Pay Per Click

Importance VS Urgency in PPC Advertising

August 28, 2013 by Justin Miller 2 Comments

A few years ago I had someone explain to me the difference between urgent and important. From what I can remember from this conversation, urgent matters were those that needed a decision within a short period of time. Important things were those that are crucial and must get done to accomplish a goal or task. This was explained to me so that I would 1) understand the difference and 2) not confuse the two. In today’s world of instant gratification, it seems that urgency is being given more and more importance, and the two are being blended and confused. One area where this is becoming increasingly evident is in advertising, specifically Online Advertising. Ads are written in a matter to entice the user to not only click, but to convert (buy, sign-up, or another desired action) after the click. As the writer of PPC ads it is up to us as to how to entice them. Should they be pressured into making a rushed decision or shown the benefit and importance of what they could get?

Urgency within PPC Ads

Urgency in PPC ads is easy to spot. All one has to do is look for the call to action – Buy Now, Sign-up Today, etc. Although creating a sense of urgency in a user may lead some to quickly buy, it may also push others away resulting in a loss of a sale. In some cases a sense of urgency already exists, like for repair services. For instance no one wants to wait forever to fix a leaky pipe. So an ad copy that reads “Call Now for a Plumber” creates urgency, but it matches the already urgent situation. Whereas “Buy Shoes Today” is creating urgency just to create urgency. A new pair of shoes is rarely, if ever an urgent matter.

Showing Importance in PPC

Rather than cresting urgency, the Ad Copy could tell the importance of purchasing the product or service. Focusing on the importance tells the user of the benefits of your product/service. Instead of creating urgency in the call to action in the shoe example above, explain that the shoes are the latest style, cheaper, more comfortable, or any other feature and/or benefit. Give the user a reason to click the ad and take a look at your shoes, instead of trying to pressure them into a rushed purchase. Below are examples of urgency vs. importance focused Ad Copy.

The first Ad Copy is very pushy. Focused heavily on price and getting you to buy and buy NOW. The second on the other hand is more tailored to the use of the shoes and the importance/purpose of the purchase of the shoes.

Is Urgent or Important Better for Your PPC Ads

Neither is wrong or right, rather there is a time and place for both types and focuses. And of course they can be a combination of both focuses within the character limits. The question is which focus and tactic is best for your product/service. The only way to know is through continual testing of PPC ad copy.

Here are a few questions to ask to help discover which focus might work best for your Ads:

Is there a natural time crunch with your product/service? (i.e. resolving a leaky pipe for plumbing services.)
Is your ideal customer concerned with features/benefits or speed/timing?
Are impulse sales sustainable for your company?
How long is your sales cycle – does it make sense to try to rush potential customers?

Try focusing ad copy on both urgency and importance, and let us know the results of your testing in comments. Is urgency needed to generate clicks and conversions? Or are people searching for features and benefits of your products/services? Whichever may be the case, remember to stay focused on your customers and give them what they are searching and your PPC will help increase your sales (today – if you are looking for urgency.)

Achieve PPC Success by Working Backward

July 10, 2013 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

If you are measuring your PPC Campaigns to monitor their success, then you know that there are a lot of metrics to consider. There are the straightforward metrics (Impressions, Clicks, Cost, etc.), the calculated stats (Cost/Click = CPC, Click/Impressions = CTR, etc.), and now there are even assisted metrics (referring to Impressions and/or Clicks that eventually lead to a Conversion.) With so many different ways to measure your PPC, it is not realistic to attempt to be the best (whether that is highest or lowest) in every metric. Instead, you will need to focus on specific metrics and measure your success based upon your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs.) However, with so many metrics, which should be your KPIs? This question can easily be answered by determining your Goal, or purpose, for wanting to run PPC.

What’s Your PPC Goal & Strategy?

Before you start paying for and running your PPC ads, you should have a purpose, or goal that you want the ads to achieve. This purpose can range from increasing brand awareness, to generating leads, or driving more online/in-store sales. The fulfillment of this goal will determine if your PPC is a success or if it needs more work. Once you have chosen your PPC goal or purpose, the next step is to figure out a way (strategy) to accomplish it.

