Moderator Loren Baker, VP of Marketing, BlueGlass Interactive, Inc. and speakers Joseph Kerschbaum, Vice President, Clix Marketing and Kevin Lee, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Didit, hit the stage to share their two cents on the blossoming new frontier beyond paid search, tips for optimizing for various ad-types, and best practices for tapping into display and social networks on the PPC front. Read on for the juicy goods!

Joe was up first, and jumped right into some top-shelf strategies.

Core Strategies for the Google Display Network

• Focus on your target audience
• Manage to your CPA- focus on ROI and CPA
• Separate your channels never run your channels together because each one is incredibly different and should be treated accordingly
• Segregate your devices

Standard targeting methods: Joe used the example of a hair loss product to explain the methods.

• Keyword targeting: Examples- hair loss, hair loss remedy, hair loss medication, hair loss treatment
• Placement targeting: Specific websites- about.com, anniesremedies.com, WebMD.com
• Remarketing: visitors to a website who don’t purchase

Keywords, placement targeting, and remarketing are the standard targeting types to look into first. The goal is to find those sights that are going to convert for you. You want to find that person that is willing to buy from you.

Joe showed some methods to try together for more powerful niche targeting tactics. You can mix, slice and dice, even jubilee all these examples to narrow down your target .

1. It is important to use placement targeting and keyword targeting together for a more targeted ad. For instance, you could target WebMD, but also make sure to add your keywords, so your not targeting all of WebMD, but only the keywords you want to target within WebMD. It is important to narrow your focus down to get that conversion.
2. Placement targeting, with topic targeting to narrow down your focus
3. Topic targeting, layered with keyword targeting over that to zero in.
4. Use re-marketing and include keywords too. This will lower your volume, but will help you get the people that are willing to convert.
5. Use re-marketing and interest categories together.

Again, with these different tactics0– you can use all of them or some of them together to really hone in your target audience and truly focus on those that will convert.

Topic Targeting vs. Interest Categories

• Topic targeting: describes the page
• Interest categories:  describes the person
• Topic targeting vs. Interest categories = Page vs. person

There is one silent killer tactic, and if you don’t set it up right, you may not be happy with your results. It is a critical Google Display Network campaign setting, you have two options:

1. Broadest targeting method
2. All selected targeting methods

Make sure to select all selected targeting methods- this is extremely important. If you don’t do this, you could be spending a lot of marketing dollars targeting a whole website. For instance, you could be targeting the entire WebMD website, when you should be targeting only a really focused portion of the site. The default setting is the broadest targeting method, which is a no-no. So you need to check your settings and set them accordingly.

All of these targeting methods will help narrow down where campaigns are showing. You need to focus on CPA’s!

Before Joe finished up his portion of the presentation he left us with some Bonus tips:

• Impression cap: Eventually, people will be tired of seeing your ads, so set an impressions cap. You should be switching up your ads regularly so as to avoid ad fatigue.
• CPA bidding and enhanced CPC: These can really help your campaigns. Joe recommends to at least test them and find what works best for you.
• Frequent ad testing: You have to keep your ads fresh. Test new variations so people to not get bored
• Exclude high CPA websites: Either adjust bids specifically to that site or make sure to cut sites that are not working.
• Target your previous customers: People may want to continue to buying your product or service. Why not remind people in 60 days to re-order and buy again?
• Exclude your previous customers: If it is a product that typically people would not buy twice, don’t waste your time and money, focus your efforts on new customers only.

All in all, always be thinking about how you can get more specific with your display targeting.

Next up is Kevin Lee. Kevin talked about Facebook and LinkedIn ads as well as text and display beyond the SERPs.

As search engine marketers, we have opportunity to manage tangential forms of media, some of which belong in search, others… the jury is still out.

Regarding Facebook…

The good news:

• Billions of impressions available
• Demographic targeting likes, groups, connections

The bad news:

• Millions of Facebook users generally ignore the advertising
• “Info” is very incomplete for many profiles which is a targeting challenge
• Like search, remember to use unique inbound URL (query parameter or other) to help reconcile billing
• No 3^rd party ad serving or frequency caps (not as much of an issue in search and most contextual)

Facebook Targeting:

• Works for branding, awareness, likes and some Direct Response
• Direct response needs a low barrier to conversion
• Difficult to get high scale when the interest are niche
• Not as much employer targeting as LinkedIn but some potential for B-To-B focus

As you go through the opportunities in the marketing platforms, think about how niche you can go to hit that small audience, who is most likely to convert. For instance, with Facebook targeting, you can target against likes and interests.

Tools like PageData are available to find (top “liked” pages). Are there messages you could craft to specific enthusiasts for some of these? Why yes, there are.

Kevin gave an example of top liked pages in the (Baby Goods / kids goods) category as categorized and measured by Pagedata. Gerber and Pampers were the first two results. Select the ones you want from the top lists and Facebook will suggest more. Then, go wild! But make sure to add more targeting so get your desired target audience.

• More targeting is better at tuning both the ad creative and the quality of the click
• Audience narrows more than you’d expect because profile data is often incomplete
• In your Facebook ads, try including:
  • Logo if you want branding
  • Photo if you want clicks (CTR)
  • There is lots of room for ad copy, so you may need to get creative!

Facebook ads are more like traditional media buying but there are targeting demographics. Think about who “likes” your competition:

1. Their customers
2. Former customers
3. Their staff
4. Their management

Any strategies come to mind? Like trademark SEM bidding, there are risks. Targeting your competition is an option you can consider.

LinkedIn
With LinkedIn, you could probably get as narrowed down to an audience of one person, even though they list <1000 as a minimum. Like Facebook, LinkedIn ads include text and images, but are not IAB sized units. Targeting in LinkedIn is profile based, not keyword driven. Decide if you need branding or direct response and tune copy and images to fit your strategy.

Useful takeaways:

• Prioritizing within and across media types
• Know the value that each click and impression ads to your top line, or bottom line.
• Buy highest ROI clicks/ impressions with your first dollar
• Work your way to the more “expensive” media
• Include interaction effects between media types
• Understand how changing your metrics changes your campaign
• Test media based on predicted ROI plus scale if it can’t deliver scale, it’s often not worth your time.

Figuring out what to do first and what will deliver the biggest campaign improvement is the key. Kevin ended with a few last tips:

• Stay educated on best practices
• Think like Google, put the consumer’s needs first. Don’t be afraid to ask experts for advice and help.

