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PPC Bidding against your Competition

One of the best “tricks” in managing a PPC campaigns is creating ads that will be triggered from your competitor’s brand names. The first common question is this “legal”, to bid with their names even if they are trademarked? The answer is yes, as long as you don’t include those brand or company names inside of your ads. Google has been challenged in the courts for allowing advertisers to display ads that are triggered by user searches for names such as “AcmeCompany.com”. In all cases, Google has won the case that they have the right to allow your competitor to use your company name to trigger their ad, and vice versa. So since this is an acceptable practice, by all means you should actively pursue a competitor’s brand name campaign.

Note, there are times you can use the brand name in the ads, if you are a reseller and complement their business, but you may not get away with if you compete directly. The best way to find out if this is acceptable is to try running an ad with the brand term in it. Google will very quickly return a message stating if this is acceptable. You may have to request “an exception” stating why it is acceptable to use the brand name in the ad. Give it a try, but run an alternative ad without brand terms in case the ad at a future date is rejected and this can happen.

When bidding with your competitor’s names, I always like to break these up into separate ads, and when possible use like terms as in this example below. Having these ads separated is very useful for future reports to develop trends to measure which competitor has the best on-line brand presence overall or the effect of news events by spikes in daily traffic. And don’t limit the ads to your competitors terms, include an ad for your own company, because this will help you understand how your on-line presence measures up or if that recent press release generated any search excitement. An example of brand search terms that will trigger ads is as follows:

www acmecompany
acmecompany.com
acme company com
[Acme Company] (exact match)
“Acme Company” (phrase match)

In the example above I avoid a broad match if the company name is somewhat common, since this will trigger a much wider search result. For in brand bidding I’m really looking for the searches people are doing who know the company name and are using Google as a quick directory lookup. You can include product names if the branding is unique and has some common usage, but I always recommend performing a search first to check out the search results to avoid association with other common terms.

Will brand bidding deliver new sales? Is the effort worth it? Very often the conversions aside from your on brand terms (which should be your highest converting ad) will produce lower sales or leads from the other campaigns. But in most cases the actual costs associated with brand bidding are much lower, so the Cost Per Conversion is low, thus making it worth it. The insight in tracking your competitions on-line marketing efforts can prove to be a long-term benefit as it is often an indication of how active they are in on-line marketing.

What’s a search marketing professional to do when their vertical of choice becomes completely flooded? Or, more accurately, what’s a search engine marketing professional to do - period? When the low-hanging fruit is a fond memory, it’s time to break out the 24 foot extendable ladder.This article didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but it’s a good shortcut for the newbie. In a nutshell, find the more obscure phrases that people use to find what you’re selling. When it comes to PPC, locating these “sweet spots” is what SEM firms spend hours doing every day across the globe. But how many people are building pages that are focused specifically on terms like “discount blue baby bedding”? The longer the keyword phrase, the less people are likely competing to optimize for it.

Yes, we all already knew this. But when applied to page creation as opposed to PPC - it got my brain working. Stay tuned for my brand new site: www.brightredrubberpickuptruckfloormats.com.

The world of ecommerce is often times baffling as to the specifics of how everything works. Frequently, one successful strategy in a certain scenario fails to make a dent in another. Although there are no absolutes in this business, there are some helpful guidelines that can boost your conversions. First of all, 1% conversion is roughly the standard in the business. It may seem like a small number, but considering the volume of traffic that goes through a site; a conversion rate of 1.9% as reported by Shop.org in 2004 is average.

There are many fine touches one can make in order to improve conversion rates; however, three key areas to focus on are website simplicity, humanization, and security. Nothing is more frustrating for an online shopper than a complex website with excessive scrolling, a navigation system that takes you everywhere except where you want to be, or intrusive pop-up windows. By keeping everything organized and making the shopping experience as intuitive as possible, potential buyers just may take that extra step and become a customer. This idea of keeping it simple holds true especially during the checkout phase because nothing will make you pull out your hair quicker than a lost sale during checkout. Make prices of products big and bold and post shipping rates upfront or possibly consider free shipping on selective products altogether.

Once you’ve managed to organize and simplify your website, then next phase is to bring a human element. The internet is a cold world of anonymity and in order to bring a more enjoyable experience to a potential buyer; they need a sign of reassurance that you’re not just another faceless corporate company. By developing an in-depth “about us” page citing company history, a bond of trust is instilled within the user. Another little touch is posting real pictures of employees past customers or even testimonials, all of which adds a bit of warmth.

