TABLE OF CONTENTS

PPC Heroes' Favorite PPC Mistakes: Lessons Learned

Where are They? Leverage Geography or PPC Success

Re-Evaluating Success: The Value of PPC Audits

The Buyer Journey: Using Paid Media To Drive Demand

Keynote with Tim Ash: “The Context and the Power of Framing: Biasing Your Offer with Irrational Neuromarketing”

Lead Gen & eCommerce PPC: You Got The Conversion, Now What?

The Best and Worst Bid Rules Ever Written

The Psychology of PPC: How Consumer Behavior Affects You

Making The Case For Match Type Segmentation

Building And Managing A World-Class PPC Team

PPC Heroes' Favorite PPC Mistakes: Lessons Learned

Mismanaging Restricted Budgets

Develop a strategic bid plan

Increased bis = higher CPCs = less traffic

Ad rank increase = CTR increase = QS increase = CPC decrease

The Biggest Blunders and what I learned

Google Display Network

Ordered by CEO to shut down profitable GDN campaigns and relaunch them in separate accounts.

Campaigns lost 5k per day

Sunk profit for entire department and was near fired

Location targeting: What targeting?

Important AdWords campaign o Bing

Import went smooth (So I thought)

Spent entire months budget in 16 hours

Geo-targeting flipped to “entire world” during import

Had more clicks from Africa than in Erie PA

I’ve Made a Huge Mistake

Jeff Allen, @JeffAllenUT

President, Hanapin Marketing

Know your business

Making decisions in isolation

Now That I’m All Growed Up: The Lesson I Learned the Hard Way

Amanda West-Bookwalter, @Amanda_Westbook

Senior Account Manager, Hanapin Marketing

Running a campaign:

Ad URL updates never happened… And no tracking was added to any of the URLs… And they ran and ran….

Until someone on the team noticed. :|

What went wrong? The ads weren’t in the same platform, thus no automatic URL updates.

Why?

The rookie didn’t understand the project.

The QA and follow up processes were incomplete.

What did I learn?

  1. How tracking works (it’s important to understand how everything ties together)
  2. QA isn’t just about looking for the obvious stuff.
  3. Every account has its own nuances. Learn them. Teach them.
  4. Keep the lines of communication open when problems arise.
  5. If you find a problem, identify who can help you decide how to handle it
  6. Set up systems to ensure it doesn’t happen again
  7. Scare the PPC children with your horror.

Where are They? Leverage Geography or PPC Success

Amy Bishop, @Hoffman8

Senior Manager: Audits, Onboarding, Training, Clix Marketing

Choosing the right set-up

Why localize?

Helpful Settings

Bid Modifiers

Location Groups

Income Targeting

Reports:

Physical location vs location of interest: Pivot the geographic report to determine if your advanced location settings are helping or hurting

Zeroing in on location of interest:

If return is more important, adding a negative modifier might make CPA more tolerable, although it would likely also impact lead volume

If volume is more important, you could create a separate campaign just for Philadelphia and target only people that are physically in Philadelphia.

Find your outliers

Create a pivot to determine which geographies perform better or worse than the average.

User location report

Optimization Recap

Identifying opportunities

Where Are They? Leveraging Geography for PPC Success

Shane Jennings, @ShaneAJennings

Manager, Paid Media, U-Pack

How can you use Geography to be successful in marketing? Think outside the click.

Don’t overcomplicate it

These are the things that matter: Budget allocation, CPC, CPA, Revenue, ROAS, Impressions, Clicks Conversions, Coverage

Geo-targeting, geo-bidding >> don’t do it unless it makes sense.

Only make modifications when there is statistically significant data to support the decision.

Performance outliers by specific location:

Smarter geo-marketing

Targeted based on smart business practices

product availability is limited

Clif Bar example

Location of interest and physical location only tell part of the story.

What do we do about it?

In-house bid management solution

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Re-Evaluating Success: The Value of PPC Audits

Wijnand Meijer, @wijnandmeijer

Quality & Learning Manager, iProspect

Why should you audit in the first place?

Goals of PPC audits

Google’s Audit: The Opportunities Tab

Audit starting point: goal setting

Goal setting: Essentials

Goal setting: advanced

Find posts with PPC audit checklists

But keep in mind that they have their drawbacks...

Solution: Framework of the audit scorecard

>>>> Grab the scorecard here: www.bitly.com/adwords-scorecard

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Megan Ginecki, @megster88

Senior Paid Search Account Manager, Empire Covers

The word “audit” has a bad rap. But they don’t have to be a pain.

