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The view from our lunchtime walk ain't bad!

In a search marketing strategy, each of your channels is primarily geared toward a distinct goal with its own ROI:

• Organic search—to acquire customers by ranking high on the search results page for targeted, high-value phrases for as long as possible.
• Paid search—to acquire customers by testing a wide range of phrases in controlled locations on the results page for as long as budgets permit.
• Internal site search—to acquire customers by letting your visitors tell you what they want to see so you can serve up the most important, valuable, and relevant result.

When it comes to tactics and planning, each channel requires a different approach in the beginning. For instance, the real work in organic search is in choosing just what high-value phrases to target.

Read more: http://monetate.com/2012/05/follow-the-signal/#ixzz1tdshoI6N

One of our clients did just that and asked us:

“We are seeing QS below 5 for some of our top spending keywords. Should we optimize these keywords and try to increase our QS?”

It’s a great question, so let’s do a quick refresher. QS is still mostly made up of CTR, and there is often a give-and-take between quality score and conversion rates. In other words, ads with higher CTRs show lower conversion rates.  You may be able to write a more click-friendly ad, but the marginal clicks you will receive are from less qualified folks. Now when you mouse over the little bubble (on the Keywords tab) you will get a bit more detail regarding QS. For example, one of our main keywords has an AdWords QS of 4, which means “average” for CTR, ad relevance and landing page.

Let’s say we want to test a price in the 1^st line of ad text (ie, $24.95), which Google also will include in the headline of the ad. By putting price upfront, we might exclude folks who want to see something like “up to 50% off”. Sure, a 50% off ad may have a better CTR (QS), but it may not be as profitable for you (the advertiser).

To sum it up, we generally do not “optimize for quality score” and instead prefer to optimize on harder metrics such as CPA or ROAS.

Old News

We recently began reporting to a new hire for one of our long-time clients. Since we have had this client for several years, we naturally have considered dayparting from time to time. This new direct report suggested we reconsider using dayparting in our AdWords account, citing it as a way to increase bids during periods of heightened impression activity. This is a poor idea. Let me explain why.

The key thing to remember is that we want to maximize value; impressions alone denote zero value, and they may even have a negative correlation with value. Value is comprised of revenue (or some other conversion metric) and click costs.  If we talk only about revenue, conversions, or conversion rates, we are missing out on a key component of value.

For instance, it may be the case that revenue and revenue-per-click (RPC) increase greatly from 2pm to 5pm, but unless cost rises at a slower rate than does revenue, increasing bids is probably not a great idea.  If, however, average CPCs for some reason stay the same while RPC increases 20%+, then a daypart bid multiplier could be a great idea.

Dayparting as a response to increased or decreased impression activity misses the point that the goal is centered around value. Further, to calculate value you have to take costs into account. We do want to increase revenue or conversions, but within a certain efficiency metric. For a conversion-oriented account, CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is the efficiency metric. For a revenue-oriented account, ROAS (Revenue Over Ad Spend) may be the efficiency metric.  But to talk about impressions or clicks without talking about revenue or conversions, not to mention costs, will lead to poor decisions.

That manual approach has served Terry and the agency very well for years, but we knew that one day a platform would come along that meets all of our needs without any of the frill… you know, a search marketer’s search platform.

Well that day has come, and we are excited to announce the addition of SearchForce to the team! The superb folks at SearchForce really understand us for what we are: deeply focused on search. Plus they’ve got a talented team who are both recognized leaders in the search community and also incredibly adept PPC and ROI optimizers. It’s really all about the algorithms, right?

So, welcome SearchForce! We are super excited to bring our core business to the next level, and we know they will help us get there quickly.

Okay, time to roll up our sleeves again and do things in a more… updated way.

We all love feeling as though we’ve dodged a bullet, right? In this post we provide some practical tips and real-life examples for using AdWords tools without them using you.

The AdWords Search Funnel

• Top Paths report: we especially enjoy the Transitions reports.
• Assisted Conversions report: understanding assist roles may change your bidding approach.
• Path Length report: this will tell you how many folks are NOT converting on the first click alone.

Head over to Trada and read the post! http://www.trada.com/blog/advanced-adwords-tools/

This got us thinking about other ways crowdsourcing has crept into PPC. In another post, we likened PPC to a Stereo System, describing how each stereo component is equally important to delivering good sound, with the speakers at the end playing a crucial role similar to landing pages. We suspect crowdsourcing will soon find its way into landing page creation, but for now we’re happy to see companies like Unbounce tackling the ever-important issue of landing page design and hosting.

Then there’s the crowdsourced PPC platform, Trada, which seems to be a good entry into PPC for smaller advertisers without a lot of time and resources. They might not get the strategy they’d receive working with a dedicated agency or bringing it in-house, but they’ll have a portfolio of optimization experts working hard on their behalf.

As a PPC agency, we welcome innovation in a field where there are a lot of levers to be pulled. We hope to come across more opportunities to leverage experts who may not physically be in our office but are still definitely on our team.

Know any more examples of crowdsourcing in PPC? Let us know!