With so much news about hackers, identity theft, and viruses floating around the internet these days, security is a big issue especially with ecommerce. Subscribing to a knowledgeable online security company and posting the logo prominently on your website is a big plus with consumers. Utilizing SSL and making sure to let users know it within your privacy policy also helps. With the knowledge that they are safe from the prying eyes of online intruders, potential buyers feel free to unlock that safe they stash their credit cards in.

By no means are these guides the only way to improve conversion rates; however they are a good starting point. In the end, the key ingredient within the relationship between buyer and seller is and always has been trust. Once you’ve gained that bond, you must strive even harder just to maintain it.

Starting a new PPC campaign from scratch requires planning and a clear set of conversion goals. Building new accounts, researching keywords and testing ad copy all factor in to the ramp up time - but is there ever a point at which you’re ‘done’? Can occasional maintenance take the place of the undivided attention you were devoting in the early days of a new PPC effort? The short answer is ‘definitely not’. Although it may seem plausible that your campaigns will reach a point where they can be switched on to auto pilot, there are many reasons you should always remain active in their daily management.

The world of ecommerce is often times baffling as to the specifics of how everything works. Frequently, one successful strategy in a certain scenario fails to make a dent in another. Although there are no absolutes in this business, there are some helpful guidelines that can boost your conversions. First of all, 1% conversion is roughly the standard in the business. It may seem like a small number, but considering the volume of traffic that goes through a site; a conversion rate of 1.9% as reported by Shop.org in 2004 is average.

There are many fine touches one can make in order to improve conversion rates; however, three key areas to focus on are website simplicity, humanization, and security. Nothing is more frustrating for an online shopper than a complex website with excessive scrolling, a navigation system that takes you everywhere except where you want to be, or intrusive pop-up windows. By keeping everything organized and making the shopping experience as intuitive as possible, potential buyers just may take that extra step and become a customer. This idea of keeping it simple holds true especially during the checkout phase because nothing will make you pull out your hair quicker than a lost sale during checkout. Make prices of products big and bold and post shipping rates upfront or possibly consider free shipping on selective products altogether.

Once you’ve managed to organize and simplify your website, then next phase is to bring a human element. The internet is a cold world of anonymity and in order to bring a more enjoyable experience to a potential buyer; they need a sign of reassurance that you’re not just another faceless corporate company. By developing an in-depth “about us” page citing company history, a bond of trust is instilled within the user. Another little touch is posting real pictures of employees past customers or even testimonials, all of which adds a bit of warmth.

With so much news about hackers, identity theft, and viruses floating around the internet these days, security is a big issue especially with ecommerce. Subscribing to a knowledgeable online security company and posting the logo prominently on your website is a big plus with consumers. Utilizing SSL and making sure to let users know it within your privacy policy also helps. With the knowledge that they are safe from the prying eyes of online intruders, potential buyers feel free to unlock that safe they stash their credit cards in.

By no means are these guides the only way to improve conversion rates; however they are a good starting point. In the end, the key ingredient within the relationship between buyer and seller is and always has been trust. Once you’ve gained that bond, you must strive even harder just to maintain it.

You wouldn’t tolerate a customer walking out of your store with stolen merchandise.  Then why would you tolerate pirates who are stealing an estimated 20% of your online advertising dollars?

If you think all your “Pay-Per-Click” online advertising dollars are well spent, think again.  The $5.6 billion Pay-Per-Click industry itself estimates that between 5% and 20% ($260 million to $1 billion) of this figure is spent on fraudulent clicks — money stolen right out of your pocket.

What is Click Fraud?

There’s considerable debate within the industry on what constitutes an act of click fraud.  Google and Yahoo! are struggling to redefine “good-faith click” because of all the bad faith clicks on their search engines, according to a Newsweek article.  Nevertheless, click fraud is “the biggest threat to the Internet economy,” according to George Reyes, Google’s CFO.

What is click fraud?  If a competitor’s sales rep clicks on your ad, is that click fraud? It’s definitely not a lead.  How about if you competitor asks all of its 100 employees to click your $2 per click add once every day?    According to the search engines, this is not detected as fraud. 

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