Most of the paid search managers I have known already use Google Adwords (the 500 lb gorilla) and have working experience using 2nd tier networks such 7 search, direct cpv, linked in and more. Mobile paid search is still new to most.

If you’d like to join our group and start sharing and learning some paid search tricks and tips visit us at http://www.facebook.com/groups/PPCPinas/.

We have decided to expand the program into 2 days.

Who is this training ideally for:
1) Online Marketing professionals who want to expand their knowledge with the use of PPC as part of their marketing arsenal.
2) Online Marketing professionals who have zero knowledge of Paid Search Marketing and want to offer it as an additional product to their clients.
3) Operations Managers of Online Marketing BPO companies who want to have a grasp of how PPC works so they can relate with their Paid Search Account managers.

Training Details:
Date: May 18-19,2012 (10am to 6pm)
Venue: Astoria Plaza Ortigas
Fee: Php 5,000 ( includes snacks, lunch)
What to bring: Laptops, Wifi plugins
What to expect: Hands-on training on how to launch a campaign (Search, Mobile, Contextual).

Limited to 5 slots only. As of May 02, 2012 only 1 slot left

Feedback from the first batch of Participants:

Thanks sir Cell. Those topics were very helpful for me to better understand what’s PPC all about, PPC strategies, etc. Hindi ganun kadali ang PPC pala and thanks for this wonderful opportunity para mapag aralan ang PPC… Please update me para sa susunod na training.

Anne Tan, Local Search Heroes

Thanks Sir Cell, It’s a good start to attend on the PPC, it ignites my interest to learn more. I hope there will be more tutorials to come!

Joseph “OTEP” Emmanuel, Branders Philppines

Thanks Cell,  the session was indeed very enlightening and I can now appreciate how Google PPC can become a powerful marketing tool given the right strategies. Thanks for the opportunity and for dedicating time and effort to teach beginners like me. Looking forward to the next set of training…

Joy Munsayac, Source Fit

Instructor: Cell

* Cellconversion has the right to refuse any interested participant.

Who is this training ideally for:
1) Online Marketing professionals who want to expand their knowledge with the use of PPC as part of their marketing arsenal.
2) Online Marketing professionals who have zero knowledge of Paid Search Marketing and want to offer it as an additional product to their clients.
3) Operations Managers of Online Marketing BPO companies who want to have a grasp of how PPC works so they can relate with their Paid Search Account managers.

Training Details:
Date: April 19,2012 (10am to 6pm)
Venue: Astoria Plaza Ortigas
Fee: Php 2,500 ( includes snacks, lunch)
What to bring: Laptops, Wifi plugins

What to expect: Hands-on training on how to launch a campaign (Search, Mobile, Contextual).

Instructor: Cell

What does this problem have to do with viral marketing?

1)I tried transferring the files through the bluetooth device.

Lo and behold while Ipad was looking for a compatible “pairing” i saw one Bluetooth device with the actual URL as its device name – www.example.com/tk. So it crossed my mind that if someone was creative enough to post an actual ad copy on their computer name like Need PPC Managers? – www.cellconversion.com (not sure how many characters are allowed) people turning on their bluetooth devices will have instantly seen that ad.

2) Sadly even with the bluetooth pairing for both Macbook Air and Ipad, I cant figure out how to send the files. So the next best thing would be to look for a decent internet connection which I was doing for the last 30 mins or so. Then why not create an adcopy as the name of your tethered wifi connection. I’m sure that 50% of those visitors, upon opening their laptops, searched for a decent wifi connection. Instant Free advertising to 100 or 180 visitors.

3) After having a laugh with these 2 ideas with Myles Vives and Benj Arriola, Benj shared an experience he had while driving into a gas station. Someone was clever enough to post his/her blackberry barcode “thingy” near
the pump station so anyone who would be texting or reading their email would somehow pickup the information – though I’m not a balckberry user so it might not be as easy as it sounds. Clever.

Now why not have your ScanLife RFID/barcode thingy printed out and stick it on the back of your laptop. This will work best if you are a speaker for the conference as everyone will have a direct line of sight to your laptop.

4) If the ScanLife barcode thingy doesn’t work then place the Logo of your company and URL on the back of your laptop. For a speaker this would be great since most likely they will be standing on a podium where people can see it.

5) One thing that people will gladly waste their time on is to wait in line while getting food on a buffet. Imagine the number of minutes one has to wait just to get a plate – and you have no choice but to be inline. Hanging a banner or just even a poster near the buffet table would be a welcome sore for people waiting for their turn to get a plate – unless your ad is a sore itself.

