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PPC Marketing

Here at Acquisio, we're crazy about PPC search engine marketing. In fact, it's where we got our start. In this section of the blog, you can learn all kinds of tips and tricks to managing your pay per click marketing campaigns. From bid management to retargeting, we'll help you squeeze that little extra out of your PPC budget. And if you're really into PPC marketing, you might even consider checking out our PPC bid management software.

Process or Results?

February 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Credit: Chalkie_CC

There’s a misconception in SEM: that the way to succeed is to focus on performance. This column is intended to make it clear that while the medium is all about measurability, accountability, and performance at the end of the day, you don’t achieve those things just by obsessing about them. Caring about performance may be a necessary condition for achieving it, but as any concert pianist knows, it’s far from sufficient.

The formula boils down as follows.

1. Performance Super Powers

Most of us who do PPC think of it as a performance medium, and indeed pride ourselves for our “chops.” When Seth Godin challenges us to be able to answer the question “what’s your superpower” at a cocktail party, you aren’t allowed to trot out some soft management skills related to a very broad industry that you happen to work in. You need to answer something like:…

Filed Under: PPC Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Learn How to Get More Money out of Google Grants

February 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you are asking yourself “what is a Google Grant?”, then your eyes are going to light up and your going to find a family member or friend and tell them about it. Basically, Google provides eligible 501(c)(3) organizations with an initial $10,000/month to serve ads on Google.com only. (Google currently serves more than 6,000+ Non Profits to date). Now, with that said, Google does have some pretty intense requirements in order to get that free money.

Here’s the first round of requirements:

  • Hold current 501(c)(3) status, as determined by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service
  • Acknowledge and agree to the application’s required certifications regarding nondiscrimination and donation receipt and use.
  • Google for Nonprofits is open only to organizations based in the United States
  • Website cannot display revenue generating ads, such as Google AdSense or affiliate advertising links

Who is not eligible for a Google Grant:…

Filed Under: AdWords Tips, PPC Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Bid Management: You Make the Rules

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Dear Diary...

If you manage online campaigns, you’re probably overwhelmed by the daily manual labor required to manage campaigns properly. Campaign managers often spend over one third of their time on tedious tasks such as bid management or keyword performance monitoring.

Lucky you!

Many tools are now available on the market that can help you automatically change the main parameters of your campaigns (keywords, bids, ad texts, positions or even landing pages) according to precise rules (that you set according to your goals and objectives). This frees up some of your time which will be better spent on developing improved strategy, text ads, and landing pages.

Adwords has developed their Automated Rules, and the main vendors in Campaign Management (Acquisio, Marin, etc.) propose some very interesting PPC Automation Tools. The goal of this post is not to analyse or compare these solutions (that could be the subject of another article), but to see how to make the most of them….

Filed Under: PPC Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Beginner’s PPC Guide: 5 Tips to Simplify Your Paid Search Campaign

February 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

Managing an effective paid search campaign is daunting for even the most experienced PPC expert. And for us mere mortals, it can seem almost impossible, especially if it’s one of twenty other marketing activities you’re managing. Here are a few tips that can help you simplify your PPC campaign to make day-to-day management easier.

1. Clean Up Your Ad Groups

Credit: clogwog

When you’re feeling strapped for time, it can be tempting to toss hundreds of keywords and dozens of ads into one large ad group and let them run. After all, it seems logical that managing a few uber-ad groups would be far simpler than a dozen or more smaller, tightly coupled ad groups, right? Wrong.

Taking the time to set up several, tightly focused ad groups with highly relevant keywords, ads and landing pages will be simpler and save you time in the long run. The data you collect on these ad groups will be far more relevant and actionable. You’ll know quickly which keywords and ads are working well and which aren’t so you can more easily optimize your campaign to improve performance.

What’s more, you’ll see better campaign performance from tightly coupled ad groups. Google will award you with higher Quality Scores, which will lower your Cost Per Click (CPC), and you’ll see a better Click Through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate….

Filed Under: Marketing for Beginners, PPC Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Mobile Paid Search 101

February 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In this clip, Marc Poirier Co-Founder and VP Marketing at Acquisio talks about mobile PPC and its implications for your paid search campaigns. Specifically, he looks at (1) the growth of mobile PPC, (2) what kind of advertisers it affects the most, (3) how mobile PPC ads differ from desktop PPC ads, (4) mobile landing pages, (5) how to choose mobile keywords, and (6) how to measure the success of your mobile paid search campaigns.

 

Filed Under: Landing Pages, Mobile Marketing, PPC Marketing, Trends in Search Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Adding Value Through Facebook Advertising

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Facebook Ads

Convincing brands to allow your agency to spend their money on Facebook ads is a tough sell.

