Until now, to track which campaign or particular ad was converting you had to tag your ad destination URLs with a tracking ID or parameter, then go back and reference that manually to figure out if a given ad was converting or not…Ugh.

Conversions Without Clicks

Facebook has put their own spin on conventional conversion tracking however by allowing advertisers to track conversion events that happen on their site even if the user didn’t click any of their ads, tracking on an ad impression alone.

Similar to Google’s reasoning behind implementing “View-Through” conversion tracking, under the “Post-Impression Data” heading in Facebook’s PDF ‘Conversion Tracking Guide’ they point out the motivation for this level of tracking:

“The ability to track Post-Impression…enables you to measure conversions from users who saw your ads without clicking them and so gives you insight into the true value of your ads.“

i.e. “Keep buying display ads from us even if your CTR sucks…”

It’s hard to imagine the amount of data crunching and storage they’ll have to do to be able to reference what ad you’ve simply seen and successfully tie it back to conversion pixels firing on vendor sites’ everywhere. But hey, if Google can do it, they can too.

They appear to hold onto that impression-recording data for at least a month as their new Conversion Time reports can tell you how far out the conversion was from the time a user saw an ad.

Nice Metrics You Have There

In addition to allowing advertisers to count conversions as they come in (FB says to expect roughly a 24 hour delay on conversion data), advertisers can dynamically add additional parameters to the FB tracking scripts included conversion values in dollars (”VALUE”) as well as “SKU” to let you figure out what exact product the user ultimately bought or signed up for.  Definitely a nice touch.

Configuring Facebook Conversion Tracking

If the tracking beta has been enabled in your account, you’ll see it in the sidebar of your Facebook Ads interface:

Next, select the type of action you’d like to track and give the a “tag name”, or an easily-referenced nickname.  You can also add the conversion value amount to help evaluate ROI later on:

That’s it, you end up with a small piece of javascript to insert before the ending </body> tag on your landing page:  (sorry for the tiny image)

Conversion Reporting – Apps, Fan Pages, & Events Now Included

When you run the conversion reporting, or “Conversions by Conversion Time” report, you can drill down to the account, campaign, or individual ad level, viewing how many conversions took place during given time frames and/or how long after impressions or ad clicks conversions happened.

If you’ve been using the ‘VALUE’ and ‘SKU’ parameters, you’ll be able to see revenue figures as well as particular sale or lead type data.

Conversion metrics (conversion counts, rates etc…) have also been added to the regular campaign and ad reporting, adding the big piece that’s been missing from these regular campaign reports.

Another nice touch to the new system is that if you are running ads with ‘Inline Actions’ such as “Become a Fan” or “RSVP to this Event”, you’ll automatically see “Conversion by Impression Time” and “Conversion by Conversion Time” reports including how many users responded inline by becoming a Fan of a Page or RSVPing to an Event from the ad itself.

These conversions show up in your reports associated with SKU values like “fan_page” or “rsvp_event”.

App developers can add their FB conversion tracking codes on any Facebook apps hosted on your Page the same way that you would place tracking tags in the application independently where you have control over the page code.

A Great Addition, Lots of Data to Crunch

Facebook has taken conversion tracking up a notch here, particularly with the impression-only tracking capability.  It’ll be interesting to see what kind of custom reporting can be crafted from the huge amount of data points Facebook’s allowing advertisers to empty out of their reporting.

It has been pretty difficult getting Facebook ads to convert without advanced demographic and keyword segmentation, not to mention the reams of ads you need to continually load to beat user ad-fatigue and keep them clicking.  This new Facebook Ads feature will make that job much, much easier.

More importantly, it reveals the patterns of language people use.

As you drill down through your chosen phrases, you should start to see specific patterns of language. Patterns might emerge in in form of questions, of doubts, of benefits, of price, of availability, and more. You can use these patterns to better understand your audience, and refine your campaign language to suit.

“Listen” Carefully To How People Use Language

How people say things is just as important as what they say.

Why?

Because one of the keys to a successful PPC campaign is to talk using the language of the customer. If the customer can see themselves in you, and your solutions, they are more likely to buy from you.

For example, you need to talk to a youth market differently than you would an elderly market. Language an elderly market may see as authoritative, a youth market may see as old fashioned.

It’s a generalization, but the elderly tend to respond well to voices of authority, so quoting qualified professionals is often a good idea when marketing to this group. Youth demographics tend to respond well to the voices of their peers, or people like themselves, or people who they aspire to be. To get the language right, you need to figure out exactly who you’re selling to. If your market doesn’t fit into a clear demographic, then research your competitors, particularly those who rank high on PPC for long periods of time, and see what language they use.

Focus Your Language On Customers Needs

The other important point is to address the customers needs.

For example, can you can spot what is wrong with this example of landing page text:

Our company has been trading for 26 years. We’re the world’s leading supplier of garden tools, and carry an extensive range from our chosen suppliers. Our founder, G R Holding’s motto was “Quality First!”. We’ve stuck to that motto….

Ok, cheesy – but the problem is obvious. The merchant talks a lot about themselves. They do not speak the language of the customer, nor do they speak to the customers needs.

How do we know what language the customer will respond to? One clue is the language used in the search query. Say the search query is “cheap gardening tools”. Would the language in the paragraph above appeal directly to the searcher? Not really. This visitor is motivated by price, not company longevity.

What the searcher needs to see is an ad that includes the words “cheap gardening tools”, and a landing page that features the term “cheap gardening tools” writ large. The language of the page must reaffirm the searcher has found the right place. From here, we could experiment with different layouts, perhaps showing various tools with prices in red crossed out and the discounts clearly visible. The language would orient around savings and bargains. We could add a clear call to action, moving the visitor through the sales process.

Guidelines

Whatever your demographic, these ten guidelines work well in PPC:

Repeat The Search Query – not only is this using the same language as the searcher, it also reaffirms they have found the right place. Repeat the search query in both the ad text and on the landing page.

Use “You” and “Your” – it’s not about you, it’s about them. Speak of their problems, their desires, and their needs. They don’t care about you.

Use A Crystal Clear Call To Action – use the active voice and use precise commands i.e. click here to…..

Be Factual, Not Arty – ad text and landing pages are not the places to get cryptic. Use simple, direct language. The visitor can easily click back if they become confused.

