PPC Without Pity

If you’re reading this blog, then chances are you are a serious pay per click marketing professional, or you would like to be one someday. And that’s great! There are a lot of job opportunities out there for online marketing professionals, and it’s an exciting new field. However, the field is so new that there are not many opportunities in higher education to specialize in PPC marketing. You can’t exactly get a college degree in PPC…yet.

So how do you prove your PPC chops to potential employers? Right now, the gold standard is Google’s AdWords certification. Just about everyone who is running a PPC campaign is running it in Google, so if you’re going to learn how to do PPC, you had better know how to run a Google AdWords campaign effectively. The Google AdWords certification tests your knowledge of the platform, and best practices to ensure that your campaigns are profitable.

Preparation for the test is totally free, so there’s no reason not to study for it. You can access all of the lessons online at the Google AdWords Learning Center. Lessons are available in text or video format, and they cover just about everything you need to know about what’s going to be on the certification exam.

The exam itself is about 100 questions, and has a two-hour time limit. It is open-book (which means you should probably leave a tab open to the AdWords help center as you take the test), but you’re going to need some serious time management skills in order to finish before the clock runs out. In order to pass, you’ll need to score 85% or better. There is a $50 fee to take the test, but keep in mind you have to pay that every time you retake that if you fail. Use that as a motivator to get it right the first time around.

Passing the AdWords certification exam isn’t all you need to get certified – it’s only the beginning. In order to be registered as a qualified professional, you also need to manage $1000 or more in AdWords spend over a 90-day period. You can either do this with your own account, or link to an existing account through your own client center account. The trickiest part of getting certified is getting someone to trust you with their AdWords spend. If you pass the test beforehand and show that you know your stuff, you’re going to have a better chance of landing a client who will help you finish your certification requirements.

Here’s some advice from someone who has taken and passed the exam. First, keep in mind that the correct answer on the Google test may not necessarily be the best real-world answer. I know this may sound counterintuitive, but think of it this way: Google has a vested interest in training people to spend as much money as possible on AdWords. So, a lot of Google test answers go like this: “Q: How do I improve performance in my Google account? A: Spend more money on Google!” So, be extra careful on the strategy questions. Second, two hours is definitely not long enough to finish all of the questions. Study and memorize as much as you can before you start, because looking up the answers burns up precious time. Skip too many questions, and you won’t make it to 85%.

Once you pass the test and meet the ad spend management requirements, you’ll get a nifty icon to put on your website that tells the world that you passed the certification. As an added bonus, you’ll also get some AdWords promotional credits to give to your clients. But, most importantly, you will be recognized as an expert in the field. This will help you get work if you’re a freelancer, or help you land a job if you’re looking for a 9 to 5 gig. Good luck!

This week, Google rolled out some policy changes to their AdWords platform regarding who can advertising pharmaceutical products through PPC ads. Previously, all advertisers dealing with medicinal products had to go through PharmacyChecker identification so that Google could verify that the products were legit. This week’s rollout has tightened restrictions on pharmaceutical advertising. Now, only VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to advertise their products through AdWords, and pharmaceutical advertisers will only be allowed to target their own country.

This change is sure to aggravate lots of vendors of diet pills, holistic cure-alls, and nutritional supplements, but I think it’s going to offer a better user experience in the long run. We’ve all seen the scam AdSense ads for acai miracle juice and received way too many emails promoting “ChEaP Vi@gra.” Pharmaceutical products are consistently one of the most profitable affiliate marketing niches, so I’m not too surprised that Google is cracking down on this vertical to clean up their PPC results. I suppose this is an extension of their recent ban on teeth whitening AdSense ads and their ilk. So, I guess it’s a bad time to be a pharmaceutical affiliate, but a good time to be a person searching for legitimate cures. By restricting pharmaceutical ads to only folks who can obtain a legitimate, well-regarded certification, Google is really trying to make sure that the only people who can advertise pharmaceuticals are actual pharmacies.

