Time Saving PPC Tips

June 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If there is one thing we value most in our world, it’s time. Time is limited, always running, and according to the saying, time is money.

Save time and money by implementing these quick tips into your search marketing campaign.

1.Create smaller, more relevant ad groups.
Creating smaller and more relevant ad groups will allow your company to easily test different keywords, promotions and seasonal messaging which will save you both time and money. Running a back to school promo? Just turn it off once traffic slows down and forget about weeding through the keywords and ads that are always running. More control will save you time and money!

After the announcement of Search Alliance’s quality score changes, you’ll be glad you created smaller ad groups. Ad group relevance is directly related to your quality scores.

2. Create quality, specific landing pages for each specific product search.

High quality landing pages means higher quality scores on Google, Yahoo and Bing, which will eventually equate to higher ad positions and discounted keywords. This may take a little effort upfront, but after creating a few ad groups and landing pages the data will tell you if this is the right way to spend your precious time. Your customer will remember the quality of your ads, as will Google, Yahoo and Bing.

3. Treat your PPC testing like mini, inexpensive focus groups.

In search marketing the results are instant. With just a little bit of analysis on your part you’ll learn where your customers are coming from (geotargeting), what time of day they shop (day parting), and what key messages are converting customers (keyword analysis).

4. Use your PPC ‘focus group’ to test the largest online trend today: local offers, daily deals and coupon codes.

With the success of companies like Groupon and Coupons.com, the addition of coupon codes and offers in paid search is one of the most compelling trends in eCommerce paid search. Companies should be thinking about how to leverage coupon codes and customer offers into existing and new paid search campaigns to gain an advantage over the competition.

Have any more tips you would add? Comment below or tweet them at me @PattyBaragar and I’ll add them to the post!

 

Filed Under: Paid Search, PPC Tips

College Graduates: Why PPC Matters As a Skill Set

May 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

PPC for college graduates

Senior year of college I sat in a marketing class as my professor went over the required parts of a good PR campaign: a defined audience, defined messaging for each audience, a few news releases, event promotion, media partners, campaign flyers…etc, etc.

Eventually he mentioned the importance of a strong social media plan and then quickly moved on. I raised my hand and asked if he planned to go into more depth on social media messaging and tactics (this was 2009, before Twitter “tipped”).

My professor replied, “ I don’t know how to use social media, but it’s necessary in the PR and marketing world.”

This was the moment I saw my chance to get ahead of my classmates and future job candidate competitors, classmates, and apparently my professors.

I became 1 of only 2 or 3 students in my remaining classes who used Twitter.  As I began actively building my personal brand online, word spread quickly among my parents’ network and within the local non-profits I was volunteering with that I had skills that they were looking for.

While I was turning away offers from small companies and internships, I was sitting in class every day with over 30 soon-to-be graduates that had the time and knowledge to learn, but lacked the initiative.

These were the same people who were SHOCKED that I landed a nice little marketing job just 30 days after graduation.

So what is the moral of the story?

By taking initiative to get ahead of your competitors, you will excel beyond them.

With that said, here are 3 steps to get ahead of the competition by adding paid search skills to your resume.

Get the basics

Many of us have an understanding of paid search, but very few practice it. The first step to adding a new skill set is to understand the basics and educate yourself.

We all have preferred ways to learn new things online. There’s no shortage of information, but you do need to absorb it somehow. Some suggestions: the AdWords for Dummies book, online video tutorials, ask a friend to meet for coffee and go over the basics, Google’s official AdWords certification (which offers excellent training and education), or even registering to attend some basic paid search webinars. Trada holds free webinars several times each month on basic search marketing.

Subscribe to the Trada Blog and get 2-3 quick educational posts a week – it’s the perfect dose of education to advance your PPC skills at all levels.

This step can take one day, or one year – its up to you. With enough initiative, you will be a paid search super hero as soon as you decide to learn the basics.

Bottom line: PPC isn’t “new” and it isn’t hard, but there are basics you must learn to get started.

Get the tools

Once you’ve got the basics of PPC down, learn the small ways to make the task of writing a PPC campaign that much easier.

From my experience, blogs are going to be the best place to find sites and tools the professionals prefer alongside their reviews. Check out the Trada post on the PPC tools our crowd of experts prefers.

Certification?  Maybe. That is a question you need to answer.  It’s true that certification is what makes the expert, but just getting the approval and training from Google is what some professionals need to forge ahead with confidence. Being certified is also not a bad bullet point to add to the resume.