Are you covering everything? Cover all your bases:

Mobile

Mobile isn’t going away

Different networks = different strategies

Never stop optimizing

You can optimize every level of a paid search account. It’s not just keywords and ads, you can really audit everything.

Targeting

Set milestones and ask how the changes you made are affecting performance.

Keywords

Your keywords should be tight.

Think outside of the box

Your competitors are using the search term in the headline because it’s a best practice. Consider cutting it out to stand out.

Even if you and your competitors have similar UVPs, you can show your unique side with creative ad copy.

Bidding and budgeting

Competitors

Extensions

Content

Remarketing 101

PLAs are becoming more prominent

If you can, have someone audit your account and audit theirs in return. Don’t be afraid to get critiques from someone unfamiliar with your account.

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The Buyer Journey: Using Paid Media To Drive Demand

Kayla Kirsch, @Kayla_Kirsch

Digital Analyst, Kre8 Media

Leverage TV/Search Relationship

1. TV drives online response

Even if your TV commercial is driving people to a phone number, you’re also driving people to your website.

2. Take advantage of TV’s potential

Predict increase in paid search queries.

Mobile is a key player

Use your creative verbiage to channel traffic

What to do if you’re not on TV (and your competitor is)?

If you do not have access to pre logs or creative control there are still some strategies you can adopt to capture demand being generated by your competitors

The New Buyer Journey

Kimm Lincoln, @kimmlincoln

VP, Digital Marketing, Nebo

Think about your last purchase. Did the purchase journey look something like this? (AIDA Funnel)

Awareness > Interest > Consideration > Purchase

Probably not – so where did this idea even come from? The Aida funnel is credited to E. St. Elmo Lewis. (1898)

People don’t necessarily behave like this – it isn’t so clean cut. But as long as people are buying, things are going to be okay.

The New Buyer Journey:

Exploration >> Discovery >> Engagement >> Post-purchase >> Validation >> Purchase

(Not linear but circular)

Step 1: Fight the system

You can’t do just do PPC. You might work in PPC but as a marketer, you’re part of something greater. Fight for what you need in order to tell your story.

Even if you’re a B2B brand, there are a ton of ways to make your story compelling and sexy.

Example: Zendesk – They’re communicating their brand story in a compelling way.

Step 2: Research your audience

Now it’s time to figure out who you’re going to tell your story to.

Focus on feelings.

Ask questions to get to the root of your audiences’

Step 3: Create your content

Successful buyer journey campaigns are built on content. But content can mean many things: video, white papers, case studies, etc

Use your research to understand your audience:

Check out the competition and see how you stack up.

See what people are actively searching for on your site. See what questions people are asking in forums and in blog comments. If you don’t have an answer, that’s a ripe opportunity for creating something you know people are looking for.

Create content that adds value

Step 4: Put it into action

This is where PPC comes in!

Don’t forget about post-purchase campaigns when you’re thinking about the buyer journey. How can you use the retargeting audience to cross-promote other events/products?

If you think of the buyer journey as a near, linear funnel, it’s going to be very limiting.

Be there are much as you can to guide prospects – serve as an advocate.

Fight for what you need to tell your story. Put in the work.

Focus your efforts on adding value and solving problems and you’re sure to be successful.

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Keynote: The Context and the Power of Framing: Biasing Your Offer with Irrational Neuromarketing

Tim Ash, @tim_ash

CEO SiteTuners

Context the Power of Framing: Biasing Your Offer with Irrational Neuromarketing

Part I: Brain Basics

When your brain isn’t being used for other processes, it defaults to social processes.

We share our limbic system with all mammals – we are all herd animals. If you have a strong feeling about something then you memorize it.

In general, you need to remember that your web visitors are lazy. They like simple choices. Much of their behavior is on autopilot.

95% of our actions are pre-conscious

Things that really matter: the four Fs

How the brain actually works

It’s only when we’re faced with something new that our conscious brain kicks in. We only use it when we have to.

The old sales funnel

Attention

Interest

Desire

Action

The real sales Funnel

Brain stem

Limbic system

Cerebral cortex

Part II: Creating Compelling Offers: Taking Advantage of Brain Biases

Overview of strategies


“You’re paralyzing me with choice.”

Lead Gen & eCommerce PPC: You Got The Conversion, Now What?

Andrew Miller, @AndrewCMiller

Co-Founder, Workshop Digital

The PPC Challenge: Buying clicks and generating conversions is no longer enough!