Phew! Awesome tactics shared by all. Stick around aimClear blog for more final day coverage of #SESCHI .

photo credit: pere

Hi there and hello from blustery Chicago! aimClear’s coverage of #SESCHI continued the morning of Day 1 with a killer Introduction to Paid Search session, delivered by PPC pro Melissa Mackey, Search Marketing Manager at Fluency Media, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our pal @Mel66 dropped awesome insight on PPC Secret Weapons & Brand Cannibal Combat in aimClear blog prior to SES Chicago, and today took the stage to share even more dead-eye tactics and beginner’s best practices.

Both self-disclosed PPC n00bz and online marketers simply eager to learn more from a master came together for this fascinating session, and we wrapped the best tips and tidbits for those same-type readers at home to chew over now. Step inside the #SESCHI classroom, with Ms. Mackey as your teacher, and hand-scrawled live-tweeted notes from @MeganLichty!

Melissa’s in-depth solo-preso covered two main search engines and their PPC platforms, namely Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter. She also addressed social platforms with paid ad functionality, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn ads.

Ah, paid search. Where else can you market to customers while they’re researching your product, and only pay if someone is interested in your ad, test ad copy and landing pages in real-time, learn how users talk about your product or service and quickly drive sales as a positive ROI? Pretty cool.

Still, Melissa encourages us to ask ourselves: Is Paid Search right for me?

Paid Search is great for:

• Direct marketing
• Testing
• Quickly driving traffic & conversion volume

First thing’s first: Before creating a paid search ad campaign, determine your business goals. Don’t just jump headfirst into AdWords until you have objectives clearly established. Having goals will help your business grow, but remember to make your goals achievable. Again, ask yourself: Do I have the infrastructure in place? Can my website fulfill the ad promise?

Tip: When you do get going, use Conversion Tracking. Melissa dove deeper into this concept later on (and we will, too!).

For those unfamiliar with the basics of AdWords, or other paid search platforms, here are a few key factors:

• Impressions: Number of times your ad was displayed
• Clicks: Number of times people clicked on your ad
• Conversions: Number of times people took the desired action

Within AdWords, there are different levels to be aware of:

• Campaign: Daily budget, location targeting, language targeting, distribution preference and end dates
• Ad Group: Tightly themed groups
• Keywords: Words that you are actually bidding on, show my ad for
• Search Query: What users actually type into the search engine

The first step to setting up a campaign is to perform keyword research. This is where brainstorming is really important. Let your freak flag fly! But foremost, it is essential to think about what users would actually type in a search engine to find you, rather than how you describe yourself.

Melissa used an example of a retailer selling designer jeans to demonstrate the process:

• Sample terms users might enter while looking for a pair of designer jeans:
  • “Designer jeans”
  • “Buy designer jeans”
  • “Deals on designer jeans”
• Open up Excel and type a long list of such words users might type into a search engine to find your business.
  • Use a keyword tool, like that offered by Google, for maximum ideas.
  • Keep in mind, though, these tools might spit back super-long lists of keywords.
    • Be sure to remove the irrelevant keywords- e.g. “White jeans” and “jeans on sale.”
    • These keywords are not specific enough to the product “designer jeans” and will most likely NOT lead to a conversion.
• Next, segment the relevant terms and organize into ad groups.
  • Take an Excel spreadsheet and create a filter on text- for instance, type in the word “women.”
  • Excel will filter by that word, giving you every keyword phrase that has the word “women” in it.
  • Take that list and create an ad-group for that.
  • Then, go back and think of the next term, and put those into another tab.

Tip: Use the “does contain” and “does not contain” feature. Whittle the list down until your large list is segmented into adgroups.

Here are some options to filter keywords by while in the keyword tool:

• Exact Match: Triggers ads only when the search query exactly matches the keyword. Example- (Designer jeans) will only appear for that exact query. Note: When you use exact match, you are very limited.
• Phrase Match: Triggers ads when the search query includes the keyword phrase in word order. The results you get can include words before or after the keyword phrase you type in. Phrase match is a good way to broaden the net.
• Broad Match: Triggers ads when the search query includes the keyword phrase in any order, as well as similar phrases and sometimes-relevant variations. Here are a few examples that you may get back from a broad match search: Levies Jeans, Designer Shoes and Jean Jackets. You need to be careful with broad match, a potential problem would be getting lots of clicks by users that do not want what you are offering, costing you money.
• Modified Broad Match: (AdWords only) Triggers ads when the search query includes certain words within a keyword phrase. Example: +designer jeans may appear on searches for designer true religions jeans.
• Negative Match: Prevents your ad from showing on queries including the negative term or phrase.

Tip: Eliminate Brands you don’t sell, like “Lee” or “American Eagle.” Eliminate low conversion potential words like “Free,”  ”Cheap,” or “Used.”

Ad Copy
Review your ad groups and keywords. Ask yourself: What is the goal of each ad group?

• Write the call to action first: “Buy Now” and “Click here,” for example. Think about what you want users to do.
  
• Research the competition: Perform a few searches- you’ll see huge brand names like the Buckle and Abercrombie in the results. You need to be smarter than them, but you can’t do that unless you know who you’re up against.
  
• Determine your USP (Unique Selling Proposition): What makes you unique and sets you apart from your competitors?
  
• Start writing your ads: Why should someone click?
  • Sense of urgency
  • Include numbers- i.e. price- numbers stand out on a page
  • Include keywords- add as many as you can
  • Write at least 2 ads per ad group

Choosing a Landing Page
The Landing page MUST be relevant to the search query! Keep in mind that your site’s home page is almost never a good landing page. It’s just not specific enough. Take users directly to the source.

For example, if you are selling a certain brand of designer jeans, and you are selling them on Macys.com, do NOT use the Macy’s home page for the landing page. Take users directly to your exact brand’s page on Macy’s.com.

Account Setup
The settings in both AdWords and AdCenter make it very easy to track both Daily Campaign Budget and Billing and Currency.

• Key Setting #1: Daily campaign budget should never be more than you can afford and are willing to spend per day.
• Key Setting #2: Networks- Google and Search Partners Only!

Search engines also have search-partnered networks. The Display Network is a great way to advertise, but it is very different and needs to be approached it in a different way.

• Key Setting #3: Rotate ads more evenly. That way you can determine which ads are performing better. You need to decide what is best for you, NOT Google.

Regarding Quality Score, Melissa noted this metric “looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a users search query.”

