Beginner’s Guide to PPCs

Beginner’s Guide to PPCs

Beginner’s Guide to
PPCs

Share this book: f in ©2012 Callidus Software Inc. All All Rights Reserved©2012
Callidus Software Inc. Rights Reserved


Table of Contents
Introduction

Different Types of PPCs

Plan out the Campaign

How to Implement a PPC ad

- Organize Your Account

- Work Towards a Good Quality Score

- What Goes Into a Bidding Strategy?

LinkedIn Ads Work on a Simpler Model

Campaign Settings

Optimization

Measure Results

Share this book: f in ©2012 Callidus Software Inc. All Rights Reserved

Beginner’s Guide to PPCs 2

Introduction
Are you new to pay per click campaigns or PPCs? Planning is essential to a
successful PPC strategy. Plan everything, right from goal setting to a budget to
laying down a tactical plan of action. You need to constantly track click through
and conversion data. Tweak, optimize and experiment with your bids based on
the data. In the PPC world there is constant room for improvement. The end goal
should be to get maximum number of conversions with minimum ad spend.

Different Types of PPCs
Google AdWords and Bing Ads are two of the largest network operators. Both
operate under a bid-based model. LinkedIn ads are another effective channel for
B2B PPC advertising.

There are two main types of PPCs – search engine marketing and placement ads.

Search ads appear on search websites. The text ads appear either on the top,
right column or bottom of the search results page. Google and Bing offer this
service.



Fig 1 - Search ads appear at the top and right sidebar of the SERP as seen here.

Placement ads appear on non-search sites across Google’s Display Network.
These ads can appear in web pages, videos and apps in the Display Network.

They are of three types – automatic placements, managed placements and
retargeted ads. Google offers all three types while Bing offers automatic and
managed placement ads.

a) Automatic placements - Based on keywords, topics and other factors your
banner ads, text or video ads appear on Google’s Display Network of thousands
of websites such as YouTube, NY Times or Families.com. In automatic placements,
wherever content relevant to your business appears, your ad will automatically
be placed next to it.



Fig 2 - The placement ads are in the sidebar on the right hand side.
Source: webdesignerdepot.com

b) Managed placements - If you want more control on where your ad appears,
you can choose the specific sites where you want your ad to appear and bid for
the same. This is called managed placements.

c) Retargeted ads allow you to target a person who visited your website but
failed to convert. You can follow them with your ad on other sites that they visit
on Google’s Display Network. You can select the category of sites you want to
follow them on. You can exclude certain categories of sites if you so wish, such as,
retail or travel. Google Adwords and AdRoll offer retargeted ads.



Fig 3 - 3 steps to how a retargeted ad works. Source: Adroll.com

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is like Facebook for businesses and is therefore very effective for B2B
advertising. The social network allows you to bid based on a cost per click (CPC)
or a cost per 1000 impressions model (CPM).

In the case of LinkedIn, the ads appear within the site based on the targeting
criteria you set. The placement ads appear on LinkedIn’s Audience Network,
which is similar to Google’s Display Network. Through this LinkedIn members see
your ads on other sites they visit.

In LinkedIn ads you can target your audience based on company, job function,
age, title, industry, seniority, gender, geography and groups (on LinkedIn).



Plan out the Campaign
Identify your business goals. What do you want to achieve through your PPC
campaign?

It could be:

Traffic to website
Brand awareness
Sales and conversions

A large chunk of PPC advertisers use the channel for increasing brand awareness,
says the State of Search Marketing Report 2012.

Fig 4 – Source: State of Search Marketing Report 2012 by Search Engine Marketing
Professional Organization and Econsultancy.



Close in on your target audience. Identify your target audience, their geography,
what sites they visit and what keywords they use. Use Google Placement Tool for
this.

Find suitable channels. GoogleAdwords, Adroll, Bing Ads, LinkedIn ads, social
media and industry sites are your playground. Use Google Analytics to choose
the ones that are most popular with your audience.

Identify your keywords. Each of your product names /service offerings should
be part of your list of keywords. Use Google Analytics and Google Keyword Tool
to identify keywords related to your product/service. This should be an ongoing
effort. Constantly update your keyword list as and when you come across new
ones.

Also, identify your long tail keywords as a lot of web users type in long tail
keywords in search engines.

Don’t just make keywords out of the words you use internally to describe your
business. Find out what keywords your customers use. Talk to your sales team.
They will be familiar with your customers’ language.

Anybody who searches about your niche area should see your ad.

Identify negative keywords. This list will contain the words you do not want to
bid on. Negative keywords help avoid irrelevant searches and reduce cost.

For instance you might want to avoid people who are researching or looking for
jobs.

If you operate in the marketing software domain, add the below words (among
others) to your negative keyword list to avoid researchers.



- marketing software PDF
- marketing software definition
- marketing software history

To avoid job seekers add the below words (among others) to your negative
keyword list:

- marketing software jobs
- marketing software careers
- marketing software internships

Use Google Keyword Tool and Google Analytics to build your list. Constantly
update this list based on your observations on your traffic.

