Each ad should be as specific to the user’s search intent as possible. Let’s say you sell coats. You may have a list of keywords similar to the following:

Coats Ad Group

• Winter coats
• Spring coats
• Wool coats
• Kids coats
• Leather coats
• Affordable kids coats
• Coats for kids
• Sale on leather coats
• Women’s leather coats
• Men’s leather coats
• Trench coats
• Men’s trench coat
• Spring coat clearance
• Winter coat clearance

 
Since all of these keywords are about coats, one may put all of these phrases into one ad group.  Each ad group has one ad (or a set of ads for A/B testing purposes).  You ad may look like the following:

If the user is searching for “affordable kid’s coats”, the above ad might entice a click to your site. However you are attempting to reach an audience that has varying needs with the same ad and the same website landing page. Someone searching for kid’s coats has a different need than someone search for trench coats or leather coats.  By segmenting these keywords into more closely themed ad groups you can speak to the needs of the searcher more specifically.  Here is an example of how you could group these keywords:

Kids Coats Ad Group

• Kids coats
• Affordable kids coats
• Coats for kids

The ad for the kid’s coats ad group example could be:

Had we not created a separate ad group for “kids coats,” and kept ‘all things coat’ under one ad group, we’d be presented with the following problems:

1. Having generic ad text that contains very few specifics regarding the type of coat the searcher has indicated they are interested in. This decreases your relevancy to the searcher’s needs. You lose buyers to your competitors who have ads that speak to the searcher’s needs, resulting in a lower click through rate which leads to a lower quality score. Lower quality scores = higher cost per click.
2. A generic ad typically points to a generic landing page that talks about coats in general, rather than a page specific to kid’s coats, which is what they “told us” they wanted. The probability of them leaving your site increases when they have to search for the information on kid’s coats they asked for originally.

Users who add a qualifier like “affordable” are indicating to you that they are interested in buying. They are close to making their purchase decision. Be sure you are capturing their interest with a relevant ad and a relevant landing page to makes it easy for them to take action and purchase. Be Relevant & Don’t Make Them Think.

Up Next: Mistake # 4: Failing to Track Performance

Previous posts in this series:
Mistake #1: Using Keywords that are Too Broad 

Mistake #2: Sending all traffic to the home page

Many beginner PPC campaign managers spend so much time and effort on writing good ad text and compiling a strong keyword list that they forget to consider the destination url that they’re having their ads point to. The best ad in the world will only pull someone into your site. That’s only half the battle.

The beauty of the internet is that the consumer is in control. They know that if they don’t find what they’re looking for immediately they can go back to the search results or enter in a new url in the blink of an eye. Knowing that, a good PPC manager will make sure that their landing page speaks to the user’s search query.

If a user searches for “homes for sale in Milwaukee” and is taken to your home page, which talks about real estate in southeast Wisconsin rather than just Milwaukee, it’s very likely that they’ll be frustrated. They’re much more likely to convert (in this case a request for an appointment or a contact form for more information) on a site that provides them with a page directly addressing Milwaukee homes for sale.

On top of that, Google has somewhat of a usability enforcement mechanism built into their paid ad algorithm. Since Google has an incentive to provide the searcher with content that’s relevant to their search, it looks at your landing page to make sure that it’s relevant to the keyword that you’re targeting. A quality landing page is just one aspect of the Quality Score, which Google uses to determine your cost per click for each keyword.

It’s really a win-win situation; by supplying your website visitors with content relevant to their search, you’re likely to drive up the conversion rate and lower your cost per conversion through higher quality scores. 

Up Next: Mistake # 3: Having too Many Keywords in an Adgroup

Previous posts in this series:
Mistake # 1: Using Keywords that are Too Broad

Without further delay, here’s the first in a series of 5 posts describing the common mistake, along with my prescription:

For most businesses, the objective of a PPC campaign is to reach your customer at the moment of relevance. This means that you should be presenting ads that address a customer’s desired action. For instance, using an example campaign for selling notebooks, if the customer searches “notebook for sale,” you’d want to display an ad that screams “Buy Now!” Don’t waste their time by displaying an ad that refers to a notebook battery or a pc.

