[Ultimate] Tips to be Successful with Pay Per Click Advertising October 20, 2015 1 About Atilus Atilus is a digital agency that provides full web design, web development and online marketing. Growing your business online: the driving force behind everything we do at Atilus. We don’t just build websites. Our one and only goal is to help our clients grow their businesses and increase their bottom lines. The Atilus Experience For more than a decade, we’ve helped hundreds of clients grow, market and run more effectively using the web. Our average client sees a 900% increase in leads. From construction and service to telecommunications to business consultancy, we’ve provided custom web solutions to our clients that have provided results, and more importantly, a return-­‐on-­‐investment. WHITEPAPER
2 Table of Contents About Atilus .................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 The Atilus Experience ......................................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction to Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing ............................................................................................................ 5 Search Engine Marketing ................................................................................................................................................... 5 Atilus’ Qualifications ............................................................................................................................................................ 7 Define Your Campaigns’ Objective ..................................................................................................................................... 9 Define &Create Customer Profiles ................................................................................................................................... 11 The Type of Information You Need in This Step Varies Depending on Your Business ....................... 11 Learn Their Language ...................................................................................................................................................... 11 Keywords ................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Putting Yourself in Your Customers' Shoes ............................................................................................................ 14 Organizing Your Keywords ............................................................................................................................................ 16 Google Keyword Planner ................................................................................................................................................ 17 Google AdWords Account Setup ....................................................................................................................................... 18 Understanding Quality Score ........................................................................................................................................ 19 Organization of Your Entire Account ........................................................................................................................ 20 Setting Up Your First Campaign .................................................................................................................................. 22 Setting Locations and Languages Expanded ..................................................................................................... 23 Select your Bidding and Budget .............................................................................................................................. 23 Tinker with Advanced Settings ............................................................................................................................... 24 3 Setting Up Your AdGroups ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Setting Up Ad Extensions ........................................................................................................................................... 25 Digging Deeper Into Keywords ......................................................................................................................................... 28 1) Broad Match Type ........................................................................................................................................................ 28 2) Modified Broad Match Type .................................................................................................................................... 28 3) Phrase Match .................................................................................................................................................................. 28 4) Exact Match ..................................................................................................................................................................... 29 How Do Match Types Affect Your AdWords Results? ........................................................................................ 29 Leverage Negative Keywords ....................................................................................................................................... 30 Concentrating on the User Experience .......................................................................................................................... 31 Creating Great Ads ............................................................................................................................................................. 32 Create a Landing Page ...................................................................................................................................................... 33 Target Your Ads ....................................................................................................................................................................... 33 Combine PPC and With Organic SEO .............................................................................................................................. 34 Combining PPC and Organic SEO Gains You More SERP Real Estate .......................................................... 34 Combined, PPC and Organic generates More Keyword Data .......................................................................... 35 Track, Evaluate, and Refine Your Campaigns ............................................................................................................. 35 Glossary & Relevant Websites ........................................................................................................................................... 36 Google AdWords & Pay Per Click Marketing .......................................................................................................... 36 General Search Marketing Terms ............................................................................................................................... 37 4 Introduction to Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing As we’ve explained in the past, a website – by itself – won’t drive much traffic. Sure you might get drips and drabs of visitors organically, but unlike Kevin Costner – if you build it they will NOT come. Instead, it’s only through a sustained advertising and marketing effort that you can attract the qualified visitors you need. Pay per click marketing is one of the very best of those tools – combining the relevancy of Organic Search with the immediacy of advertising. As we’ve revealed in other articles, search is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING all businesses should be looking at and concentrating on: 1. 90% of all local transactions begin with a search (for investigation, research, and discovery) 2. 75%+ of all business-­‐to-­‐business transactions originate with search 3. Search drives more than 1000% the traffic social media does 4. Search is inherently how people find things – eclipsing all other methods combined. Search Engine Marketing Search marketing refers to everything one can do to More than 90% of retail get in front of searchers. Underneath search marketing (or SEM – search engine marketing – for purchases begin with SEARCH! short) there’s many different sub-­‐sets of marketing/advertising including: •
