ClickEquations Blog

We just wrapped up our exhibit OMMA Global in New York, Craig is speaking at PPC Summit in LA and Lucinda (our CEO) is attending Shop.org in Vegas. Drop us a line if you’ll be there: marketing @ clickequations.com

Of course, a lot of folks had their training budgets cut due to the economy. Thus, I present our virtual conference: 5 Videos to Boost Your Paid Search. It includes a recording of our latest webinar, “Marketing During A Recession: From Pre-Click to Post-Click” with Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow and David Brussin of Monetate.

If you like these, join us on Thursday, September 24th for our free SEMPO webinar: Quality Score in High Resolution.

Marketing During a Recession: From Pre-Click to Post-Click

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Master Search Queries to Decrease Cost and Increase Conversions

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PPC Analytics Tips from Avinash Kaushik

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High Resolution PPC

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Quality Score: The Secret Factor in PPC Success

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Don’t forget to sign up for our free SEMPO webinar: Quality Score in High Resolution.

Starting Monday it’ll be a busy week for ClickEquations.

First, we’ll be at OMMA in New York City, with a booth at the OMMA Global Show. Stop by to say hello or catch a demo of ClickEquations.

Mid-week, ClickEquations CEO Lucinda Holt will be in Las Vegas at Shop.org. No booth for us this year, but if you’ll be there and would like to talk, contact us at info@clickequations.com and we’ll set something up.

On Weds and Thursday I’ll be in Los Angeles at the PPC-Summit. I’m speaking on Weds afternoon about Strategies and Tactics for AdWords.

If you want to get some advanced PPC training I think the two day event will be great. To arrange a discussion or meeting while I’m on the west coast – shoot us an email (info@clickequations.com) and we’ll set something up.

Of none of these shows match your travel plans, SMX-East is just a few weeks away…

Bidding in paid search is generally not an event filled with a lot of confidence. One of the ‘lingering doubts’ that makes decisions hard and choices uncertain has always been keywords that have only managed to get low in the first page – positions 6-8 – and yet never hit whatever goals are set for them.

Even if they had a lot of impressions and a good number of clicks, it’s been hard to cut them loose, due to the nagging thought that ‘if they were only up higher, those better converting people would click them and everything would be alright.”

Or so we (at least I) always thought.

But as I was staring at a long list of keywords over the weekend, pondering bid strategies (yes, I know how to have fun) it occurred to me that Google’s recent claim that conversion rate don’t vary (much) by position should take this worry away. There really aren’t a higher class of frequent buyers to meet higher up the page.

It’s still a little hard to believe. But I’m trying.

For background on all this, check out the article I wrote on SearchEngineLand discussing the recent Google announcement.

How can market effectively in this down economy and grab share from your competition?

On September 16, Craig Danuloff (ClickEquations President & Founder) will join experts Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow and David Brussin of Monetate for a free webinar: Recession Marketing: From Pre-Click to Post-Click

Date: September 16, 2009. Time: Noon, EDT.
The webinar is free but space is limited so if you plan to attend we encourage you to register now.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will help you to synchronize your efforts, from traffic acquisition, through the sales funnel, to closing. You’ll get advice from experts and company founders including:

• How persona marketing works, from end-to-end, even when times are tough
• Practical tips for using your existing analytics data to assess what segmented marketing can do for your bottom line
• Why there’s never been a better time to steal market share from your competitors

The Experts

• Craig Danuloff will explain SEM techniques for targeting profitable customers via search campaign design and deep analytics.
• David Brussin will present the art and science of deriving and acting upon persona information in the post-click experience.
• Bryan Eisenberg will discuss how “recession marketing” can steal market share from your competitors in this challenging economy.

Register Now

Registration is free. Please click here to register online. If you have any questions about our webinars, please contact us.

About the Presenters

• Bryan Eisenberg: Chief Persuasion Officer and Co-founder, Future Now, Inc. Bryan is the author of several marketing bestsellers, including: Call to Action; Waiting For Your Cat To Bark; and Always Be Testing.
• Craig Danuloff: President and Founder of ClickEquations, Inc. Craig is a leading expert on pay per click marketing and a frequent speaker at industry events such as SMX.
• David Brussin: CEO and Co-founder of Monetate, Inc. David is an author and experienced public speaker who works with leading edge e-retailers to perfect post-click marketing strategies.

When Google’s Hal Varian talks, we listen. We first met Mr. Varian – Chief Economist at Google – in his ‘Introduction to the Adwords Auction’ video and it sparked one of our most-read posts (The Economics of Quality Score) in which we took his information and used it to determine the financial of specific Quality Scores or Quality Score changes.

Last week Mr Varian spoke again, this time on the AdWords blog, but with equal import. He shared the fact that his team had studied the impact of position on conversion rate, and found that conversion rates were about the same no matter if your ads are run in position 1 or position 8.

Today SearchEngineLand published an article I wrote concerning the importance of this revelation.

While the video shared new truths that helped our understanding of Quality Score, this new information has impact almost entirely on bidding.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately working to really understand bidding – I’ll admit it’s not something I’ve focused on before because it always seemed vastly over-rated as a factor in paid search success. I still believe bidding gets more than it’s share of attention in the PPC world, but for very different reasons than in the past.

Bidding is probably the most misunderstood component in a system full of misunderstood components. This is true because we bring assumptions about the role of bidding in an auction which turn out to be true in the modified ‘auction’ that Google and the other engines run.

The result is often wasted money, but more often it is deliberate actions which have virtually no chance of accomplishing their objectives. We change bids as if raising them will push our keywords up and lowering them will drop them down. The problem is it’s not that simple.

As the the SearchEngineLand article describes, Mr. Varian is doing us all a huge favor by clarifying how various elements of the AdWords auction and system really work. But we’ve got a long way to go…

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