Here are a couple tips for effective bid management:

• Keep it simple; set bids at the AdWord level
• Don’t bid more than you can afford

So, what are we getting out of all of this?
When it comes down to it, we need to measure everything with conversion tracking. Make sure to use JavaScript code; it will tell you if a conversion has taken place. Evaluate your progress with analytics programs. Free options include Google Analytics, or you can opt for more robust paid platforms, a la Omniture, Core Metrics and WebTrends.

Social PPC  Perks, 20,000 Foot Look

• Facebook - Leveraging Facebook ads can be great for building fan base, and can benefit other activities, too, such as lead gen and e-Commerce
• LinkedIn – Ads on the LinkedIn platform can be effective for driving conversions off LinkedIn to an optimized landing page.

Melissa wrapped up with two takeaways to never forget:

1. PPC is more than few keywords and a credit card: Plan, track, test!
2. You must plan ahead! It will be worth it…

Stay tuned right here in aimClear blog for more coverage of #SESCHI, and be sure to follow along with @meganlichty @ericasendros and @merrymorud for live-tweets straight from the show .

photo credit: limcollegearchive

Attendees of #SESSF’s Introduction to Paid Search session delivered by Brad Geddes(@bgtheory), founder of Certified Knowledge, were in for a treat of a presentation. Jam-packed with oodles of stats, titillating trivia, actionable tactics & tips of the trade, this session was must-attend for entry-level PPC marketers. Brad offered up valuable information from various big-wig providers and offered great advice on how to successfully implement a paid search program of your own. aimClear live tweeted this session via @ericasendros. Keep reading for a round-up of the tastiest takeaways.

Super nifty stats, facts and all-around trivia

• 8-18 year old kids in the U.S. spend 25% of their media time using multiple avenues of media (mobile, computers, etc.)
• 11-12% of worldwide advertising revenue is online, but the average person’s daily internet use is 4 hours
• 20% of search queries are 5+ words in length
• 70% of all online searches have NO exact match keywords
• 20% of all online searches have not been done in the last 6 months, if ever

What do the numbers add up to? What does it all mean?
Online search is uninterrupted. It is the only avenue of media where a user seeking to find an answer to their question can search exactly for what they are looking for without the disturbance of commercials and other interruptions. The main reason a consumer submits a search query is because they are looking to have the question answered as quickly and with as little effort as possible. It is your job as the advertiser to answer their question by utilizing the most relevant keywords and by sending them to a landing page that will answer their question.

Some things to consider:

• As a consumer progresses through the buying cycle, their queries become more specific.
• “If you can make something more specific, make a new ad group,” Brad advises. Right on!
• Put yourself in the place of the user typing in the search query. At what point in the buying cycle are keywords used?
• Using your analytics and conversion metrics, optimize your ad campaigns.
• If you see keywords that don’t bring any clicks to your site, make them negative keywords.

Tips and tricks of the trade

• Define your target audience for both Search and Display.
• Choose both positive keywords and implement negative keywords
• Include both a feature and a benefit in your ads. To make a feature into a benefit, finish the sentence. What does the user get out of purchasing the product? How does it make their life better?
• Utilize the Display network’s placement targeting to advertise on site’s that will lead traffic to your site

Most common mistakes new advertisers make:

• Making their keywords too broad – be specific.
• Using their home page as the landing page for an ad. People want to be directed to the page on your website that will answer their question. Don’t make them navigate through your site or they will leave.
• Not having a way to track conversions. Utilize search query reports to learn what keywords are working and which ones aren’t.  How will you know which keywords and ad copies are successful if you’re not tracking them?
• Leaving out a call-to-action in their ad. You want to direct people to your site, so use language that encourages this.
• Starting out on the Display network. Until you’re comfortable with search, don’t delve into the Display network.

As Brad wrapped up, he remarked, ”Advertising is not advertising when it is information.” Too true – if you help a possible consumer find the answer to their query, you’re not advertising. You’re giving them the information they asked for. This was by far one of the biggest takeaways from the session.

Write your copy and choose your keywords to trigger an action. Learn which combinations work and which don’t.

Big thanks to Brad for such a stimulating presentation! Stay tuned to aimClear Blog for more #SESSF conference coverage – and don’t forget to follow @ericasendros, @beebow, and @mannyrivas for in-the-action live tweets!

Unless you’ve got a time machine, it’s not always realistic to achieve a sustainable CPA (cost per action) by way of paid cost-per-click online marketing channels alone. This post offers a pragmatic multi-channel scenario to prove the significant financial benefits of SEO, social media, and public relations for CPA-pumping traffic and conversion. In the early days, target CPAs were usually attainable solely by paid online advertising. That said, for years we’ve advised clients to establish their customer base while advertising costs in new channels remained low. For instance, in 1999 and 2000 the rising cost of Overture PPC blew our doors off as the bargains waned. Early adopters who had already built their brand with inexpensive/high yield pay per click were already hooked up.  Others were left in the dust.

The phenomena of continual cost increases, commensurate to new advertising channels’ growth, proved especially radical in 2003 and 2004 as Google’s AdWords search PPC program steadily increased in cost. The 2X-4X per-click cost upsurges were no surprise to those early adopters, who realized the emergent PPC channel’s value. Starting in 2008, aimClear counseled clients to leverage Facebook’s massive growth before the general business public caught on to the might and focus of social graph PPC. We were oh-so right. The $0.30 cent click in August ‘08 now can cost upwards of $3.10.  Hate to say, “We told ya so…”

Yes, there have been killings to be made for online marketers who embraced nascent channels and rode them to glory, but those splendid days are long gone. For many products it’s just no longer possible to attain reasonable target-CPAs with paid advertising alone. Sure, AdWords, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ad Center, YouTube, boutique CPM banner buys, emergent mobile networks, trade desks and other paid advertising channels offer fertile and focused marketplaces, but the cost of these channels alone or in combination, in many cases is just too high now.  More than ever, diluting the CPA to a reasonable price absolutely requires SEO (search engine optimization), social media, public relations and other classic means to drive focused website traffic and conversion.  Ready? Get our your calculators out marketers. Here we go!

Make Projections, Channel By Channel
More and more, prospective paid advertising clients are coming to us with a target CPA and projected conversion volume that’s based on fantasy as opposed to what can actually be accomplished with only paid. Don’t get me wrong… we’ll strive for any goal remotely possible with vim and vigor. That said, you might wish for 5,000 monthly conversions at a sub-$15.00 CPA and less then $80K of total monthly expense including agency fees, but wishing does not make it so. The reality is that these days target-CPAs are evermore dependent on other marketing modes a la SEO, PR and PR driven news.

