Pay Per Click Insider TipsBetter Pay-Per-Click Results Start Here – We Guarantee It!

Most PPC managers should be well aware that over the next six to eight weeks, Yahoo & Microsoft will be merging their PPC platforms into an integrated platform called, ominously, “The Search Alliance”. Understanding how the Yahoo & Microsoft Search Alliance will impact your business will help to ensure that any impact is a positive one. This article will provide a brief background of the Search Alliance and more detailed insights into three things you should do to prepare your PPC campaigns.

The Basics of the Yahoo & Microsoft Search Alliance

It’s no secret that Yahoo & Microsoft’s PPC offerings have long been a distant #2 and #3 to Google’s AdWords platform. By the beginning of Q4 2010, Yahoo & Microsoft’s PPC platforms will be merged and all PPC campaigns will be managed under what is now Microsoft adCenter. This will create a larger consolidated network that is likely to pose a greater threat to Google AdWords than either Yahoo or Microsoft ever did on their own. Yahoo Search Marketing will effectively phase itself out and adCenter powered ads will supply both Yahoo & Microsoft properties with paid advertising. This is all slated to be completed before the beginning of the 2010 holiday season.

For more detailed information and regular updates about the Search Alliance, check out the official site: http://www.searchalliance.com/home

How to Make the Search Alliance a Positive for Your Business

Although there are many more nuances to the Search Alliance that could be written about at great length, the three main things to understand about the Search Alliance are:

        I.            Decide Which Transition Option to Use

In preparation for the upcoming Yahoo & adCenter Search Alliance, Yahoo advertisers should now all be seeing a new “adCenter” tab in their Yahoo accounts with three options for transition:

1. Help Me Transition: Will allow you to move existing campaigns from Yahoo into an adCenter account. Since Yahoo campaigns are inherently structured differently than adCenter, I would rarely recommend this option.
2. Set Up Account Only: Create a new adCenter account where you will be able to import campaigns from AdWords, for example, or create new campaigns from scratch. If you don’t currently have an AdCenter account at all, this is the choice for you.
3. No Help Needed: If you have an AdCenter account that is already fairly optimized, then select this option. Your Yahoo account will essentially phase itself out as the transition gets underway.

Note that once you select one of these three options, there isn’t an “undo” button – so be sure about your choice!

      II.            Start Optimizing for AdCenter Now

The sooner you can begin to make sure you adCenter campaigns are optimized, the better. This will help to ensure you hit the ground running when adCenter ads start receiving more and more traffic from Yahoo properties. A great place to start with optimization is to look at what you are doing in Google AdWords. AdWords and adCenter are more similar than Yahoo and adCenter on many levels – some examples of similarities include:

• Keyword matching options: broad, phrase, exact match keywords
• Ad text: 25 character limit headlines, 70 characters total in description

Due to these and other similarities, AdWords campaigns often translate quite well to adCenter. In fact, the adCenter Desktop Tool allows for easy transition of AdWords campaigns by using a simple AdWords Editor export. However, keep in mind that there are still differences between AdWords and adCenter, for example:

• adCenter limits the quantity of negative keywords in each campaign.
• adCenter’s dynamic text functionality is very different than AdWords’ – however it is more robust and many would say better than AdWords, so this is something to learn and become comfortable with to make the most of your campaigns here.

Ensure that you are comfortable with these differences – start optimizing now.

    III.            Be Prepared for Changes Once the Transition Begins

Slated to begin late September through early October, the transition will mean less traffic flowing through your Yahoo PPC ads and more flowing through your adCenter ads until Yahoo is entirely phased out. As that happens, I predict there will be some noticeable changes to your adCenter campaigns. Some things to keep watch for:

1. Increasing CPCs. More market share means that more advertisers are likely to sign on to adCenter, increasing competition and driving up CPC’s in the auction.
2. More traffic. This is obvious, but remember to account for this when looking at your web analytics data, as paid traffic from Yahoo will trail off. For the time being, there is going to be no way to differentiate targeting to either Yahoo or Microsoft properties via adCenter – so report on performance accordingly.
3. Improving functionality in adCenter. If you are already an adCenter user, this will be a welcome change. adCenter has several updates planned between now and the transition, and will need to continue to develop to bring themselves in line with the superior functionality offered by AdWords.

By considering all of the options, making the choice that best suits your business and preparing for the changes still to come, you can help ensure that the Search Alliances is something that doesn’t bruise your business but instead bolsters it.

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Leisa Hall is an Account Director at Anvil Media, Inc. – a search engine marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs Search Engine Marketing strategy for primarily B2C clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500.

Like AdWords, in Facebook the #1 factor governing your CPC is your Click-Through Rate (CTR).  While Facebook doesn’t reveal your ad or keyword Quality Score, you bet that it makes a huge difference. We have some ads that we bid $2 a click and end up paying 5 cents, while we have some ads bid at 20 cents, in which we’re paying 15 cents.

 Why?  CTR.  If you’re reading this, odds are that your CTR is in the 0.030% range or less–which will cause your clicks to be in the 75 cents range for US traffic.  But if you can get a 0.100% CTR, you might pay only 25 cents.  In some cases, you could hit a home run and get a 1.000% CTR and pay a penny a click for high quality traffic that converts.