Bottom line: Just like the AP book for news releases and hashtags on Twitter, paid search has tools that will get you playing with the big dogs in no time.

Get the experience.

To become a good at anything, you’ve got to practice.

How did I get my parents network and non-profits asking me to help with social media? Shameless self-promotion. Even asking how you can help someone, anyone, with your newly acquired skill can make a difference. By putting your newly acquired skills to use, it will become part of your skills package.

Paid search is a great form of advertising for small and medium sized businesses. With a small budget and geo-targeting, you’ll have an affordable and effective paid search campaign running in no time. In your first steps of training be sure to take note on what types of companies benefit from PPC. Who do you know who could use your help? Soon you’ll be thinking like a real PPC marketer!

Bottom line: Paid search is an essential part of online marketing efforts and is like a good PR campaign: know whom you’re marketing to, what the message is, and the desired outcome. The truth is, just like all of marketing, you’ll learn as you go.

 

Filed Under: Paid Search

Gumball Guess Contest Results!

February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Thanks to those of you who stopped by the Trada booth at MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Forum in Austin last week.

We loved meeting you and sharing how Trada, the world’s first and only crowdsourced pay-per-click marketplace, is changing how companies are running PPC on Google and Yahoo/Bing.

On February 16th , we invite you to join us for a special B2B webinar chock-full of PPC tips for you to put to use!  There is limited space, please register today!

And now…. the results of our Gumball Guessing Contest!

If you entered our gumball guessing contest, we’re sure you’re anxious to know the answer….

47 entries

(the lowest number we’ve ever had!)

highest guess: 7,239

lowest guess: 312

average guess: 1,299

 

How many gumballs were there? Drumroll please!

1,247 Total Gumballs!

And the crowd wins again!

Beth Cail, you win a $50 iTunes gift card for having the closest guess.

Good eye!

What have we learned?  Well, that many heads really ARE better than one! We use this same concept with PPC advertising- applying the diverse thinking of a crowd of experts to revolutionize paid search.

If you have questions or would like to learn more about Trada’s PPC marketplace, please email us at sales@trada.com or talk to a person directly and call (877) 871-1835.

Interested in working the Trada Marketplace as PPC expert?

Read our top 5 reasons to join the crowd.

Near New Orleans? Need an excuse to go? Trada be at ERA’s Great Ideas Summit, March 1st and 2nd. See you there!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

SmileyCookie.com Does Paid Search With Trada

November 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Smiley Cookie Trada Paid Search Review

About…

In 60 years, Eat’n Park has grown from a tiny, 13-seat restaurant, serving customers right in their car, to the leading full-service restaurant chain in the tri-state area with more than 75 restaurants.

Eat’n Park has become known as “The Place for Smiles” for its friendly, fast service and delicious signature sweet treat:  the Smiley® Cookie, baked fresh daily at each restaurant. The Smiley Cookie has grown to be the restaurant’s recognizable brand icon and the cookies are now sold and delivered throughout the country on SmileyCookie.com.

Smiley Cookie’s current customer profile are mainly females and adults over the age of 35, who order custom cookies as gifts for relatives and friends. Smiley Cookie also keeps busy with orders for custom crafted cookies to match wedding colors, sport teams, corporate logos and more. The pricing is competitive and in providing great support and quality, Smiley Cookie stands apart from the competition.

Before Trada…

Despite great local support in their hometown of Pittsburgh, as an online e-commerce company, Smiley Cookie needed to be advertising on the major search networks.

A pay-per-click (PPC) agency was hired to create the first paid search campaign for the company. The agency then handed the Smiley Cookie’s campaign to one employee to manage the entire account alone. Unhappy with agency results, Smiley Cookie brought their PPC in-house. In-house, the campaign began to improve but Smiley Cookie still lacked the time and expertise needed to run a successful paid search campaign.

With Trada…

With Trada, Smiley Cookie saw an opportunity to outsource their PPC work to a certified crowd of experts with no startup fees or monthly fees. With Trada, Smiley Cookie could hand over the difficult, time-consuming work of writing relevant PPC ads to Trada’s PPC experts while saving money and remaining in control of the message.

In a few short weeks Trada’s PPC experts (Trada calls them Optimizers) had thousands of relevant keywords and hundreds of ads ready for Smiley Cookie’s stamp of approval.

Smiley Cookie is able to steer the campaign by communicating with top Optimizers, approving long-tail keywords and blacklisting costly, short-tail keywords before anything runs from Trada’s Marketplace to the major search networks.

Today, SmileyCookie.com successfully receives 4 to 5 times more conversions, and at a much more competitive price, than ever before.

