Two Simple Excel Tips for Drafting PPC Ad Copy

From experienced PPC marketers to someone just starting out, these quick tips will be a big help during the process of writing ad copy.

=LEN() Excel Function

If you need to find out how many characters are being used in the different lines of your ad copy, this Excel function will come in handy. Simply type in =LEN(INSERT CELL HERE) such as =LEN(A2), and it will insert the total character count within a cell (including spaces).

Conditioning Formatting in Excel

Taking the =LEN() function one step further, Conditional Formatting will allow you to highlight a cell as you specify based on a particular criteria. For example, let’s say you want to highlight a cell in red when it exceeds a character count of 35, this will allow you to do so along with much more.

You should be able to find the Conditional Formatting button in the Home ribbon of Excel (I’m currently using Excel 2010). You’ll see there are options such as, if a number is >greater than X, automatically highlight a cell in Y.

By using these two features together, it will make your job just a bit more efficient. A quick scan will easily tell you what ad copy is not adhering to character limits and needs your attention.

What are your favorite Excel functions for use with PPC? Remember, this is only scratching the surface!

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Image credit: Ryan Hyde

New Google AdWords Feature Allows Shared Budgets

If you ever hoped that AdWords would allow you to share your daily budgets across all of your campaigns within one account, that time is now. Google released a new feature that may make administering budgets across an account effortless.

You can find this feature in the “Shared Library” section under Budgets. Here you can also review reporting for aggregate performance metrics for multiple campaigns with a shared budget.

Although shared budgets is portrayed as a way to make your life easier when monitoring your campaigns, I am concerned about how the budget will be distributed across the campaigns. Since Google is automatically adjusting the budgets, how will you ensure one campaign doesn’t eat into the budget of another? Will it give the other campaigns a fair test?

Depending on your AdWords objectives, this feature may make sense. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

Image credit: 401(K) 2012

Overview of A Few Google AdWords Basics

Last week I provided some details on a new Google webinar series that recently premiered. While watching a video from the Google AdWords Classroom, I jotted down a few highlights from one of the lectures that I would like to share with you. This information is ideal for someone who is just getting started or wanting to brush up on AdWords basics.

What is AdWords Optimization?

Optimization means taking steps to get the results you want by improving the quality and performance of your AdWords account.

The Benefits of a Good Structure

It provides a positive impact on:

• The overall performance of the account
• Makes account management easier and more effective
• Makes tracking and analysis easier and more effective

In the end, a good structure allows you to get more clicks for less money.

Campaigns vs. Ad Groups

Campaigns:

You should create separate campaigns when there is a need for different focuses such as:

• Daily budgets
• Adapted to country and language
• Start and end dates

Ad Groups:

You should create separate ad groups when there is a need for different focuses such as:

• To advertise different products or services
• To set different cost per conversion limits

A Few Key Factors to Keep In Mind:

• Organize campaigns by topic
• Create highly specific ad groups
• Avoid duplicate keywords across ad groups

To learn more about selecting optimal keywords, writing compelling ads, etc., check out the below video:



What did you learn from the video?

10 Powerful Social Media Tools to prepare for a job interview or sales call

Before you go to to your next job interview or sales call get prepared!



You can know an amazing amount about a company and the person you are meeting by spending about 15 minutes online searching. Here are some powerful tools to find out a lot of info about the company, and the person you are about to meet.

Oh, first a handy tip. Take screen shots (use the 'print screen' button on your keyboard to grab the images) as you do your research, copy these images into a PowerPoint presentation and keep it in a file you will take to the meeting. If the opportunity arises, share some of the knowledge you have about the company and show the person how diligent you were. You should keep personal and company information separate, many people would be surprised and possibly uncomfortable about how much you can dig up about them personally.

