1. CONFIDENTIAL – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE 1
The Weirdest Intro to PPC Ever!
10+ Years of PPC Experience in
Just 40 Minutes
Larry Kim,
Founder/CTO, WordStream
June 27, 2014
2. Win One of Two $25 Amazon Gift Cards!!
• Include the hashtag #wordstream
and me (@larrykim) in your tweets
• Prizes Awarded For:
–Best Tip
–Funniest Tweet
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
3. About Me
Larry Kim (@larrykim)
• Founder & CTO of WordStream
• Commander of the Google AdWords
Quality Score Rebellion
• Had a Kid 7 Weeks Ago (#ppckid)
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #wordstream
4. Today’s Agenda: Weirdest Intro to PPC Ever
1. How AdWords Really Works
2. Winning at AdWords the Weird Way
– Tips for Writing Killer Ads / Picking
Keywords
– Tips for Writing Amazing Offers
– User Context & Mobile Search
– Converting Customers with Remarketing
Larry Kim (@larrykim)
32. Quick Recap
1. Below Avg. CTR =
Low QS
2. Low CTR ads:
Have Lower Ad Positions (Fewer Clicks)
Often don’t even get displayed
Get penalized w/ up to 400% higher CPCs
Have up to 64% higher cost per conversion
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
33. The High CTR Game for AdWords
1. Be Very Picky. Bid on Only the Best
Keywords and Get HIGH CTRs.
2. Delete Junk Keywords (Bottom Third of
your Account)
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
41. Some Ads Do 2x, 3x or 6x Above Avg!?
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
42. Under-Performing vs. Unicorns
Percentile Vs. Expected
CTR
Name
Bottom 50% Below Expected
CTR
Under-
Performing
Advertisers
Top 15% 2X Higher Awesome
Advertisers
Top 5% 3x Higher Super Awesome
Advertisers
Top 1% 6x Higher!! Unicorns
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
44. Ad Text Testing
• Same Story – 20% of Ads Generate 92% of Spend
• 20% of Ads Generated 65% of Impressions
• But CPA, CTR, and Conversion Rates vary
@larrykim, @perrymarshall
45. 1. Keywords With High Commercial Intent
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
60. Relative Abundance
Name Percentile Relative
Abundance
Vs. Expected
CTR
Awesome
Ads
Top 15% 1:6.7 2X Higher
Super
Awesome
Ads
Top 5% 1:20 3x Higher
Unicorns Top 1% 1:100 6x Higher!!
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
61. You’re Not Testing as Many Ads as You Think…
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
66. The Great Landing Page Optimization Fairy Tale
• We Changed the:
– Font Type
– Spacing
– Button Color
– Image
– Etc.
• We got a 5%
Increase in
Conversions!!*
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
67. Typical Conversion Rate Optimization Test
• PTD- Premature Testing Dilemma (aka
“Optimizatitis”)
– The Early Lead Disappears!
– We want to believe our hard work paid off but we are often
deluding ourselves…
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
68. Conventional Landing Page Optimization is Over-Rated
• Small Changes Result in Small Changes
• The x% Increase you think you got
probably isn’t significant!
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
71. What’s a Good Conversion Rate?
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
72. Unremarkable vs. Unicorns
Distribution Point Conversion Rate Vs Average Comments
Average 2.35% Unremarkable
Top 25% 5.31% 2x Awesome
Top 10% 11.45% 3-5x Unicorns
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #wordstream
73. “top 10% of accounts have a CVR 3x average” rule
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
Distribution
Point
All accounts Ecommerce Legal B2B Finance
Median
Conversion
Rate
2.35% 1.84% 2.07% 2.23% 5.01%
Top 25%
Conversion
Rate
5.31% 3.71% 4.12% 4.31% 11.19%
Top 10%
Conversion
Rate
11.45% 6.25% 6.46% 11.70% 24.48%
74. Aim For 2-5x Increases Not 2-5%!
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
84. You Need To Try Out
10 Landing Pages To
Find 1 Unicorn
85. Relative Abundance
Name Percentile Relative
Abundance
Vs. Expected
Conversion
Rate
Awesome
Landing
Pages
Top 25% 1:4 2x Higher
Unicorns Top 10% 1:10 5x Higher!!
