Lorna Li | Green Marketing 2.0

Both Google and Yahoo offer PPC conversion tracking. While measuring impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, CPC, etc. is important, ultimately, what you really want to get down to is measuring and improving conversions.

Why?

If you approach PPC from the perspective of generating traffic, you are essentially throwing money into a void. Oh - some call this branding.

Branding is important, but, sales are better. Measuring conversions boils down to understanding your return on investment (ROI).

Also, you will find that some of your keywords may generate a high CTR, but never convert. You definitely want to ferret these keywords out and reassess your bidding strategy with them.

How does Conversion Tracking Work?

Conversion tracking involves placing a cookie on the user’s computer when the person clicks on an ad. If the user clicks on your Google PPC ad and reaches one of your conversion pages, the user’s browser sends a cookie to a Google server, and a small conversion tracking image is displayed on your site. When such a match is made, Google records a successful conversion for you.

In order to enable Google Conversion Tracking, in your Google Adwords UI, go to your desired account’s “Campaign Management” tab and click on the “Conversion Tracking” link. Follow the steps to generate a snippet of javascript, which you will then need to paste onto the”Thank You” page for one of your desired actions, such as sales, request for info, registration, etc.

Once this is set up, your Google reports will now show additional columns of data related to conversion statistics. For more detailed information about how Google Conversion Tracking works, download the Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Guide.

Technorati Tags: Pay-Per-Click, PPC, PPC conversion tracking, google adwords, SEM, search marketing, paid search, lorna li

Congratulations - you’ve set up your Google Adwords account and are ready to launch your first PPC campaigns!

Somewhere very quickly down the road you are going to want to test your ad copy and perform landing page tests in order to continually identify winning creative and improve your conversion rate. Here is an overview of how you might set up and perform basic A/B split tests in Google Adwords. These insights can be applied to other paid search programs.

A/B testing is a method of advertising testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples. While a classic direct mail tactic, A/B split testing has been recently adopted within the interactive space to test PPC ads, banner ads, emails and landing pages.

To perform A/B testing correctly, you will need to deploy a control - usually the strongest, most consistently performing version of your ad - alongside at least one or more variations of this ad. Bear in mind, in order to correctly identify which variable is responsible for changes in response rate or desired outcome, the ads must essentially be identical except for one variable difference.

Confused?

If you are simply testing ad creative, you have 3 lines to work with, or 3 variables. Some might include the destination url as the 4th variable, but for simplicity’s sake, I will focus on 3.

1. Title
2. Description 1
3. Description 2

You have limited space, so understand that each line must carry its own weight, yet at the same time, reinforce the whole message you are trying to convey through your ad.

PPC Split Testing – Step by Step Instructions on Testing Ad Copy

1. Make sure ‘ad optimization’ is “off” the campaign settings in order to ensure all ads are served equally.

2. Determine how many ads you can successfully test based on your daily volume of impressions. If you have a large volume of impressions, such as 10,000 daily impressions, you can serve more ads than if you had 100 impressions a day. However more ads means more data to crunch. Also, bear in mind that more ads you have, the less proportion of time each one is served, and the longer it will take to gather statistically significant data.

3. Create 2-4 titles (T below), description line 1s (D1 below), description line 2s (D2 below), and then mix and match them. Remember, these go up exponentially, testing 3 lines is 27 ads (i.e. #t x #d1 x #d2).

Graphically, your ads will plot out to look something like this:

Ad# T D1 D2
1. A A A
2. A A B
3. A B A
4. A B B
5. B A A
6. B A B
7. B B A
8. B B B

As you can see, with just 2 variations of each line, we now have 8 ads, thus the more copy you test, the more your data analysis work will expand.

4. Determine your time frame for testing. Give yourself at least a few days, though 2-3 weeks should yield solid data. Also factor in any holidays, and allow more time to account for any deviations in user behavior during this period.

5. Once you’ve reached your time frame for testing, it’s time to analyze the results. Export your data into an excel spreadsheet. Google’s robust reporting tools will allow you to export practically every data point imaginable in a myriad of ways. In this case, you will want to download a report on Ad Performance, which will give you stats on the performance of each ad by Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Cost, CPC, and Avg Position.

However, in order to get a read on conversions, you will need to enable Google Conversion Tracking. With Google Conversion Tracking enabled, you will have additional columns of conversion related data in your reports that will help you better analyze your PPC split test results.

Technorati Tags: Pay-Per-Click, PPC, A/B testing, split testing PPC, PPC ad testing, SEM, search marketing, Google Adwords, lorna li

According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). North American advertisers spent $9.4 billion on search engine marketing (SEM) in 2006, a 62 % increase over 2005. SEMPO researchers also estimate SEM spending to double by 2011, at an aggregate spending total of $18.6 billion.

