PPC Software Review: Raven Internet Marketing Tools

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

I admit that I’m usually pretty skeptical about paid search marketing software. A lot of good, free tools are out there, and they usually do just as much (if not more) than some of the paid tools that are available. But there are a few tools out there that deserve some of your marketing budget dollars. One of these is Raven Internet Marketing Tools.

I have had the privilege of using Raven Tools for the last couple of months at my day job, and I have to admit that I have been quite impressed. Raven is primarily an SEO tool, but it offers a lot of useful functionality for PPC marketing as well. For the purposes of this review, I’m just going to cover the aspects of the software that are relevant to PPC management.

First off, I should explain some limitations of the platform. Raven doesn’t do any kind of automated bid management, statistical analysis of ad testing, keyword optimization, or any of the other fancy PPC management gimmicks that come with some of your high-end PPC software packages. Raven also does not offer integration with Microsoft AdCenter as of the writing of this review. These are some significant downsides that I hope Raven will fix in later releases. But on the other hand, Raven is much more affordable than the more comprehensive software platforms, so the cost-to-usefulness ratio is actually pretty good.

Raven Tools excels as a paid search management platform in two areas: reporting and research. With Raven, you can get side-by-side comparisons of your AdWords and Analytics data, as well as data on top ranking SEO keywords. Here’s an example (with metrics blacked out to protect client confidentiality):

Raven Tools Dashboard

This is pretty handy for easily measuring how much your AdWords efforts are contributing to your overall site traffic and performance. You can also add in additional dashboard modules like Google Analytics Keywords or Google Analytics Referrers to get a more granular look at where your traffic is coming from.

For keyword research, Raven gives you a lot of options. Your monthly subscription gets you access to keyword research from data sources including Google’s keyword tool, SEMRush, SEOMoz, WordTracker, and Open Calais. If you do a lot of keyword research for new campaigns and ad groups, then you’ll probably save some money by getting Raven Tools instead of subscribing to all of the paid tools it has access to.

You can research keywords in several different ways. A good start would be to use the Research Assistant, which mashes up data from Google, SEMRush, SEOMoz and Open Calais. Here’s a sample report:

Raven Keyword Research Data

Here, you get data on estimated CPC, search volume, and competition. If you want to get information from individual sources within the data mashup, you can do that too. Here’s a look at the same report using only SEMRush data:

Raven SEMRush Data

The Google keyword tool integration is nothing special, since you can get that data for free anyway. But it is nice to have it available in the same interface that you’re getting your other keyword data from. There’s also a WordTracker option. I’ve never been a big fan of WordTracker, since Google seems to provide more relevant and useful keywords (for free, I might add). But if you want to round out your research with another data source, you can do that too:

Raven Wordtracker Data

Another handy tool for paid search optimization is the Keyword Opportunities report. This one pulls data on your paid search keywords from Google Analytics to show you what you can improve on. The example report below provides site engagement metrics like visits, percentage of total visits, and bounce rate by keywords. With a report like this, you could see which of your paid search keywords have a high bounce rate, then go back to your account and add negative keywords or improve the ad and landing page to improve the bounce rate and increase customer engagement (and hopefully conversions as well).

Raven Keyword Opportunities Report

With monthly subscription plans starting at $99, Raven is both affordable and a must-have for any agency or business with a serious search marketing program. The data insights you get from the platform will easily help you recoup the cost of the subscription by improving your return on ad spend. And unlike most other PPC software packages, your monthly fee is not a percentage of your ad spend. You’ll pay the same for Raven if you spend $1000 a month on PPC or $1,000,000 a month. Raven is in my PPC toolbox, and I recommend that you put it in yours too.

If you want to see for yourself, Raven is offering a free 30 day trial. Setting up your Raven reporting is as easy as inputting your AdWords and Google Analytics IDs – it took me about 15 minutes to enter all of my accounts and set up the dashboards I wanted. I don’t normally endorse products, but Raven Tools is a worthy exception. Give it a try today and tell them I sent you.

Full disclosure: I was not paid by Raven Tools for this post, nor did I receive any free products in consideration. However, I am participating in Raven Tools’ affiliate program via shareasale.com.

