Five Steps to Optimization Five Steps to Optimization Beyond Best Practices Beyond Best Practices Beyond Best Practices Beyond Best Practices Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
5 Steps to Optimization 5 Steps to Optimization ● Quality Score ● Account Structure and Organization g ● Landing Page Development ● Testing ● Communication ● Communication 2 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Optimization in the most Competitive Vertical Optimization in the most Competitive Vertical Mesothelioma accounts have: ● CPCs well over $200 CPCs ell o er $200 ● Quality scores of 3 are GOOD ● Data scarcity 3 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Inarguably Bad Quality Scores Inarguably Bad Quality Scores 4 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Reverse Engineering Quality Score Reverse Engineering Quality Score 5 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Effective, but Impossible to Scale Effective, but Impossible to Scale ● Keyword : mesothelioma legal ● Ad Copy: ● Landing Page Headline: Do you or a loved one have a mesothelioma diagnosis? Find out if you’re legally entitled to compensation you re legally entitled to compensation. Result: CTR of 1.39% and quality score improvement from 1 to 2. 6 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
The Perils of Broad Match The Perils of Broad Match ● Raw search query = tylenol for fevers ● Keyword that I actually bought = mesothelioma lawyer. Result: $109 for the click, no lead. 7 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Long Lander Long Lander 8 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Multi-Step Lander Multi-Step Lander ● Step 1: Who was diagnosed? (3 options) ● Step 2: Where was the injured party exposed to asbestos? (3 St 2 Wh th i j d t d t b t ? (3 options) ● Step 3: When was the cancer diagnosed? (3 options) ● Step 4: the form and CTA. 9 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Multi-Step Landing Path Improves Conversion Multi-Step Landing Path Improves Conversion 10 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Split Testing Multi-Step Landing Pages Split Testing Multi-Step Landing Pages 11 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Testing: Plan to Fail Testing: Plan to Fail 12 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Communication Communication 13 Sokolove Law proprietary and confidential
Cara deBeer SEM Manager Slide 1: BEYOND BEST PRACTICES for PPC Good afternoon. I’m here to talk about 5 ways to optimize for paid search. I’m sure I’m not the most experienced marketer in the room, nor do I have access to the paid search algorithm. But as Isaac Newton said, If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. " – and I’ve been lucky enough to work with some very talented people who were generous about sharing their knowledge with me. I’ve been doing PPC for the past six years and I’ve run into some really weird problems in that time, some of which I was able to solve creatively and some of which blew up in my face. Standard best practices can only take you so far and so today, I’m going to go beyond best practices. SLIDE 2 – 5 STEPS Also with me today is Jeff Eckman, from BGC (big giant conversions). We’ve been working with BGC for about two years now, partnering on LPO (landing page optimization), and it’s been a very important part of our success strategy. While I will be sharing some concrete tactics, the main thrust of this presentation is to inspire you to find your own ways to bend the rules of best practices. I’m focusing on Google Adwords today because I don’t have a ton of time up here and let’s face it, Google provides the lion’s share of traffic to most advertisers.
When I interviewed for my current job – which is essentially lead gen for personal injury law firms ‐ my future boss asked me if I was familiar with mesothelioma. I knew it was a rare and deadly cancer caused by asbestos, but what I didn’t know is that it’s reputedly the most competitive vertical in paid search. SLIDE 3 – OPTIMIZATION IN COMPETITVE VERTICAL ‐ Ever since Google removed the cap on bids, I’ve been paying $250 per click for some keywords ‐ Quality scores of 3 are GOOD. ‐ Low volume, high margin industry means data scarcity can be a stumbling block for analysis Best practices are a great place to start, but that’s all they are: a starting point. I read a lot of industry blogs, and no one ever talks about what the heck you’re supposed to do when you’ve inherited an disorganized account with two years of spotty history, a million keywords, and (in which) the only quality scores higher than 4 are on the brand keywords! I also need to spend several million dollars efficiently, with a lead cycle time that usually lasts two weeks but can take months or even a year. That’s right – that click from July 2010? It still matters. Optimization #1 – QUALITY SCORE My quality score problem is a little more extreme than most industries, but I’m sure all of you have keywords which you know could work better for you, but which you just can’t budge the quality score on, and so you’re priced out of the market on that keyword, and you’re losing opportunities. SLIDE 3 – QUALITY SCORES In fact, I haven’t been able to find any articles that address my situation – they all tell you to get rid of keywords with quality scores that are 3 or below. Yikes – that would be most of my account! I’ve got instances of “mesothelioma” with a QS of 1. (The slap.) And these keywords are converting (when the ad shows). Bidding on keywords with a terrible quality score is as expensive as you’d expect – but the ROI in this high margin, low volume industry means that if I get a lead that converts, a $250 click is chicken feed. I’m lucky enough to have a dedicated Google team for my accounts and my reps tell me that these low quality scores are pretty standard for the industry. (In fact, I leaned on them to provide me with some anonymized competitive information, but the results were disappointing: we were doing as well as or better than our competitors in most areas. It’s not that I was hoping to find out that I’ve been doing a rotten job, but it would have been nice to get some actionable insights.)
So I’ve got a pretty vested interest in figuring out more about how quality score works in this vertical, because even though quality scores of 2 might be normal, I still don’t want to pay that much per click – I’d rather improve the QS and use the “left ‐ over” money for testing. SLIDE 4 ‐ FRUSTRATION I think it’s pretty widely known that there are actually several quality scores: at the keyword, ad group, campaign and account level. But: did you know that QS is also attached to the domain? Let’s say you start a new job. It’s pretty common to arrive at a new job and be handed some inherited accounts, with mediocre or flat ‐ out bad performance history, which have been badly managed for a while. (That’s why they hired you, right? To fix things.) If you decide to scrap that account and start fresh, you’re also going to need a new domain, or those crappy quality scores will follow you across the adwords network. And then your new boss will probably be annoyed that you put all the effort into creating a new account from scratch only to have it not make a difference. Trust me: there’s nothing more frustrating than having creating adgroups of less than ten keywords, all on a very similar theme, which are paired with painstakingly written ad copy which incorporates most or all of the keywords in the adgroup, which send traffic to carefully crafted landing pages that not only include the keywords, but also mirror the ad copy – only to find, at the end of the day, that you STILL have a quality score of 2 with only a mouseover “poor relevance” to guide you. (Screenshot). It’s even more frustrating is when you’re getting a 2% CTR on that keyword. 2% isn’t high in all industries, but it’s high for mesothelioma. It’s enough to make you tear your hair out trying to figure out what else you can possibly do to improve your account and bring down the CPC. OPTIMIZATION #2 –ACCOUNT STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION So here’s what you do. You take best practices, and you square them. Google recommends tightly grouped keywords ‐ copy ‐ landing page? Fine – one keyword per adgroup, one landing page per ad. [SLIDE 5] Is this insane? Yes. Is it scaleable? Absolutely not. Does it work? Yes. Yes it does. I don’t recommend it unless you’ve got a fairly small number of head keywords driving the majority of your traffic. But it *will* get you crazy high CTRs and that will improve your quality score and drive down your CPC.
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