Paid search, including a background on the channel and how to refer to it, how to set up campaigns and measure and optimize your results, as well as advanced techniques and ongoing management, you should understand why and when to use paid search, how to set up a campaign that is relevant to your business, how to optimize and manage the campaign and have a perspective on the advanced techniques used in order to differentiate your organization.
Paid search is a deceptively complex channel and one that, like many other marketing channels on and offline, takes many years to understand in detail. There are two primary reasons for this. First, paid search has more jargon and acronyms than any other form of digital marketing and so the above key terms may be useful to refer to throughout this chapter. This is ironic, considering that good marketing copywriting involves avoiding exactly this type of situation but, irony aside, it is essential to understand the language of the channel to be able to communicate your strategy effectively. Second, it is remarkably easy to begin paid search activity and to gain an understanding of the very basics but, unfortunately, very difficult to get it right and to understand the tremendous number of options and variables.
As a result, it is important that within this section we start by providing an overview of the basics of paid search (and at the same time tackle the jargon) then quickly move to measurement (as good measurement criteria reduces the risk of getting it wrong). We will of course look at measurement more generally later in the book, but as measurement in paid search is unique and crucial to success it is key that we address it here also. We then cover some of the more advanced paid search techniques and discuss whether humans or robots are
best suited to managing paid search. Finally, we cover how paid search can work in harmony with SEO, how the boundaries between paid search and display are blurring, and demonstrate how paid search can bring substantial rewards if done correctly.
The main paid search platform is of course Google and therefore this section focuses on the functionality provided by them. However, the others (Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, etc) follow a very similar approach.
Key terms
Some of the key terms used in paid search are:
PPC: ‘pay per click’, a term often used instead of paid search.
SEM: ‘search engine marketing’ – usually refers to paid search.
Bid: an auction-style bid price for your advert’s ranking.
Keyword: the word people use to search.
CPC: ‘cost per click’ – the amount paid for every click on your ad.
Ad copy: the words that make up your ad.
Match type: the way that your keyword is matched to the phrase searched for.
Quality score: a formula that Google uses to determine your ad quality.
Publisher: a site on a network that shows ads from other organizations.
Search network: a network of sites that provide the search results.
Metrics: a measurement (see below for specific metrics).
Day parting: tailoring your campaign to days and times.
Site link: a link to a part of your website; this is one of the extension options.
Extension: these are extra functions you can add to your campaign.
The basics of paid search
Paid search can be quite simply defined: it is the process of bidding for potential clicks on an advert you create that is displayed within the search results pages of most search engines. However, given that this is the land of jargon, let’s get to the point: it is the ads you see at the top, bottom and side of the search results page. Unlike traditional advertising, paid search is ‘bought’ via an auction model. For a given keyword or phrase an advertiser can place a maximum bid; the higher the bid, the higher the likelihood that the advert will be displayed in the top positions. However, one of the big attractions of paid search advertising is that the advertiser only pays each time the advert is clicked, not displayed.
This is obviously highly compelling and is perhaps the main reason why paid search has been adopted by one-man bands, multinationals and every company in-between.
What do we call the channel?
Confusingly the industry has seen fit to use different terms to describe the same thing, so let’s start by clarifying this. Paid search can also be referred to as:
● PPC, or pay per click: quite a logical name, given that it very accurately describes the basic mechanics of paid search – ie you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. However, some other channels, such as affiliate and display, can use this payment method and so it can be confusing.
● SEM, or search engine marketing: SEM was once used as an umbrella term to encompass both search engine optimization and paid search, albeit mainly in the United States. Somewhat oddly the industry, again though mainly in the United States, has adopted the SEM acronym to refer solely to paid search, therefore creating a split between SEO and SEM.
● Biddable media: a newer term that covers any media you can bid on to buy. So paid search sits under biddable media. Of all of these terms paid search is the clearest and most accurate so that is the one we use here.
Setting up a campaign
As noted above, setting up a paid search campaign is incredibly easy. However, many businesses will see this as an easy entry to digital marketing but it is important before starting to consider this: paid search can drain marketing spend very quickly and an ill-considered campaign may very well have a negative return. So, this section is designed to cover the basics of getting a strategic paid search campaign set up. As per the approaches we have been discussing so far, it starts with defining your objectives and understanding your audience. We will assume that you have looked at this as part of your initial strategic planning.
