An Introduction To Remarketing

I recently reviewed an awesome PPC Associates eBook about going after the Wide Tail of SEM (I highly recommend reading it). One of the themes of the wide tail is going after all channels within online marketing. One exciting channel, display, has a really cool tactic known as remarketing, also called retargeting. Today, I will give a quick introduction to remarketing and how you can get involved in this exciting marketing channel.

What Is Remarketing?

Target Market

The concept is quite simple. Let’s say a customer comes to your website. They look around a bit (and maybe even place some items in their shopping cart). However, they leave without buying anything. This is a highly qualified customer. They were so close to making a purchase, but weren’t quite ready. Perhaps they wanted to do more research. Perhaps they didn’t have their credit card on them. Perhaps they were just not ready to buy.

Before the invention of remarketing, you had no easy way to reach out this customer, unless they had created and account on your site (entering their email address). This is quite unfortunate because marketing costs money. You paid to get that customer to your site, but they left without making a purchase. Remarketing changes all of this. All you have to do is place remarketing pixels on your website. Then, you can target those customers who visited your site without converting, via display advertisements across the Internet. Let’s say someone who visited your site without converting is browsing the Yahoo! homepage or perhaps CNN. Your remarketing banner could show up, entice them to click through back to your site, and then convert!

Remarketing Is Getting More Sophisticated

A few years back, remarketing was relatively simple. You didn’t have a ton of options. However, these days things are evolving quickly. Because of the quick evolution, I recommend working with a company such as AdMedia that can help you with strategy (make sure to check out their Remarketing Advertising Solutions). How is remarketing getting more sophisticated? I see a few trends.

First, more and more platform options exist. There are a sea of remarketing platforms. I recommend auditioning them all and then choosing the one that meets your needs the best.
Second, people are now leveraging more inventory sources than ever before. I’m talking about RTBs, directly negotiated inventory, and big display networks such as the Google Display Network (GDN). More remarketing sources means more inventory and more options to connect with your customer.
Third, I see the creatives getting more complex and more dynamic.
Fourth, I see remarketing platforms embrace sophisticated bidding algorithms. This is right up the alley of the PPC pro who is used to a platform like Marin Software, Kenshoo, or Acquisio.

When you get into remarketing, make sure to take your time to pick the right vendor and craft a comprehensive strategy. Really think it through.

A Cost Effective Strategy

Results really differ by company. However, from auditing the industry and speaking with those who run remarketing campaigns, I generally hear good things about this marketing strategy. One word of caution: Don’t measure the results of your display and remarketing campaigns based on “view through” conversions. It’s always better to use click through conversions. If remarketing works on a CPA basis for you on a click through basis, you have a brand new marketing channel that will help raise your site’s conversion rate. You will target those customers you already paid to attract to your site, via marketing dollars. Remarketing is your tool to get the most out of your overall marketing dollars. Have you tried remarketing yet?

Image of Target Market © iStockPhoto – alexskopje

A Few PPC Ad Copy Ideas

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 11 1

I’ve written a variety of posts here on PPC Ian about paid search ad copy such as Leveraging Social Extensions, Ad Rotation Is Changing, and Six Sitelinks In AdWords. Paid search ad copy is super high leverage. A higher CTR means more traffic/conversions and also a higher quality score (and therefore ad position and CPC benefits). If you are savvy about your ad copy selection, you can scale your CTR while maintaining or even growing your conversion rate. Following are a few PPC ad copy ideas that may help you choose your next winner!

PPC Ian Billboard

Tip 1: Truly understand your customer. Have you run surveys on your site? Have you or someone at your organization interviewed your customers? Do you make an effort to sit in on customer calls? In the early days of a new PPC account, we all often throw up a few ads up and let AdWords or adCenter pick the winner. We keep repeating a few times and the strategy really works. This is a great way to start, but these days I’m also recommending a more strategic approach. If you truly understand your customer, you will hit on the most important points in your copy. Paid search ads offer very limited space. Make sure your ads hit on the top 2-3 reasons your customers buy from you! Most of the time, such ads will have the highest impression to conversion performance.
Tip 2: Optimize for the entire funnel, impression to conversion. Ad copy testing is often focused on click-through-rate (CTR). A lot of the time, a higher CTR ad will truly help your program. That said, some high CTR ads will offer a lower back end conversion rate. The true metric I’m looking at these days: conversions/impressions. You will never go wrong optimizing your ads based on the entire customer funnel.
Tip 3: Test Google’s “optimize for conversions” ad rotation setting. These days, you’re able to rotate evenly, optimize for clicks, or optimize for conversions. Optimizing for conversions allows you to accomplish tip #2, in an automated fashion (at least, on a micro/ad group level). And, Google will not make any rash decisions. If there’s not enough conversion data to make the right choice, they default to optimizing for clicks.

