Great work Christian!

Related Links:

• The article on AboutUs.org: Writing Good PPC Ads
• The AboutUs blog post on the article: Make Pay Per Click Ads Work For You
• The Ad Writing Tool: PPC Ad Copy Creator
• Amplify Interactive’s PPC Services
• Other PPC Management blog posts from Amplify Interactive

Previous PPC Campaign Domination topics:

• Landing page optimization
• Campaign organization
• Google AdWords, quality score & you
• Google AdWords ad extensions – Part 1 – What they are & how they work

This is a follow up to the part 1 cliff hanger, PPC Campaign Domination: Google AdWords Ad Extensions: What They Are & How They Work. I know all of our rabid fans have been losing sleep about the results. In fact, I personally have received dozens and dozens of emails, DM’s and even, yes, snail mail begging and pleading with me to release the results and insights from our client test.

Like any good test, we determined a few questions that needed to be answered before the test started.

Google AdWords Ad Extensions Questions Left to Answer:

Question 1: Can we even do product extensions for our client?

Google sets certain requirements for the landing environment for a product ad extension to be eligible. They require a fixed price to be listed, a secure click-to-buy option and a photo of the product on said landing page. Our client has none of these, but we didn’t let that stop us from trying.

-Table Saw Product Extension Ad Result With Plus Box Collapsed-

-Table Saw Product Extension Ad Result With Plus Box Expanded-

Answer: I guess this is a ‘yes’ with a shazam!

Question 2: Is it possible for Google to show a SiteLinks ad extension in conjunction with a product ad extension?

-Look At All of That Real Estate! Combine These Extensions With Some SEO & Utterly Dominate The First Page of Search Results-

Answer: An emphatic YES! Now that is what I call Total PPC Campaign Domination.

Question 3: Are SiteLinks only for branded searches?

-Contrary to Popular Opinion, SiteLinks Ad Extensions Do Serve For Non-branded Searches. Also, Our PPC Campaign Rocks!-

Answer: No…with a but. Once again, a high quality score is a prerequisite for this ad extension. Meaning every term is game, but to have a high quality score your campaign has to rock. This is usually the case with your own branded terms. Landing page relevancy and CTR will be high with those terms, but creating an excellent landing environment for non branded or category terms can trigger this extension. Just don’t expect to have a SiteLinks ad extension serve for competitor terms or terms with low quality scores.

Question 4: Can we report on whether Google AdWords ad extensions are effective?

Answer: Yes…with a duh. Obviously, Google isn’t going to unveil something in AdWords, which is their bread and butter ($15.7 billion worth of it), without the ability to report on it. These extensions may also be an attempt to increase clicks on paid search results (Google claims relevance) because clicks mean dollars for them and possibly for advertisers too (note: there is also a reporting option for local or map ad extensions).

Our Google AdWords Ad Extension Results:

When designing this test we hypothesized that this would increase click through rate for our Google PPC ads. We also thought that our conversion rate for category level terms would drop due to an increase in traffic and customers getting to the page and not either A.) not seeing what they thought they were going to see, or B.) realizing there is no way to buy the product directly from the manufacturer. Finally, we wondered if Google would catch us, and stop running our product extensions.

Here are the results of our ad extensions test:

-With Google Ad Extensions Enabled, The Targeted User Was 65% More Likely To Click.-

-PPC Ads With Ad Extensions Posted Higher CTR In Every Eligible Campaign.-

Observations:

Click through rate was 65% better when Google served an ad with an extension.

Overall account conversion still remains over 20%. This is a huge bonus, as we half expected conversion rate to drop significantly. It did drop slightly, but not by 65%, so it is a winner, and winner in paid search language means keeper.

Google did not catch us. However, the caveat is still there because there will be oversight, soon, as unscrupulous advertisers start exploiting this weakness.

Google AdWords Ad Extensions Strategy and Insights:

• Strategy tip 1: Identify high value or high quality score terms in your paid search account, and create campaigns just for them. This is a good tip overall, but it is especially powerful to use with the SiteLinks extension. You will be able to fully fund this campaign while keeping a high ad rank. This means SiteLinks and all of the goodies that come with it such as 140 extra characters of ad copy will help you dominate SERPs.
• Strategy tip 2: Tag your SiteLinks urls using Google’s handy URL builder so you can identify using your analytics whether your paid search visitor arrived via one of your deeper links, or simply clicked the headline.
• Strategy tip 3: Do the best you can to match the product(s) shown in the extension to be on the landing page. Nothing will upset an interwebz user more than going somewhere that doesn’t match their expectations.

