Whether you run a PPC management agency, do PPC for an agency, in-house, on the side for Uncle John’s business, or for your own business, you may have heard of the PPCchat hashtag. You can find us tweeting their all week long, but the flood of tweets starts at Noon Eastern Time on Tuesdays. For those of you on the fence about the value of joining the PPCchat community, this one’s for you.

Top 10 Reasons To Join PPCChat

10.) Free stuff.  Who doesn’t like that price? Everything you in PPCchat is free. I guess you could say you have to pay for internet service, your computer, and your time, but that isn’t much!

9.) Connections. Twitter is a great way to build relationships with other industry experts.  I can’t list all of the ways that can be a good thing for you. It is a networking thing. Don’t understand the power of networking? Well then, you will probably never get the value of connecting with people on PPCchat.

8.) Knowledge. Knowledge is power. The people in the PPCchat community are not afraid to share their knowledge.

7.) Show off. It is a great platform for really showing the world what you know about PPC.

6.) Get help!  Just ask your questions on Twitter with #PPCchat and answers will start rolling in. Get virtually immediate answers to questions almost anytime, day or night, from industry experts. Stumped on a PPC issue?

5.) Conference friends. Going to a PPC conference this year? Chances are you will find other PPCchat twitter friends there. You can set plans using the hashtag to meet them in person.

SHAMELESS PLUG: We are sponsoring a #epicdinner at SMX Advanced in Seattle, and we are looking for co-sponsors. Help us make it even more epic!

4.) Training. Are you trying to help someone get up to speed on all things PPC? Tell them about our hashtag! The will learn tons of things you may not have thought to teach them about.

NOTE: I say “our” hashtag because I feel like it is definitely something built up and made worthwhile because of the powerful and helpful community, but I need to give credit where credit is due. @Matt_Umbro is the founder of #PPCchat and he is the glue of the community. Thanks Matt!

3.) Stream caps. Do you have a meeting during PPCchat? 12 PM Eastern on Tuesday is great for people on the east coast, but in the Rocky Mountains that is smack dab in the middle of the morning at 10 AM! It happens to me all too often. Each week you can get a weekly re-cap of the chat on PPCchat.co.

2.) Share your content. Have you written a stellar post about PPC on your blog or as a guest blogger? PPCchatters love a good quick read. Share it and they may just share or blog about it later and link back to you. For those unfamiliar with SEO, that’s a good thing.

WARNING: Don’t spam the hashtag. Don’t just share job postings. Don’t just share links to your blog posts. Don’t share irrelevant content.  Don’t just take, take, take from the community.

1.) The laughs!  We like to think we are pretty funny on #PPCchat.

Come join! The things you will learn will blow your mind, and the laughs are the icing on the cake. I know there are a lot more than 10 reasons to join PPCchat. Help me make the list better by adding it to the comments. If it is a good one, I’ll add it to the list!

BONUS: Get a cool badge for your site too! All PPCChat members can add this sweet badge that says you are hanging out with the smartest PPC’ers on the web!

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• Purchases made online could be taxed at the local government level just like if you walked in a retail store
• The wording could actually apply to any downloadable app or service basically any digital good will have to collect the tax. (Here’s to a tax on your next iPhone or Android app download!)
• It will exempt companies with revenue less than $1 Million dollars (is that profit? or Gross Sales?)

So with that being said is this truly a Marketplace Fairness Act? Or is it something that was designed to help bolster big companies and drive new revenue sources for State Governments who are having problems balancing budgets?

First of all the lines are drawn between those in favor of and those opposed pretty clearly. You have such internet giants as eBay and Amazon on opposite sides, with Amazon supporting it and eBay opposing the bill, claiming many of the small mom and pops which sell through the eBay platform would be unduly burdened. Huge retail big box stores like Walmart Macy’s and Best Buy support the bill and say this would level the playing field. Ginny Marvin has a more in depth article about this on Marketing Land

Why I Believe this isn’t a good thing

This isn’t going to turn into a rant about why I think Congress (most of whom have no real business experience shouldn’t be regulating businesses) shouldn’t be arbitrarily and micro regulating businesses. The question really is will these companies making $1 million a year in revenue really be able to support the new regulation.

