 |
|
|
|
 |
October 18, 2006 |
|
By: Louise Rijk - Bio - Blog |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search Engine Marketing:
Maximizing PPC Campaign Budgets
The advantages that come from paid search advertising all involve managing the budget you are willing to spend on site visits. Unlike fixed placement display advertising, PPC paid search programs offer you dozens of opportunities to use that budget to its fullest and exert more control over exactly which visitors you are paying for. Below is a list of important options to consider when attempting to maximize your budget to its fullest.
Demographic Targeting
All of the major PPC paid search programs offer some way to target ads to certain geographic locations such as a state or customer designed demographic area. Location targeting is a necessity for local businesses. Currently, MSN AdCenter is offering many new ways to segment and target the audience by age, sex, and other demographics. Demographic targeting can be extremely helpful when you know that your product or service targets a certain audience. While returns have been good, MSN's targeting is still in its early stages. It's best to use this feature to bid higher or lower on certain narrowly defined target groups rather than filtering out people who you feel are outside of your target demographic.
Matching Options
All three of the major PPC engines are instituting some kind of matching system for keywords phrases. Often broader matching options (broad match for Google and MSN and Advanced Match for Yahoo) are too broad, and may increase impressions (and worse clicks) for visitors that don't apply to what you have to offer. The more targeted match options, e.g. phrase match and exact match at Google AdWords, are usually best. You may miss some qualified leads, but that can usually be made up for by using the next strategy.
Tail Keyword Phrases
One of the best ways to pick up targeted clicks that you may be filtering out due to your other efforts is to make an effort to include low traffic, low cost tail end keywords. Using several keyword tools, such as WordTracker, Keyword Discovery or free tools from Yahoo and Google, you can generate ideas for less common keywords that you can include in your PPC Campaign. Because these keywords are less commonly searched for they are most likely not as expensive to bid on, reducing the risk of including such words. This can bring your average cost per click down and go a long way towards stretching out your budget. Also, because these words are more targeted, you may see increased conversions for these words as well.
Negative Keywords
Using the same keyword research you use to find tail keywords, you may encounter variations of keywords that do not pertain to what you are offering. Adding these as negative keywords, keywords that do not trigger your ad to appear in the search results can reduce impressions, which can improve the performance of your PPC campaign. Be careful about which words you add as negatives, as you do not want to accidentally filter out qualified traffic. For example, you may want to add the names and abbreviations of other states if you are only selling your product in a certain area. However, adding the "Oregon" abbreviation of "OR" as a negative keyword would be detrimental as the word "or" could be an important component of some searches.
Day Parting
MSN and Google are currently offering dayparting options, which you can use to control bid amounts based on times of day. For some businesses, it may be best to turn off ads entirely during the early hours of the morning or during the weekend when less serious searches are being done. Or you may simply choose to bid lower on keywords at that time, and save budgeted money for later in the day. Make sure you look at established campaign history data before turning ads off at any time of day. You may inadvertently filter out good traffic if your ad is not showing up at a certain hour.
Removing Non-Performing Keywords
While this can be the most effective strategy in reducing cost, it can also be the most dangerous. Examine long-standing campaign data to find out which keywords are incurring high costs without converting. Take a look at this list of keywords and consider them carefully. While it may make sense to eliminate costly words that don't result in conversions, you need to consider what other purpose these keywords may be serving. Many high cost, high traffic keywords are generalized, and can be important in getting a customer's attention when they are early in the buying cycle. While these keywords may not show a direct conversion, they can be responsible for putting your message in front of someone who may purchase further down the line. Pulling these words out of your PPC campaign should only happen after in-depth analysis of the campaign statistics.
Improve Your Quality Score
Currently, two out of the three major PPC paid search ad networks (Google AdWords and MSN AdCenter) include a quality score as a factor in deciding ranking for each display of your ads in the search results. Working on improving the factors that contribute to the quality score is a good way to get discounted clicks and spread your budget out further. Make sure your ads are as relevant as possible; include the keywords whenever you can. Make the ads compelling as well; include a call to action. Increasing click-throughs while decreasing impressions will bring up your click through rate, an important part of the quality score. Also, improve the relevancy and security of your landing pages whenever possible, as Google is now grading this as part of their quality score as well.
While your strategy can become very in-depth, these basic concepts, when employed correctly, can go a long way towards optimizing your account and maximizing your PPC campaign spend.
|
|
| |
| |
| |
 |
|
 |
| |
 |
|
SBX 2006 - Business Seminar Series:
Louise Rijk presents: "Using New Media Marketing to Boost Image and Sales"
Oct. 25, 2006, Christina's Function Facility, Foxboro, Massachusetts. Learn more.
WebmasterWorld PubCon 2006
Louise Rijk presents: "Viral and WOMM Marketing Management"
Nov. 14-17, Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Clark University - Graduate School for Information Technology
Louise Rijk presents one-day seminar: "Ecommerce Web Sites and Online Marketing"
Jan. 10, 2007, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
Copyright © 1999-2006. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
251 West Central St., Suite 28, Natick, Massachusetts 01760, USA
Tel: 508-647-5151 Fax: 508-647-5150
E-mail: info@advmediaproductions.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|