We had the opportunity to interview Nick Herinckx, who will be speaking about how to track keyword-level PPC revenue and return over long sales cycles at Hero Conf 2013.
Nick Herinckx is a published online marketing consultant and owner of Obility Consulting, a fast growing online marketing agency focused on helping B2B companies with long sales cycles drive pipeline, increase sales and track marketing’s efforts to revenue. Nick began his career in information technology as a database programmer, but quickly realized that online marketing had the combination of strategy, data and technology he was really passionate about. Nick’s past IT experience combined with his passion for marketing allows him to quickly understand complex technology businesses, easily interface with IT teams and quickly learn and adopt new marketing technologies. This has led to his success partnering with high-tech B2B companies to grow their businesses. Nick has worked with companies of all sizes to improve their online marketing programs including Trend Micro, Axway, Infogroup, TEKsystems and Aerotek. Nick’s articles and client case studies have been published in industry blogs and magazines including MarketingProfs, MarketingSherpa, Marketing Experiments and PPC Insider. Nick has also spoken at industry events for the Portland Business Journal and SEMPdx, and has also instructed a class on advanced Google Analytics for the Online Marketing Institute.
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Want a chance to meet Nick and other big names in the PPC industry yourself? Well, by attending Hero Conf 2013 you can! The design of the conference allows for a low speaker to attendee ratio, making your chances of meeting and learning from our top notch speakers in a one-on-one setting, very real! If you would like to hear more about Hero Conf, you can register or visit the Hero Conf website for more information. Sign up before Friday, January 11th to take advantage of the Early Bird Special by saving $200!
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PPC Hero: Tell us a little bit about yourself…
Nick: My name is Nick Herinckx, I was born and raised in beautiful Portland, Oregon and have been a tech geek all my life. I taught myself how to build my first website in middle school and I was hooked! I began my career as a database programmer, but quickly realized that online marketing is really what I loved most, especially PPC and SEO. After working a while at other agencies, I really developed a passion for working with B2B companies and long sales cycles, which is what drove me to help start Obility Consulting, an online marketing agency specilizing in working with B2B companies with long sales cycles. In my spare time, I play blues guitar, am learning golf and enjoy spending time with my wife, friends and family.
PPC Hero: Why did you decide to become a PPC professional?
Nick: The data, the impact it has on clients’ businesses, the technology and the people. I love that PPC is always changing and I love getting to work on many businesses and help them grow. Having such a data-oriented profession also is gratifying in that you get to see the direct impact/results from your work. I also love seeing how PPC can help businesses get in front of their customers and capture demand. It’s the best feeling knowing that you have had a direct impact on your clients’ businesses. Lastly, the community is excellent and very generous with their tips and knoweldge. It’s a great industry to be in.
PPC Hero: What has your experience in PPC taught you about Account Structure?
Nick: One of the main things I’ve learned is that campaign structure isn’t just about separating keyword themes or Network, it can be used in much more powerful ways. One of my favorite tactics is to organize accounts, for example, by stage of the buying cycle. This allows you to manage budgets based on targeting prospects while they’re in the Solution Search stage of the cycle, and then using what’s leftover to target users in the Discovery stage to fill the top of the sales funnel. Using a structure like this allows you to really squeez out performance from fixed budgets. Also, I’ve learned that structing an account too granularly is much better than structuing one too broad. I always structure accounts as granularly as I can to ensure maximum control.
PPC Hero: Tell us a little about what you’ll be speaking on at Hero Conf 2013.
Nick: I’ll be discussing how to track keyword-level PPC revenue and return over long sales cycles. For example, many B2B companies use PPC to generate leads which may not purchase for 6 or more months. I’ll show you how to track a lead through to close and attribute the revenue they generate back to the keyword which drove them! Moreover, I’ll review how companies that generate leads can get keyword-level revenue reporting to inform bid adjustments. Stop focsing on form-fills, start focusing on revenue!
PPC Hero: What features would you like to see AdWords and BingAds come out with in the future?
Nick: Top Quality Scores for all of my campaigns! Just kidding…I would like to see even more focus on improving targeting options on the Display Network. Topic and Audience targeting are great, and I’d like to see this functionality pushed further to allow for more targeting of specific types of websites and even more granular topic. Continuing to refine keyword targeting is important too. On the retargeting front, better control over which types of sites retargeted ads show up on, the more options the better! More data in search term reports.
PPC Hero: If you could predict where PPC will be in 3 years, what would you say?
Nick: I think that retargeting is still very new, and options in this area will not only grow in number, but also be much better in terms of controlling how users are retargeted. I also think that PPC will continue to take a higher percentage of the search engine results pages, and that PPc ads will get more dynamic and include more semantic information. I also see the PPC networks moving away from last-click attribution to better report on the positive impact of PPc campaigns. Lastly, I feel like tracking over long sales cycles is a big hole in the current capabilities of the PPC networks, and there will be much more options for incorporating PPC data into back-end customer tracking systems to get better, more accurate return data.
PPC Hero: What do you think is the most important thing to keep in mind when managing a PPC account?
Nick: Let the data accrue! It’s tempting to want to make a lot of changes fast, but if you don’t allow for statistical significance to be reached, your changes may not be help and you’ll have no idea. Lastly, read 1 hour a day. This industry changes so such that it takes this long to keep up-to-date.
PPC Hero: Outside of paid search and the Internet, what are your favorite ways to pass the time?
Nick: I love blues guitar, learning golf and reading non-fiction to relax. I also like watching cheesy action movies!