Ok, so here are some principles to follow to increase your CTR:

1. Ask a question in the ad: Not only will this drive in-line likes (fans), but encourages participation. Consider asking them if they like you or the interest you’re targeting– but make sure you’re still relevant or you’ll be disapproved.
2. Write short ad copy: Sure you can use up all 135 characters in the body and 25 characters in the headline, but odds are that people won’t read it all.  This is Facebook– people are likely not conducting serious business, so make it light and easy.
3. Use a close-up face in your image: Smiling is better, as well as looking directly at you.  This is FACEbook, so use FACEs in your ads.
4. Personalize the image: If they’re a 45 year old white female in the Bible Belt, we’re not going to show an urban teenager rocking out. People usually convert better when the ad model is closer to them– the exception is dating and beauty products. Baby products can be like that, too.  Whatever the case, test it.  We know if they’re married or not on Facebook and can even guess their race– so that is something you can personalize the image with.
5. Capitalize a couple words: Saying FREE is not okay in AdWords, but we see it all the time in Facebook.  You might try it.
6. Use numbers and unusual characters: This works in regular PPC, too.  And if you make a claim– don’t say “We can help you save money on insurance.”  Don’t even say “We can save you 15% on your insurance.”  You need to be more specific– “Save 17.3% in just 3 minutes!”
7. Stimulate emotion:  ”You’ll be sorry.  That’s what you’ll say if you miss Portland Honda’s Labor Day blowout sale!”  Arouse curiosity. Message it as if it was a personal friend talking to a personal friend– “Doris, you wouldn’t believe the sale at Luckys on hotdogs this weekend.”  
8. Send users to your Facebook page: This is where custom tabs, especially a reveal tab or engagement app positively rules.
9. Follow through on the promise on the landing page: Almost nobody does right– if you see it done right, please let me know. In PPC, we know that we must tightly map the keyword to the ad to the landing page. That means if someone is looking for patio furniture, we don’t say “cheap furniture” and dump them on our home page.  But that’s what most folks do in Facebook- send everyone to exactly the same page, as opposed to differing landing pages based on what’s targeted in the interests and ads.
10. Dayparting: We run Facebook campaigns for a number of food companies.  I suppose you could promote breakfast foods at night, but why would you?  Consider how time of day may affect the messaging as well as the type of user you see.  For example, if you’re selling cold and flu medication, you might run ads between midnight and 6 am saying “If you were using X, you’d be sound asleep right now.”  By the way, dayparting is not a feature in Facebook yet, so we had to build our own.
11. Fan targeting: Once you have all these fans, you have to keep the conversation going.  The fan targeting won’t give you much volume, but I’ll bet it has the highest CTR of any ads you run.  It’s the equivalent of social retargeting.

There you have it–now go kick some CTR butt with these tips and let me know how they worked for you!

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 Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal, a firm specializing in Facebook and local advertising.

As a discipline, search engine marketing (SEM) is made up of several components, traditionally including both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click marketing (PPC).  Internet marketing, however, is a game that is constantly changing.  With the rise of social networking and social media, it is critical that Internet marketers understand the impact of these channels on search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

Social Media as Content Distribution Channel

Previously, if a company or individual had a blog, post, or article they wanted to get noticed, they might concentrate on SEO, hoping to get better placement in the search engines and boost traffic, getting more people to notice their article.  These days, social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become new ways of distributing, searching for, accessing, and interacting with content.

This is a trend that is not going to halt or reverse – currently, Facebook users share over 30 billion pieces of content, which includes web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, etc., each month.  Twitter has grown from about 5,000 tweets per day in 2007 to a reported 65 million tweets a day as of June, 2010; because of Twitter’s 140 character limit, many of these tweets contain embedded links to third-party websites.  While not social networks in the strictest sense, social bookmarking and content sharing sites like Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon also offer novel channels of distributing and searching for content outside of the traditional search engine.

While Google remains the most trafficked site in the United States, Facebook is already the 2^nd most trafficked, Twitter the 7^th, and LinkedIn the 17^th most trafficked in the United States; according to Alexa, Facebook is the top website in five countries.

How Does Social Media Impact Search Engine Optimization?

Twitter is now recognized as a legitimate information source and distribution channel – it is indexed by Google (tip- try typing in site:twitter.com into Google.  Over 100,000,000 pages are indexed) and the United States Library of Congress even archives all public tweets.  The social web is the future–Google knows this and, in order to stay competitive, Google has been and will continue to integrate social media assets into its search algorithm and search engine results pages.

While Facebook has long been more of a “walled garden” than Twitter, due to the higher privacy expectations of its users, you can’t afford to ignore Facebook’s impact on SEO.  There are two key things to consider when thinking about Facebook and search engine optimization: the first and most obvious is, “How does Facebook impact traditional search engines like Google and Bing?”.

But don’t ignore the second question–how do you optimize your website to appear in the search results WITHIN Facebook.  That’s right – if you haven’t noticed, when searching from within Facebook, after results from Facebook itself are displayed, “Web Results”, supplied by Bing, are also displayed.  This may not seem like a big deal right now, but you can bet that Facebook will continue to leverage its dominance in the social space to try to become a serious player in the search space.