6) On conferences coffee and drinks are served a plenty, so the bladder reacts and most people would visit the comfort room quite often. For men, I bet there would be no other way to capture 10-15 secs of their time – unless they are too busy urinating. That is a opportunity to deliver a message, 10-15 secs of undivided attention while looking into a wall. Rather that looking at a blank wall, would it be nice to read something? Place a creative ad on the walls in front of the urinals – i have already seen some of this in place.

I haven’t done any of these so I’m not sure how effective they will be but if you get to close 1 or 2 clients from any of these shoot me an email to share the story.

This may sound impressive and will likely help the metric provide granular insight on adgroup performance.

Will an adgroup level IS be significantly helpful to you?

Has the strategy of capitalizing on keyword misspells lost its luster? Has Google with all its might and armed with its gazillion worth of data finally figured out how to correlate some keyword misspells with the correct ones?

I have always made keyword misspells as part of my campaign structure whenever I build an adwords account – well not always. While doing a keyword search for the word “helmet” i came across it’s misspells: “helmit” and “helmut”. Digging deeper, and crossing my fingers that I would find enough search volume to warrant me creating a campaign for either of or both of these keywords. I tumbled into this data:

It had some decent search volume so I decided to make an adgroup for “Motorcycle Helmet Misspells” under the campaign “Misspells”. I used the same adcopy and landing page for the correctly spelled keyword “helmet”. Banking on more longtail keyword opportunities, and the fact that the client was selling merchandise for kids and teens, I capitalized on targeted keywords such as “kids motorcycle helmits” and “youth motorcycle helmits”.

Upon launching the new adgroup, I had mixed expectations on how Adwords would determine the relevancy of these misspells to both the adcopy and the landing page. As shown on the image above, the initial Quality Score score assigned was awfully low. I waited for a couple of days, hoping that after the Adbot visits my site a shift in the Quality Score will somehow materialize – it never came.

I left the adgroup to “dry” for a couple of weeks hoping that it will be able to redeem itself through building some historical data – especially on its CTR. Unfortunately though, misspelled keywords can take time to build some significant data since they are misspells to begin with. Fearing that both the low QS and low CTR (non-existent) would affect the account level variables i decided to pause the adgroup.

I have another case study to show on how confusing it gets with using misspells. This time another group gets a 7/10 score and generates traffic from the most unexpected keywords – not to mention a 2.45% CTR.

Google Adwords Keyboard Shortcut

If you are not still aware of the Google Adwords shortcut keys, which is of great help, here are some of the them. Makes me think that the guys at Google, managing the Adwords project, are just human after all.

Global Navigation:

• Press “G” then “O”: Goes to All Online Campaigns
• Press “G” then “C”: Goes to Campaigns Tab
• Press “G” then “R”: Goes to AdGroups Tab (why not D?)
• Press “G” then “K”: Goes to Keywords Tab
• Press “G” then “N”: Goes to Networks tab
• Press “G” then “A”: Goes to Ads tab
• Press “G” then “S” : Goes to Settings tab

Table navigation and actions:

• Pess “J/K”: Next/previous row
• Press “X”: Select current row (shift+x for multiple rows) – got confused first time I used this
• Press “P”: Pause selected rows
• Press “N”: Enable selected rows
• Press “D”: Delete selected rows (just be careful with this one don’t want to be pulling your hair)
• Press “l”: Download (this I love so much)

Editing ad groups and keywords:

• Press “E”: Edit selected rows (this can be confusing too)
• Press ctrl+arrows: Move between editable fields (what happens when click the “side” arrows?)
• Press ctrl+s: Save changes (doh?)
• Press esc: Cancel edit mode (Instant “oh shit I made a mistake” button)

Sweet isn’t it? If your more of an interface guy rather than an Excel or Adwords Editor guy that is. Your metacarpals are now a little bit happier with less mouse clicks and the chances of hitting your coffee mug.

Google is giving away FREE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS STICKERS btw for those within US and CANADA (sorry guys).

“We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found
that, on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by
position for the same ad. For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown
the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other
words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position,
would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on
average. Ads above the search results have a conversion rate within ±2%
of right-hand side positions. “

Now if this made you feel that all those time checking Google Analytic’s Keyword Position Report was a waste of time, I can’t for sure empathize just yet. However it kind of vindicates my position that the better metric for adcopy testing is still CTR rather than conversion rates. This maybe trying to prove a distant relationship between an effective adcopy and ad position but remember that an effective adcopy triggers a better CTR.

A better CTR with a good Ad Quality (QS) can provide your ad a better ad position/placement. Last time I remembered, the reason why everyone is improving CTR, Bids, and Ad Quality is to get the top ad positions which posits into better CTR in hopes of converting better. Does this mean that we don’t need to chase ad positions anymore? Lets be happy with our current ad position since conversion wont vary much – stop spending more since the results will relatively be the same?