• Insight 1: Unexpected results. Of the 27,000+ impressions with the plus box visible, only 138 brave souls dared interact with the PPC ad. This is definitely surprising to me on two fronts. The first being only .50% of our market for this client is curious about the plus box. The other is just the addition of the plus box seems to induce clicks.
• Insight 2: Why is Google doing this (hint: relevance is not the answer)? This is purely conjecture on my part, but my belief is that Google is simply merchandising the properties to get their existing advertisers to use more of their products. Additionally, these types of ad formats are not currently available to advertisers on competing paid search platforms. With the Microsoft-Yahoo Alliance (insert Star Wars Rebel Alliance joke) looming in the very near future, now is the time for Google to further solidify their position as the best and most robust platform for pay-per-click advertising.
• Insight 3: In case you were wondering. Yes, there are product ad extensions for hair extensions.

-Call Me Nerd, But Ad Extensions Are Cooler Than Hair Extensions.-

Testing new and cool technology and techniques is part of why working in this industry is both fascinating and rewarding. Success like this is always great. However, even if this test hadn’t produced positive results, we still would have won in the end because as our previous campaign domination posts indicate, Amplify Interactive is big on testing.We take a measured and methodical approach to our PPC management, and this means testing new toys in our bag of SEM tricks. Finding out what doesn’t work is almost as big of a win as finding out what does work.

Attain SEM Success Through Authority

“The driving principles of SEO have always been content & authority (in the form of links). Since Google came around – this principle has never changed even as the tactics have. As the search results page has gotten more competitive, and social media has started shedding light on a brand’s strengths and flaws – it has become more important and difficult to cut through the noise and capture attention. Improving the perception of your brand as an authority can help you do this.”

Read the rest of the article on the NWSEM Blog

Our Other PPC Campaign Domination topics:

• Landing page optimization
• Google Adwords, quality score & you
• Campaign organization
• Google Adwords ad extensions – Part 2 – Our client test

Today’s topic is:

An Introduction to Google AdWords Ad Extensions

In November, Google rolled out new ad formats, now known as Google Adwords ad extensions, just in time for the big holiday push known as Cyber Monday. Those in the know and or those who read the Official Google Blog will remember a post detailing the release of these new ad formats. In the months since this release, Google has expanded the ability to utilize these formats to every AdWords advertiser who is willing to jump through the hoops.

These new extensions that you can add to your Google AdWords campaigns include:

1.)  SiteLinks

2.)  Product Extensions

3.)  Click to Call

4.)  Map Extensions

Google AdWords Map Extensions - Collapsed

Google AdWords Map Extensions - Expanded

Implementing Google Adwords Ad Extensions

For the extensions to appear, you must enable each extension at the campaign level. These are clearly marked as “Ad extensions”. Once each format is enabled, you must fill out the required information or link the corresponding Google Account, such as your Local Business Center or Merchant Account.

-SiteLinks: Add up to 10 extra links with 35 characters of text.

-Product Extensions: You must link Google Merchant (formerly Google Base) with Google AdWords. Read this guide to linking your accounts.

-Click to Call: Your phone number (duh).

-Map Extensions: Must link your Local Business Center with AdWords.

Keep in mind these extensions do not get served every time time. For example, the SiteLinks extension will only be served when your ad ‘meets certain criteria’, or being number 1 with a high quality score (see our post Quality Score and You).

The other extensions seem be served at Google’s discretion, and feature a ‘plus box’ as AdWords reporting calls it. This plus box must be expanded for the non-SiteLinks extensions to show.

Google AdWords Ad Extensions Tips, Tricks and Warnings:

1.)  Right now, there is very little oversight when it comes to enforcing the terms of service requirements (shhh). For example, in the Merchant Center, Google states your landing page must have a fixed price listed and the user must be able to buy from the website. Don’t let that silly little detail deter you. This is not true, or no one seems to be checking, so ‘if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’’. Just know that this extension could disappear without warning when Google gets around to enforcing their own policies.

2.)  The SiteLinks copy also appears to have very little editorial oversight. So be sure to make any claims you and or your client feel comfortable making. Just make sure you adhere to the FTC’s Truth In Advertising Standards. Again, know that you may have to rewrite some of these in the future.

3.)  Google already has video ad extensions. It is just not open to all AdWords advertisers, but one can imagine that soon you will have the capability to insert a product demo, testimonial or even a short tv-like spot.

Video Ad Extension - Collapsed

Google AdWords Video Ad Extensions - Expanded

4.)  Remember you have to manage your feeds in the Merchant Center. This requires a spreadsheet being manually uploaded monthly, or an xml feed.

