May 11, 2010
If you read our blogs and re-posts here, chances are you are a pretty savvy PPC marketer; so I don’t have to tell you that Google makes up an enormous amount of all PPC traffic generated on a daily basis. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can be truly successful as a strictly PPC marketer without their high volume of traffic. Having said that, Over the past year we have expanded deeply into the MSN and Yahoo ad platforms and found some really good traffic.
Basically, we took our ideas and core structure of our successful Google campaigns and brought them into MSN’s adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing… Let’s start there:
Bringing your current campaigns into a new platform can be slightly tricky, sometimes confusing and often time consuming. There a a whole bunch of solutions out there… some are cheap, some are pricey and their effectiveness varies. If you do decide to purchase a software or web interface subscription for these services, it’s not a bad idea. I have used Acquisio and found it to be quite effective. However, after realizing that the system does not do everything perfectly (and receiving my first bill!!!) I spent a few hours figuring out a way to do it with .csv files that you can export from the desktop applications. Adwords editor, and the yahoo, msn desktop programs are all free of charge and very useful.
I won’t go into the process but you’ll see what’s missing if you try… I would also suggest starting with just a few or maybe only 1 campaign in the new engine. Get comfortable with the system, and make sure you CPC isn’t ruining your bottom line on that campaign.
Evaluating the Effectiveness of your new traffic is essential! Not all campaigns are created equal and you therefore can not expect the same results as the previous engine. Without reaching any further down than Yahoo and MSN your traffic quality should remain decant as long as you had good ad copy and keywords to begin with. So you can expect similar conversion rates, but obviously lower volume.
Take care to run SUB ID/CLICK REF’S reports or however your network defines uniquely tagged clicks you can trace back to a point of origin. I can’t stress this point enough. With new sources of traffic coming in you should qualify them and make sure that you are profitable with the new platform, regardless of synergy. If you were making 3:1 in Google don’t let your new ads take away from that. The point is to build on the existing success you have already taken the time to create. Adding more sales is not the goal, increasing ROI is!!!!!!
The Benefits of Running ads in Yahoo and Bing are countless.
Obviously extra traffic is great and the fact that (for the most part) your CPC will be lower here provides great potential for adding to your revenue. It’s not always cheaper outside the Google box but it generally is due to a lack of competition. Be warned though, occasionally you’ll find a program that costs a lot more in yahoo especially.
If you get “boxed out” of a word you once held in Google, you can go claim it in Bing! We’ve all been attacked or just plain outbid on words that once converted really well. It happens and it stinks big time, but you can get some of those sales back this way.
The content networks can be a big boost if this is a way you get a lot of your traffic. Yahoo in particular has a HUGE network of sites that your ad can appear on. Millions of Americans use Yahoo!’s start page as their homepage and/or news portal. This can be a great place to get noticed, as well as MSN’s Hotmail which runs your ads at the top much like in Gmail for Google.
PPC Advertising is Trial & Error Based. There is only so much you can do before testing out your ideas. Sometimes you have to take a little risk and invest your money in new places. Expanding into the 2nd and 3rd biggest search engines shouldn’t scare you too much. There is plenty of help to be found and if you do a controlled migration you should ease into your new platforms real quickly. Remember don’t expand for the sake of expanding. Be smart, diligent and increase you return on investment!
Feel Free to use this article around the web. (Just cite proper credits please!)
-Dan Spivak
The Smartest Search