Facebook’s Impact on Traditional Search Engines and SEO

Because this is such a new area and is continuing to develop, it is hard to gauge the direct and indirect impact Facebook and sharing content through Facebook has on SEO.  If your company has a blog or website and post links to that site on your Facebook, does this benefit your SEO?  If you integrate a “Like” button into your website, and visitors use it to share your content, does this benefit your SEO?

Directly – probably not – these links are running through Facebook and redirects, which likely eliminates any ‘link credit’ you might get.  But that said, it is nearly impossible to quantify the ‘indirect’ benefit to your search engine optimization efforts – that is, users who see your link, visit your site, bookmark it, tweet about it, email it to friends, and so on.

Key Tips About Social Media and Search Engine Optimization

• If your business doesn’t already have profiles on major social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), establish them now.  If you’re not on these services, users who search for you there won’t find you.
• Keep your profiles active – they’re not going to help drive traffic and improve your SEO standing if you’re not using these channels to distribute content.
• Don’t ONLY use social media as a distribution channel - one of the most powerful aspects of social networking is that it is bi-directional.  You’ll gain the most benefit by engaging users, not just throwing content at them.

Stay up-to-date.  The web and the technologies behind it are constantly changing.  Make sure you follow and understand developments at Google, Facebook, Twitter and how they impact your social media, SEO, and search engine marketing efforts. 

PPC Summit offers online training in areas including search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.

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Jason Mikula works as a freelance search engine marketing and social media marketing consultant.  He has experience working with pay per click, search engine optimization, and email and web marketing.

Google recently introduced a new keyword matching option in Google AdWords: modified broad match. As you can probably guess, modified broad match is similar to the traditional broad match option, but gives you a little more control as the advertiser. Let’s take a look at how this new option works. 

What is modified broad match?

Modified broad match is a new AdWords feature that allows pay-per-click (PPC) marketers to set keywords to a more targeted level than broad match, while still having a greater reach than phrase match or exact match keywords.

To use modified broad match, add a plus sign (+) in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. The word or words that are preceded by a (+) sign must appear in the user’s search query, exactly or in close variation. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations, acronyms, and stemmed forms.

The words that are not preceded by a plus sign may vary more significantly or not appear at all in the user’s search query, as with regular broad match.

This is potentially a very interesting and profitable opportunity for AdWords advertisers, as effective modified broad match keywords are likely to drive more traffic than phrase or exact match keywords, while attracting more qualified, targeted traffic than broad match.

What are some examples of modified broad match keywords?

Let’s start with the keyword “aromatherapy oils”—if this keyword was set to broad match, your ad might display in response to queries like “cooking oils” and “oil spill.” Not very targeted and not very good for your click-through rate, cost per click or Quality Score.

If you modify the keyword with a plus sign before “aromatherapy” (+aromatherapy oils), you’ll guarantee that only queries that include that word or close variations trigger your ad. For example, queries that trigger you ad might include:

• aromatherapy
• aromatherapeutic oils
• aromatherapy massage
• organic aromatherapy products

But your ad won’t display in response to queries like “massage oil.” As you can see, this gives you the ability to define your target audience much more closely, while still catching some interesting variants.

As another example, say your keyword is “anti wrinkle cream.” Set to broad match, your ad might show up in the results for queries like “wrinkle resistant pants” and “acne cream.” If you modify your keyword with plus signs like so (anti +wrinkle +cream), only queries with close variations of both “wrinkle” and “cream” will prompt your ad.

Hasn’t broad match always worked this way?

Originally, AdWords’ default broad match type was more restrictive than its current broad match feature. Close variations of your keyword could trigger your ad, but the field of possible queries that could trigger it was narrower. For example, the words in your keyword phrase could appear in any order, and along with any other words, but they all had to be there.

Eventually broad match became less targeted (as it is today), and many Google AdWords users complained. These advertisers felt that the change was allowing their ads to display against terms that weren’t relevant to their offerings, requiring them to develop extensive lists of negative keywords. Negative keywords are crucial for high return on investment when using broad match, but some users felt the new broad match was still too inclusive. For example, one user complained that “zebras near Chicago” showed up in his search query report for the keyword “widgets near Chicago.”

Now AdWords users can get the same control offered by the first version of broad match, but they also have the option to use today’s broader broad match.

How do I enable modified broad match?

In your AdWords account, click on the Keywords tab and select the keyword phrase you want to edit. In the Type column, click on the current match type and choose Modified Broad Match from the drop-down menu. Edit your keyword as necessary with (+) signs.

Is modified broad match is a good idea for my campaign?

Unless you are perfectly happy with your campaign performance given your current keyword settings, it’s a great idea to give modified broad match a try. If you’re mostly using phrase and exact match because you like to have more control over your keywords, you might find that modified broad match gives you a high degree of control while increasing your reach, impressions and clicks. If you’re mostly using standard broad match, you might find that enabling modified broad match on some of your keywords reduces wasteful spend on irrelevant traffic, and improves Quality Score and other key metrics.

As with any change to your AdWords campaign, be sure to keep close track of how your campaign performance evolves. Take note of how clicks, CPCs, conversion rates, and ROI change. Helpfully, Google lets you produce a performance report with information solely about your modified broad match keywords.

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Elisa Gabbert is the Content Development Manager at WordStream, a provider of PPC tools and an advanced keyword research tool to help PPC advertisers discover profitable head, mid and long-tail keywords.