Your First Paragraph Is The Most Important – I tend to use a larger font for the first paragraph. Decide on the one thing you want to get across to the visitor if you only have a five second window of opportunity. Typically, that’s all the time you do have to encourage a visitor to read further! What is your visitors burning need? That’s your first paragraph. Remember to incorporate the word “you” or “your” whenever possible. Keep it short.

Write With The Customers Goal In Mind – this will help you to keep on track, moving logically from one concept to the next. You shouldn’t include any superfluous text or imagery that doesn’t support the customer achieving their goal.

Rewrite – copy is always improved by rewriting it. Two, three or four times…ten times, if need be. The aim is to remove the superfluous. To get across an idea quickly and effectively.

Sometimes, copy can be greatly improved by deleting the first paragraph entirely, and making the second paragraph the first. Chances are, your audience is way ahead of you. They don’t need the obvious spelled out, which often happens in first paragraphs, particularly those of first drafts.

If In Doubt, “Steal” – Ok, not steal, borrow Look at the language your competitors are using. Are there similarities between them? What goal are they addressing? Have they clearly identified their target market? How can what they’ve done be improved upon?

Don’t Use Jagon – it tends to confuse. The exception is if your target audience is very familiar with industry jargon.

Be Specific – if the benchtop you’re selling is made of granite, say granite. Avoid vague language, like “a solid, enduring benchtop material”. Search engine activity tends to be specific, as opposed to vague, because people are forced to formulate a search query. That’s not to say all search phrases are specific – your target keywords should give you a clue about how specific the needs of your audience are.

The business you’re advertising via PPC needs to work on the web.

What are some examples of businesses that work well, and those that don’t?

Items that don’t sell so well include items that are easy, and cheap, to source locally, very heavy items that can’t be shipped easily, and items that need to be seen or tried on for size and fit. Having said that, people can and do sell such items over the net, but the rule of thumb when selecting a good product for selling on the web is to look for some barrier to purchase that the web smooths out.

For example, some people order pills, like Viagra, over the internet, because the internet smooths out the embarrassment factor some people may feel if they go into a store to buy it.

People order items from other countries where the item may be cheaper. The web smooths out the price difference.

Some people order because they live far away from the shops, and want something delivered. The internet smooths out the distance problem.

People will buy something they can’t get easily at their local store, like niche items. The internet smooths out the availability problem.

Select an item or service that smooths out problems such as those mentioned above. All business is about solving problems. Real problems, as opposed to imagined ones. Ask yourself if you’re solving an actual problem people have, or an imagined problem you’d like them to have.

Connect With People

Secondly, you need to connect with people.

It’s easy to get lost in the numbers of PPC, but we must remember that each click represents a living, breathing human being. That person has needs, wants and problems to solve. That person is likely to have objections to buying that need to be overcome.

Is your landing page solving a genuine problem for people? Is it speaking their language? Is it reassuring them that you can solve their problem?

The visitors have all the power. They can back-click. They don’t have to spend any time on a page that doesn’t speak to them, using their words, and addressing their specific problem.

If your landing pages aren’t converting as well as you’d like, make sure you’re solving a real problem for someone. Picture that person in your head. Who are they? How old are they? How do they speak? Why did they click thru on your advertisement?

Of course, there is a lot of guesswork involved, but it’s a good exercise to remind ourselves that maths is only one half of PPC. The other half is about people and language.

How Do You Figure Out The Language?

Testing.

Test various web pages using different text. Phrase the solution in different ways. Do you get better results if you empathize with a persons problem? Do you get better results if you re-state the problem? Do you get better results if you weave the problem into a story? Do you get better results if you focus on benefits? Do you get better results if you focus on negating risks?

Check out keyword research tools, like Google’s related searches. As you search, Google will present you with related queries. These queries give you a unique insight into the minds of searches. Look for patterns, particularly patterns related to commercial activity.

Collecting Feedback

You can also collect information from your visitors, of course. Via web analytics and your Google AdWords data aggregate feedback can be collected without asking for permission. You can further augment this feedback…

• many competitive research tools show you where competitors are consistently finding value
• there are many multivariate tools to choose from
• specialized tools like CrazyEgg & ClickTale help record how users interact with your page
• feedback services like UserTesting and Feedback Army allow you to buy reviews from end users for next to nothing
• Services like 4Q and Kampyle allow you to easily embed feedback forms in your web pages

Want More Visitor Information?

Sell something that requires building significant trust? These days, people are loathe to give out personal information, especially to people they don’t know, so it’s a good idea to give them an incentive to do so.

Can you give them something of value? An e-book, perhaps. A free white paper or report. Even better if you can couple it with an auto-responder which helps you gain repeat exposure and test different sales strategies.

Giving people something to read is a useful tool in the sales process. If you tell a convincing story about why your solution is best, and frame the story to lead to your solution, you get people closer to your cash register. Remember, only impulsive people, or those with a very strong, time-sensitive need, buy on the first look. Most people will consider, research, and comparison shop. Having something of yours they can take away increases the chances they’ll return.

Finally, review trust aspects of your landing page.

Why should the visitor give you their credit card number? Are you giving them enough reassurance that you can be trusted to deliver? Cover all the basics – secure payment process, contact details, a clear returns policy, and guarantees.

Also make sure your spelling is purfect

Smart phones.

As handset costs are driven down, more people are switching to smart phones, such as iPhones & BlackBerrys. Internet usage on mobile phones is increasing, and may well displace much PC and laptop usage.

There are already phones on the market using 1 gigahertz chips, says Andy Rubin, who works on Google’s Android platform. Soon we’ll have mobile phones with 2Ghz processors, which is more than in a lot of laptops,” he predicts, pointing out that a PC is no longer necessary to access emails, to quickly check the net or to update your Facebook page

Google even goes so far as predicting the desktop will be irrelevant within three years:

In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant,” sais John Herlihy, Googles vice president of Global Ad Operations. “In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs. Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.”

Marketing-speak perhaps, but we do live in interesting times when it comes to new opportunities in search. Google bought mobile advertising network, AdMob, last November for $750m, so expect much integration and new features this year.