SEO •
Remarketing/Retargeting •
Pay Per Click •
Display Advertising Pay Per Click marketing, the topic of this white paper, is a form of advertising that’s a sub-­‐category of search engine marketing. PPC is a model where advertisers like you target web visitors with relevant ads when people search for particular phrases. Unlike organic search listings where it can take a long time and lots of creativity to prove to Google your website should be at the top of a particular search – PPC allows you to say to search engines: “I know my audience is searching for XYZ – put my ad up” and within minutes you’re getting in front of people looking for the answers to the questions that your product or service solves – at EXACTLY the moment you’re looking for them. 5 PPC ads can be displayed, on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) and on pages throughout the web that customers visit after leaving the company page. Pay per click is a great way to: •
Advertise in General – Once we’ve set a client up on Pay Per Click marketing we’ve NEVER had them leave (and we’ve been managing accounts for over a decade). •
Reduce Acquisition Costs – across the board our clients see a 900% increase in sales and leads with us, and PPC advertising is one of the largest ways we achieve this. •
Reduce Conventional Advertising Pay Per Click is one of the best kept Costs – On many of our largest secrets in online advertising. accounts, we’ve been able to provide a reduction in cost/client by 75%+ -­‐ when compared to conventional advertising (TV + Radio). In one particular case we drove the cost/lead down from $800+ to less than $160 through this form of advertising. •
Increase Brand Awareness •
Prepare for a more broad Organic Search campaign •
Get in front of your audience at precisely the moment they’re looking for your services •
Gain More High Quality Business! But, Pay per click is dangerous. On one hand we’ve NEVER had a client stop Pay Per Click advertising as it’s so valuable and provides such a great return. However, EVERYTIME a client ran their own campaign, or hired a less-­‐then-­‐qualified company, they always stopped using this tool. Why? Because in the wrong hands pay per click can quickly spend a ton of money and provide no results. Creating, managing, and running a PPC campaign is not a simple task – it’s a game. A game where you and Atilus are rewarded for being good, rewarded with less expensive advertising and more leads. But, if you or your vendor aren’t playing that game properly it can mean higher spends and wasted clicks and budgets. Pay per click is simultaneously one of the most dangerous tools a business can yield, and one which will quickly eat up all of your money – and at the same time, it’s still one of the best kept secrets in online advertising. 6 Luckily many of the rules are pretty simple and which you’ll learn throughout this whitepaper. You can increase ROI and reduce PPC spend by effectively defining the purpose of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), researching your target audience, planning and organizing your ad categories, and tracking and updating your ad campaigns. Atilus’ Qualifications Don’t just take our word for it… Zach Katkin, Atilus’ CEO, Co-­‐Founder, and co-­‐author of this whitepaper has been a certified AdWords professional for over a dozen years. Initially managing AdWords accounts for a company in 2002, then as the head of the Internet Marketing Department for a nationwide Ad Agency managing dozens of accounts for clients throughout the country – and finally since 2005 with Atilus he has built a team of AdWords Certified Professionals in South Florida where the company is based. Atilus has been an AdWords Certified Partner (meaning our clients meet a certain spend threshold and our team is tested every year on Google’s Pay Per Click and analytics systems) since the program first started. Atilus clients include businesses and organizations of all sizes throughout the World. Our most notable clients have been featured on Oprah, Huffington Post, Inside Edition, Shark Tank, and other amazing places on and offline. 7 This whitepaper will guide you through the PPC marketing process and highlight important tips for streamlining your campaigns: 1. Define Your Campaigns’ Objective 2. Define &Create Customer Profiles 3. Research and Brainstorm keywords 4. Campaign Setup 5. Focus on Organization 6. Leverage specifics (broad match, exact match, phrase match, location, etc.) 7. Negative Keywords 8. Create Compelling Ad Copy 9. Create Landing Pages 10. Target Your Ads 11. Combine PPC and with Organic SEO 12. Track, Evaluate, and Refine Your Campaigns Finally, a key point, which we’ll go over again during the actual setup portions of this guide -­‐ this guide is solely centered on “Search Network” campaigns. Additionally, this guide primarily concentrates on the Google AdWords system (although it can be applied to any PPC system including Bing’s PPC tools). This means we’re intentionally not providing additional setup/guidance/tips on setting up your account for display advertising. Although Display Advertising can provide great advertising opportunities for a small business – it’s primarily the search network that provides the highest return and results for all the clients we work with and generally is easier to setup and manage. As you move through this guide, should you have any questions – feel free to reach out directly to our team at: contact@atilus.com. 8 Define Your Campaigns’ Objective •
What is the purpose of your investment in PPC ads? •
Increase brand/product awareness, or increase conversions and sales? •
Will you commit to tracking the effectiveness of these goals? If so, how? Normally, the point of PPC campaigns is to grow sales as opposed to generating awareness. Hence, it is essential that you clearly define the action that you want your target audience to perform up front.These actions can range from signing up for something, completing a lead form, calling your number, downloading a resource, completing an online purchase, or more. It’s important to get this down up front as one of the most common problems we see with AdWords and PPC is that “everything is all setup – and setup properly, but no one is buying (or calling).” You’re also not restricted to just one action here – outline ALL the actions you’d like your new visitors to take. Take a few minutes to think about what you hope to see happen in a PPC campaign. Your brainstorming sessions should focus on those actions that only qualified leads will perform, and which your PPC campaign should be directed to target. Don’t worry about keywords and strategy. Just take a step back and ask yourself some big business questions. If I could get in front of anyone (or my target) – what would I want them to do? Some strategic goals might include: •
Generating qualified leads — Maybe your business works from leads. You have a sales force waiting and ready for pre-­‐qualified names and numbers. Therefore, your PPC campaign should be focused on generating leads that will rapidly build your list of prospects and boosting the number of inquiries entering your marketing/sales funnel. •