As search engine marketing evolves at light speed pace, new opportunities are constantly arising–making Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that much more challenging and harder for marketers to keep up with. PPC Summit recently surveyed 3500 past PPC Summit attendees who provided valuable insight on the top areas where Search Engine Marketers feel they need more education. 

According to survey respondents, the topics that Search Marketers want to learn more about to improve their ROI are:

• Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Optimization
• Integrating Paid Search, Organic and Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

While Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimization remain strong revenue drivers for online marketers, Social Media is rapidly moving up in importance. With social media sites like Facebook (500+ million users), LinkedIn (70+ million users), Twitter (106+ million users) and YouTube (300 million accounts) all securing their justifiable placement in the marketing mix, SEM specialists have to be on top of their game in order to keep up.

ISSUE #1 – Pay Per Click Campaign Optimization: The goal in pay per click marketing is to write compelling ad copy that directs prospects to your site or landing page and then entices them to sign up or buy your product/service. Easier said than done, right?

According to the Survey Results, 82.5% of SEM respondents feel they need to focus more on PPC Campaign Strategies by: 

• Improving their Quality Score. One way to improve your Quality Score–and pay less per click– is by properly using header tags (more here).
• Utilizing Website Optimizer & Google Analytics: Paying more attention to your analytics and constantly analyzing your cost-per-customer can really help your results.
• Fine-tuning Google AdWords PPC strategies: Save time and optimize your AdWords campaigns with the AdWords Interface.

ISSUE #2 – Social Media and Search Marketing Merge: Your customers are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more. Incorporating these social media sites into your marketing mix is a must in today’s SEM world. Use Social Media Marketing to complement your paid search and organic marketing strategy and reach a broader audience.

More than two-thirds of Survey Respondents ranked “Integrating Social Media with Search Marketing” in their top three priorities. Here are some quick tips: 

• Incorporate Keywords. Use keywords in your account names and all SMM communications ie. SEO blog postings, Tweets, Facebook updates, etc
• Develop Quality Content. This is critical in attracting quality prospects through the Social Media Channel.
• Social Media Time Management. Streamline your communications with automation tools.

ISSUE #3 – Search Engine Optimization: We have heard from attendees–countless times–how they invested so much time and money on creating a fabulous SEO campaign, but in the end conversions were low due to poorly structured websites or landing pages.

Up to 82% of the SEMs polled told us they need help with their SEO campaigns. You can start by: 

• Creating Appropriate Site Architecture. Customers should be able to find what they are looking for on your site in a click or two. If it’s more than three clicks, then you should re-think your site structure and messaging.
• Using Tools Many SEO Experts Use. Utilize the industry leading tools like:
  • SEOMoz (http://www.seomoz.org/) – full complement of SEO tools, to check backlinks, PageRank, keyword research & density etc.
  • Google Webmaster Tools – research search queries, keywords, crawl rates, backlinks, diagnostics, internal linking, robots.txt, etc.
  • SEOTools for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html);
  • Wordstream (http://www.wordstream.com/seo-keyword-management) – keyword research & management.

You can learn more about these challenges and how to solve them at the upcoming
PPC Summit Presents: Search & Social Media Successconference. We built a brand new three-track curriculum based on the results from this attendee survey. On Sept. 21-22 Marketing Professionals will gather in Los Angeles to hear from an impressive line up of experts in SEM/SEO/SMM who will share their top strategies to increase search and social media marketing ROI.

We look forward to seeing you in September!

Kelly Larsen
Director of Marketing, PPC Summit

Broad match is one of the keyword matching options offered by Google AdWords. If you’re going to engage in pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, it’s important to understand how the various match types work. In this article, you’ll learn how broad match works, why it’s useful, and how best to use it in your PPC marketing campaigns.

What exactly is broad match, anyway?

Google and other search engines make decisions on which PPC ads to display in response to keyword searches based on keyword matching options, or match types. Broad match is the default option. It’s the most lenient of the options, meaning that it allows your ad to display in response to the greatest number of queries. According to Google:

If your ad group contained the keyword tennis shoes, your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations. For example, your ad might show on tennis shoe or tennis sneakers.

Basically, this option lets you pick a term related to your business, and attempts to discover other terms that are also relevant.

The importance of broad match keywords

Your keywords are automatically set to the broad match option when you upload them to your AdWords account, so you should understand the impact of this setting.

The keyword you’ve selected will now automatically be matched against a broad array of related queries. This has two interesting ramifications:

• It helps you discover new, useful broad matched keywords – Broad match provides a host of new phrases that the search engines deem relevant to your business – often long-tail keyword phrases you wouldn’t be able to come up with on your own.
• You may be matched with completely irrelevant keywords – In addition to the good stuff this option will unearth, it will match your ad text to totally irrelevant terms. The search engines’ matching algorithms don’t always work perfectly, as anyone who’s ever gotten bad results from a Google search can attest.

So broad match simultaneously adds quality phrases to your PPC keyword list while spending some of your budget on unrelated clicks that won’t convert.

For example, if your broad-match keyword is “tennis shoe”, Google might match your ad to keywords such as “women’s tennis shoes,” “converse tennis shoes,” and “discount tennis shoes.” These all seem pretty good.

Unfortunately, because of the nature of broad match, Google may also display your ads against keywords like “dress shoes,” “basketball shoes,” and “tennis racquets.” This is known as “expanded broad match,” which means that the algorithm more aggressively matches your ads against what it deems relevant variations of your keywords.

