Whenever I’m asked to audit a PPC account, my first question to the client is: how do you measure performance? It’s a simple question and the usual response is CPA (cost per acquisition) or ROI (return on investment). If the answer is CPA, then there are some follow-up questions: how many products or services are offered? And if more than one, then do they cost the same, or are they worth the same to the advertiser? What I’m getting at is that CPA is usually is a limitation of tracking – the advertiser cannot associate true revenue with the conversion. Managing to an ROI, and moreover, managing to maximize profit margin for each keyword will open up new doors for PPC efficiency.
Clients that manage to CPA generally have several products or services. To see the underlying issue with CPA optimization, consider the situation where we have two possible conversions: one worth $20 and one worth $40. If we optimize to an avg CPA of $30, we may be only selling $20 products and losing money. With ROI optimization, this is not a possibility. If CPA optimization is the only possible route, then there are a few best practices to find a good CPA to set as a goal. If the transactions occur online, then calculate the average order value and subtract the avg variable cost to the advertiser – this is the max CPA. If the online conversion is a lead which requires offline sales, then multiply this CPA by the average offline conversion rate to define the eCPA (effective CPA). Read the rest of this entry »
CPA vs ROI Optimization…What’s The Best Practice?
March 12, 2010
Leave a Comment » | 
SEM, Trends, eSearchVision General, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: SEM, ROI, PPC, Audit | 
Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
PPC vs SEO
January 20, 2010Why pay for clicks when you can get them for free?
This question often comes up when facing relatively inexperienced advertisers deciding between PPC and SEO. While I cannot refute any argument based solely on this logic (organic clicks are free and paid clicks are not), I can make a case for PPC even when SEO is at its best – which certainly is not the case for the majority of sites out there.
There are three distinct advantages that paid listings have over organic listings, and as a result these are the three most compelling arguments for integration of SEM into any marketing scheme:
1. If you don’t use SEM, your competition will poach your traffic. Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | SEM, Trends, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: marketing, online marketing, paid search, PPC, query, SEM, SEO, Trends | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
Tug-of-War
October 2, 2009by: Joshua Krafchin
The beauty of paid search marketing is that results are highly trackable. We can trace revenue back not only to the keyword and match type level, but also by the hour or even by the geography of the original search queries typed into any search engine. This extensive tracking provides us the opportunity to understand not only revenue and cost implications, but a whole host of other criteria from visitor interaction with our website to offline conversions and gross margin. With this surplus of data and choice though, many marketers run into the dilemma of how exactly to define success. Shifting general business priorities outside of search, whether or not they relate to search specifically, can directly impact how we manage a search program.
One of the big tug-of-wars is between ROI and volume. Because search is so measurable and trackable, companies have come to expect hitting and surpassing ROI numbers. In turn, this ability to consistently hit ROI makes paid search revenue highly desirable, and executives will push for more and more revenue volume from paid search. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | SEM, Trends, eSearchVision General, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: business, client, goals, ROI, SEM | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
Heads vs Tails
September 17, 2009Traditionally, search marketers base their search results on a “last click wins” basis. This means that the last click a consumer makes always gets attributed the sales revenue or conversion, regardless of how many other searches were made prior. The result is that brand terms often appear hugely profitable and costly generic terms appear to offer an extremely low ROI, if any at all. This makes it difficult to correctly classify “head” vs “tail” terms.
To combat this discrepancy, whenever we estimate performance for a keyword, we also calculate a confidence interval related to that prediction. When the confidence interval is too large, it means the prediction is useless (typical for keywords with very low traffic). We then need to aggregate in a relevant way (which is usually different from the way keywords are structured in ad groups) to get a critical mass of stats.
For this reason, we offer two different algorithms for automated bid management: Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | SEM, Trends, eSearchVision General, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: bid management, core, heads, long-tail, paid search, SEM, tails | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
Social Media – Finding a Balance
July 23, 2009In the world of marketing, we are dominated by the digital media all around us. The evidence is everywhere: the rapid growth of mobile search, branding campaigns spawned by YouTube and of course, social media tools. If you don’t buy into it, try having a discussion with someone about current marketing strategies without the focus turning to Twitter.
Social media as a whole has gained instant popularity among marketers and advertisers – and why wouldn’t it? The tools, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Technorati, FriendFeed, SlideShare, MySpace and many more, encourage instant brand updates and have the capability to reach gigantic audiences all at once. Brand perceptions can be improved almost overnight with strategic messaging and blasting. To top it all off, they’re completely free!
Social media tools have some serious benefits, but getting the most from these tools isn’t always a piece of cake. keep reading…
Leave a Comment » | Trends, Uncategorized | Tagged: marketing, ping.fm, social, twitter | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
Take Advantage of Mobile Search for Holiday 09
July 16, 2009In the retail world there are two seasons: holiday and the rest of the year. Companies will host a few other sales that bring in significant revenue, but everyone knows the big money comes in during Q4. With the influx of search opportunity, competition, and new technology during the holiday season, when we talk about the future of search, it’s applicable to look at both the short term [holiday 09] and the longer term [2010 and beyond].
As we witnessed during the 2008 holiday season, consumers are shopping for a deal – even more so in times of recession. What’s changed since the last time around? Those big ticket items from last year are turning into the biggest marketing opportunities for 2009, namely smartphones (and other internet enabled portable devices such as iPod Touch). For SEM purposes, the biggest difference between a smartphone and a WAP enabled phone is a true (HTML based) web browser – as HTML mobile browsers can support standard ad copy. With the introduction of device targeting within Google AdWords, advertisers can isolate smartphones into a unique campaign and take full advantage of opportunities like geo-targeting and one-click purchasing. Imagine seeing an ad targeted to your zip code for the exact product you’re searching for at a store nearby, and instantly making a purchase with one click. read more about mobile and holiday…
Leave a Comment » | Mobile Ads, SEM, Trends, paid search, search engine marketing | Tagged: holiday, mobile, SEM | Permalink
Posted by mwendling
Google Continues To Dominate
February 2, 2009Google continued to dominate the industry with end-of-year results showing the search engine at 63.5 percent market share in the US, according to TechCrunch. Google continued to climb through 2008, while the other top tier engines remained relatively flat. With the number of search queries increased in 2008 from 2007, Google managed to capture the vast majority of these searches (90% of all growth).
While Google continues to lead in search queries, the article does point out that the growth are not necessarily new users, just more searchers per user.
Leave a Comment » | SEM, Trends, paid search | Tagged: google | Permalink
Posted by esearchvision