1. Get to know their website. A good place to find recent information is the News or Press Release tab and read recent newsletters stored on the website
2. Do a Google search for the company and the individual you are meeting
3. Google the company name plus 'reviews' and 'comments', print out any negative information you find, and if it is appropriate share this info. with the person you're meeting. They might not have Googled themselves and they might need an Online Reputation Management program.
4. Find the person you are meeting on LinkedIn. Do any of your friends know him or her? This is a great opportunity for your friend to put a good word in for you. Plus, knowing a bit about their history might keep you from putting your foot in your mouth like I once did. I met an executive at a packaged goods company and I went on and on about how much I knew about banking before I found out she worked in the banking industry for ten years - oops!
5. Check them out on Facebook. Does the company have a Facebook Fan Page?
6. Is the company and/or the individual active on Twitter? Are they current? Is there any news you can learn? What are they passionate about? Colleges? Sports? Volunteer Activities? What common interests do you share. Do a search.twitter.com for their name as well, what are other people tweeting about them and the company? Post a Tweet and ask if anyone at the company is listening to test if they're monitoring Social Media.
7. Check their Compete.com traffic, Google Page Rank, Alexa Score, SEMRush.com for number of SEO results, How many links do they have to to their site? SpyFu.com will tell you about their Pay Per Click advertising activity.
8. Check these scores for their competitors.
9. Are they blogging?
10. And perhaps my best tip, from my friend Harvey Mackay, download the Warm Call Center Toolbar, it is amazing what this tool will reveal about the company and the individual!

Good luck and please comment below:

- What tools do you use to prepare for an interview or a sales meeting?
- Did you try any of these ideas? What did you find out?

Good Luck crushing it in your next meeting!


Photo credit drewleavy flickr.com

Advertise on the Go

Who has time these days to go to their office every time they want to optimize pay per click campaigns, check on performance, or add keywords? Well we no longer have to thanks to AdWords for mobile.

AdWords for mobile is now fully available and gives you on-the-go access to all of your campaigns, alerts, and statistics. The interface is also fully customizable so you can streamline the most important aspects of your account. For example, you can set up a custom alert to let you know when a campaign is close to reaching its daily budget. You can even set up alerts to inform you of things such as a drop in clicks compared to a previous week.

The AdWords for mobile interface does not have all the features of the desktop version, but we can certainly expect many updates from Google in the months to come.

AdWords for mobile is currently available on iPhone, Android, and Palm devices.

Device Targeting in Google Adwords

When setting up a pay per click campaign in Google Adwords, you are able to determine if you want ads displayed on the search network, the content network or both. I have previously discussed duplicating campaigns and running one mirror campaign on each network to see which performs better for your business. Another targeting option that is currently available is device targeting.

By default, your pay per click ads will run on desktop and laptop computers, as well as mobile devices with full internet browsers. The problem with this default targeting is that unless you are promoting a product or service specifically for mobile devices, running ads on mobile devices can decrease your conversion rate.

The reason for the lowered conversion rate on mobile devices is accidental clicks. As most people with a touch screen mobile browser can tell you, it takes a lot of precision to click on the right place on the screen. There are many free applications for smart phones that display pay per click ads within the app. The problem is that the ad is often very close to a function of the application, leading many people to click on the ad when they do not mean to. This results in a wasted click.

With this in mind, I usually target pay per click ads to only display on computers. If you are selling a device-specific product like an iPhone case, then it is probably worthwhile to run your ads on iPhones. If not, you will reduce wasted clicks by removing mobile devices from your campaign targeting.

PPC Tip - Remove the Spaces

To any pay per click advertising veteran, it is well-known that bidding on misspellings of keywords is a good way to cut down on the cost per click of your campaigns. In competitive industries, however, your competitors are also aware and even commonly misspelled keywords can become very expensive to bid on.

A misspelling that is often overlooked, but common in virtually any industry is leaving out a space between words in a phrase.

People are busy. They type fast. Look at a document you recently wrote quickly. It's very likely that there is a space missing somewhere. The same holds true for your market.

Let's say for example you are in online marketing. Bidding on the phrase "online marketing" will cost you about $5.72/click while bidding on "onlinemarketing" will only cost about $2.26/click.