But these variations may not be all that relevant. What if:

• We only sell tennis shoes – Dress shoes and other tennis equipment aren’t keywords we want our ad to show against, in that instance.
• We only sell tennis equipment – Again, we don’t want our ad showing against dress shoes and basketball shoes.
• We only sell shoes – We don’t want our ad to show for tennis equipment and rackets. Also, we won’t want our ad text and landing page talking about tennis shoes when our ad is appearing next to dress shoes.

However, if we choose a more restrictive matching option like exact match, we may miss out on valuable variations of tennis shoes, like “shoes for tennis” or specific brand names.

So we need to find a means for implementing broad match without wasting money on irrelevant clicks.

Getting the most out of the broad matching option

The only way to utilize the expanded reach of broad match while restricting that reach to only relevant queries is to implement negative keywords within your account. Setting a negative keyword tells search engines “Don’t show my ad against this query.”

The challenge with negative keywords is much the same as the challenge with regular keyword research: How do you find all the possible keywords and variations that you don’t want your ad to show against?

Here are your options when it comes to discovering negative keyword candidates:

• Generic negative keyword lists – This is a decent way to get started, but remember that generic negative keywords may not apply to your specific niche, and many negative keywords you should be using are likely to be missing.
• Through regular keyword research – When looking for relevant keywords, you can keep your eyes open for terms that aren’t relevant to your business.
• Search query reports – You can find negative keyword candidates by scanning your search query reports in AdWords for irrelevant terms that have matched against your ads. (This can be a slow process, of course, and will need to be repeated.)
• Organic log files – It’s also a good idea to look for irrelevant keywords in your organic log files or the keyword reports in your Web analytics. This is more proactive, since it allows you to catch wasteful keywords before they trigger your PPC ads.
• A negative keyword tool – Another proactive way to find negative keywords, a negative keyword tool (like this one from WordStream) works like a traditional keyword suggestion tool but helps you find potential negatives.

Using negative keywords in concert with the broad match option helps put your ads in front of the broadest possible audience of interested users, while ensuring that you only pay for relevant traffic that is likely to convert.

The broad match modifier

Google AdWords recently introduced a new feature, called the broad match modifier, that can also help you get more out of broad match. This feature allows you to define a middle ground between phrase match and broad match – in other words, it’s more restrictive than broad match, but still allows you to discover interesting long-tail variations on your keyword.

To use the broad match modifier, add a plus symbol (+) before one or more words in your keyword – this tells Google that the specified word or words must appear in the user’s search query. For example, if you put a plus sign before “tennis” in the keyword “tennis shoe,” only queries that include the word “tennis” will trigger your ad, though you may see traffic from keywords like “tennis equipment” or “tennis gear.”

Using this feature strategically in combination with negative keywords will help you take advantage of broad match without blowing your budget on useless clicks.

Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing with WordStream Internet Marketing Software. WordStream is a manufacturer of PPC management software and keyword research and organization tools for SEO.

We’ve seen so many companies that are competent at traditional Pay Per Click (PPC) get destroyed when trying to advertise on Facebook.  Let’s cover the most common mistakes and how to solve them:

• Keywords are not interests: You have keywords on Google versus interests on Facebook. In the former, someone is actively searching for something and is expressing immediate intent. In the latter, you’re targeting WHO someone is, as opposed to WHEN they are going to buy. You’re likely hitting them weeks and months before they search, so your targeting and ad copy must be different. We’ve seen PPC companies attempt to peddle translation tools that convert search keywords into Facebook interests. You might as well make chicken salad out of chicken poop– not possible. In search you know WHEN, but not WHO– in Facebook, you know WHO, but not when.

• Ads take users away from Facebook: Users who are on Facebook don’t appreciate being yanked out of their browsing experience. So don’t send them to your website– send them to your Facebook fan page. But that also requires that you have a custom tab on your Facebook page — a landing page that is just as specific as any PPC landing page, whether sending people to a particular product page, video testimonial, store locator, or whatever. And that does take a bit of engineering effort as they are few app makers that can build FBML apps. WebTrends just bought Transpond for that very reason.

• The ad copy is too forward: Imagine you’re having a nice dinner with a friend. Then some loud salesman interrupts your meal to pitch his wares. You’ve never seen this guy before— he’s not a friend, and you aren’t exactly interested in buying his stuff right NOW, thought it’s something you might consider later. That’s what Facebook advertisers do today– they shout over the din of the other shouting advertisers, just as you see in the content networks. On Facebook, you don’t have to shout because you can microtarget and whisper quietly because…

• There isn’t multi-step engagement: Because advertisers are trying to go from impression all the way through to the sale in the same visit (yes, it works in PPC because you can target bottom of funnel terms), they fail. Instead, have one set of ads designed only to get fans from the right target audience. Then another set of ads messaging just fans. Then another set of ads for friends of fans. You wouldn’t say the same thing to someone off the street versus a friend you’ve known for a while, now would you? In Facebook PPC, you can segment your messaging by their level of engagement. And no, this concept is not available in mainstream PPC tools– those software companies are still trying to jam the round peg in the square hole.