The best starting point to determine how much organic lift is required is to look at each paid channel and do realistic projections. As a caveat, be mindful that projections in any channel are vertical-dependent and should be expressed as a range of possibilities. One marketer’s overpriced conversion is another’s insanely cheap win. We’ll start with reasonably attainable numbers in an “average” vertical, if there is such a thing. In each channel we may be able to sharpen both CTR (click through ratio) to lower the CPC and then tweak landing page conversion. But for now, we’ll examine reasonable projection points to start the discussion. For the purpose of this exercise, we’re aiming at monthly numbers that are on the lower side of very good.

Let’s start with Google AdWords. We’re commencing with only 400K monthly impressions because, for our hypothetical KPI, we’ve limited the fruit of our keyword research to true “shopping” searches where users clearly demonstrate conversion intent.

Great! Let’s do projections for the next paid channel, in quest of our target-CPA and conversion volume. Facebook Ads are an entirely different animal. Featuring high impressions and much lower CTR, when done properly, conversion can rival search. Interestingly enough the high impression volume tends to impact search channels with branding power. Realistically, to be most focused, conversion count from Facebook Ads may be lower with a higher CPA. It stands to reason. As awesome as FB social graph targeting can be, it’s still contextual or “walk by traffic” and not quite as focused always as search laced with obvious intent. The numbers below are a bit ambitious but doable for shrewd marketers.

When wielded in the right hands, Google’s contextual product, the “Display Network,” can yield results roughly analogous to Facebook display. We’ll project 12 million impressions. The statistics below are common. The Display Network’s targeting is not quite as focused as Facebook Ads so, in our experience, it converts at a slightly lower rate. Again, keep in mind that every one of these channels is vertical-dependent and should be projected in a range of scenarios. Higher CTR in the Display Network is possible.

For some products, especially B2B that can be targeted to certain occupations, LinkedIn Ads can be an effective channel. LinkedIn Ads are overpriced but can be used to push conversion volume and brand if you don’t mind hurting the overall CPA a bit. Volume and branding matter so let’s include LinkedIn. We’ll keep things totally focused and only plan on 2 million monthly impressions. The CTR will be lower and CPC higher. Though the overall expense is relatively low, LinkedIn would be the first channel to eliminate to lower the cost in this scenario. However, our tests show that LinkedIn’s branding effect seems to lift search CTR and conversion enough to justify the small amount of conversions at a higher CPA.  That’s a whole blog post in itself.

Dial in typical Bing/Yahoo! search.  The impressions are less than Google. Since it’s search, the CPA will likely be attractive compared to other channels in the paid advertising mix.

SEO Factor: Existing Organic Blended With CPC Channels
Most of these paid case studies also include at least one organic traffic source at some level. Often the main website is not fully optimized for discoverability, CTR from SEO and conversion, but still performs to an extent. Once your credentials are verified, Google Webmaster Tools provides a high level overview of impressions and CTR data for the most prevalent organic queries driving traffic to your site. It’s not a complete picture, but is still quite helpful.

Here are metrics of an established site sporting SEO results that could be considered underperforming. The fact that there are only 20K monthly visitors is not a red flag on it’s own, though we’d like to see a higher visitor count. The low organic CTR and conversion site-wide are much bigger problems. Perhaps the title tags are optimized to rank and not focused on incenting clicks. Or worse, they’re not optimized at all. The site itself most likely does not have much of a conversion focus. Still, traffic and conversion that already exists count towards the overall CPA. Factor in existing SEO traffic. For perspective on organic impressions, Google Webmaster Tools reports that aimClear Blog had 300K organic impressions from June 29 to July 29 with approximately a 1.8% CTR site-wide. The projections below are for an established industrial site with many more pages and a much lower CTR.

Add It All Up! The Average CPA, Paid & Existing Organic
Add it all up for a look at the overall CPA and conversion volume.  This assumes your team can execute AdWords search, Google Display Network, Facebook Ads, Microsoft AdCenter and LinkedIn Ads in-house… possibly a tall order.

Calculate Agency Fees
It’s rare to have a company, spending only a half million a year on paid advertising, that has the kind of expertise to accomplish the numbers put forward in these projections. Let’s be real and add in $10K a month in agency fees, a relatively low price for that much paid-channel work at least in the first six months. The agency fee, in this scenario, increases the CPA by about 17.5% from $23.85 to $28.90. It always cracks me up when prospective clients try to negotiate down from our first-six-months price proposal for this much work. Each $1K of agency fees only effects the overall CPA by approximately 2%… hardly enough to squabble about if the agency can actually figure out how to achieve sales or generate leads on the Internet.

The SEO Effect
Now comes the fun part. Great organic CTR is (of course) dependent on well-written title tags and either well-crafted descriptions or, in this case, social buzz that recommends the content.

It’s not uncommon to achieve 15%-18% organic CTR for queries with an average rank in the top 2 positions and 1.8% CTR site-wide total across all organic impressions from any average rank. We’ve seen even higher CTRs, upon occasion, for longer tail searches.

Aside from classic and emergent SEO ranking factors, focus search engine optimization on optimized title tag writing for CTR and landing page conversion.  Design those ads to earn qualified clicks and not just comma delimited SEO junk.  We’ll also start a modest content program to attain traffic from even more mid and long tail keywords. There are many on-page methods to lift conversion, including standardized form locations, phone number placement, contextually relevant calls to action in the header, etc…

A good principle to keep in mind is that, in SEO, every page is a landing page. Treat every page in the site as such.

Let’s raise the agency fees to $12K a month over the first six months and dial in the improved performance bump. Over six months the additional $12,000 tacked onto our agency of record deal is fair. Assume that we are able to increase the traffic about 28.5% but pump CTR and conversion in a big way.

Against agency fees, the CPC for the additional 36K SEO monthly visitors is about $0.05 (5.5 cents?) and overall SEO CPA will now be $2.60. Of course, the reason the SEO work only costs $12K over six months is because it’s an add-on to the agency of record paid advertising deal. The SEO by itself would be higher standalone, but still a great value. Terrific! Now the average CPA is falling and conversion count rising.  Still, we’re shy of that fantasy sub-$15 CPA and we don’t have enough conversion yet. Time for good old fashioned PR and social media!