However, while only a tiny percentage of small and medium size businesses currently contribute to this huge volume of advertising spend, many analysts predict that the number of small businesses will grow significantly over the next few years.

If you are a small, environmentally sustainable business with a limited advertising budget or a nonprofit seeking other avenues of funding, PPC ads can be an inexpensive, cost-effective way to reach a targeted segment of customers. And now is a great time to get in on it, before the green industry gets uber-competitive.

PPC - More Bang for the Buck

Pay-Per-Click Ads are small Internet text ads with a short description that link to a Web site that usually appear on the right hand side of your search engine results pages (SERPs) and in designated sections on many content-driven Web sites and blogs. Advertisers bid to have their ads show up when users search for certain keywords, or when Web site features those specific keywords in the content of that web page. Advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad and visits their Web site.

Depending on how competitive your market is, the cost-per-click on certain keywords can be as cheap as a few cents a click to $5, $10 or even more. However, anyone can start a PPC advertising program on as little as a few dollars per week.

The first great thing about PPC advertising is that it is treeless. With print direct mail, at a 2% response rate - which is considered to be good - 98% of your mailing gets trashed. In my opinion, no matter how “successful” the campaign metrics, print direct mail is an incredible waste of time, energy, and resources.

The second great thing about PPC advertising is that your campaign results are available within days of the launch of your campaign. By contrast, direct mail advertising campaigns often take at least 3 months to close, and the first responses typically roll in 6 weeks after the mail date. Other forms of traditional marketing - print ads, TV and radio commercials - can be extremely expensive, yet, entirely unmeasurable. It is nearly impossible how many people viewed your glossy magazine ad, and how many of those people actually went out and bought your product.

With PPC, you can track all metrics from number of clicks to conversions in less than a week. Furthermore, based on your campaign statistics, you can tweak and adjust your bids, edit your text ads, and perform A/B split tests on ad creative and multivariate tests on your landing pages as often as you want, when you want - and see the results the following day. This is impossible with other forms of traditional media - not only will it prove to be very expensive, it will drive your designers and media vendors utterly crazy. And you won’t receive your results, if you are lucky, until the following quarter.

Understand PPC before you begin, or you will waste your money

Implementing a successful PPC campaign requires a certain level of skill and understanding, so read up about it before you begin. You will need to:

• set up your account correctly
• know how to select and price keywords
• know how to write compelling ad copy
• have at at least one landing page
• know how to perform ad testing and landing page tests
• be willing to monitor and tweak your campaign frequently

While PPC professionals will employ a number of arcane techniques and strategies, there are 4 main factors to PPC success that everyone should know. I will start with what I believe to be the most important:

1) Get Creative With Your PPC keywords, then Narrow it Down

Come up with a large, robust initial list of keywords and key phrases, and then narrow it down to the ones worth bidding on. To further fine-tune your targeting and avoid paying for clicks from people unlikely to buy your product, create a list of negative keywords - search terms where you don’t want your ad to appear. For example, if you are selling gourmet, organic, hand-crafted and fair-trade chocolate truffles, you will probably want to include the negative keywords “free”, “cheap”, and “discount” in your campaigns.

Also, if you have a limited budget, you may want to choose to display your ads only on the search network and turn the content network off. In general, content network ads tend to have a lower click through rate (CTR) than search ads. By showing your ads only to people actively searching for those keywords, you will get more bang for your PPC buck.

2) Put Your Keywords In Your PPC Ad Text

If your ad text is not relevant to the search term, chances are, no one will click on it. A low click through rate (CTR) can cause Google to render your ad inactive for that keyword, which will require you to increase your initial bid in order to enter the market.

Make sure your keyword is in the headline, and if not, at least in the description. The user’s search query will show up bolded on the SERP, so if your ad creative has matching keywords, these will appear more prominently as bolded text, and your ad will stand out more on the page.

3) Send PPC Traffic to a Relevant Landing Page

One of the most important factors to PPC success is driving targeted traffic to a landing page, NOT your homepage. Your landing page should be directly relevant to the ad that links to it. For example, if you have listed a text ad for “Sustainable Bamboo Cutting Boards”, be sure to send visitors to a landing page about eco-friendly bamboo cutting boards, and not bamboo products in general, or you will lose them.

Design your landing page to quickly take your visitors to product selection, purchase and check-out with a little clicks as possible. If you want them to sign up for something, make the form as simple and hassle-free as possible. Think of your landing page as funnel. Create no distractions, leave no option for escape.