Building and consolidating a brand image — You want to increase brand awareness, tying your brand’s name to your business focus, or tying your name to some tangential search. Therefore, your PPC campaign will focus on consistently keeping your business message in front of the target audience across a wide range of specific and generic search queries. For example if you’re a restaurant, perhaps you decide to bid on “restaurant” within your targeted area or region (which isn’t very targeted) with the goal of getting your regions’ foodie’s to know about your restaurant. 9 •
Keeping your online shopping cart taking orders 24/7 — Perhaps you have an eCommerce portal. You want to simultaneously drive sales, while communicating your key-­‐
differentiator – amazing customer service in a niche that’s often not known for it. With a properly targeted and tracked PPC campaign you can drive sales and keep your customer service busy nurturing lasting customer relations. Once you’ve defined some overall goals (as outlined above) go ahead and jot down some hard numbers. HOW MANY LEADS will you want to receive in the next 6 months from PPC? How many orders or new customers are you looking to have by years end? Whatever the final items you decide to track end up being the next MOST critical components are – setting up tracking, and putting in place processes or checkpoints so that you review what you’re doing. Great tracking up-­‐front ensures: 1. You achieve the best possible results 2. Have the information you need to make informed decisions about this form of advertising 3. Can evaluate all of your actions to see what’s improving or harming results 4. You can more easily spot issues down the road Atilus recommends defining a handful of goals. For us we have the following defined across our own pay per click accounts: •
Sales Opportunities (General) •
Sales Opportunities (Specific Segments) •
Email Newsletter Signups From our PPC efforts – we want the above 3 objections to be met, and set in place tracking to see how well PPC is performing across these areas. Beyond tracking on the web, we’ve set our CRM (customer relationship manager – salesforce) to record these as well. So along the lifetime of a client we know a) What originally brought them in our door (PPC or other). b) The average acquisition costs of that client. c) The average revenue and margins for that client. 10 Define &Create Customer Profiles Who is your target audience? What are their demographics? And what is the language they are using to communicate their informational and transactional intent to the search engines? The Type of Information You Need in This Step Varies Depending on Your Business Your task is to find out as much about your target customers as you can. The information that you must collect is dependent on your type of business. For example, if you target individual customers, then it will be helpful to know their spending habits, income, their primary location, gender, and age bracket. If you are targeting other businesses then you should know their niche, target sector, size, and communication channels. What’s the best way to find this information? Perform your own research online – or better yet, pick up the phone and ask your existing (and best) customers. Learn Their Language Consumers use three types of language when using the search engines: 1. Navigational 2. Informational 3. Transactional Each is directly linked with different types of keywords. •
Searchers use navigational keywords when they are finding authoritative and market relevant resources that can inform them about the products/services they need. Examples include “top-­‐rated”, “reviews”, “top10”, etc. •
Searchers use informational keywords and key phrases when they are researching a product/service or niche. The best way to find such keywords is in niche specific forums or threads on popular Q/A platforms. •
Searchers use transactional keywords and phrases when they know what they want to buy and are looking for comparative alternatives to the services/products. These keywords specifically define the features and/or benefits of the product and service they are looking for. Examples include “vs.”, “buy”, “coupon”, etc. 11 Broken out another way, informational Intent is just a fancy way of saying – what kinds of searches are they doing? Transactional Intent dives a bit deeper and are hooks you can use to discover the searchers’ likeliness to buy (are they high up in the buying funnel, further down, or not looking to buy at all?). Take these 2 keywords: •
“Construction company New York City careers” •
“Top-­‐Rated Construction company New York City” Clearly both searches are for construction companies (informational intent). However, the first one is most likely looking for a job (no transactional value – unless you’re a construction company looking to hire). The second search is most likely being done by a broader audience, perhaps a journalist doing research, perhaps an investor looking to complete a new development project. Understanding your target audience and their intent(s) is crucial to creating PPC ad text that brings in qualified leads, and prevent and minimize costly worthless clicks. All of the phrases you create (or discover) have clues like this on each individuals’ state-­‐of-­‐mind, and state-­‐of-­‐intent-­‐to-­‐buy. 12 Keywords Keywords are the driving force behind PPC campaigns, and must be selected very carefully. If you’ve gone through the above 2 steps, you’ll probably already have a few ideas on what keywords you’re going to select. In this step we’re going to brainstorm a list of keywords that potential customers will be searching for, and which reflect the services and benefits you offer. It’s vital that these words reflect the image and content of your website and your marketing materials. Keywords can be broadly organized into the following four types: 1. Brand terms — Keywords that contain your brand or trademarked terms. Using our own company as an example “Atilus” is a brand term.* 2. Competitor terms — Keywords with brand or trademarked terms of competitors offering similar services/products to yours. 3. Product & Service terms – Those terms that searchers type in that match your own [Google AdWords] works on a system that product or service offering. is setup to reward advertisers who play 4. Related& Generic terms —Keywords that the game well. your target users may be searching for, but which are not directly linked to what you are selling. When researching and collecting keywords, your task is to find a balance between being so specific that no one (or very few people) search for your keywords, and being so general that you appear for every keyword – including one that make no sense at all. •
Specific Keywords help limit over or unnecessary exposure •