Posted in PPC Software Reviews | 1 Comment

The Pros and Cons of PPC Remarketing

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

If you’re hip to the PPC marketing game, you’ve probably heard a lot about remarketing lately. It’s another PPC gimmick provided by Google and some third-party ad providers that lets you target display ads to people who have previously engaged with your website in some way (i.e. checking out but abandoning their cart, viewing a specific product page, etc.). But is remarketing right for your account? I have mixed feelings about it myself, so I put together a short list of remarketing pros and cons.

Remarketing Pros

1. It helps you convert a customer you might have lost.

The most effective remarketing campaigns take a user that very nearly converted and give them the extra push to come back to your website. For example, you could set up a remarketing campaign that targets users who abandoned their shopping cart and shows them an ad for 10% off your store with a special promo code. That extra discount may give the reluctant purchaser a little boost, and make them come back and complete the conversion. It’s much better for you to get 90% of the sale value instead of 0%, so if your profit margins can handle it remarketing could bring in a lot of lost revenue.

2. It’s more effective than traditional display advertising.

With traditional display ads, you have a few good targeting options available. You can target by keyword interest, specific websites, or demographic data. But remarketing ads offer an even more focused targeting method: people who have already engaged with your website. You know that they’re already interested in what you have to offer, so it’s only a matter of giving them that extra push to go from a browsing customer to a converting one. Remarketing ads can be that push.

Remarketing Cons

1. You might pay twice to acquire the same customer.

The flipside of remarketing is that you’ll never know if the person you’re targeting was going to come back to your website and convert anyway. For a lot of websites, the conversion process may take days, weeks, or even months. Many customers like to think about a purchase before making it. So your remarketing ads may not have any additive effect on your conversion process. If a highly-interested customer clicks on your PPC ad, thinks over their purchase, then clicks on a remarketing ad to return to your site, you just paid for two clicks when one would have sufficed. This could run up your cost per acquisition across campaigns.

2. It’s kinda creepy.

Let’s face it: the average consumer isn’t as big a fan of privacy-invading advertising schemes as us marketers. Just take a look at the recent backlash against Google’s “Search Plus Your World” rollout. Customers get kind of freaked out when their searches and ads get too personal. Extensive remarketing could make potential customers think ill of your brand, and cost you conversions from every marketing channel. If you’re going to try remarketing, be sure to do it in moderation.

So should you try remarketing for your account? It depends. Some accounts will benefit greatly, while others will just waste money. Consider the pros and cons listed above, and think if your customers would appreciate the gentle reminder that remarketing offers. And when in doubt, do like we always do: test it out, measure your results, and calculate the difference to see if it worked.

Posted in Display Network, Google AdWords, Image Ads, Remarketing, Search Engines, Text Ads | 1 Comment

The #1 Reason PPC Accounts Fail

Posted on January 9, 2012 by

I’ve worked in a lot of new PPC accounts, as an agency rep, an in-house specialist, and a freelancer. I’ve seen a lot of accounts succeed, but even more fail. And after observing quite a few PPC failures, I think I’ve figured out why most of these failures happened: the product sucked.

Sure, I can hear the uproar from all the business owners out there: “But I’m special! I put my product on the internet, so it’s destined to make me a millionaire!” Sorry, dude. If you’re just starting an online business, you are really late to the party. If something can be sold for a profit on the internet, there are hundreds of people selling it already. If you want to set yourself apart, you really need to make sure customers understand why they should buy from you instead of all the other people selling it online. If you can’t make that distinction, your pay per click marketing efforts are going to fail.

Before you start any PPC account, take a look at what your competitors are doing online. Is your product cheaper? Do you ship it faster? Is it of better quality? If you can’t say at least one of those statements is true, considering every one of your online competitors (yes, I said every one), then don’t bother with PPC. In fact, don’t bother with starting that business at all. It is not going to end well for you.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s assume that your product doesn’t totally suck. Now you have to convince your customers of that. This is where your ad text and landing page comes in. If you are cheaper than your competitors, talk up that point in your ads and display your prices prominently on your landing page. People love to get a good deal, and CTR is always great on ads with a discount percentage or a dollar amount discount. But if you’re not the cheapest, don’t even think about stating your price point in your ad. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen a PPC ad stating “Lowest Prices!” when at least three other competitors had a lower price right in their ad text. If you do this, you’re telling your customers that 1) you are not the cheapest, and 2) you are a liar. Don’t be that guy.