Usage patterns are also changing. Because smartphones were more expensive, they tended to be used mainly for business. Now, usage patterns are becoming increasingly consumer oriented. If more people do adopt smart phone usage, what does this mean for PPC advertisers?

A modified approach is needed.

Think Ergonomics

The biggest change will be in terms of ergonomics.

Factors such as small screen real-estate, lack of keyboard, and different modes of interaction will mean whole new search and interface paradigms will be adopted for mobile. Expect a lot more voice commands, and point and click driven functionality. People probably aren’t going to be doing a whole of typing, such as form filling, and they aren’t going to be reading long screeds of text.

Optimize Landing Pages For Mobile

Create pages specifically for mobile users.

Think old-school. Think small and resource-light. Don’t assume Flash or other fancy graphical scripting capabilities. Pages should be short and lean, and code should be optimized and basic.

Avoid making the user scroll too much.

Mobile usage tends to be search dominant.

Make your call to action crystal clear, and easy to tap with a finger. Include your phone number, so people can tap it to call you. Google are also rolling out a click-to-call feature (again) which displays a phone number next to your mobile ads.

Bullet point lists work well on mobiles. Dense text – not so much.

Here are a few helpful tools for testing landing pages on mobile devices:

Testiphone: web browser based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone web applications.

Opera Mini’s Simulator: live demo of Opera Mini 5 beta that functions as it would when installed on a handset.

Run Through Google’s Help Files & Data Options

Google is pushing mobile advertising and will be encouraging existing PPC advertisers to migrate their activities. Check out their official tips.

Also sign up to their Official Mobile blog. Not strictly Adwords related, but may provide insights into their broader global strategy, which is, of course, driven by Adwords.

Another useful source is Mobile Marking Watch, a blog that covers the mobile marketing community.

Google is also now splitting out stats for mobile devices. Here’s how to find them.

Adjust Bid Prices

Just as you bid differently on the content network, you should also adjust bids focused on mobile advertising. The bid competition still isn’t as fierce as on the search network, so you should be able to adjust your prices down.

Think Local, Think Navigation

People on the move tend to be thinking local. In terms of commerce, they want to know where to find restaurants, shops, and attractions. Consider navigational based search activity. Consider geo-targeting. Consider adding geo-specific variables, such as town and city names.

Have you looked at your international options?

Articles on PPC tend to focus on the US market. Let’s take a look at the massive opportunities in the international market, from a US perspective.

Untapped Markets

The US, whilst the biggest search market, still only accounts for approximately 17 percent of searches conducted globally.

According to ComScore’s 2010 search survey:

China ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global search markets, Russia posted the highest gains in 2009, growing 92 percent to 3.3 billion, followed by France (up 61 percent to 5.4 billion) and Brazil (up 53 percent to 3.8 billion)

As you can see, there’s a lot of search volume to be had beyond the US, even if you limit your market to the larger English speaking nations, like Australia and the UK.

Also, being a US-based PPC operative, you may have a serious advantage in those markets.

If you’ve been doing PPC in the US for a while, and you’ve mastered intermediate-advanced techniques, you may be able to out-compete international PPC operators in their local markets, because they haven’t had to fight so hard. Lower levels of competition means campaigns may be run a bit looser than what you’re used to. A generalization, of course, but generally true of less competitive markets.

And there’s another advantage: exchange rate.

Given the US dollar is currently weaker against some other major currencies, you can make bank on the exchange rate alone.

For example, the UK pound is, at the time of writing, worth $1.54 US. If you price your merchandise/services in pounds, without converting, you gain a 50% margin. People spend a UK £ pretty much like you spend a US $, so, depending on your market, you may not have to adjust your price figures.

But before you think it might be too easy, here’s where the locals may out-gun you….

The Challenge

Whilst most aspects of your PPC campaign will remain the same – your bidding strategy, CTR, Quality Score etc – there are differences you need to consider.

1. Pitch

Generally speaking, advertising targeted at US consumers is different to the advertising targeted at, say, UK consumers.

US advertising tends to be seen by more reserved cultures as brash and over-the-top. In order to appeal to consumers in the UK, tone down a hard pitch a few notches.

The easiest way to find the right level is examine the landing pages of competitors in your target market. It’s not just that spelling is different i.e. color vs colour – the underlying psychology is different. This is a generalization, but notice that not all cultures are as optimistic and motivated by personal success as the US. Benefit propositions tend not be pushed quite so hard.

An article in the Independent, a UK newspaper, highlighted the differences in the advertising world: Less business, more arts and entertainment:.

In Britain, advertising and its people are socially smart in the wider world in direct ratio to their distance from hard selling and their resemblance to the arts and entertainment. And advertising people definitely take their place in our great world.

In America, advertising isn’t that socially glamorous – they’ve got Hollywood after all – and its practitioners aren’t so famous, but they make millions and it’s an acceptable career choice for a decent MBA graduate who thinks creativity is something best left to window-dressers.

That’s not directly applicable to the direct marketing channel, but it gives you some idea of different underlying culture behind advertising and acceptance thereof. The good news, for US advertisers, is that the web is making everything more American. People are growing more accustomed to the hard sell, online, at least.

Again, study your competitors in terms of pitch, and revise accordingly.

If your budget allows, try to hire a copywriter based in the target market to adjust your copy.

2. .co.uk and com.au

Having a local domain name, and indicators of local presence, can help.

Just as you are likely to notice domain names that don’t end in .com, people in other countries are typically more comfortable buying from domains with local extensions, particularly when it comes to the delivery of physical items. It doesn’t tend to matter so much for merchandise or services that are delivered digitally.

It also helps if you can provide a local free calling number, and if possible, a local service address.

This is not to say any of this is necessary. People will buy from anywhere, if the deal is right.

3. Price In Local Currency

How do you feel if you see a checkout denominated in a currency other than US dollars? It can be off-putting. It can feel more risky. Same goes for people in local markets.

If you can, provide local pricing information. If not, at least provide a currency exchange widget.

4. Translation English To English

If you’re doing the ad writing and copywriting yourself, don’t forget the obvious stuff – terminology and spelling.

Here’s a useful translation dictionary for different spelling and terms.

There’s a lot to be said for running small, tightly optimized campaigns with short keyword lists instead.