Public Relations, News & Social Factors
Straight up: PR and social can pay richly. At the end of the day well-organized buzz matters a ton, financially. Like SEO, public relations and social media are far from free, but are a great value. That New York Times article or on-site content that goes incredibly hot on Facebook and Twitter can move the needle significantly.

It’s not uncommon for a major media mention, on-site viral event or mainstream article to drive 100K visitors in a month. In reality the traffic blast can be much higher. The visitors are often highly qualified, showing up on the site with conversion in mind. We’re projecting a relatively modest 2.8% conversion rate for the PR/social/buzz/news traffic. It could be higher.

Awesome! Increase the six month agency of record deal to $20K a month and factor in the additional conversions. There’s your 5K per month sub-$15 conversions, calculated after agency fees.

It should be no surprise that the cost of online advertising has risen to a point that it is no longer less expensive than legacy channels like television and mainstream print. The massive adoption of online since the mid-‘90s represented a shift of where consumers are reached, of epic proportions.  These days, there are very few traffic “steals” out there in paid advertising land.

For that reason, attaining affordable and sustainable target CPAs requires organic conversions from SEO and PR. These clicks are not “free,” but even when factored in with agency costs associated with driving the conversion, still dilute the CPA of pay per click only marketing significantly.  Happy hunting, marketers!

Marty Weintraub is author of Killer Facebook Ads (Wiley/Sybex 2011) and CEO of aimClear®, an online marketing agency that has managed Facebook ad campaigns generating over 10 billion impressions internationally.

Header Image © Helder Almeida – Fotolia (dot) com

Labor Day is over and the final push for Midterm Elections is here, with the media & candidates whipping up political parties into a polarizing frenzy. Whether you are a divisive mastermind looking to stir the crazy pot or a candidate hoping to clear up some slung mud, political Facebook ads are your friends amongst foes.

Facebook ads are the ubiquitous, often redundant, paid placements in the right column of users’ interface. Advertisers’ ability to laser target users online has some legislators, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (MO), calling it downright “creepy” and seeking Internet privacy. As marketers, it’s important to understand and identify the ways in which Facebook users self-reveal their deep roots. It’s not just cut-and-dry as “Republican” or “not.” An application download or FB group membership can speak volumes of where users sit on the political fence.

Advertisers can exploit leverage the passionate political extremes to sell, persuade, petition, and brand in social spaces. As you may imagine, targeting the passionately-divided with messages that either reinforce ideals or strongly questions beliefs can incite a click-frenzy. Perhaps campaign managers should take some notes.

Targeting users by political party is not as simple as checking a box in Facebook’s targeting field. The good news: Facebook explicitly asks for political party information while users are creating a bio, so there’s a good chance they’ve nonchalantly included this information in their profile.

Get set to spend some time, get a  little creative and reap the rewards of these passionate political segments.

Start by typing “Republican” or “GOP” into the Facebook Likes/Interest targeting bucket until it barely resembles a word.

Republican Interests on Facebook

Self-Identified Straight Republicans on Facebook

Self-Identified Homosexual Republicans on Facebook

Why the sexual orientation division? Say you’re running a campaign to keep Proposition 8 out of legislation– these Republicans may be more likely to hop on your wagon than heterosexual Republicans. Maybe. Besides, I was curious.

Once more through the wringer for the “Democrat” segment:

Democrat Interest on Facebook

Straight Democrats on Facebook

Homosexual Democrats on Facebook

After exhausting the political party names,  consider what other names these folks might call themselves. Republicans, Conservatives. Democrats, Liberals. Let’s call the whole thing off & get to work.

Conservatives on Facebook

Liberals on Facebook

Pulling the Swing Vote in Facebook
Politicians know it’s not about swaying the staunch Republican or “bleeding-heart” Liberal. Voters with a mixed political standpoint are where you get the most bang for your buck.

It’s clear the Conservatives are dominating the Facebook space, but it’s significant to consider what issues matter to each political party.

What Political Parties on Facebook Like
What do Republicans/Conservatives love? The Bible!

And how about those “Godless Liberals”… chances are folks in favor of marijuana legalization lean to the left more than the Bible beaters readers.

Back to Republicans/Conservatives. Think hard: they like “Traditional Marriages.”

Flip those interests and you get the Democrat/Liberal stance: users who sport marriage equality and the repeal of Prop 8 in California.

Often in politics, it’s not about what you like… but what you don’t like.

The polarizing flavor of the month seems to be the mosk mosque Muslim Cultural Center set to be built on near Ground Zero.

Facebook Users Against a Mosque at Ground Zero

Just a wild guess, but I’d assume they’re more politically conservative than these folks:

A week ago, less than 20 people on Facebook approved of the “Mosque Near Ground Zero.” Ouch. It stands to note, however, that this is a fairly new political hot button– mere months old. We checked back seven days later:

Facebook Users Who Support a “Mosque” at Ground Zero

What a difference a week makes.

Going After Political Enemies
What do these two parties hate more than anything? The enemy. They hate each other.

And, boy, do they hate opposing political representatives.

But don’t forget the pom-pom squads for individual politicians. There are plenty of Conservative Facebook users who like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal & the Outspoken Joe Wilson etc.

And there are over 200,000 Facebook Fans of the Conservative Poster Child, Ronald Reagan.

Still, a hefty sum of Users on Facebook like President Clinton and Senator Clinton.

And over 2 Million Supporters of President Barack Obama on Facebook.

Don’t stop there. People who like political pundits or slanted news programs also reveal deep political party affiliations.

Facebook Users Who Like “Fair and Balanced” Conservative Political Pundits & Shows

Facebook Users Who Like Liberal Political Pundits & Shows

A word to the wise: if you only go after ballot party lines, you are skimming the the mere surface of the sea of politically-charged members on Facebook. Marketers cannot assume individuals identify themselves so simply. The ways people reveal their affiliations to one political party or another are as plentiful and diverse as the persons themselves– from pundits to deep-rooted issues to notorious poster children. Be a marketer. Do your research (even if that means watching Glenn Beck…) and who knows, you may sway the next election.

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Banner Image Credit to: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Facebook doesn’t just mess around with users regarding privacy. They’ve taken the liberty to effectually raise one of our client’s daily cash expenditures nearly 5X…without asking. Amplifying the confusion of the whole thing is that Facebook did this on a weekend, when they mostly likely know average, responsible marketers are probably not eagle-eying their campaigns.

One person might say Facebook doesn’t just make us advertisers bend over, they dig their hands into our pockets.

