An overview of the most effective recent developments in PPC and how to deliver the best paid search
After years of a largely unchanged creative format, 2010 saw an unprecedented year for the diversification and development of Paid Search ads, with the way led - unsurprisingly - by Google’s Adwords platform.
My intention is not for this to be an Adwords ‘how to’ –you can researchAdwords’ nuts and bolts on the many excellent industry blogs. Moreover, I hopeto provide an overview of two of my favourite and most impactful PPC developments of the last 12 months and highlight how they can and should be having a beneficial effect on your campaigns.
In the second half of the article, drawing upon my experience of running large-scale and successful paid search campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands, I’ll share my thoughts on two of the key mind-sets and approaches required for delivering brilliant paid search.
We’ll kick things off with a look at what’s proven to be one of the most popular and successful additions to Adwords ad formats in recent years…
Site Links
In Google’s own words, the results of introducing SiteLinks have been:
“stunning […] with the two-line format increasing clickthrough rates, on average, by over 30%”
Well, I guess they would say that.
For those who are not aware, Site Link ads are an enhancement of the traditional 95 character Adwords’ listings, available only on premium positions and which allow you to include up to 4 user-defined links to your website.
Site links are available only for those ads that reach the highestthreshold of relevance and ad quality as defined and measured by Google. Ad clickthrough rate (CTR) is a key component of an ad’s quality and is evaluated relative to other competitors in the bid auction. Given that a 2-line site link takes up roughly twice as much of the screen as a regular ad, it’s probably a fair assumption that Google is looking for a CTR to be roughly twice that of other advertisers in the same auction to qualify.
Judging by the results observed across iCrossing’s portfolio of clients, I’d agree with Google and say that their introduction hasbeen anoverwhelmingly positive innovationdelivering a number of key benefits.
Site Links help you as an advertiser fill more screen real-estate with a more eye-catching ad in a self-perpetuating cycle of increased CTRs, and cruciallyreduced CPC’sand increased ROI. They also deliver other key benefits by allowing you to:
• Test and refine different creative messaging
• Direct traffic to highest revenue areas of the site
• Easily roll out temporary promotions and special offers
Site Links are a great innovation and if they’re absent from your search campaigns, then you should consider that there’s a missing link in your PPC strategy.
Merchant centre and product extensions
Google’s Merchant Centre replaces their Base productand is simplya conduit through which to provide timely, accurate and relevant information to Google, benefitting both your PPC and SEO efforts.
Taking advantage of the functionality of Google’s revamped Merchant Centre has become an absolutely vital campaign element for any retailer with large numbers of SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit), or a business with physical store locations.Google uses the information uploaded to Merchant Centre to populate, among other listings, Product Search, Places listings and Adwords’ Product Extension Features. It will also help you associateMerchant ratingswith your Adwords’ ads.
Google is pushing an integrated PPC and SEO agenda, butthis is no bad thing. They know that increased relevance of natural search results drives search volumes and,in turntheir PPC revenues, while ease of use for PPC advertisers increases uptake and overall ad density.This is a win-win scenario, and there’s no doubt that in 2011 advertisers have more ways to impact the SERPs than ever before.
The even better news is that once you’ve got your site information ordered and categorised in an XML feed for optimum ease of upload to Merchant Centre, you can take advantage of other avenues of distribution and competitive advantage.
You can for instance leverage your product feed to drive incremental traffic and revenue from results on comparison shopping engines such as NextTag,Kelkooand Price Runner. Across our portfolio of retail clients, where we have shopping feeds running alongside Google, Yahoo and Bing, for paid search conversions involving more than a single click, we’ve seenthat comparison shopping engines play a part in around 70% of these click streams.
You can also do very cool things with search management technology to integrate product feeds into PPC listings. For instance, iCrossing’s proprietary PPCmanagement platform, Merchantize, allows you to dynamically manage listings on and off based on SKU availability.Other technologies allow you to create ad copy ‘on the fly’ based on the dynamic price point or quantity parameters included in the feed.Both features of course help you provide the most relevant ads to users and help improveROI.
Beyond search
It’s easy in search to become myopic and place your focus solely on technical advancements which, whilst obviously an important part of driving performance, will only get you so far. It’s important to consider the right blend of skills and mindsets to marry to the technical side of things in order deliver truly world-class performance.
Creativity; the ability to think beyond the 95 character limit
The paid search model is arguably the most innovative advertising platform of the 20th century. At the same time, the 95-charactertext ad format while excellent at ensuring a high level of relevance to users can, paradoxically, tend towards being one of the least creative and most formulaic advertising mediums out there.
It is therefore vital for successful paid search to ensure that creativity and innovation is continually injected back into the process. That might be looking for highly tactical and innovative opportunities for distribution or ensuring that more traditional creative perspectives and approaches are embraced as paid search advertisers transition from text-based direct response, to image-based, audience led branding and direct response efforts.
Take for example the cheeky placement of paid search ads for Ann Summers alongside tactical news events. This garnered much goodwill and publicity from users for the inventive, irreverent and playful use of the PPC medium on a tight budget.
In the same vein as embracing creativity, a successful paid search advertiser must be able to embrace responsiveness and flexibility in order to thrive in an environment of change. This means allowing your team time to research and develop new ideas, and not constantly run toovercapacity – and missing out on opportunities to capitalise on emergent events and technologies.
Define the business model; provide the case for sustainable investment
Finally, I’d like to close with the point missed by those advertisers who claim that ‘PPC is too expensive’ or ‘paid search does not work’. As the authorof this article I of course have avested interest in paid search as an advertising medium, but I’d always be the first to admit that PPC is no panacea nor a one size fits all solution.
The simple fact is, that paid search does work – albeit by no means universally. However, where it does not it’s usually because of a failure to underpin one’s investment with a sound commercial rationale. If you’ve followed the widely disseminated PPC best practices and are still finding ‘CPCs too high’, then you probably need to consider reducing your investment, ormuch more progressively, go back to first principles - adopt a consumer’s eye view and make your proposition more compelling,identifying barriers which may be reducing your website’s conversion rate.
I’d suggest that for most, PPC should be an integral component of your search strategy however, for optimum success it needs to be elevated beyond search and placed in the wider context of a sustainable, integrated digital marketing approach.
Tom Jones
Head of Media, iCrossing