If you are running a nonprofit, link your text ad a donation page, and not a general info page about your organization’s mission and vision. If you are raising money for your rainforest Adopt-An-Acre campaign, make sure your Adopt-a-Rainforest text ad takes the visitor to a landing page about this specific program, and not a page about a different conservation initiative, nor your general donation or membership page.

4) Test, Test and Test Some More

Finally, running a successful PPC program depends on your ability to track results and tweak your campaigns on a frequent basis. As the bidding landscape changes daily, you will need to monitor and adjust your strategies accordingly.

You will want to test ad creative and improve your ad creative. Google and Yahoo are set up so that split testing is easy. You will also want to test your landing pages and determine which variables - such as headline, main image, ad copy - attract more conversions. Google Optimizer allows you to easily perform multivariate testing on your landing pages.

Finally, running a successful PPC program depends on your ability to track results and tweak your campaigns on a frequent basis. As the bidding landscape changes daily, you will need to monitor and adjust your strategies accordingly.

You will want to test ad creative and improve your ad creative. Google and Yahoo are set up so that split testing is easy. You will also want to test your landing pages and determine which variables - such as headline, main image, ad copy - attract more conversions. Google Optimizer allows you to easily perform multivariate testing on your landing pages.

The fun part about developing your PPC strategies is testing “out of the box” ideas. For example, most of us who care about environmental conservation are keenly aware of how active the Bush Administration has been in dismantling existing environmental laws and undermining the nation’s overall environmental policy. The Bush Administration’s environmental track record is, for most conservation-minded individuals, a miserable failure.

Some of you might be familiar also with the Google bomb for the keywords “miserable failure” that linked to the biography of George W. Bush.

The last time I Googled “miserable failure” a text ad pop up that said, “Yes, We Think So, too”. Who was that ad from? The Natural Resources Defense Council.

Technorati Tags: Pay-Per-Click, PPC, SEM, search marketing, paid search, green marketing, PPC primer, lorna li

It’s been a few months since I’ve been writing for a tech blog called bub.blicio.us - covering the social economy. My job, primarily, is to cover the SF Bay Area tech parties and blog about recently funded startups.

In addition to discovering what’s cool about certain emerging technologies and statups, I find myself uncovering patterns, researching trends, revisiting topical themes discussed in the SF Bay Area tech cocktail circuit.

Today’s topical theme is “Social”. It occurred to me that I write for a tech blog whose tagline is “Covering the Social Economy”. However, I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant in the context of all the tech partying we do. So I decided to turn to Wikipedia for guidance.

What is the Social Economy?

Economies are loosely comprised of three sectors:

1. the business private sector - which is privately owned and profit-motivated.
2. the public sector - which is owned by the state
3. the social economy - which includes a wide range of community, nonprofit, and voluntary endeavors.

According to Wikipedia, the social economy can be further divided into 3 subcategories:

1. the community sector - organizations that are active at the community level, such as community associations, civic societies and neighborhood watch
2. the voluntary sector - charities, nonprofits and nongovermental organizations (NGOs) that are supported by substantial voluntary effort
3. the social enterprise sector - businesses with a social mission, whose profit orientation is motivated by achieving social objectives rather than by profit maximization for shareholders

I looked at a few more websites that were coming up for the keyword “social economy“. What struck me is that this definition of “social economy” - community-oriented and supported economic activities that thrive on a social mission - seemed to be a predominantly European interpretation of a concept explored in top U.S. business schools called “social innovaton”.

What is Social Innovation?

Social innovation refers to strategies, concepts, organizations that meet social needs of all kinds and strengthen civil society. Examples of social innovation include micro-credit financing in Third World Countries, earned income strategies in nonprofit management, zero-waste/closed loop industrial systems, socially responsible business and corporate social responsibility.

Social innovation is a business management track explored by top U.S. B-schools such as Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley. The Stanford Social Innovation Review is an excellent resource for understanding this wide-ranging topic.

Social innovation touches upon social entrepreneurship, another topic dear to my heart. Social enrepreneurship refers to the use of business entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture that can impact social change in economically measurable ways. This metric is called the social return on investment (SROI) of the social enterprise. Great organizations that support and explore social entrepreneurship include the Social Venture Network, Ashoka, the Skoll Foundation, and Social Enterprise Alliance, to name a few.

But what does all this have to do with the SF Bay Area technology sector? Allow me to tie this in with another hot topic these days - social media.

What is Social Media?