When Chris Anderson, a columnist at Wired magazine, wrote about the Long Tail back in 2004, the concept was seized upon by the search marketing community. The Long Tail outlines a niche sales strategy whereby a vendor can sell a wide range of niche items, in small volumes, which collectively add up to more revenue than their big sellers. Think Amazon. By covering many niches, you make more money.

Search marketers seized upon the Long Tail concept because it dove-tails nicely with search strategy. You can use an infinite numbers of keywords, some of which may only receive one click a year, but added together, they provide a lot of traffic at low cost.

This theory works best in SEO, where there is nothing to manage after you’ve published a page, but in PPC, covering a lot of keyword terms can create management overhead, and affect Quality Score, which drives up your costs.

Which Terms Drive Performance?

Your top 5-10% performing keywords are likely generating almost all your sales. The PPC Long Tail, all those groups of low-traffic keywords, are probably generating nothing but mental overhead. Such campaigns can be tricky to manage well.

Your Quality Score may also suffer if you run long keyword lists. If you’re using an exhaustive list of terms covering areas where there is little buyer activity – the do-it-yourself brigade, for starters – your click through rate could suffer, which can affect your Quality Score. Your minimum bids could rise, so running with the Long Tail could in fact cost you.

Go through your lists and make a note of the low traffic keyword terms. Can any of these keyword terms be covered by broad or phrase matches? What about a combination of broad & phrase match with the addition of some negative keywords? Would you lose anything by doing so? Is the existence of these keywords helping or hindering you ability to meet your sales objectives? Look at the terms that generate your conversions. How many really perform? 20? 50? Would you be better off focusing all your mental energy on these keywords? Are you wasting time testing long tail keywords and ad copy that will take a long time to prove their worth? Is it time for a PPC spring clean?

Running Long Tail Strategy

Of course, some people swear by long keyword lists and running a huge number of groups. This strategy can and does work. Keep in mind that campaigns that receive huge volumes – millions – of clicks at the top end can include a lot of low-performance keywords further down the tail without it affecting the Quality Score too much, but smaller operators may not have this luxury. Few click-thrus, across a wide campaign, can hurt the keyword terms that perform well.

Long Tail keyword terms can also be useful for testing purposes. There might be gold down there somewhere! Again, it’s all about how much time you want to spend on testing and management of terms that deliver limited testing data over long periods of time.

ROI

Whatever method you choose, the important factor to look at the return on investment.

When calculating ROI, don’t forget to build in your keyword management time, and the opportunity cost of that time – would you have been better off managing some other aspect of the campaign, such as landing pages? Use of the Google Desktop Ad Manager or the Google API can improve efficiency, but frequently it is best to focus on improving lifetime visitor value and conversion rates before digging too deep into longtail keywords.

Most importantly, is your Quality Score affected by having too many low paying keyword terms?

What strategies do you use? Do you go for the short, focused campaign in terms of keyword lists and groups, or do you like to cast a very wide net?

In the past, it has been difficult for local businesses to advertise on search services because there were barriers – such as knowing how to use cryptic technology – but recent advances, like Google Maps, have helped make local advertising more approachable.

It’s now reasonably easy for a local business to get listed, simply by claiming a spot on the map. The more businesses who register, the greater the resource, and the more people will use it. Also, the more people will come to expect to see local resources.

With the widespread use of smart-phones with inbuilt GPS services, the global local search market set to soon surpass $31 billion.

There is a lot of potential coming up in local PPC.

Slicing Local

Local PPC campaigns require different strategy approaches than national or worldwide campaigns.

Local, in terms of search, means one of two things:

• Targeting people who live in a geographic area
• Targeting people who seek information on a geographic area

Let’s look at targeting people who live in a geographic area first.

Within Adwords, you can target by searchers location. Google determines this information by looking to see where the searchers internet service provider is located.

The problem is that some users may connect via a server that is not physically in their geographic area, or they may be surfing from work, which could be some distance from where they live.

The way to cover this issue, and target people who seek information on a geographic area, is to run two separate but related campaigns simultaneously, one at the local level and one at the national level.

Local Level

Target by geography, using the Google settings under Settings > Locations >

Here’s an example for real estate:

• Real estate
• houses for sale
• homes for sale
• realtor

Note the use of more general terms that would be too unfocused at a national or worldwide level.

National/Worldwide Level

Here’s how the same ad group might look at the national level. Use a keyword list generator to add in the location, and show ads in this group to all people, regardless of their physical location.

• Real estate Montreal
• houses for sale Montreal
• homes for sale Montreal
• realtor Montreal

Note the use of geographic qualifiers, in order to avoid clicks from people who have no interest in the area your advertiser serves.

These are very basic examples for the purposes of illustration, of course. Your campaign will include negative keywords, more geographic terms, and different forms of keyword matching. Note that they are both local campaigns – they are both qualified by region – but done in different ways in order to create both a larger net and retain focus.

General Tips

Brainstorm keyword ideas that will help differentiate local searches. There are place names, of course, but there are also zip codes, street names, telephone numbers, local attractions, landmarks, destinations and more. If applicable, your ad text should contain local markers, as should your landing page. Get all your (local) ducks lined up!

Carefully examine your business. Will people travel for some of your services? If so, how far?

Whilst it would be unlikely people would travel far for a haircut or a bar, given such services are typically plentiful, they might travel a considerable distance to see, say, a highly regarded plastic surgeon. They might even fly in from a different country.

Such services can be both local and worldwide, so be careful what you define as local, else you might miss valuable traffic.

Conversely, closely watch your ROI on services that are typically local – again, like the plastic surgeon example – that you are advertising nationwide. You’ll be competing with people in their own local markets, and businesses that do have a national presence, and you may face stiff bid prices.

Also consider time of day. Depending on the type of business you’re advertising, you may want to only run local campaigns during office hours i.e. when the business is actually open and able to respond to inquiries. You may consider bidding lower outside these hours if conversion drops away because the business can’t give an immediate response to inquiries.

By the way, there’s a cool tool that will help you keep a close eye on your competitors:

Ad Targeting Preview Tool

Use the local selector on the right to spy on your competitors who also target your area.

Let’s hope you find “none”

Local Ad Appearances

Google actually wants to help you target local by giving you a few extra lines in your ad, depending on context.