These are just a few high level thoughts going through my mind these days when it comes to ad copy. What types of frameworks are you leveraging in your ad copy testing?

What’s Your Mobile PPC Strategy?

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 5 0

Do you advertise on mobile smartphones and tablets? Mobile search marketing is absolutely taking off. If you’ve tapped out the easy opportunities on desktop search, you absolutely must take a look at mobile. Even if you haven’t exhausted desktop search, you’ll want to look at mobile as part of your overall strategy. Today, I wanted to take a step back and provide a high level framework to think through mobile search marketing. I hope this framework helps in formulating (or refining) your own mobile strategy.

Start With Google AdWords, But Don’t Forget AdCenter

As with desktop search, you’ll get the most leverage with Google AdWords. That said, Microsoft adCenter provides great mobile search marketing opportunities as well. Just like Google AdWords, adCenter allows you to create separate campaigns for tablets and smartphones. They even allow you to segment by device. The key message here: adCenter has been innovating and you’ll be amazed what you find! Make sure your mobile strategy covers all search engines.

Create Separate Campaigns For Tablets & Smartphones

Mobile search is quite a bit different than desktop search. We’re talking about different conversion rates, different CPCs, different bid landscapes, and different strategies. I highly recommend managing your mobile campaigns separately. Specifically, you will want to segment out unique campaigns for desktop, tablets, and mobile smartphones. Sure, this creates more overhead and complexity, but it also gives you the precision needed to really dial in your campaigns. Remember to go granular. Just because mobile is a smaller percentage of your ad spend now, it will one day surpass desktop search. Set up the proper infrastructure now for long-term scale and success.

Think Through Your Mobile Customer Experience

Mobile Smartphone Ads

Most likely, your tablet experience will be similar to your desktop experience. Tablets are incredibly powerful and offer large screens. Think through your tablet experience. If you’re thinking of doing something different than your desktop experience (especially a really simplified mobile smartphone-like experience), definitely make sure to test. You may be surprised at what the conversion rates tell you when you offer something too simplified. Bonus tip: Understand how your site views tablets. Does your website bucket them into the “mobile” bucket? If so, you may be incorrectly sending tablet traffic to the smartphone site. Make sure to QA for both iPads and also Android tablets. Both should go to the intended tablet site.

Now, when it comes to mobile smartphones, you will have a more difficult decision. First and foremost, I recommend developing a mobile smartphone site. Most likely, your mobile site will be different than your desktop site. No matter how simple your business, desktop experiences just don’t work on small mobile smartphone screens. Even if you don’t opt to send paid traffic to your mobile smartphone site, you will need it to capture organic and direct traffic. Bonus tip: Consider testing mobile smartphone landing pages. Landing page testing is a great way to improve conversion rate, on both desktop and mobile experiences.

After your mobile smartphone site has been developed, you now will want to start testing paid traffic from AdWords (and adCenter). If you have a long conversion funnel and a strong call center, you’ll also want to consider mobile click-to-call. Click-to-call is the perfect way to leverage your call center while bypassing your mobile smartphone site if you don’t have one or if it performs at too high of a CPA for paid search to effectively work. Alternately, you could send traffic to your mobile site, but also display your phone number in a sitelink. Users on mobile smartphones are on phones. Offering/highlighting the opportunity to call is a great way to convert new customers.

I’ve been thinking about mobile a lot lately. Mobile tablet and smartphone advertising marks an important shift in our industry (perhaps the largest since AdWords was invented). What’s your mobile PPC strategy?

Image in this post © Google and advertisers in screenshot

Watch Out For Double Serving On Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 1 1

Hey everyone, it’s Sunday night and I waited a little late to blog, so I have a quick post for you tonight. That said, it’s a good one! Today, I’m thrilled to share a Google AdWords tip that will give you instant leverage.

Copy Paste Double Serving

If you’ve been advertising on Google AdWords for a while, you probably know that double serving is prohibited – most of the time. Google is all about user experience. They want each business to show up one time. If you have a duplicate site that provides the same experience as your main site (or links into your main site as a “doorway page”), that does not add to user experience. It wastes the user’s time.

There’s one rare case where double serving is allowed: The case of acquiring businesses. Let’s say you own a business and advertise on AdWords. Then, let’s say you acquire another that already advertises on AdWords (and provides different user experience than your main site). In this case, you should be golden – you can continue to double serve as long as the two businesses remain different. (A quick tip: Let’s say you plan to acquire a business. You may want to ask your Google account management team if you would be able to double serve. It’s always best to know this type of stuff up front, before spending money.)