General Keywords target both transactional intent and informational, adding ambiguity and increasing costs. At this point it’s important to note that Pay Per Click marketing (in particular Google AdWords) works on a system that is setup to reward advertisers who find this balance. It’s VERY important, for example, to work to increase your ads’ clicks and to not be too general. If you don’t do this – you 13 will be penalized with higher ad costs, and generally poor results. If you DO this, you will be rewarded with lower ad costs and more business. The starting point for keyword research should be the following: 1. Your business – think about all you know about your business. Each product/service can be turned into a keyword. Industry specific keywords are particularly great here as there are generally fewer competitors, and higher results. Be careful though – do your customers actually know your business’ lingo? 2. Customers – Get in the mind of your customers and clients. What would they search? What questions do they generally ask about your product/service? Every interaction you’ve ever had with a customer is a great opportunity to mine for keywords. For example, do they have questions about your products pricing, integrity, levels, etc.? 3. Website – Your website probably already has a number of keywords sprinkled throughout. Review your existing website (and analytics) for keyword opportunities. Later in the guide Google allows us to type in your website address to pull back keywords. 4. Landing Pages (pages you’ll specifically direct people to if they click on your ads) – If you already have pages you specifically want to send users to on your website (called a landing page as it’s the first page they land on) review the page copy for keywords. Great examples include service or product pages. Putting Yourself in Your Customers' Shoes What search queries do you think your customers will type when searching for your products/services? What keywords will they use, or would they have to type in to arrive to your website? Start broad, and move to more specific keywords: Coats >men’s coats > men’s winter coats > men’s stylish blue winter coats Observe, as you move towards more specific queries (which show higher buying intention for the customer/searcher), you gain what are called “long-­‐tailed” key phrases — three-­‐to-­‐four-­‐word phrases (or more) that are specific to your product. Think of “long tail” as a fancy term for “more complex”. 14 Long tail keywords are important because they are highly specific and, depending on the words they contain, are used by customers who are further along in the buying or research cycle — and hence know what they want, have made the purchase decision, and are comparing alternatives. Example for targeted reach: the keyword “boots” turns into “buy royal blue knee-­‐high boots”. This person knows what they want! Furthermore, long tail keywords offer lower competition and hence can be added to your arsenal at lower rates. Finally, combining them with words that have high transactional intent further increases reach and impact. Example: “where to buy”, “price”, “buy”, etc. 15 Once you’ve completed your own personal brainstorming, we recommend checking out some of the tools that are out there. Once you’ve signed up for AdWords, Google has one of the best and most powerful keyword research tools available. To get to the tool login to your account and go to Tools > Keyword Planner (at the top of the screen). For more keyword research tools check out the glossary section of this guide. Organizing Your Keywords We find it helpful, prior to cracking open Bing’s Ad Manager or Google AdWords, to simply start with a spreadsheet for organizing your keywords. Depending on your particular company, service offering, or products we also recommend doing the following: create 4 sets of keywords. •
Start With Base Keywords (these are typically your primary services) •
Move to Prefix Keywords (these are modifiers that illustrate intention) •
Expand Into Suffix Keywords (any additional modifiers – different or NA for some business) •
Finally, Layer Location Data (if you serve a market) Let’s take a glass business as an example to really illustrate this step. We’ll go ahead and setup Column 1 in our spreadsheet as Prefix | Column 2 as Base | Column 3 as Suffix | Column 4 as Location. Prefix* Best Cheap Reliable Great Impact*** Hurricane*** Base** Sliding Glass Doors Sliding Glass Door Window Windows Mirror Mirrors Suffix NA NA NA NA NA NA Location Fort Myers Fort Myers FL Fort Myers Florida Ft. Myers FL Ft. Myers Florida Ft. Myers From this base list we can use tools like: http://www.keywordlizard.com to create our final lists. The final keyword list for the above combination of words ends up being quite large. With these 3 simple columns and only 6 keywords per column we get a total of over 100 keyword combinations. Of important note here, Pay Per Click systems DO NOT count commas, periods, etc. as different keywords – however plural and singular keywords ARE DIFFERENT. * You may end up having multiple pre-­‐fixes depending on what makes sense for your business. IE, “best hurricane windows” would probably be applicable here. For simplicities sake we kept within 1 column. ** Notice there IS a difference in the keyword when using an “S” 16 *** Of important note, impact is the technical term in this industry (we recently helped a client in this industry). Although technically all tradesmen call the windows that can withstand hurricane force windows and impacts “impact windows” we found that MOST laymen (most of the customers searching for this particular kind of product) were actually searching for HURRICANE WINDOWS. Remember, never assume, and always listen to your customers. Google Keyword Planner The keyword planner is available in 2 variations – one for those that have signed up for AdWords, and the free publicly available tool (https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner). The difference between the two versions? The “free” tool doesn’t give you # of searchers and estimated prices for keywords. Our recommendation – go sign up for an adwords account and put in your billing information. Even if you NEVER use AdWords, this tool is worth it for research! This tool allows you to scour your website, or type in your own keywords and see relevant suggestions Google has based on other people’s searches as well as the number of searches that are done per month and allows you to see approximately how much each Keyword will cost/click. 17 Google AdWords Account Setup Even with all the planning and research your ads will not deliver the ROI you are expecting if your account and campaigns are not setup and organized properly. Proper account setup will make it To setup your account visit: http://adwords.google.com IMPORTANT: If you have other google services for your business/website (analytics or webmaster tools) it’s helpful to setup your AdWords under this same account. You may want to continue reading this section prior to actually creating your account. If you’re reading this guide and need any assistance during this step – feel free to email us at contact@atilus.com we can assist you by adding your adwords account underneath our master account, and provide guidance, suggestions, etc. easier to spot issues, fix issues, and make beneficial updates to your account to bring you more business. 18 Understanding Quality Score Before we jump into the specifics of how to setup your account, it’s important to discuss Quality Score. Google’s “Quality Score” is a measure of the relevancy and effectiveness of your ads. Quality Score is the single most important thing to understand as a new Pay Per Click advertiser (within Google AdWords’ system). The higher your score – the more likely you are to: •
Pay less for all of your advertising •
See more ad impressions, clicks, etc. •