You can get your address to feature in the ad by enabling the “Allow address to show in my ads” under the Custom tab.

Google’s Custom area feature is handy for creating your own local geographic areas.

How might you use this? Say if you know that most of your customers come from specific locations within or just outside a geographic area, you can target these visitors precisely.

Those who are doing local targeting, it would be great if you could share you experiences in the comments

Google has long allowed advertisers to opt out of the content network and many search partners, and that has made their core market healthy. And given their efforts to detect fraud (and how smart pricing works on content websites) they have de-incentivized fraud to some degree. But now that content mills are being built, that trend may soon swing in the other direction.

With Demand Studio’s new revenue-sharing project, they encourage writers to share content with their relatives:

The more high quality links to your article there are on the web, the more highly a search engine will rank it. … Your family and friends are probably curious about what you are writing anyway. Send them links and invite them to take a look!

Given that authors are paid on revenue share, what is the chance that say 5% or 10% of them will also ask family members to click on the ads while viewing the page?

How could Google catch it?

You could say I am cynical, but human nature is predictable and many of the kinds of people who work for the content mills will do anything to make a Dollar. Laws exist to catch the bad actors, but when the publishers are encouraging the creation of distribution amongst friends & family and the party responsible is concealed from Google, the incentives are aligned against the interest of advertisers.

As fraud seeps in slowly, eventually it will become expected…either you engage in it, or your become an economically inefficient piece of the web – a relic. And most advertisers won’t know why their profits have dropped with the increasing number of clicks. Some will filter, but most of them will just lower their bids on the content network (or simply turn it off, as many did with Yahoo!), which in the end harms the legitimate publishers who run AdSense ads.

On one front they are stealing your content, and on the next they are destroying the value of the ads you carry. Like it or not, if you are an online publisher who depends on ad revenues it will impact you.

The incentivized publishers are pushing into the big money categories. Jason Calacanis outrageously suggested investing in people asking big money questions:

If I was a smart person I would INVEST in asking questions of high CPM value (i.e. mortgage, drugs, products, etc) and give them a nice M$3 tip. If you do that 33 times I’m betting you would make the M$100 back.

The suggestion of the free virtual currency flowing back and forth really highlights the end goal of such efforts. How long will it take advertisers to notice?

Outside of Mahalo & eHow, what other sites are engaging in the incentivized publishing programs? What sort of ROI have you seen from them? And how do you expect that to change going forward?

We’ve decided to give you “the secrets”, and charge you $0 instead. We’re good like that

This article is aimed at those who are new to affiliate marketing with PPC.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a sales process.

Like a salesperson working on commission, the affiliate marketer links a prospect with a merchant and receives a commission if the prospect takes a desired action. This typically involves buying something.

The attraction for the affiliate is that they can focus entirely on marketing. Unlike the merchant, the affiliate doesn’t need to hold stock, handle orders, or deal with customer issues and complaints.

Many affiliates are attracted to PPC because it is a channel that allows people to start selling immediately. Set up a few ad groups, direct visitors to the merchant site, and watch the cash roll in.

Sounds easy, right?

Most Affiliate Marketers Don’t Make Money

It’s not as easy as some people, particularly those selling get rich quick schemes, like to make out. Even some of the better affiliate blogs tend to make it sound easier than it is (because they want you to sign up for lots of tools and networks so they get commissions). It is probably one of the hardest markets to get good information in because the answer to every question is on the other side of an affiliate link. Literally.

Whilst it is true that top affiliates make a lot of money, there are very few top affiliates. The top affiliates don’t just earn a little more that those people further down the curve, they earn a lot more. The curve falls away very quickly in terms of income.

Why does this happen? Why do most people fail to make money at affiliate marketing, and some people make so much? How can you ensure you succeed where others fail?

How To Do Well At Affiliate Marketing Using PPC

Affiliate marketing requires two key pieces of know-how.

• Step One: Develop a sound knowledge of PPC technique
• Step Two: Develop a sound knowledge of the market you’re targeting

If you’re new to PPC, then it is a good idea to split these tasks up. It will make it much easier to isolate and fix problems i.e problems relating to execution, as opposed to your choice of market, and vice-versa.

Step One: Develop A Sound Knowledge Of PPC Technique

Focus on learning these skills:

• 1. How to use your chosen PPC system
• 2. Keyword research
• 3. How to write effective PPC Ads
• 4. How to construct effective landing pages and sites

How To Use Your Chosen PPC System

For this article, we’ll focus on Google Adwords, the most popular PPC network. Most PPC systems work in a similar way.

If you haven’t already done so, sign up for a Google Adwords account here.

Next, go through the process of becoming Adwords Certified. Even if you don’t need the certification badge, the training process to certification level is excellent.

Best of all, it is free (well everything but the test).

Here is the tricky part: Google is saturated with competition and Google hates most affiliates, so it is typically easier to make money as an affiliate on other ad networks (like Bing or FaceBook).

And even when successful with Google, affiliates tend to have better luck on contextual/AdSense ads than with ads on the search results/AdWords. The Google content network is not policed as heavily (largely because brand advertisers don’t understand it & Google has to show something) AND it is much harder for competitors to clone your campaigns than with search targeted ads.

Keyword Research

Much has been written about keyword research, so rather than re-invent the wheel, here are five top instructional pieces that tell you what you need to know.

• SEO & PPC Competitive Analysis & Keyword Research Tools
• Wordtracker Keyword Research Guide
• 10 Steps To Advanced Keyword Research
• Keyword Research For Bloggers
• Doing Keyword Research?

You want the quick summary? Put together lists of keywords your prospective audience is likely to use to find your product and service and place them in small, tightly focused ad-groups.

A few more tips:

Pay close attention to the type of query. For example, some queries indicate a person is ready to buy i.e. coupon searches and shipping options queries. Check out this article on the Three types of searches

This is one of the most important points concerning affiliate keyword research. Not all terms relating to your product or service are equal.

For example, you can’t tell much about visitor intent if the keyword is “Paris Hilton”, however “Paris Hilton watches” hints at an intent to purchase, as it directly relates to a product.

Look for keyword terms that reveal an intent to purchase.

