How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns

Filed Under Jeremy Schoemaker | Leave a Comment

As many of you know, I am a 16 year old affiliate marketer. A lot of people are more interested in talking to me about my age or how much money I make– than the techniques I use to do it. It’s true that I usually make a six figure net (not gross) income each month, primarily through PPC. But were I someone else wanting to get their start in affiliate marketing, I’d be more interested in learning something, than talking about things you’d typically find in the gossip magazines. So this guest post goes into some of what I do. You’ll perhaps be amazed that there are no “secrets”. It’s not because I’m not telling you— rather, it’s a ton of hard work and a little bit of luck. It’s amazing how “lucky” you get when you work hard. Don’t believe the “get rich quick” scams that would have you believe a single piece of magic software or a single technique to find the right keywords is all you really need. I hope you find this post helpful– ping me at harrison @ leaderclicks dot com with comments and don’t forget to check out my social advertising network http://www.leaderclicks.com and my small business advertising service.

KEYWORDS

When initially setting up your campaigns, DO NOT go to some keyword tool and dump in a gazillion keywords into your adgroups and campaigns– unless you want to boast about how many terms are in your keyword portfolio. The majority of these terms, scored by whatever techniques are going to be junky and low volume– and the engines will penalize you for it. Rather, what I do is hand pick just a few terms per ad group and then borrow ads from competitors that are already bidding on those terms. Sounds simplistic? Well, it is– but it works. Make sure you group your keywords tightly, so they all reflect the same user intent. The engines will choose one of the ads from that ad group to show, so make sure that each keyword is just as relevant for the ad you show.

MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION

This is probably where most people fall down, because they try to get really fancy and end up spending lots of time optimizing garbage— spending their time in the wrong places. What I do is let a campaign run for a day or two (less if there’s lots of volume) and then look at which terms are driving the most volume— sorting first by clicks descending in AdWords Editor. By the way, if you aren’t using AdWords Editor and are trying to optimize via the web interface, you are handicapped right there because you can’t make bulk changes and do “>

So if that ad group looks like it’s working, then starting spinning off other variants– add those keywords on other match types (assuming there is volume to justify it), come up another ad or two, maybe even bid a little higher. If it’s not working (based on my rule of spending twice the CPA amount), then you need to ruthlessly cut it. And if you’ve run a campaign for a few weeks and there are keywords that have no impressions or clicks— cut them. Don’t be afraid to prune. Same with cutting ads– look at both CTR and conversion rate. The search engines are deciding which ads to show based on what’s making THEM more money– which is based on eCPM. All else equal, Google’s optimization will choose ads that have the highest CTR, even though there is usually a corresponding trade-off in conversion rate. So when testing campaigns, choose the campaign setting to have ads rotate equally– don’t let Google choose. Finding the right balance between making Google money (to get more volume with high CTR) and maximizing your margin is hard. There is a clear trade-off between volume and price— as you have to bid up (or favor higher CTR ads) to get more clicks. Would you like to have 100 clicks a day that net you 20 cents of profit each or 500 clicks a day at 5 cents profit? I’m taking my first semester of Economics right now, and the teacher tells me that trade-off is elasticity– a measure of how much you need to pay proportionately compared to proportionately how much more volume you can get. Your profit is how many clicks you get times how much you net per click– it’s an inverse relationship, unless you are bidding on tail terms or perhaps certain branded traffic.

You’ll also want to look at your analytics data to get a sense of quality– don’t be just a PPC tool jockey. Check out your landing page bounce rate per keyword. You’ll find that some terms will have a 60%+ bounce rate and should therefore either be cut– or you have to change your landing page. A bounce rate is what percentage of folks bail on your landing page. Most affiliates choose to look only at conversion rate, but bounce rate is a great intermediate metric, since you get a lot more data earlier than having to wait for a conversion. We use our in-house analytics system, by the way, because we don’t want to give the engines our data. For many of our clients, however, we just install Google Analytics, since it’s easy, cheap (free), and has a beautiful UI. Anyway, the bounce rate is usually a good indicator of eventual conversion– after all, if they leave, they didn’t exactly have a chance to convert. So that will save you some money. If you’re sending people to your own site, you’ll also want to look at keywords that drive organic traffic. Provided you are not a one-page wonder and have a real site with information, then you’ll probably find a fair number of terms that people are coming in on— put those into your PPC campaign. And for terms that have worked well in PPC— start making pages on your site, so you can start ranking for them. I don’t look at things like KEI, LSI, or another TLA (three letter acronym). I rarely even use the Google Adwords API– but do in cases where there is enough volume to make it worth putting automated bid management in place. You do get dinged on using the API, for those who don’t know, so AdWords Editor is a more effective prototyping tool. Once you have something stable, then you can consider scaling it to the moon and using the API.
CREATIVES (ADS and LANDING PAGES)
Affiliates are notorious for copying each other– because if it’s working for somone else, then I ought to do it, too. Plus, it’s the lazy man’s approach. I admit that I do, it, too— since it’s a great starting point. But don’t just be a PPC tool jockey and think that this approach will bring you massive success. You gotta consider for a moment– if I’m doing what everyone else is doing, what kind of results can I realisttically expect? It does frustrate me when other affiliates copy my ads— what am I going to do, tell them to stop or sue them? Guys, you know who you are. So come up with a clever twist for your ads and landing pages. That slight increase in conversion rate or CTR can allow you to make significant profits even if your PPC campaigns are no better than everyone elses. I highly recommend Tim Armstrong’s book on landing page optimization. And promote related products on your landing pages— you already got them there, so might as well increase your chances of converting on something.