Observe your competitors. See what kind of campaigns your competitors are
running.

How to Implement a PPC ad
Organize Your Account

An account consists of four main components: campaigns, ad groups, keywords
and ad text.

In an Adwords account you can have:

10,000 campaigns (includes active and paused campaigns)
20,000 ad groups per campaign
10,000 keywords per ad group
300 display ads per ad group (includes image ads)
4 million active or paused ads per account
5 million keywords per account



Fig 5 - Source: searchenginewatch.com

Making sense of and reporting on thousands of ad groups and keywords seems
like a gargantuan task. Make things simpler. Organize your account well. A well
organized can also help attract the right traffic, increase revenue and your quality
score.

Create ad groups. An ad group is a set of keywords that have a common theme.
Group your keywords that go together to form an ad group. Put 2-5 keywords in
an ad group.

Make as many ad groups as is practically possible.



For starters have ad groups for:

Each of your products
Your selling points
Ways to describe your business
Rivals’ brand names

Having multiple ad groups helps you keep the ad copy and landing page as
relevant to your keywords as possible.

Suppose you sell red and white roses. Have a minimum of 3 ad groups – “Red
Roses”, “White Roses” and “Roses”. In the “Red Roses” ad group choose keywords
that closely relate to “Red Roses”. Write ad copy rich with keywords; likewise in the
others.

Let’s take another example of a marketing automation firm. You would ideally
have at least two campaigns – marketing automation and lead generation. Under
each of these campaigns you would have different ad groups. For instance, in the
marketing automation campaign, marketing automation software and marketing
automation tool would be the ad groups under it.

Fig 6.



It is important to map your keywords to the customer’s buying cycle. For instance,

Use short general keywords in research phase.
Use short-tail keywords in narrowing-down search phase.
Use long-tail keywords in decision phase.

PPC Hero explains it well with the example of cookies. Here “cookies” is the
general keyword. “Oatmeal cookies” and “peanut butter cookies” are the short-tail
keywords and “mrs.fields peanut butter cookies” and “peanut butter cookie store”
are the long-tail keywords used when the customer is ready to buy cookies.

Fig 7. Source: PPC Hero.



Develop the ads. Include keywords in the ad copy for better response rates.
The keywords appear in bold and help increase relevancy. Update your ad text
regularly, say once a month, to see what fetches a better click through rate and
conversion rate. Do A/B testing. While testing, change one thing at a time. For
example, change the headline alone or change only the call to action so that you
know what change helped make a difference.

Google Adwords allows you to have a 25 character headline, 35 characters in
each of the two descriptive lines and 35 characters for the hyperlink. Use all the
allowed characters wisely. Ideally have 3 ad copies for each ad group. In LinkedIn
you get more room for description text – 75 characters.

Fig 8.

Create relevant landing pages. The landing page is a way to convert the hot
prospect who clicks on your ad. Don’t just send your audience to your home
page. For each ad group make a relevant landing page with a prominent call to
action button. While it would be great to have a landing page for each keyword,
resources might be a constraint.

Develop your banner. You will need banners only for your placement ads. Design
your banner with attractive colors, interesting copy and a clear call to action.

Work Towards a Good Quality Score

Quality score is a key metric to lower costs. Google computes this score based
on the relevance of your ad and landing page to the keyword bid for. Google



also takes into account how fast your site loads and what keywords are in your
landing page among other factors. Quality score is rated on a scale of 1 to 10,
with 10 being the highest.

A good ad will attract more clicks, giving you a higher quality score. The higher
your quality score, the lower your cost per click.

Google ranks all ads giving each ad an ad rank. The ad with the top ad rank
appears right on top. The ad rank is a combination of your bid and your quality
score.

Ad rank = Quality Score x Max CPC bid

The higher your quality score, the higher is your ad rank.

Nine Tips to Improve Your Quality Score:

Test your ad copy. This should be an ongoing effort.

Use dynamic keyword insertion wisely in your headline to increase your
relevance to users.

Are you able to write keyword-relevant ad copy? If not, reorganize your
account structure to align your keywords more tightly.

Keep the number of keywords per ad group low.

Keep the keywords in each ad group closely related. If a particular keyword
doesn’t align with the rest in an ad group, don’t hesitate to isolate that
keyword in a separate ad group.

Have an ad group of misspelled keywords. In the ad copy use the
misspelled keywords but use correct spellings in the landing page.



Run at least 2 different ads for each ad group. This allows you to test at all
times.

Make your ad copy logically proceed to the landing page copy. One should
lead to the other.

Have a specific landing page for each ad group. The landing page should
contain the keywords in the ad group.

What Goes Into a Bidding Strategy?

Bidding is a crucial part of PPC. Bid too low and your ad will hardly appear, bid
too high and you could lose your shirt. It is a tricky balance between traffic and
profitability. For starters, set aside a budget for your PPC.