However, people who are on the fringe of the pharmaceutical industry might get dinged for this, too. In my experience, I’ve seen that Google’s automated editorial process is extremely liberal in what it considers to be a pharmaceutical advertisement. Because of these new rules, you might see your ads get disapproved if you offer pharmacy technician certification classes, medical assistance devices like walkers or orthopedic devices, or even counseling sessions on drug addiction. I’m pretty sure that Google just flags any ad that is even remotely related to pharmacies or medicine.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to clear up the confusion. If your ad gets flagged (and you know you’re not breaking the rules), all you really need to do is to submit an exception request with a simple line like “not a pharmaceutical product.” You can do this right in AdWords Editor in the ad editing section. Usually, Google is pretty good about promptly reinstating the ad if it’s clearly not bound by the pharmacy policy rules.

Because of this new policy, it’s a good idea to double-check any ads that might seem related to pharmaceutical products. If you’re not paying attention, Google might flag your ad and keep it from running. By being vigilant about the approval process and understanding the rules, you can prevent yourself from missing valuable ad impressions and clicks.

When creating a new PPC campaign or ad group, there’s an important choice to make with your text ads. Should you set text ads to rotate evenly, or optimize their distribution according to what the search engine thinks is best? Before you choose, you should think about how each distribution is calculated, and how it will affect your data collection for optimization purposes.

First off, you should always be running two to three text ads per ad group. That way, you can test different value propositions in your ads to see which one works best. After a month or two goes by, you can then compare the total conversions, conversion rate, and click-through rates of your ads to find the top performer. If your ad groups tend to get a lot of traffic, run three ads to test multiple factors at once. If your ad groups are low-traffic niche groups, you may need to run only two ads at a time to ensure you collect enough data for a reliable sample.

Choosing rotated or optimized ads will also affect your data collection. Rotating ads is pretty straightforward – each ad gets equal exposure. Optimized ad serving is where it gets a little trickier. By setting your ads to optimized serving, you allow the search engines to choose which ad gets the most exposure, since they will choose the “best” ad after a certain amount of data is gathered, then allow that ad to run the majority of the time.

This may sound good on the surface, but you also need to keep in mind that the search engines will choose the “best” ad based on their own criteria. This probably means that they will choose the ad with the highest click-through rate, since more clicks equals more money for Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. This may not be in your best interest. The ad with the highest CTR may also have the lowest conversion rate. You could be racking up click costs without seeing conversion results if you trust search engines to “optimize” your ad distribution.

Of course, this is not always the case. Sometimes optimization is on the mark, and you can have a decent performing ad group without the hassle of constantly rotating ads yourself. For advertisers that just want a “set it and forget it” solution, you’ll probably be okay with optimized ad serving. But, if you are a serious PPC marketer, you will need to run evenly-rotated ads for two reasons. First, having even rotation ensures that you will have a valid statistical sample at the end of your text ad experiment, since all ads in the group will have an equal chance to succeed. And second, choosing not to rely on the search engines lets you choose your own success metric. If you want to optimize for conversion rate, you can do that. If you want to optimize for CTR, that’s okay too. You don’t have to rely on a third party to tell you what your “best” ad is, since you will have a much better idea of what is successful for your own business.

Most of the time, I choose to set my new ad groups to rotate evenly. But then again, I’m a huge PPC geek who loves to split-test things. Think carefully about what optimizing or rotating your text ads means for your business before you make a commitment. Don’t blindly rely on a search engine to automatically do your PPC campaign optimization for you.

With the exponential rise in smartphone use over the past year or two, you might be tempted to run a pay per click marketing campaign targeted specifically toward mobile devices. On paper, it seems like a good idea. Since there are so many more people accessing the internet on smartphones these days, it’s understandable if you want to try to reach this user segment. However, you should consider the nature of your business and its relation to mobile phone searches before you invest the time and money to create a mobile-targeted PPC campaign.

First, you need to get into the mindset of a mobile internet user. This may not be too hard, especially if you’re a smartphone owner well-versed in the pleasures of instant internet gratification. Mobile internet users are crunched for time, and are probably looking for information they can act on in a hurry. They might be en route to a store and need directions, looking for a certain type of business in their immediate area, or comparison shopping online while they browse in a brick and mortar store. The plus side is that they have a strong intent to purchase what they are after – they just need a slight push to get them where they need to be. The down side is that you don’t have a lot of time to make an impression on these hurried users.