It’s imperative that your list of keywords is highly targeted towards the actions that will produce the highest return on investment. Let’s say after some high level keyword analysis we start off with the following terms related to notebooks:

• Buy cheap notebooks online now
• Computer
• Buy notebook
• Tablet
• Notebook computer
• Notebook battery
• Notebook pc
• pc

If our goal is to have customers purchase a notebook from our site, we might want to remove some of the less relevant keywords so that our budget is only used for terms that are likely to achieve our goal:

• Buy cheap notebooks online now
• Computer
• Buy notebook
• Tablet
• Notebook computer
• Notebook battery
• Notebook pc
• pc

If we have multiple goals for the campaign, we want our keywords to reflect the differences among those goals. For this, it’s a good idea to think of the purchasing process as a funnel.

The largest stage of the funnel, research/engagement, contains the most generic terms, such as “notebook” or “notebook computers.”

The next stage of the funnel, consideration/comparison, will contain keywords reflective of an intent to price compare or review a product, such as “notebook reviews” or “compare notebooks.”

The third stage of the funnel, the purchase stage, should contain keywords that tell the user they can buy directly from your site, like “buy acme notebook,” “order acme monster 2000” or “discount acme notebook.”

If you’re displaying ads that speak to the first stage but the user’s already in the second stage, it’s very likely that they’ll ignore your ad and click on your competitor’s. A lower click through rate will indirectly raise your cost per click by driving down your quality scores. So you and your customer are both happy with a more targeted keyword list that is tailored to the action you want the customer to take on your site.

The example product and goals I have above are just examples but the general principle – that your keywords should be highly targeted and reflect the goals of your site – remains true throughout any PPC campaign.

UP NEXT: Common PPC Mistake #2: Sending all traffic to your home page

The problem with adding something to your site solely because it’s the trend is that it may not serve an actual purpose for your visitors. Moreover, the new feature may end up doing the opposite of what it was intended to do, which was to portray your business as current and knowledgeable.

The best example of this is a blog, or a latest news section. Frequently, business owners ask about starting a blog or adding a latest news application to their site so that it adds timeliness to their site. A blog can provide a great service to customers by providing detailed information related to your industry, although if you haven’t updated it in four months, that’s not exactly telling the visitor that you’re on top of things. Additionally, you’ve probably lost whatever following you once had, since those visitors are now going follow more dedicated bloggers. Similar rules apply to a company Twitter account.

There are numerous examples of superfluous add-ons for websites – RSS feeds and visit counters are also frequently misguided requests – and really, anything can be superfluous if it doesn’t meet the following criteria:

• The add-on solves a user’s or site owner’s problem (or both)
• The add-on is maintained relatively frequently (if applicable)
• The add-on flows with the rest of the website’s content so as not to obstruct or distract a user from making the intended action

It’s only natural to want the latest and greatest technology added to one’s site. But before you move forward with adding a new application, make sure you’ve considered the cost/benefit thoroughly and have considered the level of maintenance it requires.

• Strategic keyword selection
• Developing great content for both end users and search engines
• Building a successful inbound linking strategy
• Measuring your SEO results
• The top-5 SEO mistakes companies make, and how to avoid them

The seminar takes place from 9:30 to 11:30 AM on Friday, February 19th at Security Insurance Services in New Berlin, Wisconsin.  The event is free, but seating is limited and advanced registration is required.  Sign up online or give us a call at 888.947.4400.

Friday, October 2, 2009 – Website Strategies
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Polish Center, Franklin, WI

Friday, October 30, 2009 – Leveraging Social Media to Grow Sales
7:30 – 9:30AM – The Pulaski Inn, Cudahy, WI

Friday, December 4, 2009 – Using Email to Reach Your Market
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Polish Center, Franklin, WI

Friday, February 5, 2010 – Leveraging Social Media to Grow Sales
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Polish Center, Franklin, WI

Friday, March 12, 2010 – Website Strategies
7:30 – 9:30AM – The Pulaski Inn, Cudahy, WI

Friday,  April 16, 2010 – Using Email to Reach Your Market
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Tri City National Bank, South Milwaukee, WI

For more information on any of the above sessions, or other classes offered, contact the UWM School of Continuing Education at 414-227-3098.

