It used to be somewhat hard to find good data for building and optimizing campaigns. Now days, there are so many tools out there it’s almost overwhelming. Some of the best tools are from search engines themselves.

I’ve talked about Adcenter Adlabs before, and their tools keep getting better and better. The Audience Intelligence tool group has an amazing Demographic Predictor. Enter a keyword string and it will tell you very accurately the demographic percentages of the people searching that term. Hint: Doing demographic targeting on Facebook and Myspace campaigns? Start your research with this tool, then build your ads with the data.

The Detecting Online Commercial Intention tool really blows me away. Adlabs describes the tool: “Web page searches display two levels of commercial intent: informational and transactional. This tool can detect customer intent to acquire information or to purchase products based on their search queries or recently visited URLs.” To an internet marketer determining customer intent means money. The tool can actually produce a statistical probability of the query have a commercial intention. In other words – a conversion.

Another great tool is Adwords Insights For Search. This tool is like Google Trends on steroids. The data is scaled and normalized so you can compare keywords against each other easily. The seasonal and geographic information is really important when planning new niches. Hint: Location targeting on social ad networks? Search keywords by country to find the top states and city data for that niche.

There are many ways to slice and dice keyword trends based on location, time, or other factors. Say you want to search the trends for the keyword ‘verizon ringtones’ from 2005-2009, for the USA, in Southern California. No problem, it’s that granular.

If you aren’t using these tools, you are really missing out on a goldmine of data that can take any campaign to the next level. Best of all, they are 100% free.

We are very focused on PPC at CDFnetworks for ourselves and clients. But I have dabbled in social network content advertising on Facebook and Myspace. There are a ton of opinions out there about social network advertising. Opinions are great, but I wanted to gather hard data on what converts better. I decided to run a case study to see what kind of conversion rates I would get on the Adwords content network versus Facebook.

The campaigns:

It’s very hard to do an exact test of PPC and social network advertising because they are very different animals. I want to single out conversion rate, so I tried to keep as many other variables as possible the same. I ran the Adwords test only on the content network, so both tests were contextual. I used the same ad text on Adwords and Facebook. I also sent both traffic sources to the identical landing pages on the same domain with tracking installed to gather the results. Both campaigns were set up with demographic targeting. Obviously Facebook allowed the use of a photo, which I could not duplicate on Adwords.

Sorry, I can’t show the ads or give away the niche because this is a niche I am still actively promoting.

The total stats for the Adwords content network:

The total stats for the Facebook network:

I was able to get similar spend amounts for the test. However, I received over double the amount of clicks on Adwords due to the lower CPC, and much higher CTR. I had good quality score which allowed me to lower my bids throughout the test. I had to run a pretty high bid price on Facebook to keep the ad running for the duration of the test. But both amounts of clicks are statistically valid for the purposes of the case study.

Conversion results:

The results were surprisingly close:

Adwords:

Total conversions: 1,250

Total overall conversion rate: 4.8%

Facebook:

Total conversions: 449

Total overall conversion rate: 3.9%

I had expected a blowout in conversion rate by Adwords, but they were not that far off. Although 4.8 is a 23.1% increase from 3.9 which is significant. Of course given the lower CPC, the Adwords campaign in this case was much more profitable. If I would have been able to lower the bid prices on the Facebook campaign to a similar amount the profitability would have been closer. The Facebook campaign also produced a huge number of impressions that I could capitalize on with a better CTR.

Bottom line:

Both traffic sources converted, which is the most important thing. But for the money spent, Adwords PPC was clearly a much better result in this case.

I thought I would start a new series of posts to tackle common PPC to affiliate marketing problems. The first one is: not enough traffic to the offer. Many times you set up a great site or landing page, spend hours building a PPC campaign, implement a full tracking system, then launch everything only to find traffic trickling in. What went wrong, and what can you do to build up the traffic?