Because of this mindset, mobile PPC campaigns that rely on a lot of bells, whistles, and customer interaction are likely to fail. Don’t target mobile users with information appropriate to the information-gathering phase of the buying cycle. Focus your landing pages on the immediate information that these users are looking for – directions to stores and quick bullet points about products and services.

Keep in mind that these people will also be viewing your landing pages on very small screens. Build a special landing page for your ads that is optimized for smartphone screens. By offering a better user experience, you can impress your potential customers.

Of course, not every business should run a mobile PPC campaign. If your product or service has a long buying cycle, and you know your users will be doing a lot of product research before making a commitment, don’t bother with a mobile campaign. People don’t do their product research on smartphones – they wait until they get home on a real computer for that. Also, if your purchase process takes more than two or three pages to complete, you probably won’t see good results from a mobile campaign. Going through a checkout process on a smartphone is a real pain, so most users are probably saving this experience for a more comfortable device.

There are some types of business that would benefit immensely from a mobile campaign, though. Bars, restaurants, and other local hot spots could see an increase in foot traffic with a little push toward smartphone users. Supplement your web local listings (Google Maps, Yelp, Yahoo Local, etc.) with a little PPC and you can help mobile users find you in your neighborhood.

If you offer a cheap, instant-gratification style product, you might succeed with a mobile PPC campaign, too. This is especially important for people selling phone applications or ringtones, but could work for any product that doesn’t require a lot of research or thought into the purchase. If you want customers to make their purchase on their smartphone, though, make sure the checkout process is as simple and short as possible.

Mobile PPC campaigns aren’t for everyone, but they will become more important over the next few years as mobile internet use continues to rise. If you do set up a campaign, make sure to track your mobile phone visitors in Google Analytics. As in any PPC campaign, you need to pay close attention to your visitor behavior and conversion metrics. Don’t be afraid to experiment until you find out what works! The rules for mobile PPC marketing are by no means set in stone, so you’ll have to take some risks to figure out what is successful.

This just in from the “I thought they had this already” department: Microsoft announces full HTML mobile device targeting for their AdCenter PPC marketing platform. Sure, Microsoft AdCenter has been in the mobile ad game for a while now, but did it really take them this long to work it out so that you can specifically target smartphone devices with full web browsers like the iPhone, Google’s Nexus One, or any number of other Palm and Android phones? Actually, they did have this capability previously, but you had to individually target each type of mobile device. At least now you can target to the general category of mobile devices, which should save you a lot of time.

Regardless of my snarky commentary, this is great news for any advertiser trying to make mobile-targeted PPC campaigns in 2010. Clearly, Google and MSN are betting big on mobile PPC marketing in 2010. Yahoo, not so much. I’m not aware of any ways to target mobile devices in Yahoo (feel free to prove me wrong in the comments!), but we’ve seen a lot of developments lately from Google and Microsoft. I’m still not totally convinced that users are going to be on board with mobile PPC just yet. I don’t think that people are ready to be advertised to on their mobile devices – it seems like a little too intimate of a medium to me. We’ll see if my cynicism is justified by the end of the year.

Either way, now would be a good time to make sure you have mobile-specific landing pages, and optimize a mobile version of your homepage for tiny smartphone screens. Whether you’re ready or not, people are going to start looking for information about your company on their mobile phones. It’s better to have a mobile version of your site ready to go and no one using it than having to scramble to make one once you see your mobile traffic take off in your web analytics program.

Yahoo recently announced some new functionality in their PPC platform. One of the new features was improved ability to import Google AdWords campaigns into Yahoo Search Marketing format. Now, I like the ability to cross-post campaigns as much as the next PPC marketer, but announcements like this just make me feel like Yahoo is constantly admitting defeat in their PPC platform.

I should preface this by saying that you can also import AdWords campaigns into MSN AdCenter, although you do need to take a side trip into Microsoft Excel to get it done. At least you have to use another Microsoft product. Yahoo just seems to be rolling over and admitting that there are much better tools for creating PPC campaigns out there, and you should probably just use those instead of the Yahoo Search Marketing platform.

