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Jun

3

SMX Advanced – Day 2 – Amazing PPC Tactics

Posted by Brian Bowman, CMO, Reply.com
Filed Under Tradeshows, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Amazing PPC Tactics

Speakers:

  • Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor, Inc.
  • Ryan Lash, Founder & VP Search, YMarketing, LLC
  • Dan Shoa, Founder & SEM Specialist, Five Mill, Inc.
  • Dan Thies, CEO, Stompernet

Dan Thies

  • Time
    • some hours of the day are more profitable
    • Some days of the week are, too
    • He uses Google analytics to see conversion rate by hour
    • Conversion rate * average order = revenue per visit
    • Campaign 1 – best times
    • Campaign 2 – night owl
    • Different ad creatives and bids may work on different parts of the day/week
    • He normally ends up with weekday and weekend copy winners
    • He says the old belief that the sweet spot is positions 5 through 8 isn’t accurate, based on eye-tracking analysis
    • He always tests at the top position to get ad copy to work. If it works, you win huge.
  • Match Types
    • If you can’t make a profit on exact match with 10 keywords and tight ad copy – good luck with Broad match
    • He recommends Phrase + negatives = a strong winner
    • He almost never uses Broad match as he finds too much waste
    • Ad copy testing – make 10 copies of an ad and then only change 1 and you get a 10% sample to limit financial exposure. – Great idea.
    • MSN Ad Center labs OCI Tool – useful to understand if a query is commercial in nature
    • Video on his core lessons – seofaststart.com/link/adwords
    • Ad Creative + Landing Page

Ryan Lash

  • How to build a semi-automatic bid managment system
    • Web browser (Firefox)
    • Spreadsheet
    • AdWords Editor
  • Calculate Ideal CPCs for CPA Campaign
    • Ideal CPC = (Ideal cost/clicks)
    • CPC sweet spot close to 50% net margin
    • What are the minimum number of clicks you need before taking action
      • Calculation: (1/Non-branded conversion rate)
    • CPC Floor/Ceiling
      • Min: $0.01
      • Max CPA & Avg Conversion Rate
      • Example: CPA $50, Conv Rte 2%, Max CPC = $1

Addie Conner

  • Yahoo Min CPC – many accounts have been hit and had their keywords removed
    • Quality score in Yahoo mainly lives at the adgroup level
    • Ask Yahoo to create a new account (unlink your accounts) and min CPCs will disappear
  • Gaining competitive insight
    • Google data is saved in their system
    • It is a great way to peer into competitive metrics
    • Example: keyword “bounty hunter”
    • Capture exact ad and click to get destination URL
    • Upload via an adwords editor into a new Google account
    • QS and first page min CPC should transfer
    • You can get click-to-bid and bid-to-position model of your competitor
  • Dominate the page (i.e. double-serving)
    • Engines realize that a single company may wish to run multiple sites to micro-target different business segments and optimize user experience
    • General rule is < 80% overlap between sites
    • You can get targeted URLs and tightly coupled landing page experience
  • Launch Keywords With High Quality Score
    • What really matters: Initial CTR, Bid, Account Structure?
      • Initial CTR matters – you need to overbid for 2 weeks. Higher initial CTR = higher lifetime value quality score.
      • Do you need to start at a high bid? Yes. Once a keyword falls off in position it is harder to recover the quality. She recommends that you start high to collect max data from Google for ROI and optimization.
    • Launch best practices and account structure
      • Ad groups have their own quality score
      • She tested generic grouping, semantic grouping, and performance grouping
      • The result: semantic grouping mattered and reduced CPCs with higher quality score
      • Start out with an inflated bid
      • Run aggressive ad copy – once established QS – change
      • Start with high-quality, high-traffic keywords
      • Once those keywords have achieved desired level, you can add other keywords
    • Relaunch
      • Keep everything the same for good quality score keywords
      • All bad – change something – display URL that can reset QS
      • If you fail, start a new account

Dan Shoa

  • Write a headline
    • Keyword:Buy Blue Widget = all caps
    • Yahoo Quick Keyword Creation
      • Quality Index is at the ad group level
      • benefit from highly-targeted keywords
      • There is no “broad match”
      • Polarized sunglasses example and re-enter on the right “select keywords” and repeat
      • Analyze keywords CTR performance in an ad group–pay attention to position. Pause all low CTR keywords.
      • Duplicate ad group
      • Delete keywords not in other group (i.e. the CTR for top group should increase and for the lower group will increase some)
      • Net result – you will get more traffic and cheaper
    • Yahoo Dynamic Keyword Insertion
      • DKI will increase quality index because Yahoo gives credit for its use
    • Google Ad Competition
      • 1 ad group with 10 keywords and 2 ads
      • Some keywords perform better for one ad or the other
      • Make sure bids are targeting your success metrics
      • Duplicate ad group and run one ad in each
      • Turn on all ad groups
      • Re-bid to current metrics of success
      • Google will do the work and bid the winner higher and eventually a winner will appear
    • Google – The Delima
      • If someone is in position 1 in Google and has been there for awhile and you have the exact same ad copy in position #2, you get hurt
      • Solution: create a second ad with a different headline
      • edit campaign settings to optimize ads
      • Need to maximize the “normalized CTR of your position”

Jan

21

Even Google Can’t Save Newspapers

Posted by Brian Bowman, CMO, Reply.com
Filed Under Online Marketing, Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

According to this Google blog post, they have decided to shut down Google Print Ads (Adwords / offline print interface) effective, February 28th.  Advertisers in AdWords were able to place ads in locally-targeted newspapers using an online interface.

Google had over 800 newspapers sign up and apparently still couldn’t make print profitable enough to keep the investment flowing.  “While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted.”

To me, it is no surprise that even Google can’t make offline print profitable.  It makes me wonder about businesses that target local consumers and their willingness to continue to invest in offline advertising with unclear return on investment.  I am surprised that more businesses haven’t aggressively moved their entire advertising spend online.

For Google’s part, I bet killing their offline Radio interface will come next.   However, I do believe that while TV may not be profitable today, ultimately any device that is, or will be I.P. enabled will be square in Google’s sights.  Given the enormity of the advertising pie in TV advertising and their investment in YouTube, Google should continue to heavily invest in TV/I.P. advertising.

Nov

27

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Posted by Brian Bowman, CMO, Reply.com
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Reply.com would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  We hope you have a wonderful day with friends and family.

Nov

4

Auto Sales Get Crushed

Posted by Brian Bowman, CMO, Reply.com
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

 GM sales down by 45%, Ford off 30%, and Toyota 23%.  The slide in sales appears to be a combination of falling consumer confidence and shortage of bank loans / credit.  These events pushed sales to their lowest monthly levels since the early ’80s.

 To those I have spoken to, it is like someone turned off the phones and people stopped walking into showrooms. GM and Ford are supposed to release third-quarter earnings this week. Losses  are expected to expose GM and Ford’s issue with cash.  It doesn’t appear that earnings will do well as Fords sale of the Focus was down 18%, and trucks and SUVs were down 30%. At GM, trucks and SUVs were down 52% and passenger cars were down 34% – painful. 

[Car Sales]There is an expectation that year-end blowout savings / advertising will begin immediately following the Presidential election.  GM may offer as much as $7,250 off select ‘08 and ‘09 models. Toyota may extend 0% financing through November.  I hope many in the auto advertising community will move a substantial chuck of their offline budgets online and reduce their cost of acquisition.

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