Found Results
Posts tagged 'ppc'
The following posts are associated with the tag you have selected. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this tag to receive future updates relevant to the topic(s) of your interest.
Subscribe to the results feed
Posted on October 15, 2009
The Progression From Search to Social Media Marketing
BY PETE HALL
**This article outlines a personal experience with a client, leading them from search marketing success into social media and word of mouth marketing. To respect their privacy, I will only refer to them as 'The Client'.**
Five years ago, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising were only beginning to take shape as legitimate lead generation and marketing strategies. At the time, SEO and PPC were cutting edge marketing strategies - many brands and companies had heard the buzz surrounding SEO and PPC, but were unable to pinpoint strategy or purpose behind it.
Today, SEO and PPC have evolved into common marketing strategies for brands to place their marketing budget. Companies understand the huge opportunities that exist within search marketing for return on investment. Social media, conversely, exists much like SEO and PPC did five years ago. Companies and brands are keen to explore the social media space, but are often unable to define social media marketing success or execute a defined strategy.
Within our niche in the industry, we execute both search marketing and social media marketing for clients. As such, there exists a unique opportunity to take learnings and success from search marketing efforts and transition into the social media space. This is what happened with an opportunistic client of ours.
We were initially hired to restructure The Client's AdWords account and increase conversion volume. They had managed their PPC efforts internally, and reached out to us to take their account to the next level. After much research and testing, we were able to determine what converted within their account - what calls to action best resonated with users, what keywords and themes were most effective, and what landing page variations were most conducive to converting. We branched out their PPC efforts into Yahoo! and Bing with continued success. Eventually, The Client began asking, "what next?" - their PPC accounts were converting in record numbers at the lowest cost per conversion yet.
Moving forward, we thoroughly researched The Client and their presence online and saw a huge opportunity for them to improve their organic search rankings. Therefore, our next step in their overall strategy was an SEO overhaul. We were able to construct an SEO blueprint based upon their PCC successes and laid out a clear strategy with actionable goals. This SEO strategy is still being executed, but we have already seen important gains in organic search results for several search terms. Recently, The Client again asked "what next?" with their sights set on entering into the space of social media.
The next phase in the overall strategy for The Client was taking the business intelligence learned from successful PPC and SEO implementation and applying it into the space of social media. Sometimes, depending on what industry you are looking to engage with, simply setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter handle is not a priority for a client. After all, you cannot fit a square peg into a round hole. With The Client being in a niche industry, there simply was not enough chatter or interest on Facebook or Twitter to warrant developing a strategy. Therefore, we researched alternative, more relevant opportunities in the social media space for The Client to engage with.
After meeting with key stakeholders and discussing goals, we were able to conclude that the next logical step was for The Client to begin a blog. A blog strategy presented the best opportunity to base conversation in the social media space around learnings from search marketing. Why? Because through search marketing, we are able to pinpoint what inspires potential customers to engage with the company. The Client will be able to create engaging conversations based around these learnings through a blog. They will be able to reach their target audience, reach industry influencers who act as information-hungry word of mouth propellers, as well as comment on other niche blogs, message boards and forums.
As it was with search marketing five years ago, social media marketing today poses a conundrum for brands - they realize that they should probably participate in the space, but are unclear how to enter in and achieve success. For a company like The Client, calculated steps and a logical progression from search engine marketing to social media marketing proved to be the best strategy. The calls to action that have worked best through SEO and PPC now act as a road map for content creation we know will be relevant to prospects, customers and influencers in the social media space.
Has anyone else had success transitioning learnings from search engine marketing into social media? Have any questions or comments? Leave them here!
Share this blog post
Posted on May 15, 2008
Set and Forget PPC (AKA Burning Your Cash) - 7 Ways to Stop the Burn
BY BEN CASTELLI
Cruise control was a great idea for cars, auto pilot is perfect for planes, but in terms of pay per click advertising there is no such thing as "set and forget". A lot of companies waste their money (and Google makes a lot of money) from pay per click campaigns that are not regularly optimized. Checking up on your PPC campaigns several times a week is essential and tackling some ongoing weekly action items will really stretch that budget dollar and improve ROI. Where do you start? Below is a list of 7 digestible weekly to-dos:
Share this blog post
Posted on April 7, 2008
Top 5 Pay Per Click Mistakes
BY BEN CASTELLI
I promised Stepan I would actually contribute to the CTC blog when the new design finally went live. Here were are 6 months later, the new design is awesome and its time for me own up. So here it is, the top 5 Pay Per Click mistakes we commonly see in client's PPC programs. If you are currently running a PPC campaign, I think you will find this list very useful, if not you may want to bookmark, star, tag or stash in a folder somewhere for future reference…
Top 5 Most Common PPC Mistakes (don't let this be you!)