I assume that most of the people reading this blog have created a Yahoo PPC campaign before. And you would probably agree with me that making changes to a Yahoo account are pretty tedious and boring. Compared to the agility and ease of use of AdWords Editor (or for that matter, the AdCenter Desktop Beta), Yahoo is light years behind the competition in terms of useful tools for large-scale PPC accounts.

So instead of creating a tool of their own, Yahoo decided to take the easy route and just assume that you are using their competitors tools (which you probably are) and outsource their PPC tool creation to the other guys. I admit that Google has some pretty awesome tools for PPC, but I hardly think that’s an excuse for just rolling over and giving up, especially if you’re one of the web’s largest companies. I guess I can’t really blame Yahoo for phoning it in, though, since their PPC platform is probably on the outs, pending the upcoming Yahoo/Bing merger.

If you are still interested in importing AdWords accounts into Yahoo, you can find instructions here. In the future, I’d recommend having a Google AdWords export handy for all of your PPC campaigns, since it seems like it has become the gold standard for pay per click accounts. I doubt that any of the other providers will be taking away their AdWords import abilities any time soon.

This week, Google announced new mobile device targeting options for AdWords campaigns. Before, you could only target computing devices (laptops, desktops, etc.), mobile devices with full internet browsers, or both. Now, Google has opened it up for much more granular targeting. You can now choose to target specific mobile phone operating systems (iPhone/iPod, Android, or Palm webOS) and specific mobile carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.

This is a huge step for mobile PPC. By allowing for this super-specific targeting, this opens up the ability for marketers to create highly effective mobile device PPC campaigns. If you sell iPhone cases, you can create a campaign that only reaches iPhone users. Maybe you run a PPC campaign for a mobile phone service provider. You can filter out users of your own mobile service, and target only people who use your competitors to convince them to switch over to your company. Also, since Google allows for specific targeting to US and Canadian mobile providers, you can ensure that your mobile campaigns only reach users from a specific country, filtering out business travelers who might have only hopped across the border for a meeting or conference. These targeting options open up a lot of possibility for creative marketing tactics, and increased return on investment for mobile PPC campaigns, since you can filter out unqualified traffic much more easily.

This is yet another indicator that Google is taking mobile PPC advertising very seriously. Both their purchase of AdMob last year, and continued improvements to mobile traffic tracking in Google Analytics were pretty clear indicators, but this is a huge step as well. Google clearly thinks that mobile advertising is about to take off in a big way. It might be time to think about your mobile PPC strategy, and start incorporating these new tools and options into your current PPC efforts.

If your company is large enough and popular enough, your company name and trademark may suddenly become valuable pay per click search terms not only for yourself, but for your competitors as well. In some cases, your competitors may find that by bidding on keywords related to your company they can reach out to customers who originally intended to purchase from you. Obviously, this is a situation most of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately, most PPC companies do not explicitly ban the use of trademarked terms in PPC keyword lists. And why should they? The more keywords they make available for bidding, the more money they make. If you are having an issue with competitor use of your branded terms, you will need to resolve the issue yourself.

If you see your competitors running pay per click ads with your branded terms, the first step you should take is to contact the advertiser directly. That way, you can ensure that your key terms are removed from all advertising campaigns instead of just one PPC account. Be firm, but polite. There is no need to threaten legal action, but you should be clear that if they do not comply to your request you will register a complaint with the PPC advertising services, and their account will be affected. If your request is acknowledged, you may be able to resolve the issue quickly and easily with no need for intervention by the search engines.

However, if the offending competitor chooses to not take down the ads that are in violation, you may need to lodge a trademark complaint with the search engines. While it is not against the rules to bid on a competitor’s trademarked keywords, there are some restrictions on using trademarked terms in text ads. Be aware of this before you lodge a complaint. You can’t stop a competitor from running ads when users search for your branded or trademarked terms, but you might be able to prevent those competitors from using the terms in their text ads.

If you see some text ads running with your branded terms (and reaching out to the advertiser directly doesn’t help), you may need to issue a trademark complaint. This is about as effective as lodging a complaint with any other major company (that is, it’s kind of a crapshoot), but it may be worth your time if you really think that it is negatively affecting your business.