How To write effective PPC Ads

Study headlines in magazines and newspapers. Headlines are hooks that entice people to read further, which is exactly what you want people to do when they see your ads.

• Offer a clear call to action and make the offer compelling.
• The landing page must closely match the offer in your ad and use similar words and phrases.
• Differentiate your offer from those of your competitors.
• Use keywords in Your Ads.
• Try to use a URL that contains the keyword.
• Use capital letters in your ad title, and, where permitted, in your ad text. They stand out more.
• Use an active verb in the title, where possible.

A deeper look into writing effective ads can be found in the members area at SEOBook.com.

How To Build Effective Landing Pages And Sites

Landing pages need to get the message across quickly and effectively.

• Steal Well, not really. Take a look at the top advertisers landing pages. Pay close attention to how the pages are laid out, the wording they use, and how they are presenting the offer. Can you go one better?
• Remove clutter. If you offer choices, people will get confused. Figure out the one thing you need to say, and stick to it. If you say three things, you say nothing.
• Bullet lists, headings, subheadings, testimonials, pictures are all good. It’s easy for the eye to scan the information. A big block of dense text, less so
• Reinforce the idea that visitors have found the right page. Place the words they searched for in large text at the top of the page. This confirms to the searcher they have found what they were looking for

Here are some great landing page resources.

Are you having trouble writing effective landing pages? There’s a book every affiliate marketing should read called “Tested Advertising Methods“. It’s a direct marketing bible about writing sales copy written in the 1930s. It looks at the psychology behind direct response advertising which is still valid today, even if most of the examples are rather outdated.

Part Two: Develop A Sound Knowledge Of The Market You’re Targeting

Understanding The Market

You may have already tried your hand at affiliate marketing using PPC. Were you frustrated by few sales? Did you run well-researched keyword campaigns that you then turned off in order to stop hemorrhaging money?

These are common experiences.

The main skill that separates good affiliate marketers from poor ones is the ability to understand and test a market.

How To Test A Market

Whilst there is a lot of trial and error involved in understanding a market, the good news is that you don’t need to understand all these aspects before you start. By doing, you’ll see things you’ll never see by standing back.

Treat your first few weeks as a training period. Accept that this training period will likely cost you money in the form of bids – but you are buying data cheaply. It need not cost you much, and you may well make a profit, but try not to put pressure on yourself to achieve this goal during the training period. Your first goal is to understand the tool and the PPC environment.

Did you know that a lot of affiliate marketers aim to break even on new campaigns?

Yes, you read that right – break even!

By breaking even, it signals that the area being targeted has potential. Affiliates then refine campaigns until they move from break even to profit. Chances are if a merchant is paying $50 per lead, they know that is costs around $50 for you to get that lead, too.

When choosing a product or service to trial whilst you are learning, look for low payouts – say, $3. Why? It’s far cheaper to make mistakes! Remember, the merchant is signaling that they think they can get the lead for around $3 if they did it themselves.

Your aim is to break even at $3. If you go over – say to $9 – without getting a conversion, you haven’t blown too much money. The same cannot be said if you were targeting a lead that pays out $100!

If you spend $50 on a $3 dollar per lead pay out and have a cost per conversion of $5, you can pause the campaign and examine what went wrong. Were you getting click-thrus, but losing people at the landing page? Your landing page and offer needs work.

Were you receiving few click-thrus? Refine your bidding and ad text. Re-nenable the campaign.

This time around, you may get down to $4 before you get a conversion. Refine, then re-enable.

Down to $3 yet? Great! You’re at break even, and you’ve still spent less than $100 testing a market. Get down below that $3 and you’re making money.

If you can’t get down to break even, even after a lot of tweaking, quit and move on. The market for that product might be so saturated that the margins are virtually non-existent.

Look for sweet spots – areas in which it is easy to break even, and then refine into profit quickly.

Market Knowledge

How well do you know the market for the service or product you are marketing?

Who is the buyer? What are their needs? Why are they buying over the internet rather than from a store? Why are they seeking out an unknown site as opposed to going to a big internet retailer, like Amazon?

These may seem like obvious questions, but the reality is that not everything sells well over the internet.

Any product or service that requires a high level of trust, or high levels of “touch” – a car, for example – will be difficult to sell online. Look through direct marketing trade journals and catalogs for clues. What types of products are services are selling well via mail order? What services and products are telemarketers selling? Chances are these products and services will sell well on the internet, too.

Put yourself in the position of the buyer. What would make you buy from a previously unknown web site? Typically it’s due to reasons such as convenience and scarcity. If your chosen merchant doesn’t meet the criteria, then pass and move onto another who does. If a merchant offers something a buyer can easily get elsewhere, then you’ll be exposed to a great deal of competition.

But Aren’t I Too Late To Do Well At PPC?

You may hear stories about how the market was back in, say, 1999, or 2003, or 2005. Low hanging fruit was everywhere, and the Adwords system -introduced in 2000 and heavily revised in 2002- didn’t have a lot of the complexity and bid competition wasn’t what it is now. People were making a lot of money relatively easily.

Whilst things have changed, it’s never too late to start.

Why?

New opportunities pop-up every day. New markets are emerging continuously. People are heading online to solve more of their problems. Whilst there are problems to be solved, there is money to made.

How do you find new, emerging markets? Top converting offers on affiliate networks and affiliate managers tell you what is working.

Further, Google Trends is a useful tool for predicting rising interest in keyword areas. Google Insights For Search allows you to drill down into the data, including by date, by region, by category and by source.

Microsoft Ad Intelligence and Google Adwords provide seasonal trends.

Paid research tools, such as Keyword Discovery, provide historical data, as do Compete.com and WikiRank.

For a longer article on trend spotting, check out How To Spot Keyword Trends.

The internet is still a baby taking its first steps. PPC is even younger.

Jump in

The Importance Of Google’s Rater Document

Google employs teams of quality raters. A quality raters job is to manually review search engine result sets and web sites to ensure the algorithms are selecting the sites Google favors.

Obviously, it pays to have a site that Google favors.

The Google quality raters follow guidelines provided by Google. These secretive guidelines have sometimes found their way onto the web.

