Ppc 101 - 102

I wrote and posted this elsewhere in this thread, hopefully the moderator won't kill both of them. (If you do Mr./Mrs. Moderator, please leave this one...thx)

Their are many ways to optimize your results, but the most important (I manage 700+ PPC accounts) is to use the proper filters (like [US only] because a lot of click fraud comes from non-US traffic), and to run your logs through an analyzer to verify the country of origin. Once you have these IP's, contact your rep at the SE and get credit for them.

I consider this to be the most important element because even if you have a great campaign, but if 30% of your traffic is from click fraud IP addresses, your conversion rate is seriously affected, and your overall campign is skewed.

Here is my approach to starting new PPC campaign:

1. Contact the company by phone and get a personal rep. Here are their numbers. (Toll-free when I could find them. Some are actual rep's personal lines, some of these were pretty difficult to get!)

Google 650-330-0100
Overture/Yahoo 503-615-3602 or 866-924-6676
LookSmart 877-512-5665 or 415-348-7842
7Search 773-283-0086
Enhance 800-840-1012
Miva/FindWhat 877-274-2525
Kanoodle 877-526-6635
Search123 818-575-4500
BrainFox 646-223-1255(fax only)
SearchFeed 866.722.9951
411Web sales@411.web.com
Turbo10 (UK): 0044 20 7232 1733
Mirago +44 (0)1420 592323
Mamma 888-844-2372
QuePasa support@quepasacorp.com
Lycos 781-370-2664
Ask/Ask Jeeves 510-985-7400
Bidvertiser 866.319.0373
Go Click 702-784-1787

2. Contact your site host and make sure your log settings are set to capture and store for at least 7 days.

3. Install a log analyzer. Be sure it will seperate the clicks from different countries and their IP addresses. This will give you the proof you will need if you get non-requested and need to prove it.

4. Find out about their filters as it relates to your products country demographics.(many ppc's require you to ASK that it be turned on - i.e.Enhance, LookSmart, Kanoodle). This is important because I market just to US companies only. BrainFox has NO FILTERS, LookSmart has a US filter but it also includes Canada which equates to 16% of their traffic sent to me. Anotherword wasted clicks and money. [i]Check each one out carefully while setting them up, and check out the fine print.

5. Use this keyword tool to get your top 10 keywords

6. Start your campaign. (See step 10 for bonus deposit credits).

7. Use each search engines estimated cost tool if available. This way you can get an estimate on the overall cost of your campaign based on your bids, and if you can afford it or need to adjust the bids.

8. If you have a conversion rate from another marketing campaign for your specific product, get it to use in this task. (For instance, I have an email campaign that gets a 1 out of 250 conversion. Applying this to a PPC budget, I need to assume that 1000 clicks will get me 4 conversions (although this SHOULD be higher because of targeted demographics a ppc provides). So if those click are costing me 10 cents each, each lead will cost $25. Is this what your getting paid or are willing to pay for a lead?) Here is a CPM tool to figure CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and an ROI (return on investment) tool. You'll want to get friendly with both of these tools. They are the bottom line on your campaigns.

9. On some of the PPC's you can get a 1 cent listing through them such as GoClick, ePilot, 7Search, or 5 cent minimum bids on FindWhat, EnHance, Kanoodle, and Search123. Assemble a list of keywords and keywords phrases that you can buy for a 1 - 5 cent minimum bid. (statistics show the more keywords in your keyword phrase, the more the term will get traffic - 4 word phrases are better than 3, 5 is better than 4, this starts to decreases at 6 total keywords in 1 phrase) This will also give you great information down the road on certain phrases that temporarily jump up in the serps and can generate a good amount of traffic.

10. Set your daily or weekly budget low. Some will call it a "cap"**. This is the stage at which the PPC system will remove your ad from circulation. This is important!

**LookSmart has what it calls a "daily target". Beware of this, it is not a cap. I had a $70 "daily target" and thanks to click fraud, 12 hrs. later it cost me almost $800...or basically until my account was depleted. I fought and got it back but it took quite some time to resolve with my personal rep.

11. Analyze your logs and get credit from your rep on a daily basis. There are many skills to master such as bid monitoring, bid gaps, strategic bidding and keyword cpm/cpc adjustments, but these steps will get you started.

12. Learn to use the monitoring tools the PPC offers up, and if you are doing multiple campaigns across many ppc engines, checkout different ppc management tools such as BidRank or SearchIgnite to help you keep up. Some of these types of companies are signed up for affiliate programs through the vendors and can get you a $5 to $100 deposit match when you open your accounts.


