To get the most out of PPC, we not only need to know the best techniques to use, we need to understand why those techniques were devised. The techniques often discussed in this blog, and in our training program, are based on a theory of how the PPC environment hangs together.

Let’s take a look under the hood.

The Search

Search engines are about the specific.

A searcher forms a keyword phrase, based on a concept they have in their head…

Small adwords campaigns are relatively straightforward to run. But what happens when you need to scale up to large campaigns, which can be extremely cumbersome and unwieldy?

In this article, we’ll look at one way to solve this problem, using the Google Adwords Editor and spreadsheets.

What Is The Google Adwords Editor?

Google’s Adword Editor, available for free here, is a desktop application for managing your Adwords campaigns…

I was reading comments made by a guy who said he can’t find any decent search marketing help. He is selling a cloud computing service.

The marketers he talked to wanted to create landing pages and copy that read like a Blu Blockers advertisement. Buy now! Two for one deal! Constant calls to action. Twee headlines, along the lines of “They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano But When I Started to Play!”…

Nothing motivates a person quite like pain.

If you’ve got a toothache, you probably can’t wait to use a dentist’s services. The money, so long as you can afford the fee, becomes a non-issue compared to the thought of enduring the pain for one day longer.

You want your customers to be in a similar painful position – not in the sense that you wish pain upon them, but you do want them to have a burning need…

Many people use PPC to promote existing businesses.

However, PPC is also well suited to the process of deciding on what business you should start. You can pick a lucrative niche using PPC data and a little self-inquiry.

If you start an internet business using the following method, you will avoid two of the biggest pitfalls common to many business start-ups – selling something no-one wants, or selling something everyone wants, but the market is already saturated…

No doubt you’ve heard the term “we follow best practice”, many times.

What does it mean?

The implication is that there is an objective methodology that is “best”, agreed upon by a group of operators, who all follow the same methodology, which is, of course, “the best”. After all, there is little point claiming to “follow worst practice”…

Whether we do PPC, SEO, or social media, we all have something in common:

We’re in the communication game

In order to play the communicate game well, we need to understand people.

You’ve heard the maxim “it’s not about you, it’s about them”, meaning that people aren’t interested in hearing about you or your product, they are interested in themselves and how your product can benefit them…

Changing adwords campaigns, particularly established campaigns that are working, can involve a lot of trial and error. We don’t want to ruin a good thing, yet all of us want to optimize for best results.

In August 2010, Google rolled out a helpful tool called Adwords Campaign Experiments, otherwise known as ACE.

ACE is a free tool that enables you to run experimental campaigns, side by side, against your existing campaigns…

If your competitors offer a similar, or identical product to your own, here are a few ideas on how to change your offer, without really changing anything!

This strategy also works well if you feel your offering is getting a little stale could use a kick-start.

Positioning In The Sales Funnel

Where, in the sales funnel, are you currently pitching?

Try shuffling the positioning either earlier or later…

As competition increases, and the price of clicks rise, webmasters are looking at various back-end strategies in order to get the most out of their PPC spend.

Continuity programs are a great way to increase the value of each customer, giving you more margin to operate with when you bid.

A continuity program involves the establishment of an ongoing relationship with your customers that extends beyond the original transaction…

Google rolled out Google Instant on September 8th, 2010.

Google Instant is a major change in the way Google presents search results. Google now attempts to predict what term searchers are searching for, then shows updated search results, in real time, as the searcher types their query.

Here’s a video of Google Instant in action:

Google reasons that Google Instant reduces the time it takes to search, and will particularly appeal to the mobile search market, as there is less need to scroll…

Are there times when PPC is next to useless?

Absolutely.

There are some goods and services that are poorly suited to search marketing.

For example, take a look at what happened to Dropbox when they blew cash on Google Adwords:

Dropbox founder and chief executive Drew Houston offered some details this afternoon about how he grew the company to more than 4 million users…

Never run a Google Adwords campaign before?

Here are the key high-level concepts you need to ensure you get the most valuable traffic for the least money.

1. Running Google Ads Comes Later. First….

Before you run a campaign, you need to get your site, and business strategy, in order. Ask yourself: “when I get traffic, what do I want this traffic to do”?

This is known as the “desired action” or “conversion”…

If you sell your PPC services to others, or you’re planning to do so, you need to consider how you position your services in relation to other suppliers.

In a crowded market, it’s difficult to stand out, and even more so when you’re just starting out, as you can’t leverage an existing reputation.

You’ll give yourself a great headstart if you focus on the clients needs, so here’s a guide to positioning and proposal writing for the PPC market…

The Google content network has huge reach. It’s also a lot cheaper than advertising on the search network, yet the conversion rates can be much the same.

Whilst the content network has had a bad reputation in the past, this has often been due to poorly targeted campaigns. Marketers have simply copied their existing search campaigns to the content network, and failed miserably.