Get more business At the end of the day a high Quality Score means less money out of your pocket and more customers. What is Quality Score? Quality Score is an algorithm Google uses to evaluate everything. It is a rating of your ads as well as the At the end of the day a high Quality Score keywords within your account. Quality Score is how means less money out of your pocket and Google determines the cost per click (CPC) when more customers. someone clicks on your ad. It’s also used to determine your ad ranking. Your Quality Score depends on multiple factors, including: 1. Relevance of keywords to their ad groups – Are keywords tightly grouped and relevant? 2. Ad Text – Is your ad text well written, include the keyword, and make sense? 3. An ads click-­‐through rate (CTR) – Each keyword/ad has a # of times it was shown (impressions) and a number of times it was clicked. Dividing the 2 gets the CTR (click through rate) one of the most important metrics to look at and to ensure an overall high quality score. 4. Landing Pages – Do the pages your sending visitor to make sense? Is it related to the keyword and ad? 5. Overall Account Performance – Combining the above, and the history of your account is also a factor in the quality score. 19 Your Quality Score is calculated at every possible level (campaign, group, keyword, and account). Gaining a higher Quality Score makes organization of your account very important. With that out of the way let’s get to account organization. Organization of Your Entire Account Before actually going to AdWords and signing up we recommend planning the organization of your account. PPC Ad account organization is crucial for optimizing your SEM efforts, freeing up resources, and increasing efficiency and returns from your account. Organization of your account has three dimensions: Campaigns > Ad Groups > Ads & Keywords 1. Organization at the Campaign level a. Organization at the Ad Group level i. Keyword Organization (bid type) ii. Ad Organization Although this might vary for your business, generally at the campaign level, each product/service should have a unique campaign. For some businesses we also recommend breaking out each product and service AS WELL AS each location serviced. For example the campaigns for a local bakery that services 2 cities might look like this: 1. Campaign #1 -­‐ Local City (1 -­‐ Minneapolis) – Bread 2. Campaign #2 -­‐ Local City (2 -­‐ Minnetonka) – Bread 3. Campaign #3 -­‐ Local City (1 -­‐ Minneapolis) – Bagels 4. Campaign #4 -­‐ Local City (2 -­‐ Minnetonka) – Bagels At the Ad Group level, each ad group should be very specific, only targeting a specific product/service along with a keyword or keywords and an ad that matches these keywords closely. Our best managed accounts feature ad groups with only a handful of keywords (some with only 1 keyword) within each ad group. To start, similar to our keyword step, we recommend coming up with a simple outline (on paper, or using a spreadsheet) on your business and how you’ll organize you campaigns. Let’s use us (Atilus) as an example. Our current setup (both pay per click and overall marketing) is VERY local oriented as we’ve found advertising to be most effective in areas where we have a presence. So our AdWords account is organized as follows: 20 •
Campaign -­‐ Bonita Springs (Local)* o
Web Design (Ad Group) §
Web Design (Keyword) §
(Corresponding Ad)** •
Bonita Springs Web Design •
Beautiful Websites from an Award-­‐ •
Winning, Local Firm. Contact Today! •
www.Atilus.com/Bonita-­‐Web-­‐Design o
Web Development (Ad Group) o
Website Development (Ad Group) * CITY TARGETED CAMPAIGN -­‐ This is marked as “local” as we’re setting the campaign settings to ONLY trigger ads when people search within Bonita Springs. Also of important note, the actual keywords in the campaign are more general. For example if someone searches for “web design” – within the geographic boundaries of Bonita – this ad will trigger. **AD – This is an example of an ad that is triggered. Because this particular campaign is set to display when anyone searches within the city-­‐limits of Bonita Springs – if someone searched for “Web Design” and was inside the geographical area of Bonita – this ad would appear. Let’s look at what this is like within AdWords… 21 Setting Up Your First Campaign Once you’ve logged into Google AdWords select the “+Campaign button > Search Network Only” On the next screen you’ll see a LOT of settings already J thanks for making things simple Google. Although many are self-­‐explanatory let’s walk through them one-­‐by-­‐one: Campaign Name -­‐ This is simple, but appropriately naming campaigns helps keep you organized down the road. Type -­‐ Here you can select the kind of campaign this will be (similar to the step referenced in the above image). Make sure to select “search network only.” To the right of this, you’ll notice there are some additional options you m ay want to tweak depending on your situation. In all but the most specific/unique cases, this should have the “All Features” option selected. 22 Load Settings -­‐ Here you can copy the settings of another campaign. We recommend using this once you have one campaign setup properly as most campaigns will have identical “campaign-­‐
wide” settings. Networks -­‐ This is selected by default, but you’ll want to make sure “include search partners” is selected. Search partners include other Google properties (maps for example), as well as business partners like AOL that use Google to power the search on their site. Bidding Strategy – For a novice it’s nice to rely on Google’s enhanced CPC (cost per click). Essentially this is where Google takes your budget and adjusts things based on getting you clicks. Over time – and as you get more practice using AdWords we recommend either taking things into your own hands (manual bidding) or, if you have enough conversions, switching to CPA (cost per acquisition bidding). Setting Locations and Languages Expanded This is the setting you tweak to control what geographical locations do you want your ad to show? You know your audience and their demographics, and even if it is global, you have an idea of the highest qualified traffic generating regions. Furthermore, if you are planning on targeting people speaking a different language, then check the settings to reflect your target audience. As an example to further explain this setting and how to use it -­‐ we have a client that does high-­‐end remodeling and interior design for commercial spaces. Although they have a global audience (and have done work all over the world) — lately they’ve seen a boom in work in Israel and Jerusalem. By creating a campaign that targets these locales they can capitalize on their existing work, examples, pictures, etc. and concentrate. Select your Bidding and Budget Arguably, these are the two most important settings when it comes to PPC. Set your daily budgets too high, and your campaigns will become thrift spenders, guzzling the entire month’s budget within days. Set the daily budget too low, and you risk decreasing reach and efficiency. To determine the right budget limit, divide the budget by the number of days in that month and split the budget across campaigns. However, you cannot determine the near-­‐perfect daily budget on the first go, you can only find out once the account starts running. 23 Once the account is running, you can reallocate accordingly. As for bidding settings, start by gaining greater control over your bidding with Focus on Clicks and manually bidding for clicks. Other options should only be experimented with once your account has run long enough to collect actionable data. Tinker with Advanced Settings Focus on Ad Delivery options. Do not confuse this setting with the Delivery Method Setting available in the Bidding and Budget area. Change the delivery method to Standard, so that your ads are displayed evenly over time and hence avoid spending your entire budget in one swoop. Primary option in the Ad Delivery settings includes rotating ads (displaying different Ad copy for the same search to different users) which allows you to perform A/B testing for your ad copy and granting you better control over your metrics. Other options include Optimizing for Conversions and the default optimizing for Clicks (which must be changed). Setting Up Your AdGroups From within the campaign we just created in the above steps select the “+ad group” button to create your first ad group. From here-­‐on-­‐out setting up the initial stages of the ad group is pretty self-­‐
