Posted by Marty Weintraub on May 3rd 2008 in Paid Marketing, Seminars
[Thanks to David Szetela over at Clix Marketing for steady guidance speaking to PPC excellence and help with this article. Clix is doing some ground breaking work right now. Do not miss David’s upcoming content network presentation during “Amazing PPC Tactics” @ SMX Advanced, June 3/4 in Seattle.]
Nobody speaks seriously about Facebook social PPC at search marketing industry conferences. I can’t believe it. Shouldn’t we be discussing multivariate landing page testing deeply segmented by users’ interests and affinities as opposed to keywords?
Doesn’t Facebook provide us a prescient peek into future mainstream social PPC platforms? As an industry could we be missing a chance to get ahead of the curve in preparation for the ultimate revolution in commercial personalization, true social demographic targeting? I don’t get it…
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Posted in Paid Marketing, Seminars | 4 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on April 20th 2008 in Paid Marketing
Facebook is marketing social PPC to those who’s “chatter” on the social graph reflects involvement in search. The ad says “Reach your customers BEFORE they start searching Pay per click.” Using their own demographic targeting tools, FB is taking on Google by marketing to Google’s very best foot solders and salespeople….search marketing professionals.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on December 26th 2007 in Paid Marketing
We had one of our clients budget substantial spend-cash for Christmas weekend PPC, as holidays are always a serious hotbed of activity for their product. Last year the same December days resulted in leads that generated hundreds of thousand in sales.
Last Friday’s 5:15PM email from their CFO was ominous: “Marty, I had to cancel the cc due to fraudulent charges. A new one will be issued within 5 business days.” This “legacy” client represents the only remaining aimClear account which still uses their credit card and, due to regulatory issues, we can’t use ours. The Grinch was screaming bloody murder at the door and it seemed Christmas was ruined.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing | 12 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on December 21st 2007 in Paid Marketing, Agencies
Most small SEMs give their clients’ credit card and billing information to search engines which can actually cause palpable accounting hurdles as an agency scales. This common practice also raises interesting questions as to who “owns” the account when a client leaves someday.
Though seldom discussed, failing to engage clients in preemptive dialog has the potential to cause accounting, intellectual property ownership, and even legal nightmares. If not proactively addressed and contractually codified, the account-ownership issue can come back to bite you.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing, Agencies | 22 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on November 15th 2007 in Paid Marketing, SEM, Agencies
Over the last 10 months the number of PPC accounts aimClear handles has multiplied by more than 20X, which has been seismic to say the least. At the same time the ever-evolving PPC landscape continually undergoes its own “global warming crises,” as heated paradigm shifts pile upon chilling conceptual overhauls at the advertising platform level.
Any search marketing agency handling small, let alone voluminous, PPC accounts knows the serious challenges. Reporting, billing, conducting multivariate ad message/landing page testing, conversion tracking, making analytics actionable, communicating with the client, and dealing with monthly cash flow makes any PPC intense- if not daunting.
Obstacles the small SEM shop encounters, when scaling to big PPC management operations at the portfolio level, can make for stormy afternoons.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing, SEM, Agencies | 20 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on November 2nd 2007 in Paid Marketing, Agencies
For years there has been frustrated chatter among PPC media buyers regarding draconian big brand franchise PPC trademark rules. After experimenting all over the world for 2 years, Marriott is now taking assertive steps to standardize and solidify global policies. Whether SEMs like the new US rules or not, Marriott’s taking an industry leading role in organizing an approval process for hotel franchisee trademark usage.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing, Agencies | 3 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on October 24th 2007 in Paid Marketing
News flash: How about if we begin an industry wide dialog regarding PPC trademark usage rules as concern big brand franchisees? The messed up paradigm is not really Google’s fault, though Google certainly lays down, and sucks up to big business without nary a protest regarding trademarks. We can’t blame Google-they’re just protecting themselves as is prudent.
Say you own lots of hotels, some of which are Best Western franchise products. Track this: you OWN these hotels, having paid millions of dollars for the privilege of flying franchise flags above the doors. Still, according to Google rules, you’re not allowed to use the keyword “Best Western” in PPC ads if Best Western so requests. You also can’t buy brand name keywords to trigger ads EVEN when Best Western chooses not to purchase PPC in the hotel’s local market-which often happens. How screwed up is that?Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing | 14 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on September 13th 2007 in Paid Marketing, Organic Optimization, Analytics
Organic landing page conversion measuring is a time tested after-deployment technique which, though highly effective, can take days, weeks, or months to fully tune.
As optimized pages gradually rise in the SERPs, conversion is measured and pages modified to achieve better conversion ratios. However we’d rather definitively test and tweak landing page concepts to focus conversion, prior to deploying them for organic indexing, using “fixed length short burst paid search.”Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing, Organic Optimization, Analytics | 3 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on September 11th 2007 in Blogging, Paid Marketing
Well known writer Rose Sylvia (aka flyingrose.stumbleupon.com) has started ppcThink, a new blog which promises to be an authority online publication focused on “Cutting Edge Internet Marketing Strategies to Increase Your Profits.” You may also know her work as long time moderator of Search Engine Forums PPC forum.
Zero to Sixty in Three Seconds
Rose joined the Sphinn community with vengeance about 2 weeks ago, bringing her StumbleUpon power-user savvy and blogging experience to the young search marketing social community. In 11 days Rose had 9 submissions that “went hot” and quickly became a top Sphinner.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogging, Paid Marketing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Marty Weintraub on August 22nd 2007 in Paid Marketing
This afternoon at SES San Jose, on the Issues Track, search marketers and audit firms gathered to discuss the click fraud problem. In this session issues surrounding fraud and tactics designed to safeguard media buys were explored. For many of us this session was the first time we’ve seen data to support our long-held suspicion: In terms of conversion, search networks outperform content networks at a rate of approximately 5/3 (Click Forensics).
How Much Does Fraud Hurt?
Traffic from Made for ad sites (MFAS) and parked domains convert at 1/20th the rate other PPC. 71.8% of sites that participate in the Yahoo publisher network are MFAS or parked domains as are approximately 60% of Google ad sense sites (Click Forensics). The victims of fraud are clients and advertisers who suffer lower conversion rates and higher CPAs, SEMs/Agencies whose usable budgets are lowered as a result, and search engines who make less money for clicks sent after writing off bad traffic. Average click-fraud rate across search advertising industries is 15.8% .Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Paid Marketing | 5 Comments »
