paramount with the research phase. For these general keywords, you can bid lower. On the flip side, for those customers in “buy mode,” you will want to bid higher on complex search terms to ensure they click your ad when the time is right!

All of that being said, use these techniques in close cooperation with your own ROI reporting. In some instances, general keywords can catch buyers at the end of the cycle. You will have to do your homework and make the best decisions for your individual campaigns.

I’d love to hear if anyone else has experimented with PPC optimization based on the stages of the buying cycle. Let me know your thoughts!