It’s a ‘tough sell’ because they know, as well as you do, that Facebook is an emerging channel where few of the rules are known, and in which the conditions are constantly changing.

With this knowledge many brands say that they should manage their own Facebook ad campaigns or avoid serving any ads at all. Some report that they have tested Facebook ads with other agencies and that it didn’t work or that they have heard many stories of ad campaigns going wrong and that they don’t want to waste their budget.

A disconnect often occurs where Paid Search Experts at agencies take the opinion that Facebook ads will run the same as Google ones, while brand managers on the client side hold the view that Facebook ads are more akin to Display advertising; totally different to Google.

The upshot of this is that brands are not convinced by the credentials of Agency-Land to deliver Facebook ads successfully. Yet.

I am sure that this will ring true for every one of you.

It is my intention with this column to give an insight each month into how you may be able to better-demonstrate value to your clients with this challenging channel, making it easier for you to win, grow and keep Facebook advertising business in 2012….

Filed Under: PPC Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Acquisio and Amaze at Figaro’s Digital Marketing Conference

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Following on from our Figaro Digital seminar on leveraging data in display, we were invited back along with Amaze, one of our clients, to the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference on 23rd November in London. Together, we explained more about how agencies use our performance media platform and delved deeper into how sophisticated reporting capabilities can support client’s efforts in areas such as retargeting.

Click to Visit the Video on Figaro Ditial's Site

We’ve been working with Amaze for over a year now and know just how important effective reporting is for maintaining their excellent client relationships. Making reporting quick and painless lets the agency spend more time analysing the data and advising their clients on how to further optimise results.

Getting reporting right also helps agencies focus attention on  matters such as integrating data, channels and campaigns to deliver a wealth of retargeting and attribution benefits. If you’re interested in how you can drive display success through incorporating search data, or whether to approach attribution modelling from an equal weighting or recency model, this presentation will help.

Take a look at the video on Figaro Digital’s site to find out more.

Filed Under: Display Advertising, Europe, PPC Marketing, SEO, Trends in Search Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Performance Predictions for 2012 in iMedia Connection

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When iMedia Connection asked us recently to provide a few ideas about what performance marketing would look like in 2012, we naturally jumped at the chance. It is one of the most, vibrant, productive and effective sectors of the marketing mix and therefore one where we expect to see some key developments this coming year.

The article is called What to look forward to in 2012, and here’s an excerpt about the state of play in search, one of the most important facets of performance media:

Today’s search marketing capabilities and results have effectively commoditised this marketing channel. For some years now, none of us have worked with a brand that would not benefit from including search in their marketing efforts. This maturation has however meant that the returns achievable by agencies are diminishing, regardless of the continued innovation and efforts in the channel and thus, agencies are struggling further to monetise their services in this space….

Filed Under: Europe, Mobile Marketing, PPC Marketing, Social Media, Trends in Search Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mobile PPC Strategies – Interview with Laura Garrido

January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Laura Garrido

With such high expectations for mobile advertising this year, marketers have a lot to consider — from high-level mobile ad strategy and deployment to working out a mobile budget. Well, with Google as the #1 mobile site destination, one thing is clear enough: mobile PPC will likely be part of any mobile advertising strategy.

Recently, I got to ask Laura Garrido about her experience with mobile PPC. Laura leads the PPC team at NVI, a search marketing and social media agency in Montreal. So she’s overseen strategy and deployment for all their clients’ mobile search campaigns. During our chat, Laura touches on:

  • Why to invest in mobile PPC
  • How to budget for mobile PPC
  • Which verticals perform best in mobile search
  • and how mobile PPC strategies can differ from desktop ones
…
Filed Under: Mobile Marketing, PPC Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Will Impression Share be Google’s Next Big Revenue Contributor of 2012?

January 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Well, it’s official. Google will be releasing Ad Group Level Impression Share Metrics (IS) for both Search and Display networks, at the request of their many advertisers. However, there are some questions that arise to the overall value of the Impression Share Metric.

In a nutshell, Impression Share measures how frequently an advertisers Ads are showing, and if the percentage is LOW, it means that if the campaign is profitable, then the advertiser is losing potential business. However, Impression Share does pose a few questions of it’s overall value. For example, here are just a few.

  • Will advertisers feel “forced” to restructure their campaign and adgroups structures?
  • Will advertisers start to lose focus on ROAS% with these additional metrics?
  • Is this just another evil way for Google to increase their revenues? (ok, a little overboard I know)…
Filed Under: AdWords Tips, PPC Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
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