Click-To-Teleport Customer Overflow Issue
While most businesses would love to get a customer in the door, the new Google AdWords Click-To-Teleport creates another problem, getting customers to leave! Their terms of service states that Google is not responsible for return teleportation. This leaves heaps of customers in the store, and adventurous shoppers wondering aimlessly around unfamiliar towns. CTR is so 2011. The only metric I care about now is Teleport-Through-Rate! ~ Greg A. Since the April Fools debut of the beta AdWords program, businesses have been teleporting customers from couches, right into the showroom floor. Business owner David Robinson stated, “We absolutely love getting customers into the store, but they often click before grabbing their wallets…or pants. It creates a bit of a problem with our more conservative staff members, and the overall plan to make money as a business.” While Google failed to teleport to my office for an in-person explanation of the issues business owners are facing, I did receive a response from famed rep, Holly “ice cream sandwich” Breyers. “We as a search company are only responsible for driving (teleporting) more customers to businesses at an affordable Cost Per Teleport. The business is responsible for handling their displaced customers post-click.” As a search marketer, I really love the idea of sending my companies real breathing customers with the ease of a click on my ad. But I also have to explain to businesses that traditional retargeting should be converted to relocating. Taxi and air travel fees can really add up for a proper relocation campaign. What about the online-only players in the eCommerce world? I was able to get a hold of Jeff Bees, an employee at Amazon. After a brief rant about NASA, I was able to get Jeff to comment on Google Click-To-Teleport. “Click-To-Teleport…where the f*&$ are we teleporting them to, our robotic warehouse? This is total bull. I’m going to play with my spaceship.” We’ll see what types of studies come out as this CTT program is more widely adopted. What will be the incremental lift of teleportation? My guess is that the lift is somewhere close to the speed of light, but only Google knows that answer. Happy April 1st bidding,...
Read MoreBig AdWords Update: Google Display Network Tab
A Beta update rolling out in AdWords finally allows search marketers to see keyword data from their Google Display Network. Finally! Seriously…this has been a BIG frustration with search marketers for the last few years. Google LOVES to take your money and pump out impressions and clicks through the Google Display Network (GDN) but never reports on granular performance. You could have 100,000 keywords driving $1mm worth of clicks to your site and Google would never tell you which keyword did what. How are you supposed to optimize an account with no keyword data? This is straight from their, somewhat hidden, AdWords help file release: “Now you can find all your Display Network targeting and exclusions in one place. We’ve moved your Networks, Audiences, and Topics tabs under the new Display Network tab to make it easier for you to build, monitor and refine your display campaigns.” Read the actual release notes here: New Google Display Network Tab in AdWords With this new data, we can finally optimize to a keyword – just like we have always wanted. This should be a very valuable update to SEMs. It should also lead to more money being spent in the GDN, now that it can be better measured. I think that this is a win-win for the advertiser and Google. In addition to Keyword data (which I think is the real news here), Google also moved Managed and Automatic Placements, Topics, and Remarketing management into the Display tab. This is really just a bit of house-cleaning to the AdWords UI. Happy bidding…with new GDN keyword...
Read MoreAdWords Enhanced Sitelinks – Update Your Architecture
Google’s recent AdWords Sitelink Extension update is a big one. It seems as if Google updates something in AdWords several times a month. While many updates are nice, they are not all game changers. The most recent update, called Enhanced Sitelinks is a game changer. You essentially get rewarded with A LOT of SERP real estate if you have closely themed Ad Groups within your campaign and those Ad Groups have ads that are closely related to your Sitelinks. Best practice is to theme everything from top to bottom very closely to each other, and this update will reward that practice. The problem is, many account managers and SEM professionals do not structure their accounts correctly so they will not be able to use the Enhanced Sitelinks. I have taken over and audited dozens of accounts in my career, and not many of them started out with a good architecture. This latest update will force people to make drastic changes to their accounts. This is all for the better, of course, but it will be quite the undertaking for some SEM managers. Enhanced Sitelinks is not only a layout update, it’s Google telling you that you better start building your AdWords account architecture in the best way possible. While there isn’t an exact account architecture guideline from Google, they do have some general recommendations for building out your account located in their help documents. This is a good read from a senior member in the AdWords Community. While it is informative, there is a lot left to the imagination. Let’s Paint a Picture, by Numbers The main idea of account architecture is to keep topics in tightly themed campaigns, groups, keyword sets, and ads. Think of an account as a dresser. You, the account (dresser) manager, should be very OCD about how you organize your clothes. Keep the socks in one drawer, shirts in another, and pants in another drawer. Those are your Campaigns. Now, inside of your sock drawer you also have rows of socks. These rows are variations of dress socks, gym socks, and casual socks. Those are your Ad Groups. Inside the rows are the individual socks, each pair made of a similar thread. The individual socks are your Keywords. On the outside of your drawer you have large labels. The labels are in-line with the rows of socks so you know what you’ll see when...