Here at Get Found First we work with a lot of e-commerce retailers and many of them you could consider “Mid-Size or Small Busineses”. We work to truly understand the businesses of our clients, their challenges and their opportunities and many times insights into their revenue and profitability, because this helps us make better holistic decisions into their marketing. Many of these companies will fall into the more than a million a year bucket. But that doesn’t mean they have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw around. Many businesses make a 3-5% profit margin, has nobody heard of cost of goods? How much do you think having to manage, and payout all of the new taxes which this bill will require them to do will cost them in money and in time?

Could you imagine having to now try and manage at least 50 different state tax rates, collect the taxes and remit them properly? What about if say 10 of these States decide to “audit you”? This is a regulatory nightmare waiting to happen for smaller internet retailers. In some cases the extra burden could potentially require laying off staff or force businesses to try to limit business. What about if a local business that makes a million dollars a year had to start remitting taxes to all of the local governments based on where their customer lived? How is this honestly any different?

Bottom Line it Isn’t Going to be Easy – to collect Sales Tax for multiple States.

If it’s fairness you want then it’s fairness you should give. A big problem in the travel industry and a cause partially for the growth in OTA’s (Online Travel Agents like Expedia) is that they only charge the local taxes based off of the “wholesale” rate that they get for hotel rooms. So if a hotel only charges $80 for Expedia to sell the room and Expedia sells it for a $100, they say they only have to pay taxes on the $80. That other $20 isn’t profit, it’s fees they charge and you shouldn’t pay taxes on fees is their logic. Yet the advertised “room rate” is $100 a night not $80. Using that logic every retailer in the country should only pay sales tax on the wholesale rate for goods and their markups should be changed to “fees”. The OTAs even went as far a couple years ago to try and get a bill passed (which almost did) excluding them from local taxes on the markups. How can Congress be ok with OTAs not collecting the local taxes but expect small online retailers to do the same? How is that fair?

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a sales tax for online sales, but I do enjoy not having to pay one sometimes. However this bill passed by the Senate is not the right way to go about doing this. This is going to make life for small and mid-size online businesses more complicated and has the potential to limit business innovation and growth.

What do you think?

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Pay-Per-Click S.W.O.T. Analysis

The S.W.O.T. analysis is a great tool is to evaluate the Stregths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of your PPC advertising (as well as your overall marketing and business objectives). In general use, it groups information into two categories: internal and external factors (Wikipedia).

The Strengths and Weaknesses categories are groupings of internal factors while the Threats and Opportunities categories are groupings of external factors.

To get the most out of this tool, identify a desired objective you would like to reach or are currently working towards. Then use S.W.O.T. to identify factors to help you build a road map to achieve this desired goal.

You might want to have a pen and paper handy, or your favorite note taking device or program.

PPC Analysis: Internal Factors

Strengths

Think about your strengths and advantages (and the strengths and advantages of your organization). These could include your knowledge of your industry or how well you know your target market (what makes them tick).

These advantages or strengths could also include your knowledge and prowess in managing your PPC account(s), or the resources you have access to.

It’s useful to consider your strengths from an internal perspective, and through the lens of your customers and peers in your industry (Mindtools). What strengths or advantages do these people say you have?

Weaknesses

In identifying your weaknesses it’s important to be realistic. Sometimes it’s easy build up our strengths and forget to realize our weak points. It can also be easy to bring down the hammer and over inflate these weaknesses to a point that they become debilitating.

Think and take note of your weaknesses (or the weakness of your organization or PPC advertising strategy). Think about what’s lacking or what could be improved.

Are your ads lacking compelling content? Do you really know who your target market is? Are CTRs high yet the traffic isn’t converting? (This could be an indication that your landing page(s) need some work).

PPC Analysis: External Factors

Opportunities

What trends can you take advantage of? Based on what you’ve learned from using the P.E.S.T. analysis and Porter’s Five Forces tools, what opportunities are out there?

Using the strengths and advantages you’ve identified what opportunities can you take advantage of?

Threats

What threats are out there? Again it would be beneficial to take what you’ve learned from the previous tools we’ve discussed to help you identify possible pitfalls.

Are the barriers to entry in your industry or market very low? Is competition on the keywords you’re targeting increasing? Are there outside forces that could threaten the profitability of your online advertising?

What weaknesses have you identified that could be roadblocks in achieving your desired advertising objectives?