1. Bid prices. Assuming you have a decent keyword set, if you aren’t getting any traffic your bid prices may be too low. This is by far one of the most common problems I see with campaigns. Its very tempting to try to ease into a niche going after cheap clicks, but its also an biggest way to shoot yourself in the foot. You have to bid enough to get the clicks, no matter what that price may be. If the top ads are bidding $1.75 and you start with $ .85, your campaign might be doomed to never get any impressions. Set your bid aggressively – you have to pay to play.

2. Add Keywords. If you have maxed out the traffic on your current keywords, common sense says its time to add more keywords. There are million keyword tools out there, so finding new keywords is never a problem. Just be sure they are relevant keywords to your adgroups. Adding non-relevant keywords could end up hurting your quality score and actually reducing traffic levels.

3. Increase CTR. Split testing ads is still one of the best ways to increase traffic on current adgroups. You should always be testing new ads no matter how much of a winner you already have. Even small increases in CTR can yield a lot more traffic. If you have an adgroup getting 10,000 impressions a day and were able to increase CTR from 3.5% to just 5.5%, that would be a 57.1% increase in total clicks.

4. Increase Quality. The quality score on your account will affect the amount of traffic you get. Unfortunately this topic alone is so big that full books are written about it. The main things to look at are ad CTRs, keyword relevance, and landing page factors. Different networks weigh the factors differently. A good resource is always Adwords help.

5. Other traffic sources. Once you have everything optimized and running nicely it might be time to add new networks. Adwords, Yahoo, and MSN are all great. Try adding the content networks with all 3 networks (in separate campaigns). There is always second tier PPC networks, some of which do actually work. Social networks like Facebook and Myspace are another option. Media buys at large ad agencies can add lots of traffic volume as well.

Next up: no profit.

If you have followed this blog for a while, you probably have noticed I don’t endorse products or do paid reviews. But if I come across a tool I like (and actually works), I am happy to share it. I recently tested a tool called PPC Bully and have to say it was pretty impressive. The tool allows you to track certain keywords in a niche and find the profitable ads, without having to do the trial and error yourself. It shows which ads are working the best, the ad variations on that account and even the landing page for each. Basically the selling point of the tool is that you let others in the market provide you with valuable data so you don’t have to use trial and error. Its not a magic program to take all the work out of PPC, but it does make launching a successful campaign right off the bat much more likely.

Here are some screenshots from my live account. I did a test of the “Acai” niche that I know a lot of marketers are running right now.

First you enter the keywords you want to track

Then you wait a day or so for the system to fully scan the marketplace and collect data.

It shows the keywords, the profitable ads for each keyword, and the scan history.

Here I selected the keyword “pure acai” to see the most profitable ads.

Finally, I selected one of the profitable campaigns to see all the advertisers ad variations.

Right now they are only pulling Adwords data, but are expanding soon into YSM and Adcenter. It’s a very powerful system. I resisted trying the “spy” tools for a while, but now that everyone else is using them I figured it’s time to check them out. Of the different ones I have tested PPC Bully is the most legit.

As I’m sure most of you know, Andrew Wee is a well known speaker, blogger, and social media expert.  Yesterday he interviewed me for his Friday podcast series.  Andrew is a great interviewer and we covered a lot of topics in the half hour session.  If you want to listen to the podcast, head on over.

Writing good ads is one of the most important parts of your campaign.   It can mean the difference between success and failure.  Although every campaign is different, I have found general trends through testing that usually work. The overall formula I like to use when writing ads is this:

Title and Line 2: Repeating the search term, starting the pre-sell

Line 3: Reassuring the customer, showing authority, and bonus selling points if space.

Display URL: Providing confidence in next step.

As always, its easiest to see with an example. Let’s use the example of a shoe offer like shoebuy or zappos. This ad would be for a search hitting the keyword “running shoes“. Here is a sample ad:

Ads may look simple but there is a lot going on here.  So let’s break it down.