• They aren’t refreshing ads daily: In PPC you can make some ads and they can live a long time. We have ads that are years old that continue to build good Quality Scores. We just leave those campaigns as is–set it and forget it. In Facebook, ads burn out in days. In fact, the narrower the audience, the faster the burnout. Google ads don’t burn out because it’s a different set of users searching on the keyword each day. In Facebook, you’re hitting the same inventory over and over– especially since the average user spends 7 hours a week on Facebook and consumes dozen of pages. With no frequency capping on Facebook, you better keep your ad copy fresh– not just because you want to split test, but because you don’t want to burn out by wasting inventory on the same people over and over.

• Their analytics is sending you the wrong message: If you’re measuring conversions, odds are that it’s the unspoken last click attribution. In other words, the user may have come to your site multiple times via organic, paid search, email, social, or other sources– but only that last click (likely a branded Google click) got 100% of the credit. In paid search, there is the concept of the “assist” and the “view through conversion” to give credit to other touchpoints prior to conversion. In the world of multi-channel marketing, where consumers take in multiple inputs before making a decision, you have to measure how many Facebook visits (or even impressions) resulted in an eventual conversion later. Facebook does have a conversion tracking tool and Ads API– but it’s still too buggy for mainstream users.

• They are going for exposure: True, when you have a new page, you want to get a lot of fans. If you’re a media buyer, you might even be looking for raw CPMs. But a fan is not a fan. You need to measure what those fans are worth. And there is no one size fits all– you can’t just use the ClickZ figure of $3.65 per fan and multiply by the number of fans you have. You have to measure how many of your fans eventually convert and then calculate back to an average fan value. If 5% of your fans eventually buy something and that something is worth $100, then a fan is worth $5 with full attribution. If you find the overlap is 33% between channels on average (3 visits on average between all channels prior to conversion), then your fan is worth $5 divided by 3–or $1.67.

There are no software packages that will save you from these pitfalls–you or someone in your organization must develop the targeting, ad copy, and landing tabs that reflect your unique selling proposition. In the same way that great traditional PPC has tight linkages between the keyword, ads, and landing page– on Facebook, you must have tight interests, ultra personal ad copy, and many interest-related landing tabs.

Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal, a Facebook advertising agency that has been serving brands and local resellers for 3 years. Come hear him speak at PPC Summit.

PPC Summit recently conducted a survey of leading bid management vendors and their customers.  Some common themes emerged, some of which were unexpected.  This article captures five of several messages search marketers are sending vendors.  See the full report for other expectations, challenges they’ve faced, and advice they have for their fellow marketers.

#1:  Provide Kick-Ass Support or Else

We interviewed more than 50 people and 41 organizations.  Of the 66 criteria they defined, support rated #1 by a long shot.  “Support” means a lot of things, though, not just an 800-number or Internet-based support.  And quite frankly, some vendors don’t even provide an 800-number.

Vendors better listen and prove they’re listening too, before and after the sale.  The level of support a vendor offers before a sale can foreshadow the level of service you may end up with after the sale.  Sure, some vendors have tiered customer service levels meaning if you pay them extra they’ll be at your beck and call.  With others the amount or type of support you get may depend on your spend level.  For example, you’re spending a couple of thousand dollars a month you won’t have a dedicated account manager but if you’re spending $50,000 a month you likely will.

My favorite pre-sale support story came out of Zappos from Assistant SEM Manager Tim Schaeffer.  When Schaeffer was evaluating vendors he had three companies on his short list.  He sent e-mail messages to all three at the same time and was surprised by the results.  Two of the vendors were located in the same time zone (Pacific).  The third, Kenshoo, was located in Israel which was Kenshoo.  It was midnight in Israel at the time.  Guess who responded first?  Kenshoo.  Guess who got the business?  You guessed it. 

Kenshoo responded immediately.  Both US vendors responded in about 4 hours and one of them was located a five minute drive away!  Oops.

The “support” bucket also now includes customer-requested product features.  Those companies who listen to their customers or solicit customer feedback and turn customer requests and comments into product features or feature enhancements are viewed as more “customer centric” than those who don’t.  Moreover, the customers who have witnessed their ideas transformed into product features are taking emotional equity in the vendor and its product to the point where some sound like a Windows 7 commercial:  “I’m a PPC (search marketer) and I invented [my favorite vendor’s product].”

#2:  Get the Lead Out

Vendors differ in a lot of respects but here we’re going to discuss time to market.  Some vendors have agile software release cycles ranging from about two weeks to three months while others still have annual or semi-annual “major release” cycles. 

Major release cycles are how software companies have traditionally built software:  They plan, build, test, and deploy a big software release that’s packed with all kinds of features and enhancements.  Traditional software development is a linear practice that moves a product down a line through several types of specialists who specify, build, and test the software, respectively.  Agile development involves software releases that are smaller in scope and released more frequently.   It breaks down interdepartmental fiefdoms like coding and testing, among other things, so software teams can develop better quality software faster and more collaboratively.

Among the people we interviewed the difference between traditional and agile releases meant a lot.  Companies with shorter (agile) release cycles are seen as more in tune with customer requirements and also more up to date with Google’s constant algorithmic modifications than companies with slower release cycles.

This finding also ties back to the point about turning customer ideas into product features:  When customers see product features a few weeks or a few months down the road that they personally suggested they become more loyal customers and they’re also amazed how fast their vendor of choice incorporated their idea(s).