Part of the reason Smiley Cookie  is so successful in the Trada Marketplace is they’re great at incentivizing their 19 optimizers with honest feedback and realistic goals. Smiley Cookie even sent each optimizer a cookie as to fully understand (and enjoy) the quality of a Smiley Cookie.

“The best part about running our PPC with Trada is the number of dedicated optimizers working on our campaign. Everyone searches differently for products online. With the input from our crowd of PPC experts we’re positioned to cover more of the target keyword spectrum – resulting in quality clicks and conversions. More heads really are better than one.”

-Adam Golomb, Director of E-Commerce, Eat’n Park Hospitality Group

Filed Under: Paid Search

Trada Review: Regenexx PPC Case Study

November 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

ABOUT…

The Regenexx procedure is a breakthrough, non-surgical treatment option for people suffering from moderate to severe joint or bone pain due to injury and other conditions.  If a patient is experiencing knee, hip or shoulder pain, they have probably been given two choices: pain management or surgery - and for a person under the age of 65, neither option is optimal.  The Regenexx procedure uses the candidates’ own adult stem cells to create new cartilage and tissues.

Trada review of Regenexx paid search

BEFORE TRADA…

This cutting-edge medical company had one marketing person handling all of the SEM in addition to many other responsibilities. After seeing some success it didn’t take Regenexx long to realize they didn’t have the skill to effectively optimize the campaign in-house. Headquartered in Brooomfield, Colorado, Regenexx also struggled to balance the geography of the campaign – needing to advertise both locally and nationally.

AND WITH TRADA…

The original campaign only consisted of 94 keywords and three ads. Once in the Marketplace, the 25 certified paid search experts (Trada calls them Optimizers) quickly generated thousands of keywords and dozens of ads specifically crafted for Regenexx and their unique needs.

After just a few months Regenexx saw a rise in online visibility and quality customer leads.  Today, Optimizers continue to customize the Regenexx search engine marketing campaigns and generate low-cost clicks and conversions.

Filed Under: Paid Search

Yahoo/Microsoft Search Alliance: What Does it Mean?

November 11, 2010 By 2 Comments

Recap from Trada Webinar: Navigating the Search Alliance

On November 1, 2010 the Yahoo / Microsoft Search Alliance was complete after over a year of talks.  The search Alliance has changed how millions of Americans with paid search campaigns manage, target and broadcast their PPC ads the world.

The Search Alliance is defined as the union of Yahoo and Microsoft Bing paid and organic search. Many people have easily mistaken the Alliance for a merger of the two companies – but this is not the case. Both companies hope to improve the relevance and speed of their search engine results to provide more value to all advertisers involved. Today the Alliance represents around 34% of the paid search market and over 16 million people in North America.

Since Microsoft’s launch of Bing, “the decision network,” in Summer 2009, Yahoo has seen their piece of the paid search marketplace shrink. Talks started in Fall 2009 and an agreement was finalized in March 2010, complete on Nov. 1, 2010. The alliance will stand for ten years.

Changing Metrics

Because the second and third largest paid search networks have combined their search efforts, you can guess with it come some affecting ppc performance in impressions, clicks, cost-per-click, click-thru-rates, ad positioning, and partner networks.

Impressions will be higher than before with the Alliance representing nearly 3 x as much marketshare as Yahoo alone. Many worry higher impressions mean less quality clicks and higher conversion costs, but ad position is expected to become more accurate and is expected to help with higher quality impressions, clicks, and click-thru-rates.

Bing and Yahoo’s partner networks are included in the Search Alliance scope and will result in higher click volumes. It is too early to tell for sure, so be sure to watch these metrics closely to keep your ROI safe.

Platform Differences

Specific things that have been changed in the paid search platform switch from Yahoo Search Marketing to the Microsoft adCenter. Specifically title and description character limits and acceptable minimum bids.

search alliance questions, what is the search alliance

Yahoo Search Marketing, Yahoo’s old paid search platform,  allowed 40-character-long titles and 71 character-long ad copy. Yahoo’s platform was essentially just changed to match Bing’s previous body and title limits. The Search Alliance, like adCenter, limits all titles to 25 characters and ad copy down to 70 characters.

Minimum keyword bids have also changed. Yahoo used to allow a low bid of one-cent, which many advertisers relied on. This low bid price is now five-cents, but bids transferred into adCenter below this price have been paused for advertiser approval.

Tips For Today

Your Yahoo-specific paid search campaign has probably been dropped into a new adCenter account by Bing in the past 6 months. If this is the case – hear these three tips to get your Yahoo campaign adCenter ready.