If you can deliver your product faster, tell your customers that! People love instant gratification. This is especially important for time-sensitive things like gifts. If you have a special shipping hook-up, you can make a killing on holidays like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day. There are an awful lot of people who are really bad at planning ahead, and they’re willing to pay a significant markup on shipping if you can promise them that you can get a package to them in just a few days. This is especially effective if your competitors can’t make the same shipping promise.

But if your product isn’t cheap, and you can’t ship it quickly, you can always rely on the quality of the product. Of course, you really have to have a quality product to pull this off. Apple is a classic example. Their gadgets are way more expensive than every other computer manufacturer, but you won’t have trouble finding someone willing to pay the Apple markup because their products are genuinely high quality. This can work for your product too, but you have to be able to convince potential customers who don’t know who you are. Use customer testimonials, high-resolution product images, and starred reviews to prove your point. Show your customers (and not just through slick marketing copy) that they would be suckers to buy anyone else’s cheap, low-quality crap. If you can’t be the cheapest or the fastest, be the best.

Before you start a PPC account, take a good, long look at your product. Does it suck? Well, then your account is going to fail. Before you even buy one click, work on making your product better. If you don’t, you’re going to waste a lot of time and money.

Posted in Landing Pages, PPC Basics, Text Ads | 2 Comments

Three PPC Predictions For 2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by

Happy new year, PPC Without Pity readers! 2011 was a heck of a year for search engine marketing, and I’m sure that 2012 will be no less interesting. Of course, this is the time of year where all of us bloggers dust off our crystal balls and come up with some predictions for the coming year. Here are my guesses for some major PPC trends we’ll see this year:

Prediction 1: Tablet targeting takes off.

Marketers have been talking up the virtues of mobile targeting for a couple years now, but I gotta be honest – I haven’t seen the appeal. Unless you’re an advertiser that can condense your user experience to work on a smartphone screen, you probably won’t see good results from mobile targeting. This rules out anyone with a multi-step conversion process, a long lead form, or anyone who uses some kind of custom web tool (that may not work on smartphones) to complete their conversion event. There are a lot of businesses that fall into that category.

However, tablets change the mobile marketing game. They’re small enough to be portable, but large enough to convey a full-screen user experience to website visitors. And I’m sure that the ranks of tablet owners have swollen after this holiday season as people received them as gifts. I expect that in 2012 we’ll see a lot more people tapping away at PPC ads on their tablet screens. Perhaps it’s time to segment out your tablet traffic into separate campaigns, analyze your tablet traffic in Google analytics, and think about how you can optimize your conversion process to look great on a mobile screen.

Prediction 2: Readability and ad-block apps hinder display network performance.

I admit that I’m a power user of ad-block extensions such as Ad Block Plus, and reader bookmarklets like the outstanding Readability. Those of you with iPhones and iPads may have noticed the “Reader” functionality in iOS 5′s Safari browser. These are indicators of a larger trend that’s been percolating since the first banner ad – users just don’t want to see ads and other distractions in their web content. There’s no doubt that there have been some lost ad impressions due to this technology over the years, but with the Reader inclusion in iOS 5 I think we just saw the cultural tipping point where these services went from being neat gadgets used by hardcore web users to entering the mainstream web toolbox. It’s going to be tougher to get your ad message out on display networks with people stripping out ads from their content by choice. It will be hard to tell the exact impact that ad-stripping widgets will have on display network performance, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see image ad performance flatten or decline by a few percentage points in 2012.

Prediction 3: SEO suffers, and PPC thrives.