If I had to target 3 of the primary tasks you need to do daily they would be;
1. Analyze your logs
2. Use your PPC Manager
3. More keyword research, keyword research, keyword research!

Good luck, and feel free to email me with any questions.
garythescubadiver@gmail.com

PPC 101

Now that accounts have been established its time to create you tracking URLs. Each company is a little different in the way they handle this. Some will add a pixel or a tracking snippet on the pages necessary to track your results. Placing this code on your landing page tells you what your CTR or ‘click through rate’ is. This can tell you whether your creative (or ad) is effective, and by rotating different creatives you can gauge the performance of them.

Placing the code on the thank-you page will tell you CPL (cost per Lead or Sale), and some of the PPC engines will allow you to enter a value for the conversion to better track your ROI (return on investment).

Placing the code on every page will tell you different things like where your navigation is taking the end-user, what page they enter and exit on, and other analytical data.

These tracking abilities are the very bottom line of your PPC campaigns. This is where ½ of all PPC’s win or lose. It is crucial to have these elements available, whether by free tracking software like Google Analytics or Yahoo Marketing Console, or with more robust software available for purchase such as DirectTracks, WebTrend or many others that are available.

By this point you should already have your keywords assembled by using a free tool such as Google or Yahoo’s keyword tools, or WordTracker which allows up to 10 words in their trial.

It is important that you understand the difference between all PPC’s and spend time evaluating their traffic, and the competition. Expect to lose or break even, and hope for the best. But expect to spend some money on research expenses. Google and Yahoo are the big boys in PPC, providing 60% of the results, and they are more expensive in most scenarios. They have estimation tools that will give you a “heads-up” on what you can expect to spend, based on prior search parameters. Adjust your budget accordingly.

Do your homework reading about the different PPC engines and the type of venues that they operate in. Some place your ads in networks, some place your ads within their own results. This is another important element because your overall result can be dramatically increased or decreased based on the network that they place you in. A mortgage page is not necessarily the network page you want to be on if your marketing weight loss.

Here is an important checklist to use when shopping a secondary PPC company (list in PPC 101):

1. Can I speak to someone on the phone?
2. Do they have filters available? (i.e. non-US traffic)
3. How do they handle Click Fraud?
4. What networks do they operate in?
5. Can you select which network to be in?
6. How do they handle multiple clicks from the same IP?
7. What tools such as IP blockers do they have?
8. Can I upload a tracking URL to track keyword conversions?
9. How current are your tracking and financial reports?
10. What type of tracking do they have?

1. Can I speak to someone on the phone?

• If you can’t speak to someone like a Sales Rep, what are the chances of getting IT help or credit for any click fraud that you might happen to find? I’m still waiting on callbacks from several PPC engines. My email said, “ We wish to spend a lot of money with your company. Please have someone contact me asap”. Would you have called?

2. Do they have filters available? (i.e. non-US traffic)

• Several PPC engines have filters that they can “turn on” to filter non-US traffic, filters that block specific IP’s that you identify through your logs as being abusers, or even different traffic sources that (networks) are sending you bad traffic. Set these up before launching any campaign. What typically has to happen (normally) is you contact them, they say they will look into it, then if and when they call you bck they suggest that they turn off a couple of networks, turn on a certain filter or do something that is supposed to make a difference. But of course you need to make another deposit to see if it will even improve the situation. (refer to #5)

3. How do they handle Click Fraud?

• Click Fraud is simply this: the practice of clicking on a text advertisement served by a search engine for the sole purpose of forcing the advertiser to pay for the click. This can come from a competitor, someone trying to collect commissions from a network your ad is running on, or one of many other possibilities.

No PPC engine wants to admit to, or give credits for click fraud. The only tool you have to combat this abuse are your logs (the text filled documents that tell you everything that has happened on your site like visitors, referrals, in and out pages, etc.), and a good log analyzer. With this analyzer these reports that seem like pages and pages of gibberish in a text format will come to life, telling you just about whatever you want to know. Armed with this information you can go to your Rep and demand reimbursement. This is a whole other chapter in PPC 101,102, etc.

For right now just be sure they have stated they will give you credit.

4. What networks do they operate in?

• PPC Engines have networks that they serve ads to that you pay for within your PPC campaign, every time someone on one of the network sites click on one of your ads, both parties make a cut.

