Paid placement is a form of search advertising that provides a top ranking in return for payment. Every major search engine offers a paid placement program. Learn what’s available in this session that is especially geared toward beginners, with details on programs from major providers and advice on how to succeed.

Introduction by:
Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ

Speakers:
Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce
Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

We started with Dana Todd, who is the chair of SEMPO.

First advice was to take the time to look at the help and training from all of the search engines, and reach each engine’s blog regularly for updates. SEMPO.org also has free webinars.

If you love data, you’ll love PPC.

The most successful pc managers are highly analytical.
Microsoft Excel is your friend. You can have expensive tools, but it does a lot for you.
Linear progression:

Start small
Test, measure, adjust, test it again
Expand on your successes

Dana shows screenshots of several search engines and vertical/specialty search, and outlines which areas are paid and which are organic. Feeds, mobile, white paper, and lots more have opportunities for PPC.

How do you buy search?

Flat cost-per-click
Yahoo search submit (Paid Inclusion)
Directory programs, white paper networks, etc.

Understanding Hybrid Auctions

Blind Auction – you can’t see other max bids
Ad rank is determined by a number of factors

What you want to pay per click
Competitive landscape
Quality score
Value of the ad space

What is quality score? It’s the keyword’s Click Through Rate + relevance of your ad text + historical keyword performance + other features.

Pre-flight checklist for building campaign.

Good tracking software. At least install Google Analytics. You’ll need two pieces of code, from both Google Analytics and from Google AdWords. Might take some time to get this set up.
KPIs
Set Values
Establish baselines
Strategy (goals)
Money
Rules

Setting base values and goals

Conversion: can mean many different things
Absolutely required homework

What are your target goals?
What are the actions you value?
What dollar values can you set? You can even do something like value an email lead at 41 cents, as that’s the cost it saved you on a stamp.

It’s OK to guess. Use your gut if you’re not sure. You can always modify your assumptions.

She skips a conversion funnel, figures that we’ll get it in all of the other sessions here.

Finding Keywords

Where?

Your site, competitors, trade literature, vertical sites, lots of other stuff.
Brand names are typically best performers if you have a known brand. You can control the message this way, much better than in organic SEO. You’re taking up more real estate on the page.
Find “negative keywords” during this phrase as well. Use lots of negative words to filter out random impressions which hurt your quality score. Start with “free” “cheap” and “naked”. Look in your referral logs to see what is bogus traffic.

How many?

If you have a low budget, don’t spread yourself too thinly across a zillion “tail terms”. Start with just a few and get them good, then expand from there.
80/20 rule. 20% of your keywords will drive 80% of your traffic (and budget!).

http://adlab.microsoft.com shows upstream and downstream of visitors. If someone typed in Compaq, shows if people then next searched dell computer or Compaq computer.

Google’s keyword tool. It’s a lot of fun, and can save you a lot of time and effort. Set your match type first, as the default match type is broad.

Building the ads

Because CTR affects your position, do NOT get lazy. Don’t use one ad for everything. You do need to put the effort into writing your ad, you want quality score to be good.
Use keyword in title and/or description. Users follow scent trail.
Must pass editorial review.
Choose appropriate landing page URLs (usually NOT home page), though sometimes home page can be best. You might want to do an A/B test.
Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion

A little complicated to explain here, so check out the tutorials on each site. Usage is different between engines.

Searchers prefer uninterrupted logic. Make sure that the ad text and the landing page all talk about what the person is searching for.

Schedule

Don’t just set it and forget it.
Map out a calendar in terms of:

Campaign rollout
Reporting/analysis
Testing period(s)
Other promotions (offline, online – trade shows, etc., like editorial calendar)
Budget changes (e.g. overspend on Google during kickoff)

Schedule promotional and seasonal messaging
Dayparting – time of day, days of week. If you are only open during the week, you may not want to advertise on the weekends.
Overlay any expected seasonality
Schedule quarterly “housecleaning”.

Budgeting

Daily budgeting technology isn’t perfect, so engines usually under-deliver or over-deliver. Set it for a little more than you want to spend, so the engines don’t under-deliver. Do look at your spend.
Put your high-traffic or high-dollar words in their own campaign with their own budget
Start out with a bang so you can lock in a high CTR which will help your quality score – then pull back
Google has different ways to manage budgets:

Conversion Optimizer (average CPA)
Budget optimizer (most clicks for a defined budget)
Preferred cost bidding (set average CPC preferred)
Manual bidding (you control it.)