PPC Strategy Takeaways

Be realistic and identify as many factors as you can. Match these factors you’ve identified in your S.W.O.T. analysis with factors from the previous tools we’ve discussed. The point is to plan how you’re going to use your strengths to take advantage of opportunity, and how you’re going to overcome your weaknesses.

Sources

“SWOT Analysis.” Mind Tools New Articles RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.

“SWOT Analysis.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Apr. 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.

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It would be nice if people would just buy our products. Too bad it doesn’t work that way. This is why we do marketing. To get to the people who will buy our products.

This E-Book describes the process of getting data and analyzing it to segment your market to illustrate what types of consumers are buying. Also, it gives tips as to what online marketing tools you can use to reach these segments once you define them. You can get the E-Book here – Consumer Segmentation for Online Marketers

Who Is This E-Book For

These are steps that are good for businesses that are just starting and need to discover who their customers would be to increase their chances for success. This is also important for larger businesses who are launching new products or want to reevaluate the market and see if their customer demographic or psychographic has changed.

No matter the size of your business if you don’t use a data driven approach to analyzing your market you will never know how efficient or effective you actually are with your money. The goal is efficiency. You only have so much money, why spend it on people who are not likely to buy your product.

Internet Marketers

The reason why this E-Book is for internet marketing in particular is because of all the different and effective ways you have to talk to specific groups of people through online channels. The internet is the land of a billion plus niches. Once you understand which ones want your product getting in front of them is relatively easy. This is what marketers dreamed of 30 years ago.

So, check out the E-Book it is full of tips and tools to help you get started. From inexpensive survey tools, to tools for analyzing the data and targeting customers online it’s all here.

Also, watch our blog for more tips and tricks, as well as more in-depth explanation on how to do some of the things outlined in the book.

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….if you are still here you have some reason that you believe this is the best place to be spending your time. Thanks for that! I am honored. Maybe it is because you think that I will give you some valuable information in a few minutes skimming this post that you will be glad you spent your time here. I am going to talk about prioritizing your time and projects, and get your wheels turning about where your time is, and should be allocated as a PPC manager.

Well, last chance….there are only 10,080 minutes in a week….are you sure this is where you want to spend a few of those minutes?

Ha. Thanks for sticking with me. Gosh, I hope I make this time valuable for you now!

I am a big believer in the late Steven R. Covey’s 4 quadrants.  Most of you are familiar, but in case you aren’t, here’s a chart I found to give you a refresher:

I got this image from: gatorworks.net and they got it from, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.

I’m not going to cover all 4 quadrants in this post. Your time is too precious, and I assume a lot of you have already seen this before. I want to focus on the “Important/Not Urgent” category.  So if you are still with me, hopefully it is because you feel there is something I can say or do for you in this blog post, that, while it is not urgent, it may be important. It may change how you act as a PPC account manager.

There are plenty of things in a PPC account that are VERY important, but they aren’t urgent. Here are a few examples:

• Setting up your next landing page, A/B test.
• Writing your next A/B test ad.
• Re-assessing the competition to see how they have changed their offers, text ads and landing pages.
• Touching base with your boss or client.
• Checking your overall quality scores for trends up or down.
• Looking for new keyword opportunities. (I like to use Spyfu to see what keywords the competition is advertising on that I am not.)
• Re-designing display ads.

Those are just a few. The list could go on.  These are important things. They can have a huge impact on your PPC account ROI, but they aren’t urgent and they often get put off. Are you spending too much time on the “Important/Urgent” category? Or worse, are you spending too much time working on the “Not Important/Urgent” and the “Not Important/Not Urgent” categories?

Trust me, the money is not being made in the bottom two categories, and I would argue, that the most money is being made by the people focusing on the “Important/Not Urgent” category. That category takes a disciplined person. A hard worker spends all of his time in the important/urgent category because that person gets the most noticeable stuff done. The PPC account manager that I want on my team doesn’t just take care of the urgent and important stuff. He takes care of that as quickly and efficiently as he can, and then rather than go waste time in the bottom two categories, he goes where the money is made. He gets to work on the important things that aren’t urgent. The things where they don’t have a deadline to get it done, but they see the return on time investment.

So, before you get back to work in your PPC accounts today, or with whatever else you do for work, ask yourself:

Click this image to read another great time management article.

If you liked this post, here is another one about Pay Per Click project management.

Did other ideas of things that are “important/not urgent” come to your mind for your PPC accounts? Add them in the comments.

