Comments on: Secret Truth Series #15: Bid Lipstick on a Keyword Pig

By: 21 Secret Truths of PPC – The Summary | The ClickEquations Blog

21 Secret Truths of PPC – The Summary | The ClickEquations Blog — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:51:31 +0000

[...] new negatives. And pay attention to click-through rate and the factors that drive quality score. Bidding is important but not omnipotent. Don’t expect too much from or apply too much effort to bidding until your keywords are [...]

By: chadsummerhill

chadsummerhill — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:33:00 +0000

Over the past 4 years I have directly managed millions of dollars on PPC and I know for a fact that the variables that matter the most for my PPC campaigns are the variables that affect my target audience (geography, time, match types, keywords) and the variables that affect how I communicates with that audience (ads, landing pages, emails).

This is the point. Don't obsess over bids. Do obsess over your customer and how you communicate with them.

By: Bradd Libby

Bradd Libby — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:13:14 +0000

My apologies for my delay in replying.

You say: "It doesn't matter how much energy you apply to bidding if you have the wrong ad, landing page, etc."

The opposite is also true: It doesn't matter how much energy you apply to your ad, landing page, etc. if you have a terrible bid.

The choice you present between only bidding and mostly changing negative terms etc. is a classic failure of logic called a 'false dichotomy', and it's also the premise of Craig's blog post.

By: chadsummerhill

chadsummerhill — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:49:46 +0000

Bradd,

Let's assume that you have a keyword that is relevant to your business and has shown success in the past--it has a decent ad and a decent landing page.

Now for the next 2 months you are responsible for improving the performance of this keyword and you are given two options for managing this keyword.

1. the only thing you can do is bid--but you can bid as much as you want--high bids, low bids, no bids.

2. Or you can only change the bid twice--but you are able to test ads and landing pages, you can use different match types and negative keywords, you can target specific geographies for this keyword, you can use any other available SEM tactics at your disposal but only change the bid twice.

Which option would you choose?

A bid lets you play the game, but has very little impact on how well you play. It doesn't matter how much energy you apply to bidding if you have the wrong ad, landing page, etc.

By: Bradd Libby

Bradd Libby — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:53:29 +0000

“Think about bidding as having *at most* a 10-20% impact on your success.”

Craig, please try setting all of your bids to $0.00 and then let me know if bidding has *at most* a 20% impact on your success…

By: chadsummerhill

chadsummerhill — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:06:00 +0000

Great post! For years we've been managing keywords and paying for CLICKS. Here are some of the variables that can affect how much we can spend on keyword bids and the clicks we are paying for:

Variables we can target within the search engine:

geography (country, state, metro)
time (time-of-day, day-of-week)
language
devices (desktops, phones, etc)
networks (google, search partners)
match type
ad creative
destination url

Variables available through web analytics that you could use to change the UX that affects the conversion rate:

search query
IP address
geography
operating system (Windows, Mac)
browser type (firefox, IE, etc.)
device (desktop, mobile, etc.)
returning visitor, days since last purchase, etc.
landing page recipe
conversion path recipe
emails
etc.

And of course our competitors are always changing what they are doing.

It's a big problem to solve. I look forward to your future posts on this issue.