Search Marketing Sage

The next panel on Thursday featured panelists Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance, Brian Massey of Conversion Scientist, Wister Walcott of Marin Software, and David Szetela of Clix Marketing.

Christine Churchill

Christine Churchill was up first and talked about PPC and analytics synergies. Christine encouraged everyone to link AdWords to Google Analytics to gain additional insight that helps you fine tune campaigns. You also can get custom reports and data by hooking up these two applications.

For example, you might wonder what the best position is for your ad. You can use the keyword position report in Analytics to analyze each keyword, verifying the visit volume, and look at performance metrics like “time on site” and others you can’t get in Google AdWords directly. Remember that a cheaper cost per click (CPC) and a better conversion rate means that the cost per acquisition (CPA) is much cheaper in the lower ad positions. You have to balance the selected position, however, with the volume. If you lower the ad position too much, you sacrifice volume, but if you raise the ad position too much, you sacrifice the conversion rate (often the case). So you have to find the right balance of both.

Using the position preference in AdWords, you can set the position preference for the optimum placement for your ad. She suggests setting position preference at the campaign level. She also suggests that you not target too tightly in position preference — strive for 3-4 position range.

There are limitations to this approach. You have to use this method with CPC pricing, not CPA pricing. It takes time too because you have to go to the keyword level. So prioritize keywords.

Another element in Google Analytics is Advanced Segments. You can slice and dice the data in new ways. You can slice nearly any metric on analytics reports and combine them with goals. If you look at your data in aggregate, you’re missing the boat. Also use segments to refine analysis, for instance with targeting cities, regions or language or first time vs. return visitors.

Another example might be if you are questioning if you should run ads in the early morning. So you’d have to check the behavior of PPC ads in early morning hours. By setting up and advanced segment, you could look at visitors that come in a certain time range and their actions.

Christine also mentioned custom reports. You can drag and drop design custom reports with metrics you use and configure. You can build them on the fly and still look at historical data. However, not all metrics are available for all dimensions. Custom reports are great for isolating odd behavior patterns and troubleshooting. By putting together custom reports with advanced segmenting in Analtyics, the power comes from being able to isolate specific visitors and then drill down through dimensions. Very powerful.

Brian Massey

Next up was Brian Massey of Conversion Scientist covering what we can learn from the “Bad Boys of Conversion”. He started by talking about Perry Belcher. He talked about “squeeze” pages, designed to build spammers’ lists. They can be as much as 20,000 pixels long! Here’s what the bad guys do that works for them:

• They have a hard-hitting headline — be clearly relevant to reader’s interest.
• An alternating bold/not bold bulleted list. Even if you don’t use this method, be sure to help your reader through the page (perhaps with subheads).
• The “Johnson Box” is a coupon-style look. The design draws the eye to an important message. This is just one way to do this.
• Testimonials work in almost any industry. Pictures also tend to help the value of testimonials.
• The Guarantee or the risk reversal is an effective way to increase conversions. No risk purchase, for example. For lead generation, try “we respect your privacy”.
• The Buy Button — ask for the business. (example: price crossed out with new price and add to cart)
• Interesting, try popovers if you know the EXACT product they are looking for.
• If they try to leave the page — ask them “are you sure you want to leave?”.
• Try Google’s new retargeting feature. Surfers are 5x to 80x more likely to click on a retargeted ad. For each visitor, 5-10 will come back and search for the domain name within an hour!

David Szeleta

Next up was David Szeleta with a top ten list of cool new things in PPC advertising. Here are David’s top ten tips/cool list:

1. Dayparting with Bing Data
   Bing allows you to see conversions by the hour, unlike Google. Very interesting.
2. Ads at the Top of Gmail
   To get your ad to the top of Gmail, you need to use content network first. Create a placement targeted ad group and put mail.google.com, inbox top center to get that placement. Wow!
3. New AdWords User Types
4. New Conversion Optimizer Features
   You can now target by CPA as your bid type. It automates bid management where you set the CPA.
5. View-through Conversions
   Counts the number of conversions after the ad is viewed on the content network but not clicked on. It can show how influential the ad is even if the ad is not clicked. David feels it’s about 50% accurate.
6. Focused Change History
   You can focus change history to one ad group or campaign to run faster.
7. New AdWords Keyword Tool
   It maps well to the content network categories.
8. New AdWords Placement Tool
   The old tool failed to reveal 50% of the sites available! The new tool is much better and provides better segmenting possibilities.
9. AdWords Sitelinks Ads
   Allows the ad to include more links (up to four) in the ad. Helps dominate more of the search ad space too! You can add up to four links if you have a very good quality score. Google claims 30% average increase in click through rate (CTR), but David has seen 50-60% improvement. You can put in ten links right now, but they only show four. Consider adding all 10 because Google may decide to show more in the future.
10. New AdWords Graphs
    Google has pulled the analytics charts into the AdWords interface. Very handy.

Wister Walcott

The last panelist was Wister Walcott who covered “Structured Search Tips and Techniques”, using data from your website or a feed to build campaigns (focused on long tail). Structured search marketing involves a changing list, feed or catalog (like real estate, products, etc.). It is essential for businesses in retail ecommerce, real estate, ringtones/media. It’s an ongoing effort and requires techniques for keyword/creative generation, inventory linkage and net/margin and ROI calculation for multi-product orders.

The requirements for structured search marketing include:

• Tail-heavy business (like Amazon)
• Landing pages for each product/property
• Raw search term report
• List of products