Interested in Everything
I’ve marketed hard hats, concert wristbands, trophies, gas station nozzles, ear plugs, plasma TVs and water pumps. I now know way too much about every single one of those things. To write truly effective ad copy and target the best keywords, you need to know about the product you’re trying to sell.

Obsessed with Numbers
Maybe it’s a bit of the OCD kicking in. Maybe it’s a hidden need to stare at numbers all day. Whatever it is, I love to analyze everything SEM. Click through rates, bounce rate, open rates, return on investment, and conversion rate – they’re all exciting to track and improve. You won’t be able to measure and improve your campaigns if you aren’t addicted to the numbers. Plus, numbers will never lie to you. They are a trustworthy group.

Thinks Charts and Graphs are Sexy
Is that a data point on your line graph, or are you just happy to see me? Sure, you already love numbers and your brain is practically a virtual pie chart. What about your clients or your boss? They do not want to see a spreadsheet full of numbers. Dress it up! People love to see their numbers in chart form; it’s a scientific fact.

Intelligently Competitive
I grew up in a house with 4 brothers and 2 sisters, and played varsity sports all through high school. I know a little something about competition. It’s great to have a competitive nature in SEM. That’s what makes you want to have a higher CTR and Conversion Rate every month. It will help you succeed. However, you have to control it and pick your battles. You never want to get into a bidding war in order to be in a number one ad position. You will lose the ROI game. And that’s no good. More on emotional bidding.

Best Friend is a Thesaurus
Webster and I have had some amazing wonderful fantastic times! In addition to learning everything you can about the product, a thesaurus or the PPC equivalent Keyword Tool, is essential to finding more keywords and writing ad variations. You can never have enough keyword synonyms in an ad campaign. Customers use the craziest words to find your products. Make sure you’re bidding on those crazy words!

Good Enough is Not an Option
Wow, I have a 14% conversion rate! I look like a hero to my client.  I’m happy that she’s happy, but how do I raise that to 16%? What am I missing? Don’t beat yourself up, but never be completely satisfied with the current results. SEM is not an infomercial, don’t “set it and forget it”. There is always room for improvement.

Since the official Google Analytics blog didn’t mention anything about their new Annotations feature yet, I wrote a small blog post on my employer’s (Lightburn) website. Google Annotations: Great New Analytics Feature

A client recently contacted me because they were concerned that their former PPC bid management company overcharged them for their services and inflated bid costs. Since I’ve been managing their PPC accounts over the past 6 months, they have reduced costs by over 45%, increased their clickthrough rate by 30%, and increased their conversion rate by over 4 times – all while growing revenue by 37%.

Before I took over the account, I was able to get a keyword report from the company that I stole the business from. Their report was full of over-priced and under-performing keywords. It was a classic case of a PPC management company just paying for position and not worrying about ROI. They carelessly spent 10’s of thousands of dollars of my client’s money on poor keywords.

By focusing on conversion and ROI, I have made such huge improvements to their PPC accounts that my client is actually auditing their former PPC manager. They feel that the company must have been inflating bid cost and passing the cost along to them. I really hope that they don’t find fraud, because the poor bidding job they did in the past was bad enough.

What’s the takeaway? Make sure you hire someone that will care about your profitability. Also make sure they are open with their information. No one should be denying you access to your own AdWords account; that’s where bid inflation can easily be hidden. Finally, the number one easiest way to avoid bid inflation is to use your own credit card and don’t let the company invoice you for the click spend. There is nothing more legit than a charge straight from Google.

Happy bidding!

Emotions tend to run high when involved with any type of bidding. Be it a fine piece of art, classic car, or a keyword. Many people cannot let go of the human emotion when they are trying to outbid the person next to them. All common sense is out of the door. They turn the bidding into a full out competition. Winning is the only option their ego will allow. This is a very well known phenomenon in the auction house and eBay setting. How many advertising professionals realize that they are partaking in the same type of competition?

The advertiser is not always the one to blame.
If you have the luxury of working in an organization with a big online marketing team, then perhaps the individual is responsible for her own accounts. Blame away! But, in many cases there is one person in the company who controls all PPC and online marketing. If this person was in control 100% of the time, emotional bidding could be blamed on him as well.

However, in many of my experiences there is an outside influence…coming from the inside…from behind a nice desk….in the largest office in the building. Yes, it is our beloved CEO / business owner. This woman built the company from scratch and knows the product inside out. When she searches Google for a product that she sells, she wants (needs) her company to show up before all of her competitors. She’s invested too much time and energy to be “beat” by her competitors in the PPC game. It’s purely an emotional ad position competition.

Fact: An ad in the number one position does not necessarily mean it’s the number one performing ad.