Your PPC strategy is simply a more defined method of how to achieve your PPC goal. For instance, if your goal is brand awareness, then your strategy should be to expand the reach and increase the visibility of your brand. However, if your goal is to drive online sales, then you will want to focus and target your PPC efforts towards people who are ready to purchase your product/service online. And, of course, if your goal is lead generation, then your strategy will broadly target people interested in your product/service, as well as similar, related and connected products/services.

What are Your Key Performance Indicators?

Your goal and strategy are now in place, but you still need metrics to measure to ensure success. The best and easiest way to determine which metrics to monitor for success is to work backward from your goal. Ask yourself, “What does the user have to do or go through to accomplish my goal?” Using increasing online sales as an example, the user would have to:

Purchase online [Conversion]
Browse & Select a product/service
Arrive at your website [Visit]
Click on one of your Ads [Click]
See one of your Ads [Impression]
Conduct a search that would trigger one of your ads

As you read through this list, certain metrics, your KPIs, will begin to stand out. First, an Impression is needed, then a Click which leads to a Visit, and finally a sale (Conversion.) After figuring out the straightforward stats, look into the calculated stats that would help you achieve your goal. In this case, Click Thru Rate (CTR = Impressions/Clicks) would show that quality of your targeting efforts. A low CTR indicates that you are getting Impressions, but either to the wrong people, or your competitors are getting the Clicks rather than you. Another calculated metric (via analytics) that you will want to see is your Bounce Rate, which is the percentage of visits that leave your site after viewing only 1 page. Because online sales require visiting multiple pages, your Bounce Rate will reveal Visits that did not turn into sales.

After looking at those that did not make a purchase, look into your Conversion Rate (Conversions/Clicks.) This metric will, again, validate your targeting efforts and give you a success rate. Additionally, do not forget to watch your Cost. Keep track of Cost per Click (CPC) as well as Cost per Acquisition (CPA) – this is the same as Cost per Conversion, but CPC was already used. Lastly, you should also be tracking the value of your Conversions to compare it to your Cost and make sure that you are obtaining a positive ROI. This process will be different for each of your PPC goals, but is a crucial step to ensure that you are measuring the correct metrics towards your PPC success.

PPC Success – Backward is the Way Forward

Success is no accident. It requires goals, strategy and KPIs measurements. For PPC, this requires starting with your goal and working backward through a user’s process to accomplish it. The important metrics, or your KPIs, will be clear once you determine the steps people have to go through to achieve your Goal. This process may seem tedious, but is absolutely mandatory to achieve success. Of course measuring is not the final step. If something isn’t working, adjustments need to be made, but without measuring (and measuring the correct metrics) you will never know why you did, or did not, achieve your goal.

Bidding is More than Just How You Pay

December 12, 2012 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

CPA or CPC? Which is best for your Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising Campaigns? To answer that, first let’s look at how these two strategies differ from each other.

CPA – Cost per Acquisition (Conversions): You set a target CPA and Google will automatically adjust your CPC bid to keep you relatively close to your target. From my experience, Google has been getting CPA just under the target CPA.

CPC – Cost per Click: This is the more common bidding strategy and allows you to manually or automatically (enhanced) set maximum CPC bids per keyword.

The Case for CPA

Obviously, the first requirement for using CPA is the necessity of Conversion tracking (which should be a priority anyway). But assuming you are tracking Conversions, is CPA your best option? From personal experience, a good campaign for CPA bidding is one that is well established and in a stable market. While implementing CPA strategic bidding, we witnessed a decrease in CPA, which increased profit margins.

The Turning Point

However, once there were changes within the market, such as new advertisers and increased competitors’ bids, the overall performance of campaigns using CPA dropped. Despite using some automatic tools to maintain average position, Google’s CPA bidding style was not able to remain competitive. The Campaign began decreasing in Clicks and Conversions. As a result of the decrease in Conversions, the CPA strategy automatically lowered the max CPC causing the ads positioning to drop, which further impacted the Conversion Rate. The CPA bidding strategy began a steep drop in performance.

The Case for CPC

Once the bidding strategy was changed back to manual CPC, the Campaign regained its positioning in the market, and the Clicks and Conversions increased back to normal levels as well. Although this required an increase in CPC, we were able to maintain the overall CPA at a very close level to the original target CPA.

Conclusions

The end result was no relative change to the calculated CPA, but an increase in overall Conversions. The conclusion is this: Google’s automatic CPA bidding strategy is great to use once your PPC campaign is up and running, but be sure to keep a close eye on it. Increased competition in your market could send your PPC spiraling downward quickly.