Read MoreThe Flaw of Last Click Attribution
TweetThe Flaw of Same Session / Last Click Attribution Think of a traditional retail purchase at a store without eCommerce…heck; let’s imagine the Internet doesn’t even exist for this scenario. The potential customer is watching TV and sees an ad from a new store in the area, for a product she needs for the house. The next day she heads out for a shopping trip to her usual stores, but happens to see a billboard for that new store. She knows the general location of the store but cannot find it until she spots a WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN in the parking lot of the new store. She walks in and browses the merchandise, but doesn’t purchase anything until a nice young store clerk shows her to the product she saw on the TV commercial. She walks out a happy customer. The story above isn’t unimaginable; it could very well happen 1000’s of times per day. Multiple marketing mediums touched the customer before she made the purchase. So what channel gets the credit? Did the TV ad cause her to buy from the store? Was the billboard the real winner in the marketing mix that reminded her that she wanted to shop at the new store? How about the WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN? He practically ushered her into the parking lot! Or, was it the young store clerk taking her directly to the product that made the sale? Ask 10 different people that question and you will get many different answers. The clerk would say it’s all because of his product knowledge and Brut cologne he was wearing that day. The Arm-Flailing Emporium owner would say it was the high-quality arm flailers that made the sale. Mr. John Billboard would argue that his billboard location and design really drove the sale. And the producer would say it was the amazing TV spot that was responsible for the sale. The problem, of deciding which channel to credit the sale to, is extremely difficult to solve. If you take one channel out of the mix, the sale may not have occurred at all. So, in order to produce more sales, which channel should get more funding? Which channel drives the most sales and how do you measure that? It is a very real problem that companies deal with every day. And many companies simply make...
Read MoreMy Top 12 SEM Online Resources
TweetTo ring in 2012, here is a list of my top 12 most frequently read Search Engine Marketing resources. I visit most of these sites every day – so I tend to say “yep I read that earlier” a lot. If you want to be as much of a “Great News Everyone” downer as I can be, go ahead and give these a look. In all seriousness, I get a lot of great news, tactics, and strategic ideas from these websites. And I am very thankful to the people putting in the hours of work to make them so good. :List Below: Alltop | http://sem.alltop.com/ The SEM information King. This is an aggregator of most SEM articles with some great usability and scanability. Alltop makes it easy to cruise through the top SEM stories of the day if you are short on time. This often leads to me finding new blogs to frequently visit. DAILY READ All Things D | http://allthingsd.com/ This is the new kid on the block; at least to my reading list. So far it has been a great resource for breaking technology news, which includes search engine news and all things Internet media. Interestingly enough, it is owned by DOW Jones and published by the Wall Street Journal. Check this one out. DAILY READ Search Engine Watch | http://searchenginewatch.com/ppc One of the classics with a semi-recent redesign. This is a go-to site to find a wide variety of search engine articles written by experts in the field. I link to the PPC focused part of the site, but Search Engine Watch has dynamite content for SEO, Analytics and all things Internet marketing. DAILY READ Search Engine Land | http://searchengineland.com/ The people who bring us SMX search marketing conference run a pretty good blog, too. Over 30k likes on Facebook and LinkedIn is a good sign that this is a go-to search destination. If you can’t make it to the world-class search conference – at least check out the blog on a regular basis. WEEKLY READ Official Google AdWords Blog | http://adwords.blogspot.com/ Why not hear it from the horse’s mouth? Sure you can get conspiracy theory blog posts that cover an alpha AdWords test, but you may as well get the real details from Google. Besides covering their features in detail, they often share some industry insights and link to other useful tools that you may...
Read More7 ½ Myths about PPC
Tweet7 ½ Myths about PPC. Because there are just too many complete lists in the world. 1. Big Pockets only, during Black Friday and Cyber Monday If you’re selling TVs or Laptops, yes, you have an insane amount of competition and should Not do major holidays. *Only play with the big guys if your site has the right offers and value-adds to your visitors. I would also stick to long-tail keywords that have been proven winners for you in the past. BUT if you are specialized in B2C or practically any B2B, don’t worry about big retailer competition. You should be able to run smoothly with your normal budget. Target and Amazon won’t be bidding on cold air condensers or 3M label glue. 2. Just press play, it takes less than an hour to start PPC It takes hours of research, years of experience, and hours of implementation to do it right. Those who say otherwise, Self-made Guru or Agency, are probably not doing a great job – and you should look elsewhere for PPC services. True Pay Per Click / Search Engine Marketing professionals specialize in one main skill. If they are also a designer, UXer, programmer, and delivery driver – it’s very rare that they would be great at PPC. 3. Cha-ching. Instant sales! Google AdWords defaults to a 30 day cookie for a reason. They understand that sales don’t happen instantly, and often times not on the first visit. If you as a business owner think that PPC is a magic bullet to your bottom line, I have some snake oil to sell you. It takes time to figure out the best use of PPC for each business. And if you don’t have a few months to invest and fine-tune, then you should wait until you can afford it. PPC is an investment, treat it as one and give it time to grow, but also have an exit plan to cut losses if it goes poorly. 4. I run the business, so I can run PPC! And my nephew can when I’m on vacation. *See #2 above. Let a pro handle it. But work with the PPC professional, for goodness sake. Work as a team. You are THE expert in your business. You know the keywords regular customers use. You know the hot products or products with the biggest profit margin. Share that insight with your...
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