I’m not really sure what this statement means for the existing PPC strategies. Now that given a similar Ad , having 2 different auction positions or ad positions will relatively generate the same level of conversions.

WHAT!? That would be the client either shouting at you while rolling his/her eyeballs not believing what you just said or your reaction to the client deciding to discontinue your consultancy.

Earlier tonight a friend who was quite new to “cleaning up” existing campaigns wanted to verify if this was a sound “recommendation” for his client. The client also wanted for him to check into previous data on conversion and check if whether the Adwords report matches the data reflected on the Google Analytics report. One of the first things he noticed was the lack of GOALS set on the Google Analytics profile which could have provided some data on any possible conversions. Without a moments hesitation he creates a mock transaction to see where the process ends – in order to identify the thank you page. Then he proceeds to create a GOAL using the thank you page as the primary goal.

Happy with what he has done, he laments on how the client could have been so careless on forgetting the creation of a GOAL. Feeling “yoda-like” for the time being I tried conjuring some smart ass wit on teaching him some fundamentals.

One often forgets that before any CPC, Bid, Budget or Conversion can be optimized one needs to look into the more fundamental stuff.

Look you will.

Fundamentals such as defining the KPI’s we want to measure and how one will measure it using the tools available.

Going a little deeper. Are the mechanics for measuring these metrics properly in place? So I told my friend if he could take a look at the “thank you page”. Suggesting to him 1) Look for the Adwords conversion snippet and 2) Look for the Google Analytics snippet. With an ounce of arrogance he would have summarily dismissed this whimsical suggestion and would even found this insulting. “I’m no newbie” he might even think.

BUT WAIT! Where the hell is the Google Analytics snippet? So even if he had added a GOAL on the analytics profile and possibly promised the client that data will be collated after a given period. Guess what? No goals will been recorded. The exercise would have been useless.

Appreciating the kind words of wisdom I have imparted, while grinning like a 2 year kid, I slightly tormented him with a follow up question: “What else will you check to make sure you now have the appropriate mechanics?”. While looking at the conversion snippet , probably he was thinking if it was a trick question or maybe I was just feeding my ego (yes, partly true).

Ten minutes passed by, as I was half way through watching the latest episode of Entourage, he tells me that he cant seem to figure it out. Going back to my “yoda-like” state I asked him what he thinks the Google ID is for?. He quietly ponders and momentarily pauses to give me a grin as if to say ” you cruel SOB”, smiles and does that right thing.

Grown have you.

Oftentimes its just the little things that can make the difference. Fundamentals that most of us often take for granted – like snippets. Having the correct snippets that is.

One Google Analytics report “inconsistency” has bothered me for sometime now and this is with regard to which data should be referenced with regards to the actual exit rate of a particular page.

Initial Table

On the “Content” menu of the GA interface, you will find the “Top Content” submenu, were one will be able to see the pages that generated enough pageviews. Now on the initial table one can see the initial Metrics: Pageviews, Unique Pageviews, Bounce Rate and Exit Rates with the corresponding pages.

If you click on any of the pages, this will lead you to a summary of the metrics indicated on the initial table. On top of the page you will see 2 drop down options: 1 for analyze and the other for content . Opting to check the navigational summary on one of the pages (Page A), I was quite surprised why I was getting a higher exit rate compared to that shown on the initial table. At first I admittedly committed a mistake by not comparing the right data as I was comparing the exit rates from “PAID TRAFFIC”. Apparently one will also notice that the “All Visits” Exit Rate is way below the one reflected on the “Navigation Summary” data.

Page A

The initial data showed a 49.78% Exit Rate while on Page A a higher, 69.70%, exit rate was recorded. On the second item listed (Page B) on the initial table, you will also notice that the exit rate is at 54.94% while the navigation summary report for Page B shows a 76.51% exit rate.

Page B

Apparently I had 2 problems to solve: 1) How to track the exit rates and navigational summary data of Landing Pages that came from PPC, and 2) How to reduce this variance in exit rate by understanding either the proper metrics involved or something else.

For problem one the easier solution will be using segmentation via “paid traffic”, as shown on the initial table, but the data becomes “diluted” later on as you dig further into the navigation summary. The content options listed on the drop down shows the aggregate data for all traffic to a selected page and will not distinguish between organic or paid traffic.

My basic solutions, though I am not 100% sure, is this:

Adding a unique parameter to the destination URL, this was the old school way of tracking traffic coming from PPC when Google Analytics and Google Adword’s auto-tagging was not yet around. The thing is, Google Analytics will document each of the destination URL separately which will enable one to track them individually. Makes sense?

Initial Table w Paramters

I’ll post the conclusion on the 2nd part of this document.