Have you had more luck with CPA or CPC bidding strategies? Leave us a comment and let us know!

One PPC Budget to Rule Them All

November 2, 2012 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Consider This PPC Advertising Scenario...

If you wanted to set up a Google AdWords Account with 3 Campaigns, and had 1 monthly budget that you were willing to spend across the account, then you would have to divide the monthly spend 3 ways (most likely not equally) between the 3 Campaigns. As the month goes on, 1 Campaign might max out its budget early, while another might not even come close to exhausting its budget. The month ends, and you only spent 2/3 of your monthly budget, but the high spending Campaign only ran for half the month and missed several potential clients.

Before the next month starts, you reallocate your budget. Money is shifted away from the lower spender to the higher ones. As the month goes on, the Campaigns and their spend act differently. The spending is reversed, you try to act quickly and adjust the budgets mid-month. However, the month ends and again you fall short of spending your entire budget. Although under budget can be a good thing, we all know it could lead to budget cuts too.

Sharing AdWords Budgets

Luckily Google Adwords has taken the guessing game out of budgeting for Campaigns. The shared budget concept within AdWords allows you to link Campaigns’ budgets together. This means that multiple Campaigns will pull for the same budget, rather than relying on just their own budget. So, if the above scenario occurs, the higher spending budget takes extra from the shared budget than the lower spending campaign. If the spending trends change, the budget gets allocated accordingly. As the PPC Account Manager, you do not have to stress over trying to predict the spend of each Campaign from month to month.

Although the Title suggest one budget for all Campaigns, that is not recommended, as different Campaigns spend at different rates. Try testing shared budgets between similar campaigns or campaigns that share the same goal. Let us know your test results, and whether shared budgets helped your PPC performance.

Rebranding of adCenter & Search Alliance

September 26, 2012 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

I’ve just finished taking the Bing Ads Accreditation exam , which is free until the end of September. Microsoft is graciously offering this exam for free as part of its rebranding promotion, which includes the renaming of adCenter to Bing Ads and Search Alliance to Yahoo! Bing Network. Offering something for free is always good at getting attention; in my opinion however, Microsoft did this a bit hastily.

What’s In A Name?

Image courtesy of InlineVision.com

The first issue with offering the Bing Ads test for free is the lack of updated questions. Sure, there are a few questions on updates to adCenter/Bing Ads features. The problem is that throughout the test the questions constantly reference adCenter, not Bing Ads! This also holds true for the Yahoo! Bing Network, which is never mentioned in the test either. Microsoft, if you are offering the test free for rebranding purposes, it makes more sense to make sure you call your own advertising platform (Bing Ads) and Network (Yahoo! Bing Network) by the correct name.

PPC Done By the Books

On top of missing a great opportunity to drill the correct/new name of Bing Ads and the Yahoo! Bing Network into the accredited professionals’ heads (assuming they pass the exam), the substance of the test still seems to be mostly textbook definitions. The only exception is when Microsoft starts asking about how to navigate and use their desktop editor, which is still called adCenter desktop in the test. Although this tool is useful for agencies who manage multiple accounts, it is not a necessity for everyone that manages a PPC campaign on Bing Ads to download and use the desktop editor.

As a recently re-accredited Bing Ads professional, I would love to hear your feedback on the rebranding and renaming of Bing Ads and the Yahoo! Bing Network. Also, if you have taken the Bing Ads test, please share your thoughts about it in the comments section below.

Testing Changes in PPC Advertising

August 24, 2011 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

As many of you have probably heard, both Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter are testing multiple aspects of PPC advertising. Some items being tested include placement, layout, ad extensions, images within text ads, and more.Descriptions of each follow:

Placement

It has been reported that text ads have been spotted with the organic results on search pages.

Layout

The Headline can sometimes include the first line of description and the URL has jumped to just under the Headline.

New Ad Extensions

These let you have searchers request that you contact them via phone of email directly from your ad.

Images within Text Ads

Lastly of the ones that I am mentioning is the ability to show off products being advertised or the company logo within the contextual ad space.

To wrap up, keep an eye out for some, if not all, of these aspects being tested to be implemented into either Bing Ads and/or Google AdWords. Also remember that no matter how frustrating these changes are to keep up with, both Google and Microsoft are trying to improve their services so that we as online markets can improve our CTR and Conversions.