Your job isn’t done after you capture a lead or make the sale. We can look further down the funnel and find out what happens after a lead is submitted and after they buy.

What is happening after our PPC campaign runs its course?

Your PPC Campaigns

Most clicks you get won’t convert.

Most leads you get won’t convert.

Start by asking two questions:

  1. Of all the clicks we’re getting/buying, which convert to a closed sale?
  2. How can I get more visitors like them?

Answering question #1: Of all the clicks we’re getting/buying, which convert to a closed sale?

1. Capture campaign data in your CRM

  1. Campaign & KW data
  2. Ad creative
  3. Offer
  4. Landing page variant

Campaign/data

Promotion/offer

Whisper messages

Customized sales pitches

Calculate customer lifetime value

2. Track offline sales in AdWords

3. Nurture those leads

Answering question #2: How can I get more visitors like them?

4. Remarket to advanced segments

The more segmented you can make your remarketing campaigns, the more successful they’re going to be.

Focus on the bottom of the funnel with your remarketing campaigns instead of trying to retargeting everyone all the time. ie Are people abandoning your shopping cart? That’s an easy win.

5. Find lookalike audiences

You have customers who are raving fans – you know who they are and which channels they come from.

There are millions of people who are like your customers but they haven’t found you yet, so you can’t remarket to them.

Depending on which platform you’re on, this feature will be called something different.

Overlay other targeting methods over lookalike audiences and watch the dollars closely.

6. Measure assisted conversions

Which upstream channels contribute to your conversions? What other traffic sources did people come through before they came to your site to convert?

Last-click conversions vs all the different steps in customer’s history.

Assign value to traffic channels they came from before.

Don’t rely on last-click conversions. Look up the chain and assign value to other channels.

Don’t shut off banner ads just because they don’t lead to conversions. IT may not be a direct conversion, but they could still be contributing.

7. Compare attribution models

The math behind how you assign values to each interaction before conversion. Look at different ways to assign value to a video view on YouTube, or banner ad impression.

Find this in analytics (in the conversion tab) and use it.

8. Identify trends with cohort analysis

Looking at the delay between a site visit and a conversion.

Recency & frequency method: how long ago and how often did people come to our site? This helps you determine how frequently and at what interval you need to be reaching out to people.

Where are drop offs occurring?

Recap

1. Measure conversions and ROI

2. Analyze segments and cohorts

3. Figure out what’s working and expand on it (audience + channels)

4. Refine. Add more data to the mix. Never set it & forget it!

The Best and Worst Bid Rules Ever Written

Chris Haleua, @chrishaleua

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Adobe

Free resources:

tiny.cc/rule

tiny.cc/templaterule

tiny.cc/3x3template

Framework:

3 keyword segments (filters)

3 sub-segments (sorts)

Bid automation evolution:

It’s nice to have options other than manual bids.

3 Worst Rules

3 Best Rules

Use Google’s preview function!

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The Psychology of PPC: How Consumer Behavior Affects You

AdWords Customizer Countdown: Assessing the impact of the countdown customizer on user behavior

Matt Umbro, @Matt_Umbro

Senior Account Manager, Hanapin Marketing

The Crowded Search Real Estate

There are a lot of great features…

… but it’s easy to get lost and make your ads look too busy.

It’s important to make sure that your text ads stand out – and that’s when the countdown customizer comes in.

“6 Days Left to Take 30% Off”

“Flash Sales Ends in 1 Hour”

An Overview of the Countdown Customizer

What’s so great about it?

Countdown Customizer Case Study

Two types of countdowns:

  1. Promotions: Free shipping, sales
  2. Event: Beginning of spring – wasn’t talking about a specific promotion but was highlighting that spring was coming shortly.

When comparing countdown clicks vs static ads, 10% of clicks came from countdown ads and the countdown ads had 2% higher CTR.

In other words, they were eliciting more eyeballs and resulted in more clicks.

How did the performance differ by time left?

Next Steps

Behavioral Economics & PPC: Using Searcher’s Irrationality in PPC

Davis Baker, @DavisBaker

Lead, Digital Media (PPC), Forthea

Classical economics: people are rational, they make well thought-out decisions that aren’t influenced by external factors.

Behavioral economics flips that on its head. How does that factor into online purchasing decisions?

Social Proof

The tendency of people to assume actions of others or want what others having.

Social proof in the wild: Groupon example, “1,000 other people have bought”

How to apply social proof

PPC ad copy:

Scarcity

Tapping into the condition in which our wants appear to be greater than the resources.

