The inaugural post of Page Zero Media’s new blog series, The Science of PPC, launched on Thursday, October 10. Spearheaded by Page Zero founder and president Andrew Goodman, The Science of PPC will dig deep into the Google Ads testing lab each week to provide readers with expert tips, tricks, and insights that will help elevate paid search account performance and turn “good” results into “great” results.
Andrew launched Page Zero Media as a consultancy in late 2000. Soon after, he wrote the first-ever book about the Google Ads platform, Winning Results with Google AdWords (McGraw-Hill, 2005, 2008). Since then, he as spoken at countless digital marketing events, and has also been instrumental in the development of Zerobot, a beta-stage PPC automation toolkit in deep stealth mode. He remains the Founder and President of Page Zero Media, with an unwavering focus on providing great results through full-service PPC campaign management.
Why “The Science of PPC”?
At Page Zero, the difference between good and great paid search results comes down to in-depth analyses supported by real-world PPC experience and collaboration with great colleagues. In true Page Zero fashion, The Science of PPC was inspired by the unrelenting hard work and expertise of every team member, and will embody this spirit of collaboration by featuring contributions from team members over the course of the series’ 50 parts.
You may have a “feel” for the product or service you’re marketing or the account you’re managing, but deep data, encyclopedic knowledge of account history and the product in question, and a thorough understanding of all of the relationships between these moving parts are what turn good performance into great performance. You need to be able to back up your intuition with real-world data.
That’s where “The Science of PPC” comes in.
As a PPC agency with 18 years under our belts, we know first-hand the amount of scientific experimentation and application that goes on within the Google Ads platform (and other paid search platforms, of course). You don’t need to have a Ph.D. or make use of proprietary software to take a scientific approach to paid search account management, especially if you can back up your claims with real-life examples and concrete data.
Many self-styled experts offer advice that lacks statistical significance (tiny companies, random results, etc.), or cheats that aimed at high CTR in unusual situations. By leaning on mainstream statistical concepts and scientific methods (nothing fancy, we promise), The Science of PPC will convince people to look past such promotional nonsense.
Why 50 Parts?
The goal of this 50-part series is to expose readers to enough odd (and sometimes obvious) tips, tricks, insights, and methodologies that they will come away with some feeling of mastery and confidence in their own powers of PPC analysis.
Throughout this series, we will address:
- Using data to analyze ad creative
- Prerequisites for effective Smart Bidding
- Framing and anchoring techniques (“nudges”) lurking in the Google Ads interface nearly guaranteed to bamboozle you!
- What to do about remarketing?
- How to address the “long tail” of unusual/unpredictable search queries
- Which ad position converts best?
- How to run a “true” campaign experiment (and why)
To improve over time, PPC marketers must be open to experimentation and trying new things. If we can help you find your way around the Google Ads testing lab, we’ll have done our job. Or you might get fed up trying and hire our agency for full-service PPC campaign management. That’s our job, too.
Let’s put “good” aside. Let’s go for great.
