Posts Tagged ‘PPC’

Regular PPC Reporting: Worthwhile or Worthless?

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns

There are a number of reports available at a user’s disposal on Google Adwords. Some will use these on a regular basis. Some may dabble in the odd report from time to time (you know – open them up, have a bit of a browse at the information in a scattergun approach, then the phone will ring, and it’ll be 3 months before you repeat the process all over again). And some, well, they probably didn’t know you could run reports through Adwords!

But is conducting regular reporting through Google Adwords a worthwhile or worthless practice for those in PPC? I’m sure you already can sense the opinion of this blogger – I mean come on, why would Google place so much information at your disposal if it was all pointless and added no value? Regular reporting is an incredibly worthwhile practice, but it is essential that you know what you are looking for, and when you find it, knowing what you are going to do with that information.

So what sort of reports should we be running on a regular basis, and why are they so valuable?

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The Importance Of Patience In PPC

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns

Now in many walks of life, I can be quite an impatient person. When I’m walking through the supermarket aisles and someone decides to put their trolley slap bang in the middle as they browse the brands of ketchup to buy. Fresh cakes from the oven that I know need 10 minutes or so to cool down before I can eat them. That website that feels like it’s taking an eternity to load. The new must-have gadget I ordered online that takes 3-4 days to arrive but I want it yesterday. All these things test my patience, and I would be the first to admit that my thresholds aren’t too high at the best of times.

Fortunately, this trait of mine doesn’t extend into my day-to-day working profession, which is a good job, as impatience and PPC don’t tend to be the best of friends!

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The Pros And Cons Of Brand Bidding

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

brand bidding, Google Adwords, Google Adwords Blog, PPC Campaigns, Quality Score

Just read a blog posted yesterday from E-Consultancy: http://econsultancy.com/blog/3817-paid-search-down

It appears that the percentage of clicks going on Paid Search is falling, which is potentially a misleading statistic (see my blog on Google and the 80:20 ratio). But they make another, very interesting point.  They indicate that the biggest fall is on brand-name keywords, and quote Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim, who says:
“Is that likely due to a reduction in spend, or Orbitz et al figuring out that they really don’t need to spend so much on paid advertising–considering they’re #1 in the organic results?” (more…)

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SES London 2009: Day 1 Review

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Conferences, Search Engine Strategies

So SES London 2009 has begun and the opening keynote speech was delivered by Matt Mason, Author of The Pirate’s Dilemma. Great opening to the conference, not related directly to commercial search but a very interesting and useful keynote. One of the running themes of this day was intellectual property and Matt covered this in his presentation. Showing how certain piracy is something to be copied rather that fought. He produced some great examples of real world pirates and their eventual affect on society and the products we use today.

I then attended Search around the world: US, Europe and Asia which explored search markets in other countries, namely China, Germany, Russia and Brazil. This had some very useful stats around search engine usage, user behaviour and tips on entering a local search market. I will present these stats once the slides are made available to me. But this was a must see for anyone considering search in another country.

Next was Search Marketing Best Practice. This was put on by the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) and covered intellectual property relating to SEO copy and PPC accounts, it also covered trademarking and some top tips on what to look for when choosing an agency. Informative presentation overall but nothing revolutionary or shocking came out of it.

There was then a panel discussing how to measure success in a 2.0 world. The was a lot of discussion around different analytics packages In the end the discussion boiled down to ensuring you have defined your KPIs and building your web analytics package around them. No one should just be looking at visits and bounce rate as a measure of success.

The final session I would like to report on was Matt Bailey’s excellent presentation on Analytics: Data Into Action. This again was focused around showing success, but also how you need to act upon your data. It focused on segmentation as a way of looking at your data and making decisions from it. This was a must see, for all types. I will be trying out some of Matt’s suggestions in the coming weeks, I will report back on any success.

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