How Can Facebook Justify This B#!! $#!^ ?
1. Facebook’s Help Center straight up says they might do it:

Why, Facebook, do you think you have a better grip on advertisers’ budgets than they do? What logic, “under normal circumstances,” gives a platform the entitlement to decide how much an advertiser will spend?

2. Well, they e-mailed the client… and here’s the arguably self-righteous note:

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Facebook Ads Team <advertise-noreply@facebook.com> wrote:

Hi [Poor Schmuck],

Since you have successfully completed your recent Facebook Ads payments, we’ve increased the spend limit on your Facebook Ads account to $X,000.00 USD. This is the new maximum amount that you’ll be allowed to spend in one day. Your new spend limit willtake [Facebook’s poor grammar not ours] effect within 24 hours.

Please note the difference between the daily budgets you’ve set for your campaigns and the daily spend limit that we now have in place for your account. Your daily budget is the amount you have indicated you’re willing to spend for your campaigns. The daily spend limit is the maximum amount that Facebook will allow you to spend in one day. Your daily budget amount cannot exceed the daily spend limit of $X,000.00 USD. We will never charge you more than the daily budget you set for your campaigns.

Here’s how you can increase the daily budgets of your campaigns to your new spend limit in order to increase the distribution of your ads:

1. Log into your Facebook Ads account at http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage?act=TUVWXYZ.
2. Click on the current budget under the ‘Budget/day’ column of the campaigns you wish to update.
3. Enter in your new, desired budget.
4. Click “Save”.

Thanks for continuing to advertise with Facebook Ads!

Sincerely,

The Facebook Ads Team

***

Thanks, Facebook, for e-mailing this notice to a busy client. On a Saturday.

Thanks for sending it from an unmonitored, no-reply e-mail address.

And, thanks, Facebook, for [NOT] providing a phone number so that we could call you and tell you just how unacceptable this is.

Potential Damages
The true danger in Facebook’s apparent sense of entitlement is the monetary damage it could have caused the client.

Facebook essentially increased the budget on a Saturday. In the very least, the campaign could have gone an entire weekend blowing through unauthorized ad spend. Were it a mature campaign, such as our client’s, it may well have gone unchecked for days, as semi-professional small business account managers often reasonably let mature campaigns hum along for a couple of days without checking back. This could’ve blown major cash.

Facebook’s apparent pompousness also shines through in their Help Center, where they assume advertisers always and only want to increase their “Daily Spend Limit.”

Let’s do the math. Say we have 20 campaigns set up with daily budgets of $50 each, which is the default.  Assume we set up the account at the default-spending limit FB imposed, which was $250.

Of course you ask, “Why would you leave each campaign set up at the default $50 daily budget in light of the $250 daily spending cap?” The answer is simple: We don’t always know which campaign will be hot, so even though 20 campaigns could theoretically spend up to $1K (at $50 each), they never will because the daily spending limit protects us. That is until Facebook raised our daily spending limit without asking us.  Now each campaign can spend out to its full $50 potential. We can only control each campaign by aggregate daily budgets.  The problem here is the surprise factor. We want to know before the move is made.

A few months ago we worked on a very large client’s Facebook PPC campaign and ran across the problem of a FB limiting daily spend of a measly $50 for new accounts. Now, we have quite the opposite problem. This time, if not for our close monitoring, Facebook would have spent much more money than our client had intended. How ironic is that?

Facebook is messing with the wrong crowd on this one. Advertisers are not the typical patrons of Facebook, who will pout, stomp their feet and go one day without logging in to Facebook when they feel wronged.  We write Facebook checks and evangelize their product to colleagues and clients.  Once FB sets the daily spend limit, there’s no way to edit it.

No, Facebook. I want to SET the daily spend limit that y’all decided to increase. Thanks.

It’s a bit like eating an elephant, a labor-intensive conundrum of today’s online marketing ecosystem. The more keyword, contextual and competitive data available to mine, the more effort is required to properly research a product’s proper place. The investment is completely worth it.

Regardless of channels we plan campaigns in (flavors of SEO, PPC, Social Media, etc…), the objective of demographic research is to attain a data-driven and comprehensive familiarity with products and categories.  From there, we strive to accomplish channel-coverage where relevant. This article offers several  semanticstarting points for the process of mapping traditional “search” inventory thinking to Facebook PPC segments.

We begin with classic “search” keyword research. Next, it’s all about mapping semantic inventory to any salient data available to advise marketing efforts.  Here are a few ideas for generating demographic insights from social media, stemming from and moving beyond keywords.

Brand Terms & Your Competitors’ Brand Terms
These days there’s no shortage of inspiring SERPs that shed light on competitors’ brand and product terms. Of course, we would know this already from traditional l keyword research, competitive PPC intelligence and other sources.  Still, a quick trip to the Google SERPs gives us all the data we need to start mapping traditional search to Facebook.

Lately, Google has been inserting big brand SERPs suggestions in various locations. There’s a bit of a to-do about it, since obviously this is to the detriment of smaller brands. Well, thanks Google for making my job easier with the suggestion of big competitors!  We like to start here.

But really, despite one’s competitive research starting point, it’s easy to map brands and products to Facebook. In each of the FB screen captures from here on out, we’ve selected a few examples of many possibilities.

It’s fun to note that in the competitors’ brand bin, we’re picking the pockets of the Kodak Challenge… bummer for Kodak .

Product Categories
Categories are easy, too. Ask yourself the question: “What are the main lines of activity surrounding digital camera usage?” At this stage of the game, we’re only limited by our creativity. Here are a few to think about.  (Please note that the “photographer” interest could apply to professionals or amateurs.  We’ve left it in the B2C bucket for now.)

Professionals & Consumers Who Use The Product & Services You’re Marketing (Using the Interest Tool)
Facebook is awesome for mapping keywords to social (contextual) inventory. Zero in on customers, both B2B and B2C. This can take some guile and imagination. Let me take you through some examples. (Remember, we left “photographer,” a huge segment, on the category side of things– so it’s not in this bucket.)

Relevant Firms (Using the Interest Tool)
Clearly there is B2B booty-loot to be spooged from Facebook. I’ve grabbed a few firms of many who might be interested in digital camera gear.  Please note that these are FB users “interested in” activities like “Michael Harris Photographer,” which is a bit different than stating straight-up that they “work for” Michael Harris Photographer.  This seemingly subtle differentiation is worthy of a tutorial in and of itself.

Professionals & Consumers Who Use The Product & Services You’re Marketing (Using the Education & Work Tool)
Here’s the same type of research from the “where I work” bucket.”