explanatory. You title the ad group with an appropriate name (again, we’ve already taken care of this with our spreadsheets), but to re-­‐iterate try to focus this on a topic. 24 We’ll detail out what those lines around the keywords are below. From here we do recommend clicking on “estimate search traffic” to see approximately how many impressions (views), clicks, and the cost of the resulting combinations. Finally, all you have to do is set a default bid and click “save ad group.” Setting Up Ad Extensions So you have your first campaign up and running (and we’re intentionally leaving out the billing setup step as it’s self-­‐explanatory and Google will prompt you at every turn to enter your billing 25 information if it’s not already in the system) but there’s one very important piece that we have to go back and update. If you go to your campaign, by clicking “All Campaigns” at the top of the screen (or clicking on the campaign on the left hand side of the screen) and then selecting “ ad extensions” you’ll get to the setup area for ad extensions. What Are Ad Extensions? Ad extensions – as the name imply – show (depending on how relevant they are) additional information to the user as they view your ad. In AdWords, part of the name-­‐of-­‐the-­‐game is take up as much real-­‐estate on the screen as possible, and show your users as much relevant information as possible. Ad Extensions allow you to do just this. Below is a breakdown of all of the extensions. Along with some examples of what they look like in Ads. Sitelinks – Sitelinks are geared towards specific sub-­‐sections or pages of your website that might be relevant to a searcher. Google can show up to 6 sitelinks at a time so we recommend adding at least 6. You can add as many as you’d like and group them into bundles of similar/related keywords/sections. 26 Location – As we stated previously, it’s helpful to use the same email address for your adwords account and other Google services. If you’re setup a Google My Business profile and confirmed your businesses address – you can link it here. Call – As the name implies, this will display a phone number with your ad. You can have it display your own phone number, or a forwarding number which will allow you to track if a keyword led to a phone call. App – App extensions are the newest of the extensions lot. If you have an app that’s a part of your business offering you can provide a link to download the app – and best of all Google will only display this if the user is on a mobile device – and even then it will display a link specific to the mobile OS the user is using (iOS or Android) Review – Similar to locations, if you’ve linked your Google My Business account you can bring over not just the location data, but also the reviews. So each of those reviews your customers give you are now displayed every time future customers search for words you’ve targeted. Callout – These are small additions of text, typically helpful to display text like “Free Shipping,” etc. Once you’ve setup a campaign, ad group, added your keywords, created your ads, and added extensions (optional, but helpful) you’re set. Your ads will now be showing when people search for the keywords you’ve targeted. 27 Digging Deeper Into Keywords When setting up PPC campaigns, you have the options of setting the keyword match types. Your ads are generated and shown when the search query from potential customers matches these settings. Properly leveraging these settings allows you to snipe in on the most qualified prospects. 1) Broad Match Type Broad match is the default match type and allows your ad to reach the widest audience. With the broad match, your ad is eligible to appear on all search queries that include any word in your key phrase in any order. Example: broad match for “luxury hotel suites” will show your ad for “luxury apartments”, “luxury cars”, “top Asian hotel suites”, and so on. As a result, customers querying irrelevant topics may see the ad and click on it. The costs can add up surprisingly fast. Use them by relying on search query reports so that you do not pay for irrelevant traffic. Overtime it’s best to use the information you gather from broad match keywords to refine your ad groups over time. 2) Modified Broad Match Type Leverage the reach of broad match without losing control over ad targeting with modified broad matches — a middle ground between broad match the more restrictive match types below. A modified broad match is created by using the “+” parameter between the keywords. When the “+” is added, it tells Google that the ad should only be displayed when the search includesall the terms. 3) Phrase Match Phrase match offers the versatility of the broad match but offers higher levels of control. You ad will only appear when the customer’s search query uses the exact phrase — with all the keywords in the exact same order. 28 For example the phrase match for “amazing PPC gains” will trigger for all queries of the following sort: “how to drive amazing PPC gains”, “guide on how to achieve amazing PPC gains”, etc. Notice that each has the same keywords, in the same order. However, it will not display the ad even if a single keyword is out of order, e.g. I need amazing gains from PPC, etc. 4) Exact Match Exact match triggers and displays ads when the when a user typesthe exact keyword phrase, and that keyword phrase alone. So, for “paranormal PPC gains”, the ad will be displayed only when the user types in the exact key phrase — keyword by keyword. To better illustrate this here’s a great image from Google: How Do Match Types Affect Your AdWords Results? Match types can have a major impact on your account’s performance: they’re the control you use to determine exactly which search queries you’re bidding on. As you determine which match types to use for each keyword, there are a few key components to consider: 29 •
Performance to Date — How a keyword or similar keywords have performed can give you insights into which match type will provide the best return on your investment. •
Competitors — How your competitors bid on certain terms and structure their own accounts, as well as how their accounts have performed historically will all impact the return you see from certain match types. •
Bids — Cost per click and cost per conversion are heavily impacted by bids – often advertisers employ various methodologies for manipulating bids and frequently bid more or less aggressively based on the match type – this can strongly influence which match type is most appropriate. •
Ad Text & AdWords Account Structure — Many advertisers will break out a “money” keyword and run it on broad, phrase and exact match types – perhaps even segmenting those match types out and writing specific ads for each. The way an advertiser structures an account can also have a massive impact on performance for different match types. Optimizing your use of AdWords match types is crucial because it allows you to reach your target audience while avoiding unnecessary spends on irrelevant clicks. Leverage Negative Keywords Keywords that won’t trigger your ad are termed “negative keywords”. Negative keywords are one of the most important part of AdWords and one of the most overlooked (or in some cases, many people don’t know what they are or that they exist!). Negative keywords eliminate wasteful ad spend if negative keywords and the right match types are proactively identified and set. Your marketing campaigns and content must have a lot of keywords, but not all of them are there for targeting the type of visitors you want from your ad. These are negative keywords, which when added to your ad campaign, prevent your ad from being displayed to people searching for items that you do not offer (hence, the people who would not click on it anyway). Streamlined Ads = More Relevant Search Results = Qualified Traffic + Higher Google AdWords Quality Score Increase productivity and save time by identifying whole clusters of related negative keywords instead of focusing on single instances of negative terms. 