If you decide to bid on misspellings like these, you should set up an ad group specifically for that and not use keyword insertion in your ads. Using keyword insertion when bidding on misspellings will cause your ad copy to contain misspellings and look unprofessional.

Pay Per Click Tip - Focus On Longtail

When starting a new pay per click campaign, there is no need to get into a bidding war with your competitors before you know how well your campaign converts. Rather, focus on very specific, long tail phrases that are likely to have less competition and a lower cost per click than the more general short tail phrases.

Additionally, don't start out with broad match phrases. Instead, start testing with exact and phrase matching on your keyword list. This will help your ads to only show up for highly relevant searches. Using only very specific phrases will give you a better idea of how your creative performs and how your landing pages convert without breaking the bank.

Once you have your ad copy and landing pages optimized based on your campaign data, then you can start including more broad phrases.

Make the Most Out of Contextual Advertising

A common mistake people make when setting up a pay per click campaign in Google Adwords is to run the same campaign on both the search and content networks. Content network campaigns are quite different than search network campaigns in how they're set up, optimized, and tracked. The messaging that works best on a content network campaign may not work best in a search network campaign and vice versa. For this reason, it is best to run each campaign on only one network and optimize each campaign individually. You can even duplicate a campaign and run one version on search and a mirror of it on content to see which performs better.

If you are new to advertising on a content network, Google has a step by step tutorial on getting a content network campaign started.

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Webinar On PPC Strategies

TenGoldenRules.com VP, Margie Schneider will be hosting another InternetMarketingClub.org Webinar focusing on creative PPC strategies. The event will take place on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM EDT and to register, please visit; PPC Strategies Webinar.

Free Workbook for AdWords Beginners

For those of you who are new to Google AdWords, there is a free workbook that will help you get started using the AdWords interface and creating pay per click advertising campaigns. The free downloadable pdf file is a bit lengthy, but provides some great insight into the basic steps of using AdWords.

The main topics covered in the workbook are organizing campaigns, picking the right keywords, writing targeted ads, and putting it all together. Each topic is complete with definitions, tips, and screen shots.

The workbook is by no means your answer to getting the most out of your advertising, but it is a good way to get started if you have a small budget and are doing things on your own. For a more in depth strategic guide to online marketing, try the Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing Book.

Spend Less in AdWords with URL Testing

Advertisers place a great deal of focus on the title and description in their ad copy, but the url is often overlooked. The display url of your ad also has an effect on whether or not people are likely to click on your ad. If you use a display url that contributes to a high click through rate, you will in turn be paying a lower average cost per click and saving money. Testing display url's is a great way to increase your click through rate.

Both differing domain names and differing url extentions should be tested. The domain name you use should be very relevant to what you are advertising. If you advertise a wide range of products or services, it may be worthwhile to set up several domains, each with a relevant domain name to a specific product and use these in your advertisements.

You should also be testing different url extentions. For example if Ten Golden Rules has an ad group set up to advertise SEO Consulting, rather than just including the top level domain (www.TenGoldenRules.com) as the display url, variations should be tested, such as (www.TenGoldenRules.com/SEO-consulting).

Use New Google Search Options to Help Map Out Your Pay Per Click Ad Groups

Google has released a useful new search options panel on their search engine results pages. One option that can be utilized to build out your keyword list to more targeted keywords and help map out your pay per click ad groups is the "Wonder wheel". The wonder wheel works by taking your search term and displaying a group of similar phrases that people search. Each of these phrases can then be clicked on and another group of phrases related directly to that phrase is displayed. This process can be repeated an unlimited number of times, each retrieving more specific phrases.

To access the wonder wheel, as well as some other greatnew search options, perform a search in Google for a phrase you are interested in. On the search results page, click on the "Show options" link under the search bar on the top of the page and a panel will be displayed on the left side of the page. Within that panel, you will see a link for the "Wonder wheel".