Check your costs and CPC. Because of the larger market and higher impressions you might burn through budget faster now.  Before raising all of your prices – check what you can afford.

Revisit old keyword lists. Yahoo used advanced matching  so the keyword ‘apple’ in covered all search results with terms that were plural or related to the word. This is not the case in AdCenter who uses broad and phrase match. To fix this simply rebuild old keyword lists to include all variations. If you’re impressions dropped dramatically, this is likely the cause.

Redefine campaign targeting. Be sure to watch for changes in your geographic targeting. Bing Microsoft target mainly by IP Address range. Check to see how your campaign is targeted and understand the difference.

How has your experience been since the Search Alliance  was finalized?  Need an answer to a Search Alliance question? Leave a comment for a PPC expert reply.

View a Trada’s Search Alliance Webinar slide show presentation.

Filed Under: Paid Search, SMB Marketing

WEBINAR: Search Alliance – What Does it Mean??

November 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Double Rainbow Trada Search Alliance webinar

This week marks the official first week of the Yahoo! / Microsoft Search Alliance. On Oct. 27th,  when Yahoo red-lined  and Microsoft’s blue line skyrocketed in the Trada Marketplace we knew the search alliance was upon us.

Just to be clear – Yahoo PPC never “died” but it is safe to say Microsoft Bing is now carrying Yahoo’s PPC on it’s shoulders.

With the Search Alliance come some subtle and not-so-subtle changes. Have questions? Not sure if you’re ready to attack the  Microsoft adCenter alone? Join Trada for a webinar on Wednesday Nov. 10th at 2pm ET/ 12pm MT to learn the benefits and drawbacks of the integration, and how you can take advantage of the Search Alliance to improve your PPC marketing efforts.

“PPC After the Yahoo/Microsoft Search Alliance: Navigating Microsoft adCenter”

TRADA Webinar : Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance

If you can’t make the live webinar don’t fret! Register today for a follow up link to view the webinar on your own time.

Hope to see you there!

@PattyBaragar

Filed Under: PPC Help

Trada Works: Alternative Apparel Paid Search

October 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

ABOUT…

Alternative is a lifestyle apparel brand at the forefront of the fashion industry. Alternative Apparel exists to inspire authenticity and comfort – both inside and out. Alternative’s mission is about more than just designing clothes that look and feel great: they want their unique community of wearers and supporters to feel comfortable in their own skin, laying the groundwork to inspire others and make a difference with how you live – and what you wear.

Alternative Apparel online marketing campaign

Online, Alternative’s presence on social media (Facebook / Twitter) and the Alternative company blog is rich with this mission. Integrating brand into all aspects of online content is extremely important when executing a successful paid search campaign.

As a clothing company, Alternative has a huge (and growing) inventory. An inventory with apparel and accessories for men, women, babies and toddlers across the United States and abroad, including Canada, Italy, Germany, Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

BEFORE TRADA …

Alternative had done a good job of building a paid search campaign that included branded keywords, but they lacked resources (employees, time, expertise) to build and manage long tail keywords for the range of products offered.

Additionally, when they tried to expand their paid search campaign to include Yahoo! Search Advertising they struggled to generate cost effective clicks and conversions.

Alternative tried running affiliate marketing programs, but weren’t happy with the results; quickly learning banking on just one person’s idea of “the right way” to do paid search wasn’t the best strategy.  Alternative Apparel needed an army of paid search experts ready to write smart long tail and creative ads (enter Trada stage right).

WITH TRADA…

Alternative launched a campaign in the Trada marketplace in September of 2009, just before the biggest season in paid search: holiday. Immediately Alterative began to leverage the wisdom of the crowd with Trada’s certified PPC experts.

Paid search experts working on the Alternative account began to build a long tail keyword focused campaign, generating cost effective traffic on the Google and Yahoo! and Bing ad networks.

Mind you, Trada’s paid search experts don’t just write ads. PPC Optimizers with Trada write ad groups, long tail keywords, and ads on the Trada Marketplace, and after approval from the advertiser (a representative from Alternative in this case) the ads run live on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. All the stats that an advertiser could ask for are then calculated and pushed out onto Trada’s paid search Marketplace. It’s pretty cool and it takes the guesswork out of figuring out what works in paid search.

Today Alternative’s paid search campaign continues to grow, evolve and expand with Trada’s dedicated Optimizers.

After just over a year with Trada, Alternative has almost 8,000 unique long tail keywords and over 300 ads – not including their recently deployed 2010 holiday paid search campaign.  Happy Holidays!

