Fierce and Flawless: PPC Tips that Would Do Beyonce Proud #SMX

Senior Client Manager of Point It, Maddie Cary has a passion for PPC – and Beyoncé. She marries the two in her tactic-packed paid search session at SMX West 2016 titled “What Would Beyonce Do? 5 Fierce PPC Tactics To Make Your Account A Superstar.”

Okay, SMX Let’s Get in Formation

Cary tells us she’s “drunk in love” with the following best new PPC features:

Upgraded URLs

• Destination URLs became Final URLS on July 1, 2015
• Ads keep performance data
• If changes made to tracking template, ads aren’t sent back for review.
• SASHA FIERCE TIP: AdWords editor still shows the Destination URL field, so it’s easy to miss updating your final URL field when building or updating ads.

AdWords Editor 11

• Redesigned interface
• New features support for labels, call only ads and upgraded URLs
• SASHA FIERCE TIP: Did you know there are new keyboard shortcuts to use with AWE including, CTRL+B to change bids and CTRL+U to change URLS.

RLSA: Google Analytics Audiences

• No longer limited by the AdWords tag! Now you can use GA audience
• Not all Google Analytics data available to use due to privacy policies
• Limitations for GDN dimensions and specific language and tech dimensions
• SASHA FIERCE TIP: Get the most out of RLSA! Duplicate Star Campaign, write new ads and bid on narrowed valuable audience by using target and bid.

Automated Shopping Extensions

• New extensions displayed alongside PLAs at no additional cost
• Automatically show free shipping and price-drop information
• Promotional text retired end of Sept. 2015
• SASHA FIERCE TIP: Want to highlight other offers? Utilize Shopping extensions like Merchant promotions, product ratings and trusted stores certification.

If You Like it then You Should Have Put a Bid on It: Bidding Tactics you Should Test

AdWords offers multiple automated, algorithmic bidding strategies, found in the Shared Library – and you should be testing them!

• Maximize clicks
• Target Search Paid locations
• Target outranking share
• Target CPA
• Target ROAS
• Enhanced CPC

Say My Name: Branded Paid Search

Branded paid search is not always as easy as you think it is. There’s testing and innovating … and there’s also protecting the brand. And you must favor the brand voice over PPC.

Protect the Brand

Discuss ad messaging guidelines before launching new ads:

• Consider internal vs. external brands
• What is the appropriate CTA?
• Be realistic about what can fit in 95 characters.

Brand protection isn’t only done with ads:

• Avoid being generic in your landing experience – searchers notice and bounce off!
• Drop searchers on most relative page you can.

When it comes to multiple accounts and/or campaigns:

• Set up regular auditing for consistency.
• Align with other internal teams bidding.

Prioritize Value Propositions

Brands have to work hard to compete and stand out in PPC. What are your value propositions? What are your competitors doing?

Manage Competition

• Use Auction Insights. Seriously it better be your best friends.
• Label and regularly monitor top keywords.
• Keep an eye on your high converting lower funnel keywords.
• SASHA FIERCE TIP: Set up a Quality Score Tracker AdWords Script and generate graphs to monitor historical QS.

Flawless PPC Team

The perfect PPC team should:

Measure Results

• Ask about specific goals.
• Deliver consistent and transparent reporting.

Make sure you can access raw data and don’t trust reports with hidden or deleted metrics.

Share Knowledge

• Keep your account updated with new features, stay abreast of best PPC practices, and look for opportunities to improve performance.
• Share new ideas through discussions on the good and the bad performances and encourage excitement of learning and growth.

Regularly Communicate

• Conduct regular calls and check-ins, share ideas, and have discussions on tactics to ensure they align with your goals.
• Don’t just say to yes to everything. Make sure to challenge new ideas that might hurt performance and always work things out to come to the best solution.

SASHA FIERCE TIP: BrainLabs has an awesome Auction Insights Script that you can run in a Google Doc to visualize your Auction trends over time.

Be Flexible

• Set KPIs per campaign category.
• Set thresholds to determine when to pivot your bidding strategy.
• Give room for testing, but set guardrails to keep things in check with budget caps and automatic email reports.

Bounce Back in Beyoncé Style

It’s easy to make changes and bounce back with PPC.

• Be proactive.
• Learn from your mistakes.
• Remember you are human.
• Share your wisdom with the SEM community.

Five BEY Key Takeaways

• New Features! Try RLSA!
• Test flexible bid strategy.
• Find intersect of Brand Voice + PPC Best Practices
• Work with PPC team with results, knowledge and communication.
• Use Auction Insights Script to bounce back faster.

And don’t forget to ask yourself: What would Beyoncé do?

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.