1. The search term is repeated in 2 different places on the ad, reinforcing the search, increasing quality score, and bolding that text for increased CTR.

2. Saving money. Everyone wants to save money, so in 2 places on the ad we have show they will save money. On line 1, the word “discount” and on line 2 the phrase “on sale”.

3. Urgency. The word “now” on line 2 evokes a sense of urgency.

4. Numbers and percentages. People scanning a page always stop on numbers. On line 3 we use “100%” which draws the eyes to the ad and increases CTR.

5. Reassurance and final selling points. On line 3 we provide buyer reassurance with the guarantee and the bonus point about free shipping.

6. The word free. If there is anything about the offer that is free, its a good thing to put in the ad. “Free” jumps out at people.

7. Sentence case. Capitalizing the first letter of every word usually leads to higher CTR.

8. Display URL. This is a simple display URL but effective because it further reinforces the search term and lets the person know the domain is related to what they want. Not overly hyphenated or too long. Also I capitalize each word in the domain if its multiple words.

Even though this ad doesn’t have a call to action like “click now for coupon” it should still lead to a good CTR. Once the searcher gets to your landing page, you can then close the deal with a clear call to action. I like more descriptive and informative ads, which usually work well. In addition you get more serious clicks which keeps expenses down and leads to overall better conversion rates. At any rate this is just one of the techniques that usually works great for me, there are tons of ways to write ads for different situations.

Most PPC and affiliate guides recommend split testing. I agree split testing is one of the main keys to success. But the only thing they usually mention is split testing of ads. The truth is almost every aspect of a campaign can and should be split tested to optimize efficiency and profits. Testing is not just something you do at the start of a campaign, but a never ending process.

Here are some things I like to split test.

• Domains – I have talked before about the importance of testing multiple domains in your campaigns. The display URL is a critical part of your ad, and you never know what will convert better until you split test different domains.
• Offers/Networks- The same offers are usually found on several different affiliate networks. By split testing to the same offer on different networks you might find a higher conversion rate on a particular network.
• Account structure - Try taking the same set of keywords on 2 different accounts with a different adgroup structure to see which performs better.
• Keyword match type – Try testing all available match types to see what converts better.
• Landing Pages – Landing pages are critical to split test. You can almost always find a better converting landing page. You can split test any page change down to something as simple as button colors.
• Ads - Of course ads are the easiest thing to split test, and still one of the most effective ways t0 optimize your campaigns.

These are just a few, I’m sure there are a ton of other things to split test. What creative ways do you split test?

You may have seen these new ad formats show up in your account recently. They are not in full release yet, but many advertisers are now able to run them after the latest Adwords maintenance last Sunday. These template ads, or rich media ads are for the Google content network only. The are much more content heavy ads than a standard text or image ad that you could previously run on the content network. These type of rich media ads can also be run on third party networks, but now Adwords is fully in the game.

One of the main benefits of these ads is the interaction tracking. This lets you see statistics of things like user mouseovers of images, and clicks on various ad components like next, previous, poll results etc… Which really helps you optimize your ads based on the interaction data. The interactions that you can track vary based on the ad type.

There are 7 different types of template ads that you can build:

• Showcase Template Ad
• Slideshow Template Ad
• Quiz Template Ad
• Business Locator Template Ad
• Photo Gallery Template Ad
• Site Search Template Ad
• Coupon Template Ad

These ads are easy to create, just plug your info and images into the template.

I have testing some of these ads for 3 weeks with mixed results. The formats I have tried are the Showcase, Quiz, and Coupons templates. I am having trouble getting decent volume with the ads, which is not surprising due to the early stage of the rollout. Once the formats become more widely accepted and the publisher base expands a bit more with Adsense publishers, I see this being a very good opportunity for marketers. Conversion rates have been strong with the low volume.

I am curious to hear if other people are testing these with good results.  Anyone want to share there experiences?