To lodge a trademark complaint with Google, first read their trademark policy here. If you still think that the advertiser is violating Google’s terms, you can send them a complaint by filling out their Trademark Complaint Form. If your complaint is valid, then your brand terms will be added to Google’s blacklisted terms, and future ads containing the keywords will be rejected through Google’s automated editorial process.

For trademark complaints about Yahoo ads, read their editorial guidelines here. If you would like to report a violation, you can send an email to trademarkconcern-ysm@yahoo-inc.com. Be sure to include the following information in your email:

1. The search term(s) that caused the ad in question to appear.
2. The trademark on which your claim is based.
3. The registration number of the trademark you own (if it is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office).
4. Evidence of consumer confusion arising from the offending ad.
5. A copy of any communication you have had with the offending advertiser about the matter.

If you have a complaint about an ad on Bing or another Microsoft network property, you can read their guidelines on intellectual property at this link. To lodge a complaint, you can fill out their trademark complaint form.

Keep in mind that all search engines explicitly state in their terms of service that they are not responsible for mediating trademark disputes. However, if you have a compelling case and the offending advertiser is clearly in the wrong, the search engines can be a great help in standing up for your intellectual property rights. Just be civil, communicate with the advertiser directly first, and use complaint forms as a last resort. As long as you remain respectful in your request, you’ll find that protecting your brand in the PPC marketplace is simple and effective.

In the world of pay per click marketing, we often focus on new customer acquisition. Much thought has been put into the buying cycle, and reaching customers who are in the research, comparison, and purchase phases. But there’s another type of customer that often gets overlooked in PPC campaigns – the returning customer.

Business research shows that acquiring a new customer can cost five to ten times more than retaining an existing one. This is especially true in pay per click, where we are constantly concerned with ROI and cost per conversion. Fortunately, return customer traffic can be really cheap if you know what you’re doing.

The best way to enable return customers is to run a “branding” campaign based on your company name and brand name keywords. There is some controversy in the PPC world regarding whether or not you should bid on your own brand name keywords. Some people think it’s a waste of money, since you’ll probably get organic results anyway. However, I think that it’s a good idea for a number of reasons. First, you may not be ranking well on your own brand search terms, especially if your company or web presence is relatively new. Adding company-related PPC keywords to your campaigns guarantees coverage. Second, having more results show up for your company on search engine results pages is never a bad thing. Even if you have multiple listings in both organic and paid search, you can dominate the SERP so that customers are certain that you’re the best option. Third, running a branding PPC campaign can help protect you if competitors are running a PPC campaign using those keywords. This is not explicitly banned by the search engines, but you can get them taken down if you register a complaint. However, running your own branding campaign offers insurance while you wait on the conflict to be resolved. And lastly, brand keywords tend to have really low bids due to the lack of competition. It’s the last niche to get ten, twenty, or thirty cent CPC keywords, so your actual traffic costs will probably be pretty minimal.

Having a strong PPC presence for your brand terms will help you bring back people who bought from you before, but might not remember your website. You’ve probably done this before – you don’t remember a URL, so you just search for a company name. Wouldn’t you want to make sure that those people are sure to find your website? Tailor your text ads with words like “official site” and other phrases that show searchers exactly where they need to go.

Finally, you can entice return customers with coupons and special offers. You can add in a coupon code to your text ads in your branding campaign, or bid on keywords like “{company name} coupons” or “{company name} promo code”. In this economic climate, everyone is looking for a deal. Plus, if customers have a special coupon code, they may feel obligated to use it. This could be especially effective if you add in a specific expiration deadline – it’s a great way to push sales in a flagging month.

Since CPC costs for brand name terms are so low, it couldn’t hurt to run a test campaign to see how it goes. I’m sure you’ll find that your cost per conversion is much lower than the rest of your campaigns and your conversion rates will be really good. And, most importantly, you’ll be showing your return customers that you know they are there, and that you value their business.