Of particular interest to affiliates is Google’s stated dislike of thin affiliate sites. Thin affiliate sites are sites sites that offer no value to the searcher, other than providing another “door” for the merchant site. These types of sites typically replicate the catalog of the merchant site.

Google regards these sites as spam.

From the quality rater document:

State your reason for assigning “Spam”, “Maybe Spam”, and “Malicious” flags. For example,
- Sneaky redirect to eBay
- Amazon thin affiliate”

“Major cosmopolitan cities are preferred targets for spammers, especially hotel affiliates. Such results should be labeled as Spam, even if they have relevance to the query – e.g. a hotel affiliate page with a list of Chicago hotels may be Relevant”.

Whilst this criteria applies mostly to SEO pages, a similar Google philosophy applies to PPC. Google doesn’t want identical, low value PPC pages and will punish them.

To get around this problem, beef up the value of your page and/or site to the user. Provide context and extra information. For example, you could offer side-by-side product reviews.

Become “fat”.

The quality rater document offers the following specific suggestions:

Pages should generally not be marked Spam if they provide added value. Added value refers to original or other useful content on the page, regardless of whether there are PPC ads. Examples of content that provides added value include:

• Price comparison functionality: Even though the user has to go to another site via the affiliate link to place
  an order, there is value to have price comparisons right there on the page.
• Product reviews: Pages that provide original reviews offer added value. Items that are commonly reviewed are books, electronics, and hotels.
• Recipes: Pages that provide recipes offer added value.
• Lyrics and quotes: Pages that display lyrics or quotes offer added value.
• Contact information: Pages that provide contact information, especially physical addresses and phone numbers, offer added value.
• Coupon, discount, and promotion codes: Affiliate pages that provide coupon, promotion, or discount codes for the consumer offer added value.

The Downsides Of Direct Linking And Campaign Cloning

Direct linking is when you place Adwords with links directly to the supplier site. A lot of get-rich-quick schemes recommend you take this approach, because it is “easy”.

You can make a KILLING on the web WITHOUT a website today!!!!!!!!! Wow. Buy my super insider secrets to automated eternal wealth generation system program now.

It’s only easy to set-up. It isn’t easy to execute well.

Direct linking is when the visitor clicks on the ad, is passed through to the sellers site, and if the visitor buys something, or takes a desired action, you receive a commission or payment.

This type of affiliate marketing was common when Adwords started, but Google makes this approach difficult by means of their quality score and internal editorial reviews.

The Google quality score is a metric assigned to each of your keywords. It is calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query.

People are still using direct linking, but it’s a hard road battling both established competitors and Google using this approach.

Direct linking campaigns are very easy to clone. Want to see which keywords your competitors are bidding on? Tools such as SEMRush and KeywordSpy reveal competitors bidding patterns.

Some unscrupulous affiliate networks could also steal your data to clone your campaigns. This is particularly true for the affiliate networks that push scams. If their entire business model is based on scamming people with hidden prices, rebilling fraud, and such then why would they treat you any differently?

Check out this illuminating interview in which Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney) talks about campaign cloning:

Many affiliate networks are known for spying on their affiliates and cloning their accounts. How do you prevent that from happening?

There is nothing you can do to prevent it. I have seen it happen with my accounts a lot… the funny thing is they still can’t do what I do…. even with all the data right in front of their face. I have had affiliate managers tell me they cloned my exact keyword campaign on Google adwords with same adcopy and everything and got 1/2 the earnings per click.

In the affiliate game lots of people clone each other’s work, causing returns to race toward 0. What do you differently that allows you to see success after success with affiliate marketing?

Great follow up and glad you asked it since I almost went into this in the previous question.

First and formost testing. We spend 10-30k a day on ppc networks (and have for a long time). This testing gives you an education that you need to make it work. I can honestly give you my exact landing page and keywords/adcopy for something that is working for me right now and guarentee you can’t make it work. You don’t know what targeting we are doing… what kind of day parting… etc etc. Its not like it was 7 years ago.

This is why a lot of people are so bitter on forums. They spent a full day copying everybody elses shit and cant make it work so they whine. They dont want to actually do any real work testing stuff on their own or being creative.

It is NEVER a good idea to give your keyword data to affiliate networks. They are higher on the revenue chain than you are and have fatter profit margins, thus they can bid you out of the market. Some tools like Prosper202 allow you to host your own data.

Cost Per Action

Cost per action is when you receive a payment if a visitor takes a specific action i.e. filling out a contact form. CPA is popular because the affiliate doesn’t have to close the deal with a sale.

The problem with CPA offers is that the good ones are tightly controlled and may disappear at any time, and without notice. If a visitor only has to fill out a form, as opposed to hand over a credit card, there is plenty of scope for abuse in the form of junk leads.

Merchants aren’t stupid. When this happens, they will either cut the payout, or more likely pull the offer and work only with a small group of trusted affiliates who have demonstrated they can deliver quality leads.

In addition, some (perhaps most?) of these offers (particularly in weight loss, health, and fitness) are usually for something where the person unknowingly gets billed to their phone, or gets a free trial with a recurring subscription, etc. And eventually the FTC or other organizations step in and close down the offers.

One of the more interesting approaches to pushing legitimate CPA offers was mentioned by ShoeMoney in this interview, where he mentioned how he created a Nebraska Cornhuskers quiz where people who got a high enough score “won” a free trial to Netflix (available through his affiliate link).

Selecting Merchants

You can sign up at major affiliate networks, such as Google Affiliate Network, PepperJam and Commission Junction. Or you can scout out individual merchants by typing “[keyword] + affiliate program” (in this case: loans) into a search engine.

One of the biggest problems with affiliate marketing is the low barrier to entry. Because it is easy for anyone to sign up, then the level of competition can be huge, especially if you’re using the same big affiliate networks as everyone else.

All sounds too hard?

Well, that’s a good thing! Because if something is hard to do, it means most people won’t put the effort in that is required to succeed. The difficulty creates a barrier to your competition, too. The winners overcome that barrier to reach the other side. I recommend reading The Dip, by Seth Godin, for a good analysis of this point.

Evaluate the seller as you would any supplier you buy from. What is their position in the market? Is their offering competitive? Would you buy from them? Is their offer compelling and do they execute well? You can tell a lot of this information by looking at their website. And if you buy + test out the product you will have knowledge that 99% of lazy affiliates do not, yielding a real competitive advantage.