5.)  Remember to test. These ad extensions may only serve to drive up clicks. If those clicks don’t convert or they bounce, you may be wasting money. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s better.

With the guides, a loose strategy and our Award-Winning PPC Client’s approval in hand, we set out to test relevant extensions (note I left out the comparison extension).  These are now percolating.  Results and analysis to follow in Part 2….

Ben & Spencer pose with their MAX Award

Amplify Interactive was awarded the “best single medium advertising campaign” at the 2010 AMA MAX Awards. Amplify Interactive’s work on a campaign for our client SawStop was recognized as the best among 8 entries in the category from other Portland area agencies & companies including a campaign from our office-mates Grady Britton as well as our partner eROI, and Intel (with whom we tied for 1st place) among others.

Great job on the AWARD WINNING work guys!

Links to related info:

• Press Release: Amplify Interactive wins a 2010 AMA MAX Award
• Our entry/case study: PPC Campaign Domination – Launching SawStop’s New Professional Cabinet Saw with PPC Advertising
• AMA MAX Awards
• Pictures from the 2010 AMA MAX Awards Ceremony
• Our series of posts on how to  “PPC Campaign Domination“

We’re always looking for clients who want to do award winning campaigns. Follow the link to find out more about our PPC Management Services.

My planned PPC Campaign Domination topics:

• Landing page optimization
• Google AdWords, quality score & you
• Google AdWords ad extensions – Part 1 – What they are & how they work
• Google AdWords ad extensions – Part 2 – Our client test

Today’s topic is:

PPC Campaign Organization

Everyone at Amplify Interactive knows that I tend to obsess about organization. I have a folder for everything, I maintain a well pruned task list, I harp on them about keeping our project management systems up to date, we have a process in place for nearly everything, etc. So it should come as no surprise that  all of our PPC campaigns must be well organized and thought out so that our efforts at optimization are easy.

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.”

-A.A. Milne

Success Starts at the Very Bottom -  Organizing Your Terms

One of the biggest PPC campaign pitfalls we see when we take over campaigns from someone else is that the previous owner was lazy and put too many terms into too few ad groups. Taking the time to organize your terms into granular, extremely focused ad groups makes things easier in the long run. Consider the following example:

Let’s say your company is called “SawCompany” and you make Circular Saws. After doing your keyword research, you realize there are three major categories of terms.

1. Branded: terms that contain your brand name “sawcompany”
2. Circular Saw: searches for circular saws ranging from general to extremely specific
3. Safety/Injury Prevention: searches for safety features

In AdWords – we’ll turn these distinct categories into “campaigns”. Within these campaigns – we’ll organize the terms into specific ad groups where the terms within each ad group are specifically related to one another, and generally related to the general category. After some work – we come up with the following structure:

Example of an organized PPC campaign

PPC Campaign Organization Will Set You Free

Organizing a campaign like this will give us the power to do two very specific things:

1. Understand performance and manage our spend by term, group and category. If a particular Ad Group and/or Campaign is performing particularly well – we’ll be able to tell right away and explore options like allocating more budget to the top performing group/campaign so that our ads show as often as possible. We’ll also be able to tell if there’s a specific group or campaign that doesn’t perform very well so we can prune it from our spend and maintain a good quality score.
2. Test ad copy at the ad group level and run the best possible ad copy for each individual group which will, you guessed it, help us to maintain a good quality score. If we didn’t have our search terms broken up into really specific ad groups, we might end up running the same ad copy for a term like “woodworking safety” that we do for “best contractor saw”. These terms are clearly entirely different and we should be serving different ads and landing pages for each.

There are other benefits to be sure, but I’m not going to give you all our secrets. Please feel free to share any PPC campaign management & organization tips with our readers by commenting below!

Just read an interesting article over at eMarketer “Display Campaigns Boost Search Effectiveness” about a study that  shows that display ad campaigns increase visits from search engine users by nearly 14% from both organic (SEO) and PPC search combined. Another benefit? Cost per click for PPC decreased as well – demonstrating greater efficiency of the PPC campaign as a result of display.

When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. A lot goes into whether or not users are going to click on a search result… or even search for something in the first place. Depending on the type of search I’m doing, I know that I personally run through a little bit of a mental checklist before clicking on a result that goes something like “does the result seem to match what I’m looking for?” (title/description), “is the source credible?” (URL/recall), “have I heard of/been to the site before?” etc. Those last two questions are where display and other marketing efforts can have a bigger though less direct influence than you’d think on whether or not someone’s going to click on your result in a search engine.