SILLY THINGS THAT I SEE PEOPLE DO

ROUNDING IT UP
There is much more we can talk about here— maybe I should write a book? The main point I wanted to get across is that my wins in affiliate marketing (I’m still young, so who knows where this will go) have come from being a cross-functional player. I understand a little bit about PPC, analytics, SEO, landing page development, relationship building (to get the best offers and payouts), and creative writing. With a limited reliance on tools and no formal education, I’ve been able to do reasonably well so far by coming up with new strategies at the intersections of these areas– for example, monitoring my natural and paid rankings together for keywords or using analytics to data drive PPC bids. In the last year, I’ve branched out beyond pure affiliate marketing and started doing lead gen for Fortune 500 companies, as well as a semi-automated solution for small business advertising (blitzlocal). Our team has developed some internal tools in the process, such as a kick-ass ad server and some PPC/SEO/analytics tools. We’ll be publicly releasing these tools in trimmed down versions soon. Meanwhile, I hope this was informative for you. Check out my blog for more articles.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns

Aug

31

3 Landing Page Conversion Tips… or What’s the Point?

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If you’ve ever visited a website and muttered to yourself “what’s the point,” remember that your visitors will ask YOU the same question when they visit your landing pages.

A website can exceed all Quality Score guidelines, employ stunning design, and be oozing with quality content… but if it doesn’t convert, what’s the point?

If your conversions aren’t what you hoped for, these tips will help you revamp your landing pages:

TIP #1 - Think like a visitor, not like YOU. Your likes, dislikes, tastes, and hot buttons don’t matter - only your visitors’. If you’re not sure what will grab their immediate attention, research the top sites for your keywords in both natural search and first-page PPC placements. Study those landing pages carefully and take notes.

TIP #2 - Remove obstacles. Getting out of your visitor’s way is one of the easiest ways to improve a landing page. Try this exercise: load a copy of the page into your favorite html editor, then start cutting. Ruthlessly slash away anything that distracts from the main purpose. You must keep everything that contributes to a quality user experience, such as links to relevant content pages. But it’s worth seeing just how much stuff you can cut — and it often results in a much more “to the point” landing page.

TIP #3 - Put the Most Desired Action (MDA) front and center. Every landing page should have ONE goal in mind - and that’s the most desired action you want the visitor to take. Whether it’s joining your opt-in list, clicking the “Learn More” or “Buy Now” buttons, or making good on the promise of your PPC ad, that’s what should hit your visitor right between the eyes.

Finally, confused about your MDA? If you’re not sure what your Most Desired Action really should be, ask yourself these questions:

What’s the “in your face” message of this landing page? Is it the answer to the visitor’s problem, question, or need? Is it the best price on the product they’ve searched for? Is it a coupon or free shipping deal? Is it five key comparisons between product X and product Y? Whatever it is, it needs to be the most prominent thing on the landing page.
What do you want EVERY visitor to do? In a perfect world, what would do you want from every single visitor to your page? Of course they ALL won’t do it, but thinking about the ideal result often helps you eliminate static and clutter. It also helps you get clear on the next point…
What’s the ONE RESULT you desire the most? Give your visitors too many options, and you’re asking them to make decisions. And if they can’t decide immediately, they’re likely to bail out — which will kill conversions. The key here is choosing ONE goal for the page and making that the most obvious choice for your visitor. Don’t make them think — make them ACT.
What are your competitors doing, and doing well? Don’t reinvent the mousetrap, just build a better one. Scope out your competitors’ pages and ask yourself, what’s their strongest message? What’s the one in-your-face item that hits you immediately? Is there one obvious action, or are you being asked to bounce around and make decisions? And most importantly: If you were in the market for this product, would YOU do what this page asks you to do?

Landing pages don’t have to be slick or pretty to generate sales. But they do need to have ONE crystal clear purpose that get the response you want. So find that purpose. That’s the real point of your landing pages.