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Quality Scores was founded by James Zolman in 2007.  James has been a leader in the online marketing world since 2005.

The purchase includes not only the QualityScores.com business, blog, and tools. The possibilities are endless for what we can do, and where we will go with this acquisition.

While we are not ready to give out all of the details of what we plan to do just yet, we will absolutely develop an industry blog around the Qualityscores.com property, and are open to the idea of high quality guest bloggers that would like to pitch to contribute.

Our QualityScores.com purchase included a tool for  aggregating and measuring the impact of Google Adwords Quality Scores within an advertising account. It is our goal to develop into this tool statistical correlations,  additional KPIs beyond just Quality Scores, and updated reporting features by 2014.

Alpha launch of this tool is planned for Summer 2013.

If we did not feel that it would help Get Found First better serve our own clients we would not have moved forward with the acquisition.

2013 has already been a banner year. Bryant Garvin was brought on as a partner, we got an updated Get Found First’s logo and website, Mark Jensen has developed sophisticated internal processes to ensure performance quality and a PPC account audit tool that will rock your world, AND Get Found First will turn 5 years old later this year.

What can we say? Now that we own Quality Scores, “Our future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades!“

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Want to have success and see ROI with your PPC campaign? Before you worry about your PPC campaigns and ads, worry about your design! Never forget that Good Design = Higher ROI when it comes to PPC.

When clients come to us that have never done online marketing before I get excited for a minute, but the excitement quickly fades when I go to their site and see that the site design and UX aren’t where they need to be. You have all come across those sites. The ones that look like they have the same design they had when they first launched their site in 1999.  I remember telling clients back in 2007 that mediocre and poor design were less important than getting found online.  I would use the example of Craigslist.

Craigslist’s brand, ease of use, service, and user experience make up for it’s boring, bland and blah design. They are the exception to the rule. If you want to succeed in 2013, your design better look professional.  I always tell clients that their  site design needs to look as fresh as the product or service they provide.  Most clients quickly agree with me that their design doesn’t do a good job of representing the quality of their work.  When they don’t I show them sites like this:

Bad dentist design example.

Then I ask them questions like:

What do you picture this dentist looking like? What do you picture his dental tools looking like? What about the office chairs? Would you guess that this dentist is going to be able to provide the latest and greatest in dental care when you look at his site?

When I look at that site, I think horror movie. The black and white sketch of the house is just creepy. I imagine that rather than see a tv mounted to the ceiling I will only see spider webs. Talk about a bad first impression.

Good orthodontist design example

Now, when I look at this site, I start to envision my kids happily sitting down to see a vibrant doctor whose practice is up to date and current with the latest and greatest technology. I envision an orthodontist’s office that will be friendly and welcoming.

Design matters. If you are going to spend money on PPC and expect to see a decent return on investment, make sure your site design is sending the right message.

Disclaimers: Draper Orthodontics is my older brother’s practice, and yes, I am VERY biased. I used to run ads for Dr. Granger. His ads ranked well and he got lots of clicks at a decent rate. I begged him to build a new site. Before he ever spent any money with us I told him he needed a new site. He wouldn’t ever do it. He quit advertising and he thinks it is because Adwords doesn’t work. #facepalm

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Zappos.com

Below you will see 3 screenshots from ONE Zappos ad.  Why does this banner ad rock?

1. The ad is interactive. You can click the arrows and see other products without clicking through to the site.
2. Depending on what image you are on when you click elsewhere on the ad, the landing page automatically correlates with the product in the ad when you click.
3. Really it is 3 ads in one.

Below are 3 examples of the Zappo ad(s) that rock and landing pages that roll. Why do I say the landing pages roll? Rock and roll go together and so should your landing pages and banner ads. When someone clicks on your banner ads, they should roll along seamlessly on to a correlating landing page and keep rolling through to a conversion.

AdRoll.com

As a rule of thumb, you don’t come right out and tell people that you are retargeting them in your banner ads. It  basically says, “hey, I am following you, and I know you were on my site.” I mean, think about it. What if you owned a grocery store and you paid employees to follow people after they left your store to go up to people in the street and say,  ”hey, I saw you in our store the other day, when are you going to come back?” You don’t want to creep people out.

There is one vertical in which creepy, funny retargeting will be okay. If you are a retargeting company, you are the exception to the rule. Show people how good you are at retargeting and come right out and tell them that is what you are doing. It will work!