I spent months sipping cocktails with social media experts in the SF Bay Area before I even began to get a glimmer of what social media was all about, and why it is so cool. Let me go back to the social media application that I refer to for all my information needs - Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia entry for social media is astoundingly brief - I can’t believe that none of the tech-savvy, Web 2.0 social media pundits in the SF Bay Area have gotten to Wikipedia yet. According to Wikipedia, social media describes online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with each other.

Prominent examples of social media applications include sites that enable social networking (MySpace, Facebook), video sharing (YouTube, Grouper, Revver), photosharing (Flickr, Photobucket), music sharing (Last.fm), news sharing (Digg) and social bookmarking(Del.icio.us).

Blogs, message boards, podcasts, vlogs, wikis are all examples of social media technologies.

Social media differs from traditional media in that it enables interaction and dialogue its users, and can be entirely self sustaining (informationally) through user-generated content.Social media relies heavily on democratic principles that allow anyone to promote anything from videos and news stories, to music and photos. Social media is a force to be reckoned with, as it has the awesome potential to democratize society by placing the power of information back into the hands of civil society through citizen journalism. It can harnass the wisdom of crowds and create community in unprecedented ways.

Social Media and the Web 2.0 Revolution

Social media is often used interchangeably with Web 2.0, or the “participatory Web”. Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of Web-based services and technologies that has catalyzed a paradigm shift in the Internet as a platform, and in the way that people on the Web interact with each other.

Stowe Boyd, friend and expert on building social applications, describes the Web 2.0 Revolution this way:

“A new category of software is emerging, software intended to augment social systems. Not to change the company inadvertantly, like email did, when the electronic analogue of interoffice mail became something else, grew into something else by changing the way people communicated, and led to a change in the structure of the company. No this new generation of software is intentional , designed from the start to guide human behavior into new paths and patterns, to counter prevailing ways of interaction. I call these social tools: software intended to shape culture.”

What Does Social Media have to do with the Social Economy?

In the SF Bay Area, many would say that the “social economy” refers to the economy of the social web and emerging social media technologies, rather than “social innovation” or “social enterprise”.

I would like to mash together these definitions and explore the very interesting intersection of social media and social innovation. Or call it new media in the social economy, if you will.

The use of social media technologies to meet social needs, empower civil society, fight global warming will have a huge impact on raising citizen awareness and activism. Already, a number of sites have emerged, with the ability, if not, the express intention to impact positive social change.

Change.org is a social network for hundreds of social causes and over 1 million nonprofit organizations.

LinkedIn For Good aims to profile outstanding nonprofit organizations and enable visitors to donate directly via the new nonprofit pages featured on LinkedIn. They are also offering free job postings to registered nonprofit organizations to support their hiring needs.

Ning allows you to create a social network about anything for free. Ning’s robust technology allows you to drag and drop all kinds of content (video, RSS feeds, photos, and more) to make your site a rich, rewarding place for your fans to hang out. Given the high costs and headaches of building a social network in-house, nonprofits would do well to create a Ning community for their members. Not only can organization members, donors, volunteers and supporters meet and communicate with each other online, nonprofits can update the community on new programs, fundraising drives, news, and events.

Ning is a great way to find other people interested in the same issues, because, chances are, someone has already created a Ning social network for it, such as
The Bay Area Clean Technology Network

WiserEarth is a project of Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism Institute. WiserEarth is an open source, community-editable international directory and networking forum that maps, links and empowers the largest movement in the world – the hundreds of thousands of organizations within civil society that address social justice, poverty, and the environment.

WiserEarth is essentially a structured wiki with a comprehensive taxonomy that makes it the most advanced search tool available in the environmental and social justice fields. Social entrepreneurs, students, scientists, consultants and volunteers can construct personal profiles, which creates visibility for them, while organizations will be able to access a broader pool of prospective talent. Grassroots groups that do not have a web presence visibility and access can benefit enormously from a listing on WiserEarth.

In upcoming posts, I will explore some of these sites in depth, and share ways in which they can be leveraged for maximum visibility of your social cause, organization, and the activist you.

Technorati Tags: social innovation, social economy, social activism, social media, social media applications, participatory web, Web 2.0, green 2.0, ning, change.org, wiser earth, linkedin for good, lorna li

This evening, our yoga instructor made a statement during class that struck a chord in me. In the writings of Carlos Castenada, according to Don Juan, a Yaqui elder and brujo, there was one main difference between an ordinary person and an impeccable warrior.

Ordinary people see life as a series of blessings and misfortunes.

An impeccable warrior sees life as a series of challenges.

Every challenge has the opportunity to awaken us to life.