Well then, here it is, 2011 in all its glory. Hopefully 2010 was as good a year for you as it was for us here at Epiphany; it has certainly been full of change and challenges. As ever the world of paid search marketing has been a whirlwind of innovation and advance with new channels, features, and options galore. Keeping with New Year’s tradition, here is a list of resolutions that may be worth bearing in mind in the coming year…
Make Sure You Give and Receive…
Be active in the community. Ensure you keep up to date with all the latest blogs and discussions. But remember, like any good relationship, it should be a two way process. Whenever you have an interesting idea or pick up on a new innovation, share it in a blog or start a discussion, remember what your parents said ‘it’s better to give than to receive’! Contribute to a company blog – post some links to interesting articles on Twitter? It’s a fantastic way to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry and build relationships.
This is certainly something we take seriously at Epiphany, since we began blogging we have published over 350 articles and our blog traffic is up almost 1000% (!!!) year on year.
Add More Strings to Your PPC Bow…
AdWords is where it’s at in terms of search volume by far, but don’t let this stop you utilising all of the PPC channels that make up today’s landscape. Yahoo and Bing offer a decent slice of volume, and since the well publicised merger, there’s never been a better time to start tapping into the additional volumes these two platforms offer.
This brings us to the social beasts that are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook offers a huge amount of traffic and has some great targeting options, letting you experiment with reaching out to specific demographics based on their likes and interests. The interface is user friendly and creating ads couldn’t be simpler, and while a small gripe is that there is no conversion tracking built into the interface this is easily overcome with some intelligent use of Analytics. Twitter is a relatively new entrant into the paid search arena with ‘Promoted Tweets’. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of Twitter in the paid search world but this is definitely one to look out for in the coming year.
Don’t Forget Your Mobile…
I know, I know, the industry has been banging on about the emergence of Mobile since about 2004 but it really is time to start utilising this growing platform. At Epiphany this is something we believe is important to be at the forefront of. Nearly 30% of the time spent on the internet is now via a mobile device, while sales of smart phones have increased by more than 50% in 2010. So bite the bullet and accept that mobile is here to stay, create some mobile specific campaigns and start optimising for the smartphone generation.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat…
In other words make sure you keep on analysing and optimising your PPC campaigns. No matter how established and settled your account is, there’s always something new that can be tested, don’t get complacent and keep on innovating! They don’t have to be huge changes, how about using a new superlative in your ads? Try different capitalisation perhaps, or do a bit of landing page testing. When it comes to optimising your account every little helps, don’t stand still or it’s more than likely you’ll get left behind.
On top of this are you sure you are capitalising on all that AdWords has to offer? There are some great new features that have become vital to our accounts at Epiphany. These include; Sitelinks, product extentions, location extensions, remarketing and many more. These are all powerful tools and can really add a new level of sophistication to an AdWords campaign.
Be Considerate…
Don’t just drop your customers on site and forget about them. Are you sending them to the right page? The aim of PPC is to send as many relevant users to site, but really our job shouldn’t end there. The use of intelligent deep linking is a must, especially for ecommerce customers, the less work a user has to do – the more likely they are to convert. It doesn’t stop there though; you always need to ask yourself if there are any barriers in the conversion process that may be putting customers off. There is no point sending all that wonderfully qualified traffic you’ve been working so hard to optimise your account for, to a site that confuses the user.
Forget Getting Skinny, Get Broad (Match Modified)…
The introduction of the Broad Match Modifier has really added an extra option when looking at the keyword reach of a campaign, and although it’s been around for a while now, many people still are utilising this handy addition to the Match Type family.
Your common or garden broad match can be very unwieldy and result in you appearing for searches that bear little relation to the services or products that you offer, or display a less than relevant ad. Alas, no more, with modified Broad Match you can use the ‘+’ symbol infront of any keyword in your keyword phrase and Google will only include results containing common misspellings, abbreviations, or pluralisation’s of that particular keyword. This can be particularly useful if you are finding Broad Match is pulling down your click through rates or delivering poor quality traffic. Give it a go, you might just be pleasantly surprised!
Finally, go and take a good long look at yourself (or your accounts)…
Many advertisers fall into the trap of letting established accounts fall into a ‘comfort zone’. Take the New Year as an opportunity to step back and take stock of your position. Are your objectives still relevant? So there you are, some resolutions for the coming year, I hope they will help you get into gear for 2011.
You may also be interested in the SEO and Conversion Rate Optimisation Resolutions we have for 2011.
Have you made any PPC New Year’s resolutions? Do you have any questions about the ones detailed above? If so let me know, I’ll be more than happy to hear from you.