Now, onto today’s tip… Paid search is getting super competitive. You will get a ton of leverage via traditional PPC optimization – keyword generation, bidding, ad copy testing, landing page testing, etc. However, it’s also possible to get leverage by “cleaning up” the landscape. Audit the competitive landscape. Look at all geos. Search at different times of the day. (Side note: Tools such as Adgooroo can help greatly with this type of analysis.) See if any of your competitors are double serving. If they appear to be breaking the rules, alert your Google account management team. See if they can run it by their policy team. In many cases, they will pull down the double serving. The result: Less competition for you! Hope this quick tip helps. Sometimes, it’s not only about optimizing your account, but it’s also about keeping the landscape as clean as possible. At the end of the day, this type of policing will help improve the experience for those searching in your vertical, and your bottom line too.

Image of copy/paste double serving © iStockPhoto – pressureUA

Check Out My Weekend Checks Guest Post

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 24 3

One of the really popular posts here on PPC Ian is my post about Six Essential PPC Campaign Checks. These checks are great and make sense any day of the week. However, let’s say it’s the weekend and you’re super busy. Let’s say you don’t have a lot of time for paid search. That’s ok, but there are still some essential checks you just need to do, even if you are on a tight schedule. As such, when I got the opportunity to guest post today on the PPC Associates Blog, I wrote a post about Four Essential Weekend Campaign Checks. I highly recommend checking it out. I’m passionate about the checks, especially the part about Protecting Your Brand Keywords (link hijacking tends to ramp up on weekends). I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank David, Hillary, and the entire PPC Associates team for the opportunity to guest post on their awesome blog. If you’re looking for a PPC Agency, I highly recommend contacting PPC Associates. They are awesome!

Update: Hillary from PPC Associates just informed me that my guest post made it to Marketing Day for May, 24 on Marketing Land. You can check it out here – just scroll down to the “Search Marketing” section. Sweet!

Image of PPC Associates © PPCAssociates.com

Exact and Phrase Match Changing On AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 18 3

Google recently announced that they are Improving Exact and Phrase Match on Google AdWords. This is a really important change that’s happening right now (mid May). If you’re advertising on Google AdWords, today’s post is going to be super important for you.

So what’s Google doing? Basically, they are expanding the reach of exact and phrase. In addition to their classical definitions, both exact and phrase will now match to close variations (such as plurals and misspellings). An example: Let’s say you’re buying [mortgage]. It could now match to [mortgages] or even [mmortgage].

For advertisers who are smaller and have fewer overall keywords in their accounts, this could actually help. You’ll automatically match to more keywords (which should perform more-or-less similar since the variations are really close). You’re going to get more traffic (and hopefully conversions)! However, if you have a larger account with all the variations, this change could create some mapping and bidding issues. Why? When you’re large, it’s all about control. While a small advertiser may just have the word [mortgage] in their account, the large advertiser may already have [mortgage], [mortgages], and [mmortgage]. Moreover, the really savvy advertiser will have these split into separate adgroups with custom ads (and will have all three variations bid at different levels depending on their performance). With Google’s change, you don’t know which one will get triggered and you may therefore potentially deliver the wrong ad to the user. Moreover, you may overpay on some variations if you have lower bids set for them.

However, don’t worry! Right now, you can go into your advanced campaign settings and opt out if you’d like. My advice: Whether you are a smaller advertiser or larger, I recommend testing selectively. You’ll want to opt out for most campaigns, but opt in a few test campaigns. Then, you’ll want to test and see how the new exact and phrase matching do in your test campaigns as compared to the controls.

Also, keep in mind that the new matching will not affect quality score. Quality score is only calculated on Google.com for the exact query you are buying. That is good news! The net effect: I think this is a good change Google is making and I’m thrilled they give the advertiser the control to opt out if they’d like.

Ad Rotation Is Changing On Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 3 1

I’m a huge fan of Google’s ad rotation. There are three settings right now: rotate evenly, optimize for clicks, and optimize for conversions. All three have their time and place. In the case of rotate evenly, some major changes are happening. You can read all about the New Changes To Ad Rotation on the Google AdWords blog.

Rotate Evenly

So what’s happening? Basically, rotate evenly will only work for 30 days. Then, after 30 days, Google will start optimizing for clicks. I can totally see why Google is doing this. I’m sure plenty of advertisers set rotate evenly during ad copy testing and then forget all about it. Due to a less than optimized CTR (they forgot to conclude the test and pick a winner), the advertiser is getting fewer clicks and Google is earning less revenue that way. And, honestly, from an advertiser’s perspective it is nice to have something like this in place because we all forget about ad copy tests from time to time.