In the example shown, the initial Google search was for "ten golden rules". In the image, several other phrases branch out from that phrase. By clicking on one of them, in this case "internet marketing consultant", we see that another set of phrases branch out related to internet marketing consultant, and so on.

This can be especially useful if you are trying to determine how you should separate your keyword phrases into ad groups in a pay per click campaign. It can give you an initial idea of how phrases can be grouped. Use this as a road map to help determine how your campaigns should be grouped.

Resurrecting Old Keywords

Through the evolution of a pay per click campaign, many keywords and ads will be removed for various reasons, including poor click through rate, poor conversion rate, etc. Of course, I hope you paused these keywords and ads rather than deleting or editing them so they retain their historical data (click through rate, conversion rate, etc). Paused keywords and ads are often forgotten and new variations are more likely added to campaigns over the course of time. Some of those ads and keywords that did not work out well in the past, however, may work out now.

Lets say at some point you found your ad copy to convert poorly. Therefore, you paused the ad and replaced it with a new one. Later down the road, you have found that a new landing page is causing your campaign to convert much better. You may have some old paused ads that are actually very good, but rather than going through your old ads, you forget about them. For this reason, it is beneficial to go through paused ads and keywords from time to time and see if they are worth resurrecting.

It may not only be the case that a new landing page gives new opportunity to old phrases and ads. Changes in the market can also have an effect on performance. So before you decide to add a bunch of new keywords and ads to your campaign, go through your paused ones and see if there may be some that are now more relevant.

AdWords Trick - Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Many pay per click advertisers are now using dynamic keyword insertion in their ad copy. Many, however are no getting the most out of this trick because they do not understand the capitalization techniques. The way you use capitalization in your keyword insertion command will directly affect the capitalization in the ad that appears. Here are some ways to control capitalization in your keyword insertion ads.

Lets say a user is searching "ten golden rules". Here is how it will look using different keyword insertion capitalization variations:

If your ad uses this command: {keyword:Internet Marketing}, the ad will read "ten golden rules". (no capitalization)

If your ad uses this command: {Keyword:Internet Marketing}, the ad will read "Ten golden rules". (only the first letter of the first word is capitalized)

If your ad uses this command: {KeyWord:Internet Marketing}, the ad will read "Ten Golden Rules". (the first letter of each word is capitalized)

If your ad uses this command: {KEYWORD:Internet Marketing}, the ad will read "TEN GOLDEN RULES". (all letters are capitalized)

In most cases, it is best to capitalize the first letter of each word (KeyWord:). Play around with some different variations and see how they work for your campaign.

AdWords Tip: Identify Negative Keywords

A useful PPC optimization strategy that is often overlooked is including negative keywords in your campaign. Negative keywords are used in AdWords to prevent your ads from being served for irrelevant searches. To paint a clearer picture, assume you are bidding on the term “bass” because you sell bass guitars. If you are bidding on “bass” with broad match, your ad could be served in searches for “bass fishing”. Anyone searching for “bass fishing” is unlikely to purchase a bass guitar from your site. If you included the term “bass fishing” in your negative keywords, you would not be wasting the impression and possible click. In addition, by adding negative keywords, your cost per click is likely to decrease as your click through rate increases.

Understanding negative keywords is only half the battle. Many advertisers know about negative keywords but do not utilize them because they have trouble identifying them. Common sense can certainly get you a starter list of negative keywords, but to really be effective, you will need to constantly be adding negative keywords to your campaigns.

The first way to identify negative keywords is to look for them in your current campaigns. Run a keyword performance report to see which keywords convert poorly over time. Add those phrases to your negative keywords.

There is also a very simple way to identify negative keywords you may not have thought of. Just run your broad keywords through any keyword suggestion tool, like the one provided in AdWords. Look through the list and identify any phrases that include your keywords but are irrelevant to your business. For example, you may have never considered that when bidding on “packaged food”, your ad will be showing up on searches for “packaged food poisoning”. However, if you ran “packaged food” through a keyword suggestion tool, “packaged food poisoning” would be right there for you to see.