Alternative Apparel online marketing campaign

Filed Under: Advertising

Trada Review : Rosen Law Firm

September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

About …

Rosen Law firm is a successful divorce firm located in Raleigh, North Carolina who offer legal expertise in divorce, child custody, and property division…to name a few.

In North Carolina divorce is a complex process compared to other states. To set themselves apart from competition, Rosen Law created a niche online as an online resource by stocking the site full of free literature and E-courses for people seeking information and advice on divorce.

Lee Rosen, owner and head legal consultant at Rosen Law, has been working with Trada for 4 months,  and the campaign has been performing to perfection since day one.

Rosen Law’s paid search campaign with Trada is an EXCELLENT example of how local and small to medium sized businesses can get ahead by using paid search.

Before Trada…

Rosen was on the right track by creating content on their website to become an online destination for the target market but, even though the website was tops, Rosen struggled with low-traffic numbers and high-bounce rates.

Rosen saw an opportunity in clicks and impressions from local search term queries that would likely convert to future clientele. They  needed to keep marking costs down while remaining in control of the messaging. Paid search was the correct and most economical next step. The only problem? They didn’t know where to start and after a few weeks of confusing keyword creation by robots and no way of measuring success – Rosen needed help.

With Trada…

Rosen Law launched a paid search campaign in the Trada Marketplace in May of 2010, leveraging the skills of more than 500 certified paid search experts.  The campaign was specifically geo-targeted to include cities around their offices in North Carolina. Geo-targeting paid search campaigns ensures only prospective locals living in the area were seeing and clicking on ads – thus allowing Rosen to only pay for clicks they wanted.  The paid search experts at Trada – we call them Optimizers – immediately jumped on the Rosen campaign and started generating clicks at low costs and inbound leads. There are 20 optimizers on the campaign today.

Rosen Law worked with one of Trada’s account management team members to review and focus their messaging to set campaign goals. A conversion was defined as a sign-up for a free online E-Course offered by Rosen.

In a few short weeks there were thousands of relevant keywords and hundreds of ads ready for Rosen’s stamp of approval before running live on Google and Yahoo, the paid search networks of Rosen’s choice.

Rosen keeps control of their paid search messaging by communicating directly with top performing optimizers. The paid search experts have managed to lower Rosen’s CPA down to $12, 5 times less than the original CPA goal of $60/conversion.

In a recent Trada review in the New York Times, Tapping the Wisdom of the Crowd, Lee Rosen was quoted saying, “Really, (Trada)’s Magical.”

And guess what? We think you’re magical too, Rosen Law.

Filed Under: Crowdsourcing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

4 Easy Tips For Holiday Paid Search Campaigns

August 5, 2010 By 1 Comment

If you’re an online retailer you know the drill and if you’re an online retailer and don’t know the Holiday SEM drill – listen up.

Believe it or not, you’ve got to start  your holiday SEM campaign sooner than you think. Holiday keywords are searched regularly as early as AUGUST!

Sadly, it’s true. And it’s true for E commerce business of all sizes

Small BIZ: this is your chance to brand yourself and inform people on how cool and unique your products are.

Bigger BIZ: search always helps with branding, but it can also keep potential clients updated on new offers and products you have.  Also, use your SEM campaigns as an extension of other advertising you might be running (display/print).

We can help you get your fundamentals ready now. According to Google, in first 30 days of Q4  $15,000,000 was spent in online shopping.Take advantage of this huge market! Below are a few tips on just how to do it.

  • Build SEM around stats and spikes in sales from holidays in years past. Plan for this holiday season based to how your campaigns preformed this time last year. Take a look at your holiday sales trends from last year – review keywords, ads, referring sites and popular buying times.
  • Run a complete competitive analysis on your competitor’s holiday campaign. What are they offering for the holidays? What keywords are they bidding on? Know what you’re up against. If they don’t guarantee shipping by a specific date – maybe you can.  Savvy online shoppers will notice.
  • Write campaigns with buying cycle in mind: Interest, Research, Purchase. Keywords and campaign will evolve and change as client searches and needs change.  By November many shoppers are doing a lot of price comparisons.
  • Write ad groups specifically around popular products  - if you have a few items for sale that run the chance of selling out. When that product is gone you can easily turn off the campaign. You’ll save money by not paying for clicks that won’t convert and save time by just turning off one ad group instead of painstakingly searching through long keyword lists and irrelevant ads.
Filed Under: Paid Search Tagged With: ,
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