2008 PPC Learnings

2008.
With 2008 coming to a close,have you reflect back regarding your search campaigns in 2008 ? What can you learn and leverage for 2009 ?

Here's some learnings to share for 2008:

Daily Budget:
How better to blow your budget overnight ?
- Setting a newly revised daily budget and going for a holiday, going for a few day retreat, ignoring the budget over the weekend. Get ready to burn off your budget when you try the above mention.

Keywords
- Bidding on high click through keywords which has zero or very low conversion rates.
- Over bidding on keywords without having taken into consideration of your revenue / profit per conversion.
- Paying for negative keywords without knowing (Failure to run the reports in identifying the negative keywords which are costing you money but zero / low conversions)
- Lumping all your keywords all onto a single ad group when you should be segmenting them individually onto respective relevant ad groups.

ZERO testing:
- Simply just running your only ad copy without any alternative copy in testing which has a better conversion rate. No split / AB testing conducted.
- Which elements of the landing page are better enticing the prospects in converting ? (Call to action button, colours, hero image, form fields, copy content)

Generic Landing Page:
- Simply send all your potential customers to a generic page without a goal in mind; paying for all the clicks but zero conversions. When you should be sending them to respective product / promotions / information page.

Your Turn.
PPC search campaign learnings to share ?

Optimize your PPC campaigns

2008.
The year is coming to an end.
How much are you spending on search marketing ?
Are your marketing dollars well spent ?
Or are you throwing your $ out of your window ?

So how do you better optimize your ppc campaigns ?
Enough said, here's some quick tips to implement now.

PPC elements optimization:

Negative keywords
* Removal of non-performing keywords which are not converting but costing $

Split testing
* Any split test conducted on a on-going basis ?
* Which ad group is converting better ? In individual countries ? In seasonal period ?
* How long is the test conducted ? Too long ? Too Short period ?

Historical keyword performance
* What's the historical keyword performance of individual ad groups / campaigns ?


Other on-page elements to test:

Call to Action Button
* Colour - which colour on the cta button converts better ? In different countries ? In different seasonal period ?
* Copy on cta - which copy on cta converts better ? In different countries ? In different seasonal period ?
* Shape - Which shape coverts better ? In different countries ?

Web Form
* Which part of your web form field is actually necessary ? Or which part of web form fields are hindering conversion rates ?
* Shorter web form field, have you tried testing the conversion after alteration ?

Landing Page Load Time
* How fast is your landing page loading ?
* What is the landing page individual document size ?
* What is the average Internet connection speed of your visitors ?

Landing Page Copy Font
* Is your landing page fonts visible ? (Even though visitors / potential customers scan web pages)
* Which Font size / colour converts better ? In different countries ?

Landing Page Friction Elements
* Which element of your landing page is actually hindering conversion rate ? (Don't make the visitors / potential customers think !)
* Are there any substantial claims or testimonials to support your copy content in reducing friction,thereby increasing trust factor ?

Implement this:
> Try using Google Website Optimizer, let the consumers test / decide for you, which on page elements work best at which country, for which seasonal period, for which promotional campaign, etc.

Test, Test, Test
Learn.
Optimize.
Re-Test, Re-Test

Are you testing ?