Just ask AdRoll. Their retargeting banner ads on Facebook rock:

And, you know what? AdRoll’s landing pages roll! Why do they roll? Take a look at this landing page, then let me give you a few reasons why:

1. Immediate trust and credibility in the black bar across the top.
2. Call to action in the ad and landing page match.
3. Content in the ad and landing page match.
4. The button to get started, while small, stands out.

If I were to change one thing, I would include another image of whichever person is pointing at me in the ad I click on.

iStockPhoto.com

I saved the best for last here. If you are still hanging with me on this long, image heavy post, I think you will be glad you did.

iStock‘s ads are award-winning. Why, because I am officially giving them an award by talking about them in my post! Seriously though, if they haven’t won an award, they should. I have never seen a better interactive banner ad campaign that does such an outstanding job of giving the user EXACTLY what they want when they click through to the landing page.

The drop down for the categories can be clicked and selected without clicking through.

You can type in a search of your choice if you want to do a search more specific than just by the drop down categories.

When you search for photos of abs as a search in the ad, the landing page rolls you along to image of abs. Exactly what you looked for. Why did I choose to search for abs? It was a random search that came to mind….I swear!

This next banner ad rocks!

5 reasons why the above banner ad rocks:

1. Calls me to action right away to browse millions of photos.
2. It is one of a variety of ads that I see as I browse the web after visiting their site so I don’t feel fatigue as I notice their ad starting to follow me.
3. It uses images of women. Images of people in banner ads catch the eye.
4. I can click different tabs of the ad and go to different, correlating landing pages.
5. I can type in searches and click through to a search result of exactly what I want to see.

This next ad is better when seen live, but I had to share it. Again, I can search, but also it gives me examples of what I can get when I click through. The images magnify as I mouse over them. Interactivity in banner ads rock.

Oh, and if seeing iStock’s banner ads elsewhere online didn’t catch my attention, I can see them on Facebook too. The interactivity is gone thanks to FB’s young, but maturing banner ad platform. Note that they use an image of a woman here as well.

And if photos aren’t getting me to convert, why not try converting me with one of their other offers?

Online advertising with banner ads is about doing your best to give people what they want. iStockPhoto has figured that out with their interactive ads that give people options and selection before they even click through.   Here are 3 more that do such a good job of that:

How are your banner ads? Do they rock and roll? Are you innovating with your banner ads? Some say they don’t work. I totally disagree. A well-planned banner ad campaign that rocks and retargets and landing pages that roll people along the online conversion process  do work.

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So, now you have a tool to help you manage your Pay-Per-Click projects, now what? The hardest part about project management for marketing projects like Pay-per-Click advertising is that they are continuous. Most project management philosophies center around projects that have a set beginning and ending and therefore they don’t work well with continuous projects. How then do you manage continuous projects?

The answer is that you create cycles.

Define your PPC Project Cycle

Every continuous project has tasks that you have to repeat on a regular basis. An example of this from a PPC project would be running a search query report and checking it for converting keywords to add to your account. Create a list of these tasks and the time that it takes to do them. Then consider how long it will take for you to perform these tasks. That is the length of your cycle.

Consider the Impact of ‘Emergencies’

An important note here is remember everything else that you have going on. Your cycle should not be one day because you can get everything done in a few hours. In that case it should be a week or may two depending on your time constraints, obligations, and responsibility. Also, remember to schedule in some time for problems or issues that may arise. A rule of thumb would be for small projects a week or two will be fine. For larger projects, 3 to 4 weeks, and very large projects can be larger than that.

Now that you have your cycle length, plan your tasks to fit within it and set them up in your tool of choice.

Pay-per-click Project Management To Do List

So, here is your to-do list:

1. List all of tasks related to the project
2. Calculate the amount of time it will take you to get this all done once, this is your cycle
3. Plan your task within your cycle time (I will be elaborating on this next week)

Now all that is left is to implement it.

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This marketing eBook takes a high level look at each of Porter’s 5 Forces and how each force impacts PPC Management. Each chapter includes actionable tactics to protect your PPC campaigns (and your job!) from aggressive market forces.

As always, we welcome any and all feedback. It’s our goal to produce the highest quality content for online marketing managers, CFOs, and entrepreneurs everywhere knee-deep in the world of SEM!


Download “5 Critical Marketing Forces for PPC Success” Here!

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