Presentation for the DMA-SC: Pay-Per-Click Optimization Tips Erica Forrette Adapt Technologies, Inc. 5/17/07 1
Agenda
1. Intro 2. Why PPC Marketing? 3. Setting Goals for your Campaign 4. Tracking/Reporting on Results 5. Making Decisions from your Data
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Intro – About Me • Working in search since 2003; online marketing since 1999 • SEO and PPC campaign management • Both agency side and client side • Now Director, Marketing at Adapt Technologies, Inc.
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Get Tips on the Basics
• You’ll learn how to: – Set (the right) goals – Track & report on performance – Figure out to do with your results – Optimize all aspects of PPC
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How The Top 3 Engines Work • No more pure bid-toposition • “Hybrid” auction model: – Ad position determined by your max bid per click + clickthru rate of ad, plus other factors • Higher quality ads (read: more clicks) get higher position • Relevance is key! 5
Goal Setting
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Most Important Step!
• PPC is inherently trackable • Before you do anything, ask yourself: – What is the desired action? – What’s the value of that action?
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Example Goals Send traffic to your site at a set cost per visitor (click) Maintain a margin or ROI % on your ad spend
Meet a company-defined CPA target
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Stumped? Try These Formulas To Start Target Cost Per Click
= Your Budget / Req # of Clicks (aka Site Visitors)
Specific Leads or Sales Goal
= Req Leads or Sales / Site Conversion Rate
Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
= Your Budget / Req # of Conversions
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About Goal Setting • Be ready to adjust goals based on actuals once you have data – Be realistic & be aware of your keyword “marketplace”
• Online vs. offline cost of sales • Consider seasonality factor in your sales trends 10
Tracking
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Setting Up • Best practice: track at the keyword level • Use free conversion tracking tools from the search networks
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Sample Code: Google AdWords • Snippet of code you place in your “success” or “thank you” page • Code tracks which keyword sent the visitor/customer • Reports back to your AdWords account • Most tracking uses this same basic principle
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How Tracking Works – Step 1 1: The engines track which keywords get clicks to your site
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How Tracking Works – Step 2
“veterinary degree program”
2. As visitor navigates thru your site, the cookie placed by the engine at the visitor’s clickthru stays with them
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How Tracking Works – Step 3 3. At completion of a successful action (conversion), the code you embedded records which keyword sent the customer/lead.
“veterinary degree program”
1 lead
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Reporting
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Reports – Know Them, Use Them • With conversion tracking set up you can see, by keyword: – Visitors to your site (clicks) – How much those clicks cost – How many actions completed
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Optimization Tips
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Optimization Basics – The 5 Pieces
Landing Pages
Keywords
Bids
Ads Budgeting
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1) Keyword Selection • Choose keywords your audience would use to find your site – Search engine tools – Brainstorm – Customer feedback – Site log files – 3rd party tools/databases 21
Keyword Grouping • Group (“bucket”) keywords according to how they’re related – Types: “Research” vs “shop” vs “purchase” – Synonyms – Products
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Sample Keyword Buckets
Research
Shop
Buy
•Snowboard
•Flexible snowboards
•Burton feelgood 155
•Compare snowboards
•Powder board
•sale burton feather board
•Best snowboards
•Freestyle snowboard
•New burton alpha
•Snowboard reviews
•Board for women
•Gtwin 158 snowboard
•Snowboard ratings 23
Ongoing Keyword Management • Using reports, keep an eye on what keywords perform – Campaign Expansion/Deletion: • Brainstorm/research new kw’s similar to those; add to campaign • Delete underperforming keywords
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2) Bidding: Basic How-To Hints • Focus on high-volume keywords to control costs – these will probably be 1020% of campaign
• Recommend using bid management software to automate the process 25
Manual Bid Optimization (if you must) •
Use reports to drill down on each keyword’s performance
1. Sort reports by most expensive kw to least 2. Look at conversions & conversion rates 3. Look at costs per kw and sales generated Basic rule of thumb: The lower the ROI, the lower the bid should be. 26
Sample Bid Optimization
Result: recommend setting bids LOWER on -“burton” -“kids snowboards” -“snowboard rental” -“ride”
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Caveats on Bid-Setting
• Balancing act: – it is up to you to determine if it’s worth it to sacrifice volume for profitability
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3) Budget • How much to spend on each network? Domain
Apr-07
www.google.com
65.26%
search.yahoo.com
20.73%
search.msn.com
Source: Hitwise, May 2007
8.46%
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3) (Re) Allocating Budget • Monitor campaigns or even networks for performance against goals
Allocate more budget to high performing segments
Decrease budget allocation for lowperforming segments
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4) Ad Creatives - Tips • Always strive for higher Clickthru Rate – BUT… conversion is important too!
• Test at least 2 ads in each ad group – G, Y, M allow multiple ads – Monitor performance, delete “bad” ads 31
Copywriting Hints • Factual, non-salesy ads tend to do better – Include a call-to-action – Be descriptive, concise, w/ proper grammar – Repeat keyword in ad title, descrip if makes sense
• Consider audience terminology • Copy should promise what user can expect at your site 32
Good vs. Bad Ads Æ Search term: “roxy snowboard sale”
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Consider The Surroundings • Review competitor ads on your keywords – What can you do to stand out? – What’s your company’s USP? – Promotions/offers?
Æ Search term: “whistler vacation”
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5) Landing Pages • Best practices: – Send searchers directly to page most relevant to their query – The ad should set the expectation for what the searcher will see on your page – Don’t make visitors look for what to do 35
Landing Pages: Good & Bad Æ Search term: “k2 snowboard sale”
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Landing Pages: Good & Bad Æ Search term: “k2 snowboard sale”
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Final Thoughts Active management & optimization can improve results significantly Initial changes are dramatic; over time you make more incremental refinements
Never stop testing, never stop optimizing 38
Additional Resources • “Improving Ad Performance” (AdWords) – http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic= 9361
• “Improving Your Results” (Yahoo) – http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/optimize/in dex.html
• “MSN LiveSearch (adCenter) FAQ” – http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoftadcenter/faqs
• Watch free webinars at SEMPO.org 39
Thank You!
Erica Forrette erica@adapt.com (626) 941-0220
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