30 Check your Search Query Report – go to a campaign, or ad group and select “Keywords > Details > Search Terms > All”. The report shows the searches are currently triggering your ads. Filter and sort the report to find the irrelevant yet frequently searched queries that are wasting your money and budget. Find opportunities for negative keywords by sorting them: 1. By the highest impressions to see the most popular queries your ads are showing up for. 2. By money they are costing you (with the highest spend). Once sorted, check their CTR, conversions, and conversion rate to gauge the quality of the keyword. If the keyword isn’t resulting in any conversions, it is irrelevant and should be used as a negative keyword. Let’s look at quick example of where a negative keyword would be beneficial. We have a client who distributes and sells online hand dryers. One of their most popular models – shares its name with a muffler company. So we were bidding on “Xlerator” (the name of the hand dryers). However we noticed that this would be triggered (and we were getting clicks for “Xlerator mufflers”). Since our client does not, and will never sell mufflers, we add “muffler” and “mufflers” as a negative keyword. From now on Xlerator will continue to trigger our ad, but if a user adds in “muffler” it will no longer display. This helps because it increases the overall click through rate of the ad group, campaign, and account, and is far more targeted. Concentrating on the User Experience One of the interesting things that have made search engines and search engine marketing so successful is that conventional advertising has been flipped on its head. Companies (most notably Google) have setup their ad platforms to incentivize businesses to provide a great experience. If this might be detrimental for business in the short-­‐term, in the long-­‐run it has meant more market share and more advertisers. After years on this path Google has taken over and it’s one of the most amazing harmonies of businesses who need to find customers/clients and those of us searching for products and services that solve our problems. As such as an advertiser venturing into the world of Pay Per Click marketing it’s VERY IMPORTANT to understand THIS 1 IDEA FROM NOW ON EVERYTHING CENTERS ON THE USER EXPERIENCE 31 Reverse roles for a second and put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Would this not be the ideal situation? 1. You’re looking for a solution to a problem (let’s say you’re hungry for a bagel) 2. You do a search for “bagels in Detroit” 3. You see an ad at the top that references this (mentions “we have the best bagels in Detroit), speaks to you and gets you to click 4. You then land on a page with the baker’s location (in Detroit) with some information on their world famous bagels (including pictures) and allows you to quickly call to place an order, or get directions, or order online Perfect. In less than a minute you’re on your way to ingesting a delicious poppy-­‐seed bagel! This is exactly what Google and the other search engines want. This is what will continue to allow them to grow their ad network and ad revenues. They understand if that end-­‐customer doesn’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll be unhappy. And similarly if that end customer leaves your website without placing an order or deciding to come in to fulfill their deepest bagel desires then you’ve lost as an advertiser. So a system is in place to make sure that you continually move towards perfection. If you ignore this your competition will beat you – they’ll out rank you, they’ll get more clicks, they’ll close more sales. So begin thinking (and improving) the ENTIRE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. From keyword, to pay per click ad, to landing page, to final experience with you – and loop it back around with reviews (but that’s for another whitepaper!). Creating Great Ads Create a catchy headline. It represents the ad you are offering. Make sure touse your target keywords and communicate the product, the service, or its benefits (depending on what your ad category is targeting). The purpose of your ad copy is to make visitors click on the link. Your landing page is supposed to do the other works. Quick Ad Tips: 1. Include keywords if possible – they appear bolded and will help get attention. 32 2. Your ad copy (features and the benefit) should match what you will deliver to your customer on your landing page. 3. For the Display URL – make sure it includes the keyword (if possible). Also make sure the landing page URL references the keyword. 4. Make sure to enable as many ad extensions as possible (calls, location, ratings, etc.) they mean larger ads, more real estate, and click through rates. 5. Mention Key Differentiators – Do you know your best customers demand free shipping? Do you offer free shipping? Make sure to highlight here. For additional tips on writing great AdWords Ads check out: •
http://unbounce.com/ppc/write-­‐high-­‐performing-­‐adwords-­‐ads/ •
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1704392?hl=en •
http://www.smartinsights.com/paid-­‐search-­‐marketing-­‐ppc/paid-­‐search-­‐creative/laura-­‐
hampton/ Create a Landing Page Your homepage is NOT a landing page. Back to that beautiful bagel example – a landing page should really concentrate on one thing! You can get overwhelmed with this so at first, don’t go too crazy with how specific you get, but remember everything’s setup to reward you if you get really specific. Quick Landing Page Tips: 1. Make the URL relevant: IE DetroitBakery.com/Bagels (more relevant than say) 2. Optimize your landing pages with A/B testing and Multi-­‐variant testing experiments. 3. Try testing different page elements in a controlled environment (one to two elements at a time). Test keywords, headlines, body text, CTA on buttons, page layout and design, form layout, design, and position, and navigation, among other aspects. 4. Make “converting” (whatever you think the user should be doing – calling, contacting, downloading something, etc.) as easy as possible. Target Your Ads Use all types of keyword targeting (exact match, phrase match, broad match) into your targeting strategy: 33 •
Bid least for broad match •
Bid most for exact match •
Continuously improve your exact match cluster (remove ones with low ROI) Organize ads — by keyword type and category Target with “targeting criteria” — go for: •
Geo-­‐targeting (location, zip, street radius, etc.), •
Type of website (tech, education, automobile, health, etc.), •
Web behavior (sites often visited, and related to your business/niche/industry) Combine PPC and With Organic SEO In this final technical part of this guide we’d like to talk about organic search engine optimization and how pay per click marketing plays a role in SEO. PPC is often one of the first (and best) steps towards great search engine presence. Combining both PPC and SEO means that you will take up more search engine real estate. But some studies have shown it goes further than that – that there’s actually a branding effect that happens leading to a 70% increase (overall) in conversions once visitors land on your website – when they saw you have BOTH a pay per click ad and search engine result listing. Here’s breakdown of the benefits of combing PPC & Organic SEO: •
More screen real estate •
Less competitive real estate •
Higher conversions •
Target keywords that work (convert) •