Now that we’re firmly planted in 2010, I think it’s time for a few predictions for the coming year. And, since this blog is quite obviously concerned with pay per click marketing, I’m going to stick with what I know. Here are what I think the big three developments for PPC will be in 2010:

1. Yahoo and Bing will join forces, but still won’t match Google for PPC marketshare.

In July 2009, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a deal that would eliminate Yahoo search and replace it with Bing. Of course, as in all major business transactions, this deal has taken quite a while to materialize. Yahoo and Microsoft just finalized their deal in December 2009, and are anticipating a rollout of the new functionality in early 2010.

This is obviously big news for the PPC world. With Yahoo Search Marketing leaving the market space, that only leaves two major PPC providers – Google and Microsoft. With billion-dollar budgets at their disposal, this is sure to be a corporate slugfest for the ages.

However, I’m convinced that Google is still going to come out on top on this one. Let’s crunch some numbers. An August 2009 study by Search Engine Watch indicates that Google gets about 65% of total searches, Yahoo gets 15%, and MSN/Bing gets about 10%. Looking exclusively at PPC market share, a Rimm-Kaufmann group blog in March 2009 shows that Google dominates with 80% of PPC market share, while Yahoo gets about 15% and MSN/Bing lags with only about 5%. Even after Yahoo and Bing join forces, they will only get about 25% of web searches and 20% of the PPC money out there. I’m optimistic about Bing, since it has showed some great momentum since it’s launch, but I think we need to be realistic here. Google will dominate PPC spending for quite some time, since their company name is synonymous with web searching in a lot of web users’ minds. Microsoft is going to have to do a lot more than just take over Yahoo’s search market share if they want to put a dent in Google’s profits. This won’t happen any time soon, and certainly not in 2010.

2. Mobile PPC spending and use will continue to increase.

This is a pretty obvious one. More smartphones are being purchased with every passing year, and with that comes an increase in mobile internet use. Google made a big bet on the mobile ad market in late 2009 when they announced the acquisition of mobile ad provider AdMob. Google has also made significant improvements this year to mobile ad tracking in their Google Analytics platform. Yahoo offers a robust mobile advertising platform for display advertising, and Microsoft inked a deal to be the exclusive search and advertising provider for Verizon mobile phones. With the big three making such big pushes into the mobile advertising space, we’re sure to see some interesting developments in the coming year. The only question that remains is how will users of smartphones react to the encroachment of advertising on their mobile experience?

3. Social network PPC advertising rises, then falls flat.

Social networking has definitely been on everyone’s mind in 2009. With the explosive growth of Facebook and Twitter in the last year, advertisers have been wondering how to capitalize on the user bases of these extremely popular sites. To better monetize their products, both Facebook and MySpace have created advertising platforms to businesses who want to reach out to their users.

This is a really tempting proposition. Social networks have access to an unparalleled amount of demographic data that allows for hyper-specific targeting. On the surface, this seems like a great deal, and I think it’s going to attract a lot of advertising dollars in the coming year from businesses who don’t understand social media, and are looking for a shortcut to get presence on these sites. However, from my personal experience (and a few other folks I’ve talked to), social media ads tend to get really terrible results. You can already target MySpace, YouTube, and a few other social sites through Google’s content network, and let me tell you that the results aren’t pretty. You certainly get a lot of impressions due to the massive amounts of users, but you’ll also get a lot of errant clicks. What you probably won’t get, though, are conversions.

People go to social network sites to be social – they’re not there to buy things, fill out lead forms, or learn more about companies. This is the inherent flaw in any social network PPC campaign. Sure, you can pick up some good brand recognition through clever banner ads, but I wouldn’t expect anything good from text ads. The reach is good, the demographic targeting is good, but the user intent just isn’t there.

So here’s what I think will happen in 2010: businesses will get sucked in by the promises of awesome demographic targeting, and consultants telling them they need to get into “the social media thing.” Then, after a few months of mediocre results, they’ll realize that the ROI just isn’t there and they will pull the plug on their social network PPC campaigns. 2010 will be the year of boom and bust in the social media PPC space, unless Facebook and MySpace can figure out how to make ads more engaging to their user base, and more profitable for their advertisers.

There you have it – three PPC predictions for the coming year. We’ll see if I’m right this time next year. Got some predictions of your own? Let’s hear them in the comments.