Scarcity in the wild:

Amazon example: instilling sense of urgency with “Only 1 left in stock.”

Scarcity in PPC:

How to apply scarcity

Anchoring

The tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information. As consumers, we latch onto the first thing we see.

Anchoring in the wild:

How to apply anchoring:

PPC ad copy:

Framing

A condition that occurs when the same information is presented in different ways which can evoke different emotions.

A real estate agent doesn’t say a house is small – they say it’s cozy. A car salesman doesn’t say a car is cheap – he says it’s affordable. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Framing in the wild:

Yogurt: 20% fat vs 80% fat-free <<< everyone will choose the latter

Framing in PPC:

How to apply framing

“Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless - they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains.” - Dan Ariely

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Making The Case For Match Type Segmentation

Amanda West-Bookwalter, @Amanda_Westbook

Senior Account Manager, Hanapin Marketing

Why segment by match type?

What if a search term has multiple keywords it could match to?


There are three rules:

  1. If you have a keyword that is identical to the search term, the system will prefer to use this keyword to trigger an ad. This is true even if there are other keywords in your ad group that are similar to the search term.
  2. If you have multiple keywords that are the same, the system will prefer to use exact match.
  3. When several broad match keywords in your ad group broadly match the search term, the system will prefer to use the keyword with the highest ad rank.

With two exceptions…

  1. On rare occasion, the system will prefer to use a keyword that is cheaper. If its in the same ad group, this means it as a lower cost-per-click bid and has a higher Ad Rank. If there are multiple keywords in multiple ad groups, similar to the search term, it needs to have a lower bid, a higher ad rank and a better quality score.
  2. When one keyword contains the entirety of another keyword, the system prefers to use the longer keyword.


Why is this a problem?

How do you fix it once you’ve identified a problem?

See the impact of match type cross-contamination

Then see how many keywords each search term has matched to in the date range.

Go back to your report, search for most egregious.

How do we fix this?

Two options for segmentation

1. Ad Group Level

2. Campaign level

Analyze performance by match type

A difference in performance dictates a need for budget control

*Consider excluding or segmenting branded or similar campaigns

Negative impacts of embedded negatives?

Low Search Volume

An account-wide restructure?

Starting with a fresh account?

Landing Page Optimization by Observable Data and Match Type

Mike Olson

Director of Online Experience, Beachbody

Observable data: a physical property such as weight or temperature that can be observed or measured directly, as distinguished from a quantity, such as work or entropy, that must be derived from observed quantities.

So what?

The process of diving what you can about the person “across the table” based upon whatever characteristics they will show you.

Characteristics and their levels:

We really don’t know a ton when someone clicks on a search ad.

What data does a user reveal in their search terminology?

If a user is searching for size 13 shoes, you can safely assume they are male.

If a user is search for cat food, you can assume (hopefully) that they have a cat.

Observable search:

Simple examples

Insanity Max 30 workout landing page:

Triggers:

Recap:

Building And Managing A World-Class PPC Team

A Customer Centric Approach to Company Structure

Jeff Allen, @JeffAllenUT

President, Hanapin Marketing

Many agencies struggle with expectations – the idea that any company has goals that are fixed and never change.

To prevent that, focus on being customer centric through dynamic processes.

THE HANDOFF (approximately two weeks)

Role clarity

Ask the client:

Who’s your boss? What does she care about? What hairy problems is she trying to solve? What does she ask for in her status updates? Who reports to you? How can we make you look like a rockstar? What are the metrics you’re trying to hit? How much time do you spend on PPC?

Team structure

Career path

PA > PS > AA > SR. AA, Resp. > ADoPS

or

PA > PS > AM > SR. AM, Resp. > ADoPS

Conditions for promotions

MEASURING PERFORMANCE

Behaviors matter as much maybe more, than results.

TOOLS

Basecamp

Hipchat

Tinyquotes

Recap:

Managing an In-House PPC Team

Ryan Dobrin, @rjdobrin

Director of Marketing, Sylvane

Organizational structure

Sylvane’s structure:

Onboarding and training

Goal: Spend money, make more money

Hiring process is straightforward. Posted on Craigslist, LinkedIn.

Onboarding: get them up to speed on the accounts, the company’s structure, best practices. Basics, account structure. Show them what’s worked for us.

Metrics and KPIs

Revenue growth goal we try to hit every quarter

Two KPIs:

Other smaller KPIs that feed into the above. Report on KPIs weekly, monthly and quarterly.

Weekly marketing meetings.

Efficiency tools

Communication

Recognition and promotions