PPC used to pretty simple.

You just signed up, selected a keyword terms – probably used your SEO keyword list – put in a few bids, and hit go. Some tweaking here, some tweaking there. Life was good.

These days, with quality scores, ruthless levels of competition (including Google competing against the advertisers), a wealth of segmentation options, and complex analysis and reporting, PPC has become more demanding, necessitating the need for more in depth training.

• Should you bid on your brand? What match type should you use if you do?
• Do AdWords Site Links increase yield? Or do they charge you for what you were already getting free?
• Have you tested modified broad match yet?
• Have you seen Google’s new enhanced CPC bidding option?

When does it make sense to use any of those options?

Before you get down to detail, there are some higher level skills you should read up on, too. The fundamentals of PPC are similar to established channels. Because these channels have been around a long time, they’ve build up a lot of time-tested theory. You can apply much of this theory to PPC, without having to repeat the same mistakes.

1. Study Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is a form of advertising that communicates with the consumer using advertising techniques such as fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and street advertising. The techniques are very similar to PPC. Direct marketers target a group of people, seek to convince them using well-crafted written/pictorial advertising, and try to illicit a response and/or purchase.

The great thing about direct marketing theory is that there is so much of it. Direct marketing has been going since the 1860s. In order to be profitable, direct marketing had to ruthlessly test what worked, and what didn’t, else direct marketers could blow through a lot of money in print and distribution costs.

There are a lot of great books on the craft of direct marketing theory, but one good place to start is Tested Advertising Methods, by John Caples. Whilst the examples offered by the book are getting a bit long in the tooth, the psychology underlying the approach – how to appeal to your market segment using effective copy and constant testing – is sound.

2. Understand Your Customer

PPC is a sales channel.

A lot of sales theory is directly applicable to PPC, particularly in terms of identifying your customer, determining what they want, and making an offer at a price they want to pay.

Sales relies on three aspects:

Quality Prospects – you need to target the people who are prepared to buy.

Your keyword selection process should involve weeding out keyword terms that sound like they are relevant, but do not convert.

For example, someone looking for “[keyword] coupon” has already made a decision to buy, they’re just looking for a discount before they do.

The person who searches on the keyword, but uses no qualifier, may be much further back in the sales funnel. They require a very different pitch to get them to the point where they are ready to give over their credit card details.

Sales theory, particularly relating to sales funnels, will help you pitch correctly.

Quality Presentation – you need to make a persuasive case. This comes down to your copy and landing page style. Are you responding to peoples needs, and are you doing so in a credible way?

Numbers – you need to get infront of as many people as possible, once you’ve selected quality prospects and got a quality presentation. Scale is near infinite in PPC, given the range of keywords and channels.

3. Understand Your Strategic Goals

What do you want your PPC campaign to achieve?

Whilst the obvious answer is “more sales!”, there are other ojectives you may wish to consider. You may want to increase market share, keep expenses under control, increase your profitability, increase your profit margins, or a mix of the above. Starting a PPC campaign without clear strategic goals makes it difficult to measure your achievement in a broader sense.

Another way of clarifying this aspect is to ask yourself “what problem am I trying to solve?” Are you trying to get more/better…..what? Why use PPC at all? Would another channel solve those goals more easily? Where does PPC fit into the overall business strategy?

If you have a regularly updated business case, it makes strategic planning easier than if you just wing it. A business case doesn’t need to be complicated. It can occupy a single page.

Be clear about where PPC fits into the broader picture.

When you run a PPC campaign, how do you decide whether to use Google Adwords, or Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter or, erm….Findology?

How do you decide whether to push you campaign into content networks, such as Adsense, or Facebook?

The simple answer is you should be everywhere your customers reside, so long as the ROI is positive. The Balkanisation of the web is ongoing & won’t be complete until every single person becomes a demographic.

You have to be everywhere.

And people need to remember who you are.

Why Building Brand Is The New Rock N Roll

PPC is often geared around direct sales, so doesn’t take into account brand metrics. However, PPC offers brand building opportunities that are still fabulously cheap.

The world is changing fast. To build a brand, you used to need to spend a fortune on TV, radio and newspaper advertising. There was no other way. As Gary Vaynerchuk – owner of the Wine Library – says, the gatekeepers of those channels were a handful of 70 year old guys who run the world. But they’ll be retiring soon. Or dead.

These days, you can build a brand for next to nothing. You can publish on media channels, like YouTube, for nothing. Yet the reach of these channels is huge.

Everyone can now have a brand. A brand can exist in every micro-niche. Pick your niche, no matter how small, and become the biggest brand in that niche.

Why should you focus on brand?

Brand related searches are hugely lucrative. People use brand names as starting points for their searches. Once you own the brand name, you don’t need to do as much search marketing to get traffic. People will find you directly.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, is on record as saying brand would be used as a means to clean up the internet cesspool:

Brands, he said, are the way to rise above the cesspool, and of course he is right. The corollary is that advertising via Google and its brethren is an essential way to build and sustain a brand

So, when a visitor clicks through to your site, they should always take something away with them. That “thing” could be a brand association.

Evaluate your landing pages. Do they convey a brand image, and is it easy for people to relate that brand image to your keyword niche?

It doesn’t cost much to gain this benefit. It’s a simple positioning exercise – ask “what niche am I top in?”.

Next, create a brand that is consistent with that niche, and the service you offer. Pick a strong, memorable name. Buy the .com, .net and .org, or regional variants. Own the word. Get a graphic designer to create a logo and identity, and use it consistently across all your media advertising. Become that brand. Let it flow through everything you do.

For many small internet niches, that’s all you need to do to build a brand. So long as you get in front of your audience wherever they reside, they’ll have one more opportunity to remember your brand name. Once they start searching on your brand name, you win. This lowers your advertising cost over time. You can also prevent others from advertising against your brand name, especially in PPC. This make your position more defensible.

Compare this approach with focusing solely on direct sales. You’ve paid for the click, you may still lose the sale, and yet the visitor takes nothing away with them. Your site is just another anonymous site which they’ll quickly forget.

Even a break even PPC campaign can be a big winner if you include the value of data along with the latent impact of exposure, branding & links.

Brand is now something for everyone. The benefits are huge, and it can cost next to nothing to build.