Archive by Author

Nov26

Kyle Grant

1

Failure is the Only Option: Failing Quickly to Succeed Faster

I don’t think it is going to be a surprise to anyone to know that not every paid search test they implement will be a success; if it is a surprise, I am sorry. (p.s. there is no Santa Clause, either). The key to successful management of paid search is to determine acceptable margins of failure and test within those margins. How much failure can be tolerated and how much are you willing to risk? Gord Hotchkiss has spoken and written on many occasions about internet speed and what this means for organizations trying to adapt to a rapidly changing [...]

Sep24

Kyle Grant

0

Structuring your PPC Campaign to Maximize Visibility and Cost Control

The importance of campaign structure plays a significant role in determining the overall success of a PPC campaign. Defining the structure of a PPC campaign can be defined by a series of best practices, but really what it comes down to is crafting your marketing communication mix and how you will want to interact with customers at all points of the purchase decision process. Your paid search campaign structure should adequately cover all stages of the purchase decision cycle while maintaining a sufficient ad frequency to be effective. Determining the most effective structure comes down to really understanding what the [...]

Apr27

Kyle Grant

2

PPC Measurability: A Double Edged Sword

In marketing circles, the old adage: "Half my advertising money is wasted. The problem is that I don’t know which half!" is often regarded as marketing fact and has been more or less accepted as fact until now. In a down economy marketers are now heralding this statement no longer as a quote, but as a mission statement to finding where to invest money.  However, the very nature of this quote embodies the challenge that all marketers face: attribution. The famous marketing quote was reportedly said by William Lever, John Wanamaker, and F.W. Woolworth; begging the question: who gets the [...]

Mar16

Kyle Grant

4

Yahoo Day Parting Has Arrived!

Without much fanfare or publication, Yahoo has released its day parting and demographic targeting technologies. This is a great stride forward for Yahoo and, until now, has been a pain for many search marketers advertising on Yahoo. Yahoo now joins the ranks of the other major Search Engines (Google, Microsoft Live Search, and ASK) with offering a greater level of sophisticated targeting tools to help advertisers eliminate wasted advertising dollars.  We have been working quite closely with our Yahoo Representatives who have been up until this point been assisting with manually day parting our clients’ campaigns. With Yahoo we have [...]

Sep10

Kyle Grant

0

SAR-R: Search and Rescuing ROI

Over the past several months, in part due to increased economic pressures, we have seen an increase of importance placed on improving return on investment (ROI) from search-based activity, particularly from PPC campaigns. ROI attribution and measurement becomes especially important when justifying the cost of the online sponsored advertising and improving the return on advertising spend (ROAS). Here are some tips on improving your search performance and getting the best ROI possible. 1.      Know Your Analytics This statement may seem fairly redundant, but all too often search marketers find themselves flying blind without proper analytics. Much of this article will [...]

Aug14

Kyle Grant

2

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 4 of 4)

This is the final installment of the 4-part series on key PPC best practices (PPC Best Practices Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). Speak Their Language There has been constant debate as to what to use for keyword analysis with regards to long-tail versus head phrases and which yields the better results. Head phrases are the very generic and broad search queries where there is enormous search volume, but costs associated with the keywords are quite high. Torso keywords are the more-specific keywords; the 2- to 4-word search queries that still have lower search volume compared to the head [...]

Jul31

Kyle Grant

3

PPC Best Practices (Part 3 of 4)

This is the third installment of the 4-part series on key PPC best practices (PPC Best Practices Part 1, Part 2). So far we’ve introduced the basics in the planning and measurement involved with the setup of a PPC campaign in addition to conversion path analysis. This week we’ll get into testing, demographic targeting, and vertical engines. Don’t Guess… Test With a PPC campaign, testing is the campaign manager’s best friend. Testing is a constant, iterative process that must be followed to refine the effectiveness of your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns. Multivariate testing can be as complex as developing [...]

Jul23

Kyle Grant

4

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 2 of 4)

Last week, I started wrote a post on some of the key PPC best practices (Go to Part 1). This is the second installment of the 4 part series.   Plan to Measure; then Measure the Plan As you move forward with your PPC campaign, ensure you are able to effectively measure your KPIs through your analytics tracking. With several of our clients, we are using keyword-level ROI to ensure we can accurately spend the budget where we are making the highest returns. This measurement includes being able to merge data from several sources in order to accurately measure the [...]

Jul15

Kyle Grant

4

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 1 of 4)

Stop Thinking PPC, Start Thinking Consumer-Initiated Marketing Over the past year, several new options (and the list keeps growing) have been made available for online advertisers to create more sophisticated online marketing campaigns. We’ve seen the implementation of display advertising through Pay Per Click (PPC) providers as well as a significant movement towards local and mobile advertising. This movement in the market represents a paradigm shift, from simply a PPC-focused strategy, to thinking about all the channels associated with consumer-initiated marketing conversations. Several of these options include display advertisements, paid inclusion, local listings and Pay Per Action (PPA). With each [...]

Jun24

Kyle Grant

0

Google Adwords Phishing Attempts

  A word of Caution to Adwords Advertisers: Recently, we have seen a notable increase in the number of what appears to be phishing (A.K.A spoofing) attempts targeting Google Adwords Accounts. These attempts mirror the same strategy that was used to steal account information from bank accounts; where the email appears to be from Google Adwords, yet the URL is a different variation to the Google Adwords link. Google does attempt to contact you through emails; however, should you receive an email alert, please look into your account through the user interface directly. A valid email from Google will include [...]

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