- Abandoning ad copy split testing after initial success
- Misunderstanding margin and miscalculating ROI from PPC ad spend
- Assuming top ad placement will result in the greatest conversion or ROI.
- Not sending traffic to the most relevant pages
- Disorganized campaign structure
Ok, I actually have 6 but "Top 5" sounds better so here is a bonus one:
6. Having too narrow or too broad keyword strategy
Got any other common mistakes you think should be on the list? lemme hear about them!
Share this blog post
Posted on June 25, 2007
Google Reveals Content Network Site Performance
BY BEN CASTELLI
I was finally able to catch up on some of the latest news in my reader over the weekend and was really psyched to see that Google has begun a phased launch of their Placement Performance report for Adwords. Several months ago Google announced it would be adding this new feature which basically allows you to “view site-by-site performance metrics -- including clicks, impressions, cost, and conversion data -- for domains or URLs in the content network where your ads have appeared.”
Overall, with our clients we see that the Pay Per Click ads on Google Search convert better (with a better ROI) than ads on the Google Content network. Ads on Google Search show up on the top and right hand side of the page when you do a search in Google, content network ads show on websites running Ad Sense (such as news and blog sites) that have content relevant to your keywords.
One of the biggest challenges I have had with running ads on the content network is that a major news story or popular event can trigger ads to receive a huge spike in impressions and clicks but not necessarily an increase in conversions. Without the ability to see which sites were driving all of the clicks, the only option was to scale back your bids on the content network or turn off the content network altogether.
Now with the Placement Performance report, you can see which content network sites are converting well and those that are not. You can use the site exclusion tool to eliminate sites that drive a lot of clicks but little conversions. And increase ad spend on the sites that drive the quality traffic that results in conversions and high ROI. This is accomplished with the site targeting feature.
I have also seen similar trends with ads on the Yahoo Search Marketing content network, where a news event triggers ads to receive a large increase in impressions, resulting in a large number of clicks with very few conversions. Hopefully Yahoo will continue to their strategy of copying the Google PPC platform and add this feature!
Actually, Yahoo recently did take one step to improving their content network by introducing Quality Based Pricing, realizing that all clicks from the content network are not created equal, something Google has been doing for a long time with their Smart Pricing.
So rather than shutting off your ads from showing on the Google content network when your cost per acquisition is high and ROI low, use this new transparency to improve your content network strategy by optimizing your ad for specific sites or weeding out sites that drive a lot of clicks but do not convert.
Share this blog post
Posted on March 27, 2007
MFA's and Does Costa Rica Suck?
BY BEN CASTELLI
Brad Geddes recently posted a great article over on Search Engine Land about search arbitrage in PPC marketing and provides some interesting arguments for and against this practice. Sometimes called MFA’s (made for Adsense), these sites use some trickery in their ads to send an unsuspecting searcher to a site loaded with Adsense ads. When the searcher then clicks on one of those ads the arbitrager gets paid. “The arbitrager pockets the difference between what they paid per click and what they get paid per click.” Here is a great example of one I ran into the other day in Google: I searched for “costa rica + surf lodge” and this is the ad that came up:
Now that is some powerful ad text so naturally I was compelled to click on the ad and read the report, well this was the resulting page:
Yup, nothing but a bunch of Adsense and no information on why Costa Rica sucks. As an advertiser I may not mind my ads being shown on the above page because the search arbitrager is likely bidding on keywords that I am not and it presents another chance for a searcher to see my ad and visit my site. It all comes back to ROI and whether or not visitors from the arbitrage sites are converting well.
However, as a searcher I was annoyed that the original “Costa Rica Sucks” ad did not deliver the content it promised in the ad text and the ads being displayed on the subsequent page were only semi-relevant to my initial search of “costa rica + surf camp”. And that is the biggest argument against search arbitrage, poor relevance and a negative user experience. Since Google’s bread and butter is high relevance and user experience I expect them to continue to crack down on the practice.
Share this blog post