The problem here is that if I am paying a PPC engine to run an unsecured credit card ad, and the put it on all of their networks, (these include mortgage, real estate planning, investment and stock sites). The demographics of this network are all wrong, and your wasting your (or they are wasting your) money. This type of ad would need to go on an 18-35 demographic, with average earnings from 10k-35k per year.

5. Can you select which network to be in?

• Unless you get a Rep on the phone and ask “what networks do you operate in?”, or at least specify your target audience, you will waste a lot of money. The PPC won’t intervene unless you cut your spending or they have a reason to. Lycos actually allows you to turn networks on and off from their management console.

6. How do they handle multiple clicks from the same IP?

• The tracking software that I use lets me set the cookies to 1 click per 24 hours. If you click on one of my ads more than once in a 24 hr. period, my tracking will block that click from being recorded in my traffic details, but it will show me in other areas. I can also set certain tools to email or text me there is a problem with a particular campaign, keyword, or any parameter I put in place. So I can say,”If I receive more than 5 clicks from the same IP, (or even IP range), alert me by text message. This will not only save you money, but give you the ammunition you’ll need to convince the PPC Rep’s you know what your doing.

Although PPC engine have this ability, not many will spend the time to track it down…after all, they are the ones getting paid.

7. What tools such as IP blockers do they have?

• Many tools are available through different PPC engines that allow you to control your traffic. Some allow you to block IP’s, block URL’s (i.e. competitors), add negative keyword filters, install country filters and geographical filters, depending on your needs. Be sure to know these well, as PPC Management is just as much about identifying fraudulent traffic, as it is attracting good traffic.

8. Can I upload tracking URLs to track keyword conversions?

• Without inserting an image pixel or code snippets, PPC engine cannot track your ROI or your conversions, beyond CPC, CTR or basic information. A successful PPC Manager uses every possible piece of information to adjust his/her campaigns. In many cases (i.e. shared SSL application sites sharing the same certificate), these snippets will interfere with the platform or design of your website navigation. (This is my problem I am using as an example. There are many more). In this case I have to create specific URL’s for each engine, each search term and even the match type in order to track my campaigns effectively.

9. How current are your tracking and financial reports?

• My daily routine is to run daily reports for all of my campaigns to send to the CEO. Many PPC engines have weird ways of reporting traffic, some 3 to 4 days after-the-fact. Others require you to “order them” via email. They are all somewhat different, so set your reporting up prior to running your campaigns. I use an excel sheet with all my formulas preset. This way all I need to do is enter the clicks, the cost and the number of leads, and the spreadsheet does the rest.

Here are my column headers:

Campaign Name | Ad Name | Clicks | Click Cost | # Leads | Cost Per Lead | Spend Budget | Profit/Loss

I set these up for each PPC Engine, then down the left side I list the Campaigns.

10. What type of tracking do they have?

• I could include this in #8 or #9, but I have listed it separately because some PPC’s have specialized tools that you can use in your tracking efforts. One that I use is the Value= parameter. In Google Analytics for example you can insert a value to your conversion, and the tool will give you a bottom line ROI (return on investment), making your life a lot easier! So ask this question, there are a lot of great tools available for free from the guys your throwing your money at!

You can find some free “double-your-initial-deposit” HERE. I would even go as far as to contact they rep you got in PPC 101, and advise him that you have plenty of funding to spend on good traffic, and get a suggestion on what they can do or what they recommend you do to help accomplish this.

Be aware of the settings for each company such as the type of ad. Is it a CPC (cost-per-click), CPM (cost per 1000 impressions – or how many times it shows up within an entire page of other advertisers), and whether it is Search Advertising, Search Network Advertising, Contextual ads in the Network or Content Bids. There are many variables between the PPC’s, and I run on most of them so I know that being aware of their setting is very important.


So by now you should have the following:

1. A Rep
2. A list of keywords (start small)
3. A predetermined budget just for research
4. An idea of where you want to run your ads
5. What type of ads you want to run
6. A spread sheet to record the analytics
7. A list of what you need to insert into your site for tracking

Go ahead and get a Google and Yahoo account set up. It will take awhile to get Google’s Analytics and Yahoo’s Marketing Console setup.

In PPC 103 I’ll cover how to set your campaigns up across the major PPC’s, appropriate settings, conversion tracking and trends, as well as what to look at within your reports to boost conversions.

Gary R. Beal