#3:  Make Me More Effective

Almost everyone we interviewed had switched vendors at least once or dumped their agency because they believed they could do a better job in-house using the right tools and with the help of the right experts on the vendors’ account team.

“Help” comes in several forms including human assistance and machine assistance.  The human element we’ve already touched on; however, I can say the vendor account teams when they’re good are a valuable extension of the in-house search team.

Machine help is also popular among both experienced and novice search professionals.  Some systems have automated best practice engines that will suggest best practices automatically, kind of like contextual help.  The engines apply algorithms to historical history, keyword prices, the buying patterns of organizations inside or even outside your industry, and then compare the results with your current actions.

Experienced search marketers sometimes ignore the suggestions based on experience.  Seasonal keyword buys are a great example.  They nevertheless value a second pair of eyes, virtual or not, because it forces them to think about what they’re doing and why.  New search marketers like best-practice suggestions because it’s a great way to learn hands-on.

In terms of product features you may have noticed – and we point out in the report – that bid management isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to managing search programs effectively.  Vendors tend to categorize the additional features differently but reporting and campaign management are the two major buckets with the latter including bulk uploads and editing, Quality Score management, and more.

#4:  Help Me Do Business My Way

It’s wonderful some vendors have so many features available for every imaginable vertical market.  On the other hand, who cares?   If a company sells professional services it has no need to tie inventory to paid search because it has no inventory.  The message here is twofold:  1) Make me effective in my vertical and 2) Don’t make me wade through hundreds of features just to guess which 50 actually matter.

(Actually, you can do yourself a BIG favor by prioritizing what you’re trying to accomplish.  That way, what is and is not relevant will be more obvious to you.)

Search marketers appreciate domain expertise but it’s hard to know what you’re missing if don’t know a capability exists.  One gentleman we interviewed is convinced multi-channel attribution is impossible and yet other fellow retailers are doing it with varying levels of success and sophistication.

Vertical market nuances can also play out in sales.  A search marketer who works for a national insurance agency is spending lots of money but on very few keywords so a percentage-of-spend cost model doesn’t work for him.

Help Me Improve ROI

ROI is a moving target and as you well know search marketers are under constant pressure to improve ROI.  Many search marketers are looking beyond last click attribution to multi-attribution and multichannel attribution for two main reasons:  1) Last-click attribution rarely reflects actual human behavior and 2) Paid search is being integrated into overall marketing strategies more than it has been. As a result, paid search is increasingly being compared to, contrasted with, and optimized in relation to other marketing tactics.

Retailers are a good example of a vertical market making this move.  Admittedly, it’s the larger retailers that are pushing the trend forward but as always sophistication flows downstream over time.  Smaller retailers are already paying attention because they’re hearing more buzz about it generally thanks to AdWords search funnel reports.

Not all vendors provide this capability and those who do don’t necessarily support it to the same degree.  At the present time, some search marketers are doing the functional equivalent of sticking a finger in the wind to using complex data models to attribute costs to specific actions.

It’s a growing area and people are interested so expect to see a lot more about this (and more sophisticated solutions) in the near future.

Conclusion

There are a lot of reasons to hate bid management solutions and vendors, especially if their products and/or services don’t align with your business.  If you’re unhappy with your present vendor, you’re wise to take a thoughtful approach to vendor selection starting with your objectives.  Along the way, pay attention to things like responsiveness and a willingness to ensure your success, particularly if your spend level is formidable.

The main message is don’t settle.  You don’t have to.  Most vendors offer free trials so you can take their solutions for a test drive and all of them would be more than happy to be your next business partner.  Just make sure you’re in the driver’s seat or you may end up feeling like you’ve been taken for a ride.

Lisa Morgan is CEO of Strategic Rainmakers, a management and marketing consulting firm that helps organizations meet their strategic business and marketing goals.  Its services include in-depth research, marketing consulting, content development, and strategic initiatives, among other things.  Past and present clients include vendors, service providers, event producers, publishers, and associations.

By Dennis Yu, The Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of BlitzLocal

You may have read these HitWise numbers  on how Facebook has overtaken Google as the most popular site in the United States– now at 7.07% of all visits versus Google at 7.03%.  At 400 million users and 25% of all traffic (not visits), it’s not just teenagers anymore. Did you know that Facebook serves 150 million search queries a day? Industry estimates place Google at 250 to 400 million queries per day.

Thus, “search” is not a website– it’s a function that occurs across any site or application. Think of websites as vertical bars, while applications such as search, commenting, and user participation as horizontal slices that go across these sites.  Even the concept of a “website” is being blown away– note that most users of twitter are interacting not at twitter.com, but via a 3rd party tool or within another blog. Whether it’s @anywhere or even the APIs being released by CitySearch and Foursquare, it’s clear that there’s a increasingly shared data layer underneath these websites. Think of the sewer and electrical grid that is below Manhattan.

I had a chance to sit down with Alex Schultz, who runs online marketing for Facebook– he is also in charge of Facebook’s SEO.  He mentioned the concept of “interestingness squared, boringness squared”. Let’s say you have 500 friends and each friend, on average, has 20 things they do each day that could be shown in the feed.  Thus, with no filter, you would see 10,000 items in your feed on your Facebook homepage. Impossible to sort the noise on what’s important or most relevant to you.