Think Hard About Occupations
Regardless whether users disclose that they are fans of or work for specific companies, or from the education and work segment, this data is valuable insight for marketers. Say you sell scientific software, regarding water with an environmental slant. Again, discovering the occupations of professionals who consume your products is only limited by your research time and guile.

College Majors
I once had a client that built airplanes. The old joke was, “Gee– I guess we need to manufacture a few pilots!”  Think about the long-term ramifications of brand building, holistic benevolence and direct response sales to those studying to be come professionals in any category. We pulled these 250K+ students studying specific major from FB. There’s a lot of short tail inventory there in wacky Facebook corners to mine.

The job of mapping brands to Facebook PPC can be a great big furry animal to eat, but the more data we have regarding social PPC segments, the more comprehensive coverage we can attain for a client.  Just remember… one bite at a time, people.

In review, here are a few starting places for your marketing pleasure:

• Brand Terms & Your Competitors’ Brand Terms
• Product Categories
• Professionals & Consumers Who Use The Product & Services You’re Marketing
• Relevant Firms (Using the Interest Tool)
• Professionals & Consumers Who Use The Product & Services You’re Marketing (From the Education & Work Tool)
• College Majors

The rise of exchanges in display advertising is making it look a hell of a lot more like search. Display is making headway from a shot-in-the-dark branding channel tactic to a highly targeted conduit for brands to capture the right audience, with the right dialog at the right time.

Well folks, there’s no doubt about it; I threw out my neck, but for good cause. At the session Ad Networks & Exchanges: How the Search O/S is Changing the Display Game at SESNY, I found myself nodding in agreement a little bit more than usual. Not to be gratuitous, I just really jived with the information proffered.

Moderating the session was the lovely Bianca Gardner (Hey, Matt…never mind), Digital Media Supervisor, Publicis Modem. Alongside her, the stellar lineup; Jonathan Mendez, Founder & CEO, Yieldbot, Dax Hamman, VP of Display Media, iCrossing, Paul Pellman, CEO, Click Forensics, Inc. and Justin Merickel, VP, Marketing and New Product Development, Efficient Frontier.

First up was Jonathan Mendez and it went a little something like this.

• No matter what the medium, great ads are all about delivering relevance. Display has pushed hard to achieve that goal and will only continue to advance in this area.

• Search is really a matching problem. The idea is to match highly relevant messages to inventory. Of course the power here is the ability to select the exact inventory (and funnel location) you’ll purchase. Display is on its way there.

“People don’t read ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes that an ad.” – Howard Gossage

• #1 lesson: Context
  • Relevance is having context with what you do and timing
  • Relevance is very temporal – timing is everything
  • Display has a way to go but its moving towards relevance
  • 5 Core Pieces to Search and Display
    • Intent
    • Segmentation (people do this for you. Think about Facebook)
    • Creative
    • Buying (making the most headway here, becoming more like search playing field)
    • Campaign management

Jonathan then took a look at how display once was and how it is now.

Intent

• Used to be based on awareness. Looking at reach and frequency against a CPM.
• Now performance is becoming intent and data driven, backing everything into cost per action (CPA or CPL).

Segmentation

• Used to be bulk, site/demand past behavior
• Now differentiated, audience and current behavior. Data we’re getting now is much more temporal, this equals better targeting.

Creative

• Used to have no conversion at a high cost with a long lead-time.
• Now creative is targeted and highly dynamic, (shown based on your location) self serve. We’re in the early days of this dynamic creative. This is the key to delivering relevance.

Buying

• Used to be rate card, call them up then i/o
• Now bid & real-time bidding

Campaign Management

• Used to be pricey – high min, no optimization
• Now low minimum, no switch $, and you can optimize

Last words of wisdom: Technology only helps you aim. The best marketers are people not machines.

Next up was Dax Hamman.

Dax creates the typical large client scenario:

• Pressure to grow revenue
• Sophisticated SEM program
• Need alternative ROI channels

This scenario has really pushed display ads to evolve. Historically display was seen as a high-cost branding tool. It was like standing on a corner and blapping your message to walk by traffic. It really ignored both social interaction and the buying cycle.

Search is about the individual. They come to you and tell you what they’re interested in. You have the opportunity to develop a one-on-one conversation with potential customers. This makes it easy to define ROI.

Q: So where should you start if you’re just getting into display?

A: Search re-targeting and site re-targeting

Search re-targeting

• Individual searches term related to your business
• Individual is tagged with a cookie
• Individual clicks on an ad that isn’t yours
• Individual can be identified by you 15 minutes later and shown your ads

Note: Marketers are eager for a bigger crowd but its not available yet.

Site re-targeting

• Individual arrives on your site
• The visit is recorded by a tracking pixel
• Our tagged individual is identified again
• Individual clicks on the ad and is brought back to your site
• This gives you the opportunity to get in front of potential customers after they’ve abandoned the search process.

Furthermore,

• A media exchange allows us to buy audiences instead of inventory
• Like search, display becomes an auction environment; success comes from combining technology, data and people.
• Groups about aggregate people with intent. You can now bid on these people

What is social re-targeting?

• Find your customers – individual visits your site through any channel
• Social graph mapping – individual’s closest contacts are identified from social sites
• Targeted delivery – targeted ads are shown to customer’s closest friends
• Creating scale – one customer lead can turn to ten potential customers
• Cookie them, then map what other social profiles they interact with. From that you can garner their 10 best friends. Once we figure that out we can serve them ads. Birds of a feather buy a lot of the same stuff!

Remember… display is an art as well as a science.

Next to the podium was Justin Merickel.

Display is a performance channel and Justin showed us how.

3 primary trends from a performance optimization platform perspective

• Massive reach on high quality display at auction-based prices is available in the exchanges/meta-exchanges inventory.
• Targeting is widely available – pursue to intent data
• Real time bidding – a lot of noise in the industry. Inventory sources will push impressions to performance platforms.

Display in 3 parts

• Premium
• Non premium networks
• Non-premium exchange

(His company is focused on the exchange.)

• Biddable display is a huge market. This is the growth channel in online marketing. 40-50% growth rate here. This will get more competitive and more expensive.
• If your not doing retargeting your missing the boat on something that works.
• Need to attribute conversions to the right actions based on last view and last click. This is a big challenge.

Tips:

• Attribute success the right way
• Think of Inventory and data side – try to unbundle it
• Test and learn. This market is immature

Last up was Paul Pellman.

