Mercurythread » ppc

Huge arrows on PPC sitelinks in Google

Michael — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:25:47 +0000

I’m really starting to hate the PPC testing at Google – they call it usability improvements. There again I can’t blame ‘em for trying to improve the profitability of their products. Today I was searching for a few brands to see about getting some new life insurance. And I see the following when I search google.co.uk for “Sun Life Direct”:

Sun Life Direct PPC ad with arrows on the sitelinks

Huge blue arrows next to the site links – all that is missing is a couple of large neon signs which say “CLICK HERE” in blinking text to attract even more attention. Yesterday the background colour of the top PPC ads (yellow above) had changed to pink on my machine and green on another computer! I thought I was going colour blind -apparently not.

OK back to follow CTR improvements on PPC sitelinks for a while and determine if this increases the value of these for clients.

Cost Per Influence (new one on me)

Michael — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:18:23 +0000

Over at Ambergreen they did a blog piece on return on investment etc. Nice enough little piec, makes sense, nothing to make me disagree it’s nice (damned by faint praise I know). Anyway towards the end of it they user the term “cost per influence” and I have no idea how on earth you measure the cost per influence of an online marketing channel.

Cost per influence is mentioned on only 3,430 webpages (according to Google by doing a quick intext:”cost per influence” search) . And some of these date back to 2005 so its not exactly a term setting the heather alight with online conversations and interest. And to be honest I think the whole concept may be wrong.

The great love that I, and lots of businesses, have for online marketing is that its quantifiable. I make a PPC advert up I bid 10 pence of every forty people I get a sale. The sale costs me £4.00 and I make a couple of quid back as profit. If its not profitable I do some refinement, if it’s not profitable I turn it off or keep going with it accepting that revenue generation is more important and that other high return keywords will subsidise this one. With every channel its the same – we spent ‘x’ and we got ‘y’ as our return.

By starting to bring in concepts such as “cost per influence” everything beomces fluffy. Less empirical. Not based in numbers and we’re unable to define cost and benefit. There is a link between having strong PPC and a strong SEO campaign (PPC can beomce tactical and SEO more strategic by working together). But no agency goes in and says if you spend an extra couple of quid on PPC you’re SEO will benefit due to the growth in brand equity, and this means you can cut back on your SEO investment. And why? because:

they know they can’t prove it

They’ve pitched on hard cold figures. Invest this much to get this much back. Fluff doesn’t sell. fluff can be a great fall back position.

They know that banner advertising will always cost you a fortune and deliver only marginal results (marginal compared to PPC, SEO, email etc). Accept it. It’s expensive: that’s why most agencies will tell you banner advertising helps with ‘branding’ – my friend colin once described “branding as the excuse you give for not making sales” and I agree whole heartedly. Measuring brand equity online is a fools errand – it can’t be quantified. And if it can’t be quantified should we really be bringing it into online marketing. Just because your brand was mentioned 20 times in one tweeting day doesn’t indiciate that your campaign worked.

Cost per influence looks remarkably like the excuses made for campaigns that were for “branding”. Online marketing is about proving causality between action and result. I’m not saying that online advertising cant have a benefit in developing brand equity etc. Rather than you should not view these kind of fluffy, unquantifiable variables as something of use to your campaign.

Online campaigns generate return, clients invest to make returns and achieve targets. Multichannel analysis may indiciate cross campaign pollonation and benefit. But an indiciation of something is not evidence, and saying that some one came through one channel and bought on another without a clear factual basisis wrong.

Here endeth the rant for today. Feel better.

You, Me, Carpark, NOW…

Michael — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:21:12 +0000

Always liked the ring of that phrase. Far better than ‘Hi, how are you?’. Anyway have been running about the web trying to work out WTF Google has been upto recently – results are so screwey its half cock up (think Chris Iwelumo against Norway) and half comedy show (Homer Simpson’s been left in charge of the big set of Google buttons and smoking crack).

That’s an aside I just thought I’d post a cool image that I found over @ crackunit (nice blog – you should read his description of ‘digital planning‘).

If the answer is no – then I guess you must be doing PPC for a living – poor souls…

Imagine Google being your Affiliate on your Programs

Michael — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:23:42 +0000

There is no point in getting too angry too often. And when it comes to PPC I rarely get angry or feel any other emotion. Everything in PPC can generally be scoped, planned, projected, dissected to within an inch of its ROI driven life. To me personally that makes it a bit dull – its a bit like Internet Marketing on auto pilot. But is does generate sales for many sites, and cost effective high ROI sales. Even affiliates can make good profits with PPC. So I guess it was only a matter of time before the money hungry share holders at Google wanted to get as much money from it as they can.

For the first time I saw Google trying to steal everyones sales with their price comparrison function. Right at the top of the results, displayed to distract users from the other results they’ve rattled in a price comparison function. I was doing some research for a potential client in the financial sector – rather than looking to strangle myself with expensive debt. I think the ditraction factor is hugely important – by creating a level of abrasion on a page you can increase clickthrough rates on your on screen items. Highlight it, change the font, do anything just to make to clash with other elements – not so much as it annoys people but just enough that they have a thought of “whats that” as they read through your content. The new item certainly did that to me today – so much so that I got a PPC expert to explain it to me. Apparently its part of Googles Merchant Search functionality.

Google Price Comparisson function

You select an amount from the drop down and click compare lenders and you’re sent to: http://www.google.co.uk/MerchantSearchBeta/search. And you get:

Is google an affiliate?

The swine @ Google must be getting commision on sales – or the cost per click must be massive.

If you’re an affiliate relying on PPC be on the look out. Google may be coming to steal all your luctrative sales. May be time to get into some SEO and stop developing bridge pages to make your sales. If Google expands this to many more queries it could be a fun ride.

BigMouthMedia Internet Marketing PDF Documents

Michael — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:57:18 +0000

Bigmouthmedia are pretty much the largest Internet Marketing providers in the UK. I’ve always been based in Scotland and as such they’re always in the forefront of the industry gaze. When I worked at Oyster Web, at one stage there were two of us working out a bedroom, and we were beating them hands down in the SERPs for everything to do with SEO: they got more clients – and higher spending clients at that. As such I’ve kept an eye on them for about 6 years.

Anyway one of the things they do which I really like, and I’m thinking of doing in the next couple of months, are their PDF handouts. For their Internet marketing services they provide small PDF documents for clients, prospective clients and anyone who wants them. Today I got sent a link to their new affiliate marketing guide.

I’ve stuck links below to the docs I know of that they’ve made so far – there are more I’m sure but I dont have all the URLs to hand. I list them not because I think it’ll change how you think about your marketing online but because they may help you develop your own ‘soft sell‘ documents. If you’ve got a new service what better way to announce it than by sending all your clients a nice little doc that’s a bit fun. Or if you’re in pre-sales mode with a new lead arises send them the bundle by email – it’ll be cool, branded and keep you in their thoughts.

Bignmouthmedia PDF Links

Have fun.