Target keywords that matter (that people are searching for) PPC and SEO supplement one another (keywords with proven ROI can be used in SEO). Combining PPC and Organic SEO Gains You More SERP Real Estate Unlike organically ranked content, PPC has a fixed space in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Hence, if combined with organic SEO content, a visitor searching for your target keywords/queries 34 will find most of the SERP real estate occupied by your target content (navigational, informational, and transactional!). Combined, PPC and Organic generates More Keyword Data When your organic and PPC campaigns are run simultaneously, you gain double the data. This data provides tons of insights to optimize your existing content strategy and to improve your PPC with keywords that are generating more qualified traffic to your content or landing page. Given that your Ad copy/text is a direct measure of the effectiveness of your Ad, all high converting PPC copies can direct the meta titles and meta descriptions for your organic content! This will boost the CTR for organic content as well as inform your content strategy to target those topics/keywords that are in demand by your target audience. Track, Evaluate, and Refine Your Campaigns For lasting results, your PPC ad campaign needs to be tweaked on a fairly regular basis (once a week). Consistent tracking allows you to remove keywords that are wasting your PPC budget, add newer keywords (both positive and long-­‐tail and negative ones). Possible changes include pausing ads and keywords with low CTR, adding newer ad copy (changing ones that are underperforming), reducing keyword bids if the campaign is hitting daily budget limit, etc. Use search term reports. It helps you can help you identify low CTR, keywords with higher cost-­‐per-­‐click, time on site, and other aspects that negatively impact your PPC ROI. This can be used to clear out low performing keywords and replace them, and test out new ones. 35 Glossary & Relevant Websites Google AdWords & Pay Per Click Marketing •
Ad Position – Also known as ad rank, is the position in the ad rank your ad appears. When performing a search on Google.com for example if your ad is #1 – it will generally be the first thing you see on the screen. An ad position of 2 or lower, may mean your ad appears on the right side of the screen. •
Ad Extensions -­‐ •
Bing Ads– Microsoft’s advertising tool. Allows you to advertise to searchers on Bing, Bing’s search partners, and other publishers. •
Click Through Rate (CTR) – A formula characterized as Clicks/Impressions. CTR is one of the most important elements in a Google AdWords account. The higher the CTR for a given keyword, ad, ad group, and campaign – generally the higher the Quality Score of the overall account, the lower the cost of the advertising, and the better performing. •
Cost-­‐Per-­‐Click – This is both a target, as well as an exact amount you are assessed as an advertiser when someone clicks on your website. •
Display Network (Display Advertising) – A form of pay per click marketing where ads are placed on relevant websites (triggered by words that appear on those websites, or topics discussed on those websites). Advertising can be in the form of text-­‐based ads, or graphic ads. •
Google AdSense – Google’s tool that allows publishers to make money with their website by placing a snippet of code on their site – that then shows relevant ads to visitors. Visitors see those ads based on the content of the website/web page they are on as well as their own history on the web. •
Google AdWords –Google’s advertising tool. Allows you to advertise to searchers on Google, Google’s search partner, Google Adsense publishers (with Display Advertising) and remarketing. •
Google AdWords Certified Partner – A company with more than 3 certified AdWords Professionals on staff that manages a certain ad budget within Google across a list of clients, and maintains AdWords professional status for each person by taking 2 AdWords courses yearly. •
Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) – A form of advertising where you ask a search engine to display your ad for a keyword and are (generally) only charged or debited a fee when someone clicks on your ad (and calls you or lands on your website). •
Quality Score – An estimate of the quality of your ads and landing pages triggered by a keyword. Quality score affects ad position, and cost-­‐per-­‐click. •
Remarketing/Retargeting – Ads that are displayed to people who have been on your website. Ads are displayed on websites that former visitors to your site are now on (examples include Facebook, Google Adsense publishers, etc.) •
AdWords AdGroup – Sub-­‐level organization element in an AdWords Campaign that organizes a group of keywords matching them to an ad. •
AdWords Campaign – Top level organizational element in an AdWords account. It’s where advertisers set preferences like, type, network, device targeting, location targeting, language, bid strategy, budget, delivery method, and much more. •
Search Network -­‐ The Search Network is a collection of Google search sites and search partner sites where your ads can appear. •
Search Network Partners -­‐ Search partners extend the reach of Search ads to hundreds of non-­‐Google websites (like AOL), as well as Google Maps, YouTube, and other Google sites. On search partners, ads can appear on search results pages, on site directory pages, or on other pages related to a person's search. With Shopping campaigns, your Product Listing Ads can appear on search partner sites that display and link to products for sale. 36 General Search Marketing Terms •
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – A coordination of efforts on your site and on the web – that communicate to Google and other search engines that your website and business should be trusted as the authority on various topics and for various keywords. •
Marketing/Sales Funnel – The process your customers go through to determine they have a problem, search for a solution, find you, and then make a purchasing decision. •
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – An all-­‐encompassing phrase for how to get in front of those people performing searches online. Generally includes paid and non-­‐paid/creative efforts. •
Ecommerce Website – Website that presents products or services online and allows end-­‐users to input payment information allowing you as a business owner to receive income directly from the website. •
CRM – Customer Relationship Manager – Examples include Sugar, Salesforce, Highrise – a tool used to record names, email addresses, questions, transactions, birthdays and other important information about your customers. •
Navigational Intent– Keyword that connotes users’ desire to find move through a particular product space or category. •
Information intent – Keyword that connotes users’ desire to learn more about a particular product space or category. •
Transaction intent – Keyword that connotes users’ desire to purchase a product or service. •
Long Tail Keyword – More detail keyword that generally means the user doing the search is more qualified than a shorter keyword. Long tail keywords also (generally) have less competition when it comes to marketing, pay per click, or search engine optimization. •
Landing page – Landing pages have a couple definitions most generally this is a page a user lands on when they click on your ad or search engine result listing. More specifically landing pages are pages that target a specific keyword or keywords that your company has deemed high-­‐value, and then have corresponding advertising campaigns that point to these pages. The pages have content and design that increase conversions (contacts). Keyword Research Tools (Free) •
Google Keyword Planner -­‐ https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner •
http://keywordtool.io/ •
http://ubersuggest.org/ •
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-­‐tools/seobook/ •
http://www.semrush.com/ Keyword Research Tools (Paid) 37 •
WordTracker -­‐ http://www.wordtracker.com/ •
SEOMoz -­‐ https://moz.com/tools/keyword-­‐difficulty •
RavenTools -­‐ http://raventools.com/seo-­‐tools/ •
KeywordSpy -­‐ http://www.keywordspy.com/ •
Keyword Lizard -­‐ http://www.keywordlizard.com/