Common Mistake 3 – Poor Navigation

Let’s consider an illustration from the bricks and mortar retail environment.  Imagine entering your favorite department store, only to find that the store has no cohesive organization to its layout.  Products are scattered here and there, with no logical sections and an incredibly vague store map.  In fact, some products are hidden in a dark corner of the store behind a stack of boxes  – unlikely to be found by anyone.  Worse yet, even if you can find a product you need, you’re not sure what to do next as there’s no checkout registers and no knowledgeable staff to assist you.

Sadly, this illustration is not as far-fetched as it sounds when it comes to Websites.  Consider some of the following key navigational errors:

• Labeling your navigation using your proprietary products names/numbers, rather than using descriptive products category names.  This approach assumes that every new prospect who arrives at your site already knows what product AB123 is … an unlikely assumption in most cases.
• Hiding key navigation behind rollovers and drop down menus.  I’m not suggesting that there’s not a place for drop down menus, because there is.  However, your critical “here’s what we offer” navigation needs to be immediately visible on the site.
• Using inconsistent navigation throughout the site.  It’s incredibly frustrating to visit a site with navigation schemes that change from page to page or section to section.  Rather, keep your primary navigation elements in consistent areas (with consistent labels) throughout your Website.
• Failing to use contextually relevant cross-linking throughout the Website.  Use your content to drive visitors to other areas of your Website for more information and ultimately a conversion.  For example, if you’re speaking about your key capabilities on one of your industries served pages, use your text to link directly to relevant capabilities pages on your site.

If we fail to provide our users with intuitive navigation, we are increasing the odds that the back button will be their only click after they arrive.  Take a look at your analytics.  Is your bounce rate higher than it should be?  Are visitors finding their way to your key product and service landing pages?  Are they converting into leads and sales?  Then, take a look at your navigation and ask yourself, “If I were one of our typical target customers, would I immediately know where to go and what to do on my Website.”  Or, better yet, ask one of your customers what they think.  The more we move toward a mindset of user-focused navigation, the more successful our Websites will be.

Let’s use the following baseline numbers:

• Average Visitors Per Month: 5000
• Average Monthly Conversions:  50
• Average Value of Conversion: $200.00

This gives us a current conversion rate of 1.00% (the average monthly conversions (50) divided by the average number of visitors per month (5000), or 50/5000= .01 or 1.00%).

Another way to look at this is that with our current numbers the website is earning $10,000 a month or $120,000 annually.  Not too bad, but we can do better.

1.0% to a 1.1% Conversion Rate

What happens if we are able to increase the average conversion rate for our website from 1.0% to a mere 1.1%.  Let’s plug those numbers into our current visitor traffic.

1.1% Conversion Rate

• Average Visitors Per Month: 5000 (same)
• Average Monthly Conversions:  55 (new)
• Average Value of Conversion: $200.00 (same)

With this new conversion rate the website is now earning $11,000 monthly or $132,000 annually.  Not a bad increase for only moving the conversion rate a tenth of a percent.

It Takes Money to Earn Money

This sounds good on the surface, but I need to pay someone either internally or externally to do the work to our website.  Okay, true enough, so let’s see if the ROI is worth it.  After adding it up (internally), or signing off on the contract (externally), we incur a total cost of $10,000.

Monthly ROI is calculated by taking the monthly incremental value minus 1/12 the total cost and then dividing that by the total cost.

The easiest way to get Annual ROI is to multiply the monthly ROI by 12.

If we do the math we get the following:

• Monthly ROI:  2%
• Annual ROI: 20%

This means that if we will get a 20% return on our investment after the course of a year.  I believe that this would be an excellent use of available monetary funds available.  Just imagine if the conversion rate grew to 1.5% or 2% instead of just 1.1%.

I hope this post helps to illuminate the impact that even little changes can have on the overall performance and ROI of your website.  Keep that in mind next time you are looking at your website analytics.