Paul touched on some of the trends occurring in the market place and how that will change the landscape moving forward.

• 1^st – More money will be brought into display, driven by people spending more time online and media spend has not caught up.
• 2^nd – Improved media buying efficacy. The resource it takes to do display campaigns is extremely high. This cost is passed on to the advertiser and needs to be reduced and its on its way down.
• Side effect: More efficient platforms create less transparency where those ads are being placed. The challenge is making sure clients are getting what they paid for.
• 3^rd – Disaggregation of data used to target media – Creation of new media data providers.

Pellman shared a data showing media buys between several different channels. Media buys for TV are 10x the amount spent on Internet. Smart marketers cannot continue to pay high CPMs to reach a shrinking audience; they absolutely need to put their money where it is going to do work.

• Data insight layer will start become more targeted enabling the placement of ads in the proper places.

Big Issue:
According to Kantar, ad spend in all media categories was down in 2009 with the exception of freestanding inserts and display ads. Now things are picking up, but a lot of these channels will never come back such as print, radio, even television is threatened.

Search Vs. Display

• Similarities
  • Efficiencies of media buying – (Allows you to spend more money efficiently)
  • Enhance campaign refine capabilities
  • Similar campaign platforms and approach

• Differences
  • Its going to be a lot more difficult (analyzing 1^st and 3^rd party data)
  • Going to need a lot better metrics and attribution
  • Data, data, data

Last thoughts

• Online display spend migration will be higher than most experts predict
• Beware of privacy rights – new targeting approaches may worry consumers

-End scene-

There has been much written surrounding classic query types. In review, conventional wisdom dictates that there are basically three kinds:

• Informational - suggests the searcher is on the broad quest for knowledge about a topic of interest (medical symptoms, film trivia, tips on housebreaking puppies, etc.).

• Navigational - indicates the searcher is on the hunt for a specific website, usually dedicated to a specific brand (a search for Pepsi usually means the searcher’s destination is Pepsi.com).

• Transactional - connotes the searcher is ready to make a purchase online (typically formatted like so: “buy [product keyword] online”]).

However, things are not always that cut and dry. In these days of four and five word searches, there are subtle shades of intent that aren’t always obvious to the marketer.  For PPC jockeys, spending cold cash to separate out live customers can be a crucial matter of budget.  Let’s take a look at four ways to identify and leverage some subtle intent words out there to help you focus time and money on PPC keywords that should stand a decent better of converting.

Background
When crafting PPC campaigns, it can be tempting to choose any keywords that seem highly relevant to your client’s products and services. Targeting people who search for what Client X has to offer makes sense at face value: doctor is to “surgery” as restaurant owner is to “Indian food” as clothing store is to “yellow sweater,” right? Tight industry-associated  keywords reach out to every Tom, Dick and Harry interested in your commodity, and the glistening pot of search volume they generate is enough to make any client glassy-eyed with glee. But as the marketer-of-record (he/she who will be judged on actual ROI) are you in tune with how deep in the purchase funnel these searches are?

4 Types of Keywords that Help Define User Intent
The objective here is to get a handle on the level of intent behind a person’s search.  There won’t always be blatantly obvious “where can I buy a” or “where can I find a” transactional prefixes to distinguish walk-by traffic from potential customers.

1) Profession-based keywords. Determining user intent can be as simple as separating commodity-based keywords from the people who provide them. For example, someone searching for “gynecology” may have a very different end-goal compared to someone searching for “gynecologist.” The former is more informational whereas the latter suggests a sense of direction, of urgency, of preparedness to take next steps further into the funnel. This works for a healthy chunk of industry-based descriptive nouns and their performers:

2) Clarification keywords. The keywords people tack onto informational short tail queries can help define intent, too. For example, “kidney stone” as a stand-alone keyword is too generic to convey intent one way or the other, but consider:

• kidney stone doctor
• kidney stone specialist
• kidney stone medical center
• kidney stone hospital
• kidney stone emergency clinic
• kidney stone 24 hour clinic

The bold terms up the intent value of the basic keywords tremendously. This person is no longer searching for information about kidney stones… they’re looking for someone or someplace where they can find help.  These are “buyers,” considerably deeper in the purchase funnel, and as such, worth marketing to.

3) Transactional keywords. Terms such as “cheap,” “discount,” “clearance,” and “new” convey intent in a very direct way. A query for “discount digital camera” immediately places the searcher deeper in the buying funnel as opposed to simply “digital camera.”

4) Geo-specific keywords. Tacking a city or zip code to a generic keyword also strengthens the level of intent.  A search for “Indian food New York City” is much more telling of a person’s intent as compared to simply “Indian food.”

Once you identify your profession-based keywords, clarification keywords, transactional keywords and geo-specific keywords, dump them all into a tab on an excel sheet. For the sake of this post, let’s run with the example of a client who happens to be a veterinarian. Here’s some examples of correlating intent words:

Incorporating Intent Keywords into your PPC Ads
Either manually or with a keyword list generating tool, mash up carefully thought out intent words with any keywords that apply to your industry.

Run the mashed up keywords though the AdWords Keyword Tool to obtain literal search volume on terms that indicate a readiness to convert:

Now head further out on the long tail by mashing up three buckets: industry words, intent words and geo-specific words:

Segmenting the Results
Export the keyword mash to an Excel spreadsheet:

Create tabs in the spreadsheet as you see fit:

From there create keyword clusters with correlating data- for example, a chunk of the spreadsheet dedicated to search terms with the intent word “specialist” and a chunk for “hospital.”

Armed with these intent-driven keywords and their literal inventory, you’re ready to create PPC ads that specifically target people ready to convert.

Sure, adding the the keyphrase “new york” as a qualifier to “veterinary hospital” whittles the global search volume from 368,000 down to 390, but those 390 people are your new best friends (and potential customers). The last thing you want to do with your PPC budget is spend it educating the sweaty masses at the top of the funnel who aren’t ready or even looking to convert. Your goal should be to identify those in the prone-to-purchase sweet spot and pounce with your effective PPC ads.

Let the record show that it certainly isn’t a  waste to market to informational keywords so long as the process is undertaken in a very intentionally way. PPC ads to informational  searches are terrific for engaging users, making friends, building brands and even selling at a reduced conversion rate and (often) higher CPA. On the other hand, marketing specifically to intent words will filter your keyword bucket to such a great extent that you can expect fewer but better converting searches.
photo credit: AlishaV