That said, there are some downsides here. First, when I test ads, I like to look at both CTR and conversion rate. It’s easy to conclude a winner based on CTR since it’s top of funnel and statistical significance comes fast. However, if you’re in a lower conversion rate vertical, getting statistical significance on conversion rate can take some time. Frequently, it will take more than 30 days. In my opinion, 30 days is just not enough. Therefore, the 30 day limit will lessen the ability to perform a proper ad copy test for certain advertisers.

The second downside I see here is you cannot use rotate evenly to allocate ads anymore. Let’s say you have a specific allocation in mind. Let’s say you have two ads, one of which should show up 90% of the time with the other showing up 10% of the time. The historical trick was to set the campaign to rotate evenly and then to deploy the first ad 9 times and the second ad 1 time. That quick hack gets you exactly the ad allocation you want. However, with rotate evenly only lasting 30 days, this ability will become too cumbersome. Sure, you could re-deploy all the ads every 30 days, but that’s certainly going to create more work.

So, where does this leave us? Really, I see two action items. First, it will be critical to perform an account audit. Where are you utilizing rotate evenly? Find ways to conclude those tests and get away from rotate evenly. To the extent you can figure it out ahead of time, there will be no unwanted surprises. Second, it’s time to really think through ad copy testing strategy. Some of the strategies that were used in the past may no longer be viable (especially if your tests took more than 30 days). This applies not only to ad copy testing, but landing page testing too (if you happen to test landing pages by splitting ads via rotate evenly). Best of luck! Personally, I’m not the largest fan of this particular change, but it also probably won’t be that big of a deal for the majority of advertisers.

Leveraging Google Social Extensions In Your Ad Copy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Apr 30 1

A few posts ago, I wrote about how Google+ Shows Up In Paid Search. Google+ is actually showing up in paid search two different ways. First, as you can see in my prior post (and by simply searching for “insurance” on Google), organic Google+ profiles are showing up in the right rail, displacing paid search ads. Second, Google+ is actually showing up right within paid search ads. You can see that in the screenshot below. When you search for “mortgage refinance”, Quicken Loans has a really sweet integration of their Google+ profile, via Google Social Extensions (also known as Social Annotations). I’ve been researching these opportunities over the last week and today I’m going to provide some quick tips on how you can take advantage of both of them!

First and foremost, a bi-directional link is required to take advantage of these Google+ advertising opportunities. It’s quite simple, and this allows you to verify to Google that you own your Google+ page. All you need to do is link to your Google+ profile from your homepage. Then, you need to also link to your homepage from your Google+ profile. Specific information on how to do this is located on Google’s Social Extensions Tutorial.

Once your bi-directional link is in place, you will want to get as many followers as possible and regularly update your Google+ page. The more relevant your Google+ page, the more likely it will show up within the organic search opportunity. On the paid side of things, not sure this affects things as much, but it’s still important because your ad is likely to have a higher CTR if you have more followers.

Once you’re ready to start leveraging Google+ in your paid ads via Google Social Extensions, it’s as simple as setting up a new ad extension in your AdWords account. Add that extension to the campaigns in which you’re interested in testing this exciting feature. I wanted to share two interesting benefits of Google Social Extensions.

First, Social Extensions are complementary to your other extensions (such as Sitelinks). If you already have Sitelinks activated, you can also activate the Social Extensions in parallel. You can see this firsthand in the Quicken Loans copy below. Personally, I think the combination of both extensions is unbeatable.
Second, Social Extensions will improve your CTR. Sources tell me that the CTR improvement can be as high as 5%. Just having that Social Extension there adds credibility to your ad.

So, there you have it! Are you using Google Social Extensions yet? If not, I highly recommend trying this great strategy. Personally, I still have a lot to learn about Google+ but I feel like I’m on the right track!

An Example of Great Ad Copy On Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 8 3

Ad copy is one of the single biggest campaign levers on Google AdWords. Optimize your ad copy and you will experience an increased CTR (which means more traffic). Ultimately, that higher CTR will translate into a better quality score and therefore decreased CPCs with increased ad position. Increase the effectiveness of your ad copy and your ads will also display more sitelinks.

I’m always testing new ad copy. Today, I wanted to share the competitive landscape from the people search vertical (check out the screenshot below). I used to work at Inflection, one of the hottest startups in the Bay Area and a leader in the people search space.

In the screenshot below, check out the first ad for Intelius. Intelius is leveraging the “1) 2)” ad copy strategy. I really like this ad because it illustrates the simplicity of Intelius. I’m definitely not the only one. The fact that Intelius has four sitelinks displaying on a generic term like “people search” means that their CTR is quite high. If your company offers a streamlined service, I highly recommend testing the “1) 2)” ad copy yourself.