Facebook must choose what to show, based on the influence of each user, their track record (are they spamming others or is their stuff being actively shared and commented on), and general “karma” FriendRank-like factors.  Thus, the things that are interesting get promoted in the social graph– to quickly become viral.  And things that are boring get buried, never to be shown in activity stream.

This morning, Facebook released some insights into how their search works.  It’s worth a read if you some time, but let’s just say that they’re serving personalized search results based on proximity (of the many “Jose Gonzales” in the world, show the one that has the most mutual friends in common), popularity, and context. I’m in Boulder today, so my search for cosmetic surgery here should ideally yield a different result than someone searching from Chicago.  Google’s Caffeine and the introduction of personalized results from your friends only starts to approach what happens on Facebook.

5,000 new businesses join Facebook each day.  Google has about 570,000 advertisers on AdWords. Do the math.  Who has the deeper relationships and has 50% of visits from users that log in at least once a day? Facebook is on track to hit a billion dollars in annualized revenue, if they haven’t already.

Are you using Facebook’s self-serve ad platform yet?  For the 2.5 years, we’ve treated Facebook PPC as another paid search channel, just behind Google, while ahead of Yahoo! and Bing.  And the results for Facebook lead gen and consumer product have been phenomenal.  They will continue to be so long as the territory is still new to advertisers and agencies– and clients understand that social media, properly targeted, and integrated with other channels, is quite effective.

Google has discussed that they’re incorporating social signals into ranking factors.  An article that a couple years ago might have generated 50 links might today generate 10 links and 300 mentions on twitter and Facebook.  Facebook now opening up pages to be indexed, along with many other previously private default options, means that you should be sending stronger signals in social media to influence search results not just on Facebook, but in traditional search engines, too.

So what does this mean for your business?

1. Create and pimp out your fan page immediately. When you get to 100 users, grab your vanity url at facebook.com/username. Get customers and friends to comment and participate regularly, knowing this can generate a viral effect, plus generate links to your fan page (links between pages are votes for Google, while fanning on fan pages are votes for Google).

2. Start testing Facebook’s PPC.  Run traffic to both your fan page and site, to build up a fan base and generate a viral effect. Use proper analytics and attribution, determine the effect of the “assist” on organic search traffic and direct traffic, much like a view-through conversion.

3. Run demographically targeted ads on the Google Content Network– this is a good proxy for what will work on Facebook and MySpace self-serve, given your display creatives and demographic targets are in alignment.

4. Focus more on offers and “interestingness”. Remember what Alex Schultz said about “interestingness squared” earlier? With the rise of local, social, and mobile games– or platforms like Gowalla that effectively are video games, make sure what you are saying doesn’t sound like a shameless ad.  Make it cool, interesting, or perhaps even offer a coupon.  Is it funny or shareable in some other aspect?

5. Begin reaping the rewards for being a first-mover. The spammers were first, but your legitimate brand is still early in the game. 

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Dennis Yu is an entrepreneur and internationally recognized lecturer in search engine marketing. Areas of expertise include search marketing technical analysis and pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign development and optimization. He is co-founder and chief executive officer of BlitzLocal, a Denver area firm that provides local search solutions for enterprises of all sizes. Dennis is also a regular speaker at leading industry events like AdWords Advantage Online Summit and the upcoming PPC Summit Presents…Search & Social Media Success.

Article Posting Offered By Craig Danuloff, President ClickEquations

This article is part of a series of blog posts provided by ClickEquations that goes ‘behind the scenes’  on paid search. See the full post here.

We wanted to share this insightful article about paid seach campaigns and how important it is to organize your ad groups. Most spend too little time building ad groups primarily because goals aren’t clear.

Here are the goals of an ad group that you should follow:
•  To perfectly align questions (search queries) with answers (text ads).
•  Every query that comes into an ad group should go into ad copy that directly addresses its topics, issues, intent, and desires.
•  It not good enough for all the keywords in an ad group to be similar or narrowly focused or contextually similar or anything else.
•  If the people whose queries come into a group don’t see text ads that satisfy them, the ad group is a failure.

Rebuilding Ad Groups: Ad group reorganization doesn’t happen a lot in large part because it isn’t easy enough to reorganize within our tools. Without a clear set of organizational goals how can you know that something is wrong or how you should fix it?

There is only one legitimate way to analyze the success of an ad group: make the list of search queries the ad group has attracted. Put this list next to the text ad copy that has been shown to the people who executed those searches. If the text ads on that list are not aimed at answering the question implied in the search query on the other list, then improve your ad groups.

The Ads Are The Targets:  Here’s the basic idea – build ad groups around ads, fit in keywords that attract compatible queries, make ads the target (build a nice small target and then hit it). Build as many ad groups as you need, but make sure they are tight and focused.

Special Note: if you allow unaligned queries into your ad group, the downhill spiral begins:
•  Queries that don’t target the ad copy get impressions but not clicks
•  CTRs drop
•  Good queries are under-served by inappropriate ads
•  Quality score suffers for the keywords, target URLs
•  Money wasted, and cost rise in the future

The key is to build highly targeted text ads then construct ad groups that only bring very specific people to them.

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Craig Danuloff, President of ClickEquations, a complete, easy-to-use paid search platform for large advertiser and agencies. For more free tips, check out the ClickEquations Learn section and their paid search blog.