There are some great stats in this article, but I think the number one takeaway for all marketers is that search engine marketing is a great option and it should absolutely be part of your marketing mix, but it shouldn’t be the only thing that your organization is doing to market itself. I think this is also cause for celebration amongst “traditional” marketers and agencies. Search has been a much easier sell over the last year, but here’s a reason to encourage their clients to spend money on display and better integrate with search marketers to improve marketing results overall.

While most PPC marketers (myself included) frown upon running programs like Google’s content targeting option within our PPC campaigns because the click through performance is poor, perhaps it’s time to change or adjust our perception. I know that I always encourage our clients not to put all their eggs in one basket and rely on search as their only marketing tool, but this study definitely makes the case that display campaigns should be a consideration for any SEM campaign.

We’ve already had several clients start inquiring about testing a PPC campaign with Bing and I’m sure we’ll see more as we move into Q4 and start looking at 2010 budgets. Let us know if you want to look into a PPC campaign with Bing or any of the rest. We’d also like to hear about any recent experiences you may have had with Bing.

As you can read in this article on Search Engine Watch “It’s Official: Microsoft and Yahoo! Finally Strike a Search Deal” – the deal basically says that:

1. Bing will power Yahoo’s organic search results

I think this is a great move. Bing has made some pretty terrific strides in creating a better search engine. Spending another 100 mil on advertising it is making a dent as well. Bing isn’t perfect, but Yahoo organic results haven’t been all that great either.

2. Yahoo will handle the paid search

Again – this is a great move. If you manage paid search campaigns – you know there’s two specific problems with Microsoft/Bing.

1. AdCenter sucks to use. It just does. That’s not to say that Yahoo’s platform is great, but it is better than AdCenter and now they can focus on making it more usable.

2. Low search volume: WIth the exception of some verticals, the search volume is rarely there for clients to justify the time, energy & budget required to build & manage an additional campaign with Bing

So ideally, as a part of this deal we’ll just be able to opt-in or out of displaying ads on Bing with a simple check box. Just like you check a box to add the Google search partner network today.

This move will still be tricky and they’re both a long way from pulling it off. But hopefully by allowing each to focus on what they do best – maybe they’ll be able to actually compete and we’ll also have to start thinking about results from more than one search engine!

My planned PPC Campaign Domination topics:

• Landing page optimization
• Campaign organization
• Google AdWords ad extensions – Part 1 – What are they & how do they work
• Google AdWords ad extensions – Part 2 – Our client test

Today’s topic is…

Google AdWords Quality Score Optimization

Before you yawn or leave because you don’t know what Quality Score is – you should realize that the success of your PPC campaign may in fact hinge on quality score. So it’s kind of important to know what it is and how to make it work for you!

I recently did a presentation “Google AdWords Tips You Can’t Live Without” at the Portland Online Marketing Summit where I had 4 minutes to give a couple of Google AdWords optimization tips. Most of my content was based on quality score but 4 minutes isn’t much time – so I wasn’t able to finish all of my tips for the crowd. What follows is an extended presentation of my AdWords Quality Score tips plus a few bonus tips for you loyal readers.

(note – the presentation isn’t visible in the feed if you’re reading via email/rss/facebook)

A summary of the Google AdWords Quality Score tips in the presentation:

• Improving your Quality Score will drive down your cost per click and ultimately your cost per acquisition/lead/sale
• You can’t succeed at AdWords unless your search terms (keywords) are grouped into many, very tightly aligned ad groups
• Your campaign settings are critical to AdWords success and will have a huge impact on your Quality Score – see slide 5 & 6 in the presentation for my tips
• Always be testing ad copy – I give specific advice about how to structure your ad copy testing (slide 7 & 8 )
• Keep your keyword list pruned – eliminate zero & low impression keywords that could be dragging your quality score down and add keywords that could improve your targeting & cost per click (slide 8 )
• If you aren’t using conversion tracking – you’re sucker. I also give tips on how to implement conversion tracking even if you can’t track “real” conversions (slide 9)

And – a few bonus AdWords management tips for you:

• Budget allocation: Optimize your impression share by fully funding the campaigns/ad groups that are giving you the best performance.
• Pay attention to the Geographic Performance Report and look for geographic areas (countries/regions/cities)  where you get higher impressions/clicks/conversions and create separate campaigns for targeting those areas specifically. This can help you allocate budget to top performers (see below)
• Use AdWords Editor and make spreadsheets for campaign planning that you can import directly into AdWords editor. It will save you HOURS of campaign management time.

Got any other AdWords tips you’d like to share or ask us about? Comment below.