The content network requires a different strategy…

Unless you’re lucky enough to be selling something absolutely unique, you’ll face competition in PPC. How you position against your competitors is crucial to your success.

Positioning is not simply a case of writing better ads, bidding higher, or occupying the top space. Positioning starts before you get anywhere near a PPC campaign.

It starts with research.

What Are Your Competitors Offering?

First, you need to get a sense of the market…

Search marketing is typically associated with PPC and SEO. However, there’s an overlooked aspect of search that can provide some very powerful data – internal search.

Internal searches occur, obviously, when a person doesn’t find what they need on the page they land on.

You don’t often see internal search boxes displayed prominently on PPC landing pages, however if users do not find what they are looking for on your landing page, they are likely to click back…

At some point, most of us have to make a presentation.

Does the notion fill you with dread? Or perhaps you comfortable with presenting, but often don’t know what to say, or how best to say it? Do you think you might get more sales, or get your way more often, if you could made better presentations?

Making better presentations is a craft that can be learned. Let’s break the elements of a presentation down to an easy-to-use template…

Most pay per click performance measurement has been at the keyword level i.e. which keyword resulted in conversion.

The problem is this is a blunt measurement tool. It would also be great to know what steps led up to that keyword. For example, did the visitor search on a number of different keyword variations before s/he arrived at that particular keyword. Up until now, this type of tracking has been painful to implement…

Twitter have announced a new advertising model, called Promoted Tweets.

Promoted Tweets are paid tweets that appear at the top of Twitter’s search results. The promoted tweet is much the same as a normal tweet in that you can retweet it, reply to it, or mark it as a favourite. The only difference is that it is sponsored. The sponsorship is marked.

Promoted Tweets work much like a banner ad – for now…

If our landing pages aren’t converting as well as we’d like, it might be a good idea to look at how we’re trying to persuade visitors.

We need to make a compelling offer, but we also need to pitch that offer in a way that persuades a person to take action. There are many barriers to taking action, even if the visitor really wants what we have to offer. Once we identify barriers to purchase or take a desired action, and break them down, conversion rates will rise…

A lot of PPC advice is focused around direct marketing strategy i.e. you identify an audience and deliver them what they want. You convert at rate X. Repeat.

For the most part, this works well. However, you may be missing an opportunity to spread your message to a wider audience, and this benefit could come free.

Try to make your offer truly remarkable. Is your offer worth remarking upon? If not, could it be twisted so it could be, or put in a form that makes it easy to repeat?

Become A Purple Cow

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable is a book by Seth Godin…

We may be in a recession, but one area is booming.

Smart phones.

As handset costs are driven down, more people are switching to smart phones, such as iPhones & BlackBerrys. Internet usage on mobile phones is increasing, and may well displace much PC and laptop usage.

There are already phones on the market using 1 gigahertz chips, says Andy Rubin, who works on Google’s Android platform…

Local search, in all forms, is becoming increasingly popular.

In the past, it has been difficult for local businesses to advertise on search services because there were barriers – such as knowing how to use cryptic technology – but recent advances, like Google Maps, have helped make local advertising more approachable.

It’s now reasonably easy for a local business to get listed, simply by claiming a spot on the map…

New To Google Adwords? One aspect that will likely have you pulling your hair out is Google’s “quality score”.

Google’s quality score is a cryptic formula Google uses to help determine your keyword bid. The quality score affects your cost per click, eligibility to appear under a keyword term, estimates the cost of appearing on the first page of results, and affects how high your keyword is ranked…

Over this last weekend, some Adwords users have received a warning email from Google stating that their landing pages are of poor quality and do not comply with Google’s landing page and site quality guidelines.

Some users have already been banned outright.

Here’s an automated response from one user who queried the ban:

As the email you received on Friday explained, your account has been suspended due to multiple submissions of poor quality landing pages…

Google have announced a new Adwords feature called Bid Simulator.

From the Google Adwords blog:

Bid Simulator takes some of the guess work out of cost per click (CPC) bidding by estimating the number of clicks or impressions you could have received if you had used a different maximum CPC bid.

Google have also provided a tutorial video showing you how to work out your value per click, and how to use this value to maximize your profits…

Search marketing consists of two channels: PPC (pay-per-click) and SEO (search engine optimization). Both channels have advantages and disadavatages you need to consider before committing resources to either approach.

Advantages Of Google AdWords Over SEO

Minimal Impact – Most sites won’t need to make design or layout changes in order to use PPC. SEO often requires site design changes, and these changes can be significant…

Search is all about language.

The keyword is a goldmine of information. Not only do you know how many people search on a keyword, the way the keyword term is used helps reveal to you the intent of the visitor. What order do people use words in the keyword phrase? What qualifiers do they use, or not use?

Once you figure out the visitors intent, you need to align everything you do with that intent…