Keyword research
Having set your objective and identified your audience, the next step is keyword research. There is a suggested process for this and it applies just as well to paid search. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google’s own keyword analyzer (available as part of the Ad words platform) is a great tool for building out keywords. However, as with SEO, you need to pick your battles. If your budget is $500 a month, then the highly popular volume driving or ‘halo’ terms are not within your budget and instead you should focus on niche or longer tail keywords that you are more likely to win the battle on. To put this into context, some of the most expensive keywords have average cost per clicks well above $50 and so you can see how quickly your budget can be depleted if your keyword research and planning is not conducted thoroughly.
Campaigns and ad groups
Google and thousands of other sources provide plenty of guidance on how to structure a paid search account. In short, you will have one or more campaigns. A campaign defines your overall budget settings and determines where your ads appear (both in terms of geography and ad networks).
If you are setting up the paid search campaign for an auto dealership, for example, you might have one campaign for cars and a separate campaign for bikes. Within a campaign you should have a number of ad groups. Think of ad groups as logical storage buckets. You would not throw all your stock into one big bucket so don’t do the same with your ads. Each ad group should contain similar keywords/phrases and therefore similar products. So you might in the cars campaign have an ad group for each individual type of car you sell.
For example:
● Campaign one – cars:
- ad group one: Fords;
- ad group two: Toyotas.
●Campaign two – bikes:
- –ad group one: Harley Davidsons;
- ad group two: Triumphs.
Think strategically
The keywords are the start of the user journey. This is what your user is specifically looking for. Users are individuals and want to be treated as such, therefore try to ensure that your journey is as unique as it can be. You can best achieve this by aligning your journeys to the user needs and this means creating a very large and organized set of keywords. Spending the time building out your keywords can be the difference between success and failure.
Ad copy
Paid search ad copy is an art form as you have a limited number of characters (130 including the display URL and just 63 characters for double-width languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean) to create something that is highly relevant and compelling. The good news is there is no limit to the number of ads you can create, so try out a few and refine as you go.
Think strategically
Following on from the section above, at this stage it is vital that your ad copy matches to the search term as closely as possible.
Ad copy
A manufacturer of socks would have a wide range of socks available, including smart socks, sports socks, casual socks and perhaps even tights. Differentiating these is vital in your ad copy to ensure maximum relevance to the user. Imagine if a user searches for ‘white sports socks’ and receives the following three ads in the results from three separate companies:
- Buy white socks today.
- White sports socks.
- Get cheap socks here.
Option two is returned based on the campaign set-up and is an exact match to the keyword, as the account has been built into a logical structure with deep customization to keyword type. This option is clearly a perfect match to what the user is looking for and will receive an increased level of clicks versus other ads that are returned in the same position. This in turn means that this company can bid lower in the knowledge that being returned in position two or three is fine as the relevance of their ad will ensure that they still receive the most clicks.
Match types
Once you have created your ads and defined your keyword list you need to consider match types for each keyword. In short, you can tell Google whether you want your ads to appear for just the exact keyword/phrase entered or widen it out with a number of parameters – the widest being a ‘broad match’, which will show your ads for the keywords/phrases requested and any related keywords. Broad matching will generate the most traffic, but by its very nature it will be less targeted and therefore performance may not be as good. In addition, broad match can very quickly get expensive. Typically, most paid search experts only use broad match for an initial period of exploration to help find the keywords/phrases that convert the best.
A description of the various match types, courtesy of Google, ‘negative match’, is worthy of more detailed discussion as it can be very powerful. A detailed review of your ad campaign will likely show some keywords/phrases that are not a good match to the products/services you sell. If this is the case you will potentially be displaying irrelevant ads, which will affect your click-through rate (and in turn your cost per click as quality score may be affected). Removing these erroneous keywords/phrases using negative keywords is therefore highly recommended.
Quality score
Quality score is a Google metric and is a measure of the quality of the ad. The higher the quality score, the higher your position potential. If, for example, two advertisers both have a maximum bid of $10 but one has a higher quality score, the one with the higher quality score will likely be given the higher position. Indeed, even if the maximum bid for the company with the higher quality score was $9 they may still get the higher position. Why? Because Google wants to present ads that people will find relevant and click on. The quality score algorithm is not publicly available but some of the factors that contribute to a higher score are, including how long you have been advertising, your click-through rates (CTRs) and your ad relevancy.