Since launching The Science of PPC in October 2019, Page Zero founder and president Andrew Goodman has covered a variety of topics with the goal of bringing greater clarity and insight to the complicated world of paid search marketing.
Andrew continues his analysis of the concepts, quirks, and complexities that govern Google Ads in Parts 11-20 of this 50-part blog series, delving into topics ranging from embracing customer feedback, the importance (or unimportance) of ad relevance, and using overlooked statistical measures to analyze your paid search performance.
Part 11: A Focus Group of One: What Consumers Really Think of Your Google Ads
Paid search advertising isn’t just about what businesses want their consumers to do next. Advertising is a two-way street, and helpful insights lurk where you least expect them. Andrew explores how listening to your consumers—even just a single consumer—can provide valuable insight into real customer behaviors that hours spent poring over data simply can’t match.
Part 12: Beautiful Snowflakes: The Unique Behaviors of Your Best Customers
Is “story-less” aggregate data always better? Take your marketing data with a grain of salt—real-time analytics and watching how individuals shop can be helpful in shaping marketing strategy, but can also drive a stake through the heart of myths about typical behaviors. Through the lens of the underutilized User Explorer report in Google Analytics, Andrew weighs in on how analyzing (anonymized) individual user behavior can fill in the blanks, debunk myths about typical behaviors, and shape your PPC advertising strategy.
Part 13: Fail to Succeed: Steer Clear of Overconfidence to Win at PPC
Success comes to those who anticipate a few setbacks. Studying the various ways that your product could fail to connect with its target market can deepen your understanding of how difficult the journey to success is going to be. Look beyond the fail and explore how embracing failure by adopting a “PPC mindset” of experimentation can help your paid search campaigns—and your business—prosper.
Part 14: The Two Things You Must Absolutely Do (or Not Do) to Achieve PPC Success
A contingent, creative mindset will make you more money than a bland how-to anytime. Andrew cautions against adopting a subjective viewpoint of what’s “poor” or “wrong” and explores how taking a “try this and that approach” when it comes to negative keywords, Dynamic Keyword Insertion, and other tools available in PPC platforms can lead to major improvements in paid search performance.
Part 15: The Holy Grail of Extreme PPC Ad Relevance
The SERP landscape may have changed significantly since the days of “Ten Blue Links”, but the core tenet of paid search marketing remains the same: relentlessly pursue the “holy grail” of relevance. Andrew examines how focusing on search intent, granularity, and relevance can delight users by artfully connecting them with whatever it is they’re looking for—not just what advertisers want them to see.
Part 16: Extreme Relevance Won’t Pay the Bills: How to Broaden your PPC Campaigns
Relevance may be at the core of paid search marketing, but is it really the Holy Grail of paid search success? You’re going to the poorhouse if you pursue only the most obvious paths from keyword search to avid interest to purchase intent. Andrew debunks the myth of extreme relevance with 5 new ways to broaden your paid search strategies.
Part 17: Nimble PPC Optimizations to Address Seasonality
When it comes to seasonality, the most likely mistake account managers can make is to assume continuity of conditions. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security—mature PPC accounts aren’t immune from seasonal trends. Andrew presents three nimble seasonal optimization tips to help account managers keep up with hot-and-cold consumer behavior.
Part 18: Display Advertising for Performance: Reawakening the Lost Art of Managing Placements
Can the Google Display Network actually drive paid search results for your business? In some cases, yes, but the Display component of paid media accounts tends to revert to the non-performing norm eventually. Andrew shares his perspective on this timeworn topic and offers his advice for maximizing Display performance by thinking small, embracing granularity, and rekindling the lost art of managing placements.
Part 19: Statistics & PPC: There’s More You Can Do
PPC pros aren’t strangers to using statistics like confidence intervals to guide their paid search strategies, but other measures like correlation coefficients can also provide deep insights into account performance over time. Andrew explores new ways to incorporate statistical analysis into your paid search campaigns using often-overlooked measures of statistical significance.
Part 20: Google Ads Campaign Settings: Perils, Pitfalls, and Perplexity
Consumer trust in Google’s search results soared in the “no nonsense” “show me” environment that blossomed after the dot com bust of 2000, showing that economic disruptions have a habit of instigating widespread changes in consumer behavior. Andrew reflects on the impact of past disruptions before turning his attention to some of the most basic building blocks of paid search: campaign settings. Did you know? Many of your biggest PPC campaign mistakes can be errors at the setup stage. Some of those errors or omissions are fostered by Google, as important settings are opaque to all but more advanced advertisers.
—
New content in The Science of PPC series is published every Thursday!
Subscribe to get notified of new entries every week.