Managing Bids

Bid management software helps

Popular tools: search engines’ tools, Atlas, Keyword BidMax, Omniture, SearchRev, Performics, Clickable, Adapt
Note: “bidding rules” don’t work well on hybrid auctions
Low volume keywords won’t have much data to optimize automatically against ROI or other projected values

People are still required!
Paying too much? Improve your CTR and landing page
Delete low performing keywords, or pause/isolate them so they don’t bring down overall campaign. Don’t have pity, get rid of them if they don’t help you.

Final thoughts

Don’t be afraid to start small and grow your success
Build a risk portfolio for yourself – set aside some budget for experiments and branding. Be creative, try some things, see what you can figure out.
Reinvest a portion of “profits” back into the budget.
Leverage the engines for knowledge, but don’t believe everything they tell you. Changes occur, ad reps aren’t always talking to the engineers, etc.
Provide enough resources to support the campaign.
Strive for integrated strategy across all media.

Matt Van Wagner is up next.
PPC is really process-oriented. You’ll keep getting better as time goes on. He starts off by showing an ad for Bebop Baby Shop. Their only goal was to get people to go into the store. They did a bunch of ad impressions, got some qualified visitors, and it cost $185. Their sales were three months ahead of projects. They refined their ad to just a specific geography to make it more relevant.

Another reason he loves PPC is so many things are measurable. Investment, revenue, percentage of ad spend to revenue.

PPC and SEO are complementary.

Get going quickly
Discover what words convert
Reduces risk of major ago changes
Predictable, dependable flow of traffic

PPC allows you more control over messaging

You control messaging through ad text
You determine what pages ad visitors land on first.

Process creates sustainable advantage

It’s not just about keywords, ands, bids, and “secretes”

Use systems-level thinking

Align PPC campaign, goals with larger company goals.
Increase s ales, not just clicks

Track performance, Make adjustments

Be methodical, measure and test everything you can
Don’t react too quickly, but don’t get analysis-paralysis. Do write a note as to why you are doing what you are doing.

Set good goals and work towards them.

He showed graphic of the structure of a PPC account. I won’t replicate here, as you can find it on the help pages for PPC vendors.

Google/MSN keyword match types.

Broad
Phrase
Exact
Negative

Yahoo Keyword Match types

Standard Match
Advanced Match

Broad match

Queries in any word order
Likely plurals
Likely equivalents including misspellings

Phrase Matches

Exact query order

Exact Matches

Only if query matches keyword exactly. The keywords will be the exact search only.

Yahoo
Standard Match

Exact query order
Common misspellings
Singular or plural forms
Words in your ad, even if they are not in your keyword list. Warning!

Advanced Matches:

Queries in any order
Common misspellings
Singular or plural forms
Words in ad text or website. Warning!

Use broad/advanced match to generate traffic and discover new terms

Stick to two and three word terms
Use one word keywords only very rarely if at all
Watch conversion rates and web logs

Use phrase and exact match to hone in on important high-traffic terms
Use negative match to reduce ad impressions on non-productive searches.
Negative match keywords

Prevent ads from showing on non-productive searches
Subtle differences across PPC networks
Improves CTR, quality scores, and reduces costs.
Good to exclude type of traffic you don’t want. If you want to sell wool capes, think of a negative of costume, so someone looking for a Halloween costume doesn’t see your ad.

Click-Through Rate = Clicks divided by Ad Impressions
Reduce unproductive ad impressions, improve CTR

Gives a case example where looking at logs and adding in negative words helped reduce ad spend.

Where do your ads show?
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

A user types n a query
They are actively seeking answers

Content sites

User doesn’t type in query
Users encounter ads while doing something else. Reading a newspaper online is one example. It’s interrupt advertising.

Search:

More directly relevant visitors
More control on placement
Content ads

Less control over where ads are placed

Can be “spikey”, which could be good or bad
Traditionally where more click spam lives

Tip: look at your spend of content versus search. Reduce content it is higher than search.

Example of ad designed to draw clicks:

Make the ad relevant to the keyword.
Ad includes keyword
Good, strong offer
Local campaign gives you a fifth line (Google only).

Ads designed to filter clicks

Ambiguous keywords like “home care” need ads that clearly identify purpose – is this for lawn services, or senior care?
Impacts quality score, unfortunately.

Get a variety of ad styles, have a contest in the office, or look at the SERPs and see the types of styles.

First person story
Trusted authority, uses quotes
Price Appeal
Convenience – toll free number
Get information
We’re different from “them”

When looking at ad performance, look at conversion rate. One can have higher CTR, but doesn’t convert.

Please forget everything you just learned about ad rank. Please remember only that ad rank exists.

Coverage provided by Keri