Larry Kim (@larrykim)
96. Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
Call Extensions Radically Change The Flow!
Calls to Businesses worth on Average 3x More
Than Clicks to Websites!!
4. Captured
Lead
2. Calls
Business
2. Clicks On Ad
Desktop Search Conversion Funnel
3% Avg.
Conversion
Rate
Mobile Conversion Funnel
1. Sees Ad 1. Sees Ad
3. Visits Website
Landing Page
3. Lead
Captured!!
101. Typical Conversion Rates Are in Single Digits
of people who visit a website
leave without completing
the actions marketers want
them to take
~97%
Your Ad
Your Site
X
-
of people abandon their
shopping cart without
completing a purchase
70%
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
104. Typical Reach of Remarketing…
1. Reach 2. Frequency 3. DiversityOn various pagesReach more users Reach them frequently
Of the typical remarketing
audience, find
Reach them on between As they visit 20 or more pages
on a typical day across
84%
…within a month
10-18 days
… or more out of the month
5-10 sites
… of which all pages and
sites have ad space available
to Google Display Network buyers
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
110. 1. Delete Bottom Third of your Search Marketing
Campaigns
2. Redeploy Budget to Remarketing!!
Crazy PPC Strategy!!
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
111. Summary: Weirdest Intro to PPC Ever
1. Just Say No to Low CTR!
2. Write Insane Ads that Get 3x Avg. CTR
3. Crazy Offers that Get 3x Conversion Rates
4. Use Mobile Search to Triple ROI
5. Convert Customers with Remarketing
Larry Kim (@larrykim) #mnsearch
Show how the keyword expansion is easier using a tool. Explain that we’re following the same best practices that Brad Suggested.
Now guys just a quick warning here. I’ve got like 40 data-packed slides and just 15 minutes to go through them so try to keep up! After all, this is SMX advanced not SMX beginner.
Talk about how google makes it very hard for PPC spammers, too. Google shut down millions of spammy accounts year. All keywords/ads are graded with a quality score. The higher your quality score, the higher your ad ranking and lower your cost per click.
The first big change I’ve noticed is that Google expects way more performance from your ads. They’ve raised the bar in terms of the quality they expect from your ads. Here I’m showing some research into expected click through rates across a few thousand advertiser accounts and found that the average click through rates for any given ad position is much higher than you might expect -- and keeps trending even higher. So why should you care?
Done
Talk about how google makes it very hard for PPC spammers, too. Google shut down millions of spammy accounts year. All keywords/ads are graded with a quality score. The higher your quality score, the higher your ad ranking and lower your cost per click.
I’ve heard people say that it’s not possible to get high quality scores in your specific industry (as if google has a personal grudge against you and your industry). Keep in mind that quality score is based on beating an expected average click through rate for a given ad position. So by definition, in any industry, essentially around half of the accounts out there have above average quality scores, the other half don’t.
To prove this, I recently segmented average quality scores by industry and found that in all industries, there were (surprise surprise) both high and low average quality scores for every industry!
For example, I looked at specifically at B2B companies (the purple dots in this graph) and found that the calculations used to determine their Quality Scores weren’t a heck of a lot different from any other industry.
What about Finance Companies – the yellow dots in the graph? surely google must be out to get wall street? Again, not a huge difference compared to other industries.
Same with Ecommerce companies – the orange dots in this graph. Again, their quality score calculations were very similar to every other industry out there. So if you hear anyone say that It’s not possible to get a high quality score – I think that could be a bit of a cop-out – the problem could be their strategy.
I’ve heard people say that it’s not possible to get high quality scores in your specific industry (as if google has a personal grudge against you and your industry). Keep in mind that quality score is based on beating an expected average click through rate for a given ad position. So by definition, in any industry, essentially around half of the accounts out there have above average quality scores, the other half don’t.
To prove this, I recently segmented average quality scores by industry and found that in all industries, there were (surprise surprise) both high and low average quality scores for every industry!
Talk about the reasons why we thought that there could be a great opportunity here.
Talk about the process of defining different audiences based on where they visited on our website, so that we can message to them differently in our ads. Talk about how we didn’t have to use managed placements because we already have people visiting the site and we’re merely trying to convert them.
Describe how we target different ads to different audiences. Mention that even though there are ad builders available from google, we designed our own.