In order to know how much to bid, you need to figure out:

How much traffic you need for one conversion?
How much can you afford to pay for one conversion without
compromising your profitability?
How many conversions you need to cover the cost of bidding?

If you don’t have exact figures, go by estimates. And always test, measure,
experiment and improve.

Check out Adwords Campaign Experiments to test parts of your account. With
this you can have different bids on the same keyword. Observe the impact of the
change on a section of your account without rocking the boat. Similarly you can
test your ad copy or your landing pages. Google claims this tool can help you
take better decisions and increase your ROI.



Things to Keep in Mind While Bidding:

If you have a limited budget, bid high enough to be in ad positions
between four and eight so that you appear on the first page of search
results.

If you are more aggressive, start by bidding high. Accumulate click through
and conversion data, analyze the data to trim your bids. Aim to get
maximum conversions at the lowest price.

Bid differently on different keywords based on their importance and
relevance.

A good thumb rule would be to bid high on 10% of the high-quality,
high-converting keywords and bid low on the remaining 90%. Only the
top ten bidders are displayed on Google.

Bid high on long-tail keywords since these are used when the customer is
in decision phase.

Bid high when bidding on a new campaign since you have no quality score
to back you up.

Don’t make bid changes too frequently. You need some historical data
before you can make the right decisions.

Set maximum bids for your ad groups. While it would be nice to bid high for all
keywords, your budget may not permit it. On some keywords where you bid low,
make up for it with your quality score. Create keyword-relevant ad copies and
landing pages to shore up your quality score.

Use Google’s free conversion optimizer tool to fix the optimal maximum bids.



Consider the cost per acquisition model. If you have the option, consider
bidding for a cost per acquisition rather than through a cost per click model.
Google will allow you this privilege only if you have substantial amount of
conversions. In the cost per acquisition model you can trim your costs since you
pay only for each sale or download rather than every click.

LinkedIn Ads Work on a Simpler
Model
Every account is organized into campaigns. Each campaign will have:

A daily budget
Targeting options
Ads

Fig 9.

For every campaign have at least 3 ads. You can have a maximum of 15 ads. Vary
the copy, images and call to action to see what works.

Campaign Settings for AdWords
Location and language - Choose which location and language you want your ad
to appear in.



Choose the network – Search, display or retarget.

Device – Choose which devices you want your PPC ads to appear on such as
laptop, smartphone etc.

AdExtensions – Put out additional tidbits about yourself so prospects are keener
to click on your ad such as address, phone number, how much you are liked on
Google+ and additional URLs. Ad extensions go a long way in raising the click
through rate.

1) Social extensions – Connect your Google+ business page to your AdWords
account. Then your +1 annotations will appear in your ad.

Fig 10 - Maria Foret and 28 other people +1’d this company on Google+.

2) Location and call extensions – Give your office location and phone number, so
when someone searches for your product/service and he is in a physical address
close to yours, your address and phone number will appear below your ad. This
urges the viewer to visit/call your office.

Fig 11 - The ad gives the address and the phone number of the pub urging the viewer
to call/visit the place.

3) Add site links – Use site links to get more space for ad copy. You can add as
many as 10 site links when you select your campaign’s settings. The links appear
below your ad copy.



Fig 12 - In this ad four site links are seen below the ad copy urging you to order online
or locate a store.

Optimization
You need to optimize your campaigns to improve the click through rate, reduce
costs and increase conversion. Optimize for higher conversion rather than higher
clicks. Use Google Adwords or Google Analytics to analyze your campaigns.

Here is a list of things you can do to optimize your PPC campaign:

Update your keywords often
Remove your non-performing keywords
Update your negative keywords
Write great ad copy that converts
Create relevant landing pages
Have a clear and prominent call to action button on your landing page
Use geo-targeting
Test different ad positions on the SERP
Evaluate your quality score
If conversion is low, try different things with your ad copy, display URL,
landing page etc. But change one element at a time so you know what
makes a difference.



Measure Results
You can use Google Analytics or a third party tool to measure your PPC campaign.

You need to monitor:

Click through rate (CTR) – This shows you how many people clicked
on your ad. Your ad’s CTR is a good indicator of how your ad is performing.
Generally, good ads have a CTR greater than 0.025%.

Conversion rate
- Google Adwords provides a conversion tracking code that can be
incorporated into your landing page to monitor the conversion
rate. This will tell you how many of your visitors converted.

- LinkedIn offers a lead collection feature that allows advertisers to
collect leads directly through their LinkedIn ad campaigns. Click
on the Leads tab in the Ads Dashboard to view your leads. You can
also filter your leads by time period, contact status and campaign
name.

Bounce rate – This will tell you the number of people who look at your
landing page and go away without taking any action.

Average time spent on site - This tells you the average time spent on your
site in minutes.

Number of pages visited – It tells you the average number of pages visited
on your site.



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Beginner’s Guide to PPCs

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