If the seller doesn’t look that great, skip them. They aren’t worth your time. There’s not much point advertising a high payout percentage if their offer isn’t competitive.

Affiliate nirvana is when you find a great company that has few other affiliates.

How do you find such companies?

Plenty of these companies exist, but they may not be aware of affiliate marketing, or even internet marketing. They may have a very limited web presence. Perhaps no one has ever approached them. One of the best ways to do this is to help market local businesses online.

If you know of such companies, or you can make an effort to seek them out, this puts you in an excellent position if you can sign them up to an exclusive or semi-exclusive deal. The strongest business case for an affiliate, by far, is this type of white label, exclusive arrangement.

Your protection is that no other affiliate can directly compete with you by offering the exact same products or services.

If the merchant ends the term, you retain the data and knowledge. You can then make similar offers to their competitors.

The next best thing is having a direct relationship with the merchant. Often, the affiliate network forms a barrier between the affiliate and the merchant. However, if you can get a contact at the merchant company, you’re in a better position to negotiate better deals.

Building An Audience

This approach requires the most upfront work, but it’s a model that can pay off well over time.

The affiliate builds a site that attracts a particular audience demographic. The affiliate then picks affiliate programs to suit that demographic.

Whilst this approach fits nicely with SEO, it can also work with PPC. You can use PPC to get visitors to sign up to the site, join your forum, or subscribe to your RSS or e-mail newsletter. Typically, you don’t aim to make a sale at this point as the payoff comes later. These visitors can attract more visitors, especially if you blend in viral marketing techniques i.e. make it easy for them to invite friends.

You may get to a point where you can attract the same audience the top affiliate PPC bidders attract, but at much lower cost as you don’t have to build a new audience each time. You sell different products to the same audience you already have.

Another problem affiliates face is that they do all the marketing work, but the merchant keeps the customer list.

This is why building an email list or a web site is a great approach. You can capture buyers details, as opposed to letting the visitor disappear once you’ve passed the prospect along to the merchant. Once you have these details, you can build up a buyer list that you can leverage to offer related goods and services at a later date.

Also remember that people often do not buy on the first visit, no matter how interested they are in the product or service. They may click through to the merchant – on your dime – then go off and do some price comparison, perhaps leaving their buying decision for a few days, forgot who they went to a few days earlier, and end up buying the product elsewhere.

This is why it is important to capture a prospects details. At least you retain something – the details of an interested buyer.

You can then use auto-responders to keep your name in front of the buyer. People often need to hear your name a number of times before they make a buying decision, especially on big ticket items.

Summary

Learn the PPC environment. Test and learn about the market. Run short, low-cost campaigns to start, and work your way up. Try to discover market trends early to avoid competition. Try to establish close contact with merchants. Try to keep as much visitor data and contact details as possible in order to sell at a later date if an immediate sale doesn’t occur. Make sure your site is adding value, in the true 2010 sense of the word!

Negative keywords are search keywords you wish to exclude.

For example, if you target the term “cars”, and you sell new cars, you may not wish to appear under queries such as “used cars”, “classic cars” or “Best Friend’s Girl by The Cars”.

You can create a negative keyword list, like so:

• used
• vintage
• old
• second hand
• classic
• friends girl

By using negative keywords, you can cut down on unwanted impressions. These unwanted impressions can lower your click-thru rates and quality scores, thus increasing your cost per click. Trimming out that fat can save a lot of money as you are effectively gaining a discount on the rest of your impressions.

You can achieve something similar using a keyword list generator tool and exact match, however this match type means you may miss out on keywords you hadn’t considered, but may well be valuable. For example, you might exact match “cars”, or “new cars” but then you’d miss out on phrases such as “latest model vehicles”.

Look at your search query performance reports to find this data. Keep in mind that most keyword searches are unique, further underscoring the disadvantages of an over-reliance on exact match. There will be many keyword combinations you will never have considered. Part of your early phrase or broad match ad budget can be seen as an expense of buying market data & finding related keyword ideas to inform your future AdWords strategy.

A well constructed keyword list, including negative terms, can result in significant cost savings, as you can bid less than competitors who may not be focusing heavily on unnwanted queries.

Common Search Phrases To Exclude

The problem you’ll likely face is that your keyword reports might contain thousands of terms. There might be many irrelevant terms you need to exclude.

Here are a few short-cuts.

Think about the type of query people are making. Does the query indicate an encyclopedic-style search? Examples include “diagram”, “”map”, meaning of”, “what is”, etc.

Whilst you may be able to sell goods or services using such keywords, it’s most likely such terms indicate the searcher is looking for reference information.

“Free” is another obvious one, unless giving away free stuff is part of your marketing strategy. Closely related terms include “cheap”, “bargains”, “low price” and “sales”. These buyers are buying on price considerations, or wanting something for nothing. Again, unless you’re targeting this end of the market, exclude such terms with a negative match. Also consider excluding those people who want to “do it for themselves”, or seeking methodologies, unless, once again, these are your target markets.

Think carefully about what stage of the buy-cycle you are targeting. For example, you may be targeting people who are seeking information about your products or services. You want a lead, but may wish to close on the phone, or after a meeting. You may not want someone who wants to close a deal online. In these circumstances, terms relating to ordering online, price comparison, etc may be good candidates for negative match.

The Google Keywords tool can be useful for finding these terms. Search on your keywords and see what comes up. The associations can be revealing, especially when evaluating them in terms of of what you don’t want.

You can learn a lot about your demographic, especially if you can pick recurring patterns. For example, people searching on “software” might be looking to “burn” software, or “download free software”, more often than not. Are you seeing a lot of reference queries? A lot of “do it yourself” queries? Look specifically for patterns that indicate buying behavior, or lack thereof.

A high frequency of keywords that don’t indicate an intention to buy might make you rethink your keyword strategy around that term.

Numerous attempts have been made to create comprehensive negative keyword lists, but sometimes you have to go against conventional wisdom and test what works. However the numbers don’t lie. If you have chronic under-performers and/or irrelevant exposure then block them. And if you operate in parallel markets then many of the general themes from one campaign can help give you a stronger starting point for the next ad campaign.