I asked for examples of this but instead received at least one comment, that I expected, which revolved around the idea that the traditional advertising agencies are run by dinosaurs and they will go extinct. While in some cases that maybe the case what I am trying to establish is why these worlds are so far apart? How does this divide specifically end up harming our clients return on investment?

Let’s face it- those of us from the search side of the isle have seen the following time and time again. A traditional agency  designs a site for a client that has;

High end agency quality graphics-

Tthe major branding message scrawled across the most valuable real estate on the home page-

Tthe site is done in all flash and or any semblance of valuable key words are hidden in images-

It is clear to us that these sites are putting their clients at a competitive disadvantage on-line because they have no visibility on the search engines and even if they do find a way to direct traffic to the site (probably a very poorly designed pay per click program) the site chases away the visitors because the site is not providing them the information they are looking for.

Instead it is presenting a branding slogan without context and is therefore providing the user and in turn the client zero value.

By the way my favorite is a site for a local multi-divisional manufacturing company whose home page repeats the slogan from their corporate brochure “The Next Big Thing”.

The site is beautiful from a graphics standpoint. You can tell that there was art direction at every point just by looking at the way the color schemes flow through the various photos and images presented.

However, I have asked probably 100 persons over the past couple of years to tell me what the company does and not one of them got it right. There is no way this site could be found on the search engines because there was no consideration given to that in the site architecture or format of the pages. In addition, the usability is cumbersome at best given the non-conventional navigation structure.

From the search professionals these are no brainers. However, what is probably not as much of a no brainer is when search marketing companies build sites that completely ignore the companies brand and how best to present that brand on-line. After all, just because you are on-line doesn’t mean that being consistent in the presentation of your brand isn’t important.

When we ignore brand completely and just concern ourselves with making sure the site is found we too are guilty of not full leveraging our client’s investments.

However, in most cases it seems that neither side has much of an interest in trying to understand each other. It is as if search agencies what to revel in the fact that they are the new wave and all those traditional marketing people are “dinosaurs” and the traditional agencies continue to miss the point that they are delivering a message in a completely different context and it therefore needs to be crafted in a completely different way?

So with that said what do these to worlds look like? What do the beings on the search oriented planet of Saturn value vs. the traditional advertising planet of Mars?

Planet Values & Perspectives

Even though the above chart clearly shows how different these worlds are the one thing everyone in both worlds hopes to do is increase the clients sales. The problem is each group goes about trying to accomplish this is in polar opposite ways.

It is not that one approach is better than another but that they are completely different ways to accomplish the same goal which is to increase the client’s sales. What is most frustrating to the search community is that all too often the traditional advertising professional fails to understand that when you apply traditional push marketing methods in a search environment you do your client a major disservice and greatly reduce their return on investment.

What we need to work to explore more fully is how to bring these worlds together to maximize the clients return on their investment. Agencies that learn to do this will in the end rule the new world of Integrated Marketing and thus dominate the galaxy.

Note: In my last post I mentioned that I had been in search marketing for over 25 years but as most of you are aware the Internet has not been around that long, at least a marketing tool. That being the case you may wonder how one could be in search marketing for that long?

The answer is that prior to the Internet there was still a lot of searching going on. That searching was going on in directories and yellow pages. I was with the top industrial directory in print and even back then we were fighting the same fight. We knew our directory advertising would generate 10 times as many calls as the trade journal ads (we had conclusive data to prove it) yet every time an agency guy would get a hold of one of these programs it would be either completely eliminated or scaled back to almost nothing. You see even back then these agency guys didn’t appreciate the power of search.

They didn’t understand it either, which was exemplified when one year the BMA opened up an awards category for directory ads. The winner was for a “crane manufacture”. Did the add contain information on the types of cranes this company manufactured? The type of applications for their cranes? Spec?  Bold contact information, etc.? – the kind of information a person searching for a crane supplier would want to know? Absolutely not! It contained a picture of a Bird (a crane) with some useless slogan. It contained no  useful product information. The ad didn’t even have a phone number!!! A directory ad without a phone number!!!! Yet the traditional advertising people sitting in as judges had no more sense of how search marketing worked back then than they do today. However, now they have a much greater financial incentive to do so, so there is still hope.