This year, I switched jobs and took on a role that has me managing both SEO and PPC. I was always tangentially involved in the SEO world, but now I’m getting a first-hand look at the struggles SEO practitioners go through on a daily basis. SEO was dealt a major blow in 2011 with Google’s SSL encryption of user queries, and the subsequent loss of organic search query data in Google Analytics reports. PPC escaped unscathed from this change – we can view all the user search queries we want, as long as someone clicked on an ad instead of an organic result. As I’ve written before, this schism between Google’s priorities for user privacy in regards to organic search versus paid search concerns me. This change showed that Google is willing to throw SEO specialists (and users) under the bus while leaving paid advertisers untouched. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another similar development in 2012 – at least one incident where a Google policy change shows a naked favoritism for paid advertisers over SEO’s. I don’t think that SEO is going to die off by any means, but I do think it is going to get battered around a bit.

That’s it for this year’s predictions. Best of luck in your 2012 advertising efforts, and stick around for another great year of PPC Without Pity!

Posted in Analytics, Display Network, Google AdWords, Image Ads, Keywords, Mobile PPC, Search Engines, SEO | 1 Comment

Checking Back on 2011′s PPC Predictions

Posted on December 26, 2011 by

Around this time last year, I made a few PPC predictions for 2011. And every year, I like to reflect back on what I said and see how my predictions panned out. Let’s take a look at what I said, and how it worked out:

Prediction #1: PPC Effort Increases, Although Spending Does Not

I think I was half-right on this one. PPC effort has no doubt increased, with new targeting options, ad extensions, and search engine policy changes keeping even the most experienced paid search marketers on their toes. However, PPC spending has still shown a strong trend of increasing year-over-year. According to a study by Ignition One, a digital marketing firm, total search spend was up 7.2% year-over-year Q3 2011 vs. Q3 2010, and search spend was up 11.8% YoY Q2 2011 vs. Q2 2010. Another study by Performics showed that this year’s Black Friday search spending was up 112% vs. Black Friday 2010, and Cyber Monday search spending increased 68% year-over-year. There’s clearly more room to grow in the PPC space as more retailers get online, and more consumers make the switch from brick-and-mortar purchases to e-commerce. I’m going to stop predicting a plateau for PPC spending. Based on the last couple of years, I expect search spending to continue growing for quite some time.

Prediction #2: Microsoft makes significant improvements to AdCenter to compete better with Google

100% true. AdCenter has really stepped up their game this year, adding a better UI, better data visualizations, enhanced geographic targeting, quality score calculations, and more sensible budget options to their product. Ever since the Yahoo/Bing search alliance, it seems like Microsoft has been making a flurry of improvements to their advertising platform to continue to make it a viable option for search advertisers. The only persistent problem is market share – Google is still the 800-pound gorilla in the room on that one, and it doesn’t look like they’re about to give up that search traffic share any time soon. I think that Microsoft has decided to stop going head-to-head with the Big G, and instead offer themselves as a complementary product to reach an audience that has rejected Google for whatever reason. Case in point: this year, AdCenter made it stupidly easy to export an AdWords campaign and import it directly into your AdCenter account. This shows that Microsoft is aware that search marketers aren’t facing a choice between AdWords and AdCenter. They’re almost forced to use Google, the choice is whether or not to supplement that coverage with AdCenter. I’m on record for being in favor of using AdCenter, and with the product improvements they’ve done in 2011, it has become a much easier choice to make.

Prediction #3: Facebook PPC gets big

True. On a personal level, I’ve been hearing a lot more about Facebook ads than in previous years. But to really back me up, let’s run some numbers:

Google Ad Revenue, Q1-Q3 2011: $26,357,000,000
Bing Ad Revenue, 2011 (estimated by eMarketer): $1,470,000,000
Facebook Revenue, Q1-Q3 2011 (according to a Gawker source): $2,500,000,000

If Gawker is to be believed, then Facebook is on pace for driving twice the ad revenue that AdCenter is. Not surprising, since by some estimates Facebook is now responsible for one third of online ad impressions in the US. Facebook has already reached ubiquity in the lives of most everyone with a first-world internet connection. It’s not surprising that they would evolve into one of the most valuable advertising platforms out there, since Facebook captures so much of the world’s attention. They’ve still got a long way to go before they overtake Google, though.

So the final tally is 2.5 out of three. Better than last year! Join me next week, when I take a shot at some PPC predictions for 2012.

Posted in Bing, Facebook, Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, Search Engines | Leave a comment