The next step our CEO takes is walking down to the one man team that manages her company’s PPC bids. She will demand that her company is in the number one position for all of her favorite keywords. Some PPC managers will listen and do whatever their boss says and blindly raise bids; others may put up a fight. I’m telling you now, put up a fight.

How to fight the CEO and not lose your job:
Bidding for position is important. And testing the number one position should be part of your everyday practice. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it’s a hole in your wallet. You won’t know what works if you don’t test. But if you blindly aim for the number one position every time, you’re not effectively doing your job as a PPC bid manager. So when your boss asks you to make sure your ads are number one in the search engines, put up a fight, an intelligent fight. All you have to do is show your boss the numbers. Numbers don’t lie.

Win the fight with a 1 stat: Ecommerce Conversion Rate based on Ad Position. The stat is already available to you in Google Analytics if you have your AdWords account properly linked. You can easily show your boss which position your ads earn the most conversions. That should be enough information to show your boss that you know what you’re doing. And at the same time it should earn you the respect you deserve for being an intelligent PPC manager.

Use this list of 50 states (and capitals below) for any project where you need to easily copy and paste them. I searched everywhere for a simple text list to copy for a PPC campaign I was working on and had no luck. Hopefully this is useful to someone other than myself.

50 States

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

50 Capitals

This is a list of state capitals in order of the states, alphabetically. If that doesn’t make sense, you can always sort it out yourself in Excel.

Montgomery

Juneau

Phoenix

Little Rock

Sacramento

Denver

Hartford

Dover

Tallahassee

Atlanta

Honolulu

Boise

Springfield

Indianapolis

Des Moines

Topeka

Frankfort

Baton Rouge

Augusta

Annapolis

Boston

Lansing

Saint Paul

Jackson

Jefferson City

Helena

Lincoln

Carson City

Concord

Trenton

Santa Fe

Albany

Raleigh

Bismarck

Columbus

Oklahoma City

Salem

Harrisburg

Providence

Columbia

Pierre

Nashville

Austin

Salt Lake City

Montpelier

Richmond

Olympia

Charleston

Madison

Cheyenne

AT&T’s response to their lackluster 3G coverage is a poorly done ad campaign that refers to their STANDARD cell coverage. This is all highlighted by a desperate looking Luke Wilson who throws POSTCARDS on a map of the US. How about spending some of those millions of dollars on expanding your actual 3G coverage instead of poorly defending yourself?

AT&T recently sued Verizon over the “There’s a Map for That” ads. Basically AT&T said Verizon mislead consumers with their maps. By only showing 3G coverage on the map, it appeared that AT&T had no service in any of the white areas. Verizon made some disclaimer changes, and most of the issues are smoothed out.

Main issues I have with AT&T’s ad campaign:

1. AT&T responds to a 3G coverage map with a standard cell coverage map.
2. Luke Wilson throws postcards on a map. Who in the hell sends postcards these days? Postcards are as out of date as your standard cell coverage map.
3. The ads ooze desperation and haste. This was clearly rushed through the marketing department in an attempt to save any credibility they have left in regards to their 3G coverage.
4. Verizon nailed their “There’s a map for that” ad campaign. AT&T retorts with a poorly done ad. It makes them look desperate.

Let’s take a break from counting our money, Retailers. Do we realize what we have just done? This past weekend we encouraged the same type of spending habits that wiped out our economy a short time ago. We dazzled, wooed and begged the American people to spend their money so they could ‘save’ X percent on something they didn’t need. It feels good doesn’t it? It feels great to be deep in the black for a month out of the year. Who cares about Joe Samson, who just spent $800 on a flat screen instead of saving that money for his mortgage? I’m sure he’ll be fine when he loses his job next month.

Americans are great at holding grudges on all sorts of things. But why is it that we have such a short memory of a financial crisis? Terrorists touch a few thousand of us and we are angry at them forever. It is justified. But why are we not irate towards retailers and financial institutions that extend infinite credit to individuals who cannot afford it? They are ruining tens of thousands of lives. Overall, consumers had an average of 5.4 retail cards with a total of over $900 billion in outstanding debt. (Source: Nielsen Report, April 2009) That is ridiculous.

I’m not suggesting that American’s do not spend anything this holiday season. I am simply saying that we overdo it every year. We need to stop accumulating debt. If we learn to balance our checkbooks (debit cards) then retailers and financial institutions can learn to balance their finances as well. Try to be frugal this year. Look like a cheapskate for once. It’s not that embarrassing. Try to make something that has more sentimental value than a plastic-wrapped gadget.

Happy holidays. Try to stay out of the red this year!

Background: I have worked in the eCommerce industry for over 4 years. I advertise online for a number of clients that spend thousands of dollars every week in search marketing. I am in the belly of the beast.