If you haven’t heard yet, the last Friday of every month, YOU have a chance for your PPC blog post to be featured in our weekly News Roundups! How, you may ask? By Tweeting it to us, I answer! You’ll have the entire last week of every month to get your submissions Tweeted to us. You might be thinking, “Seriously? Do you think I’m going to remember four weeks from now to Tweet you my blog post?” Well, have no fear (PPC Hero is here!…Sorry, I had to…). We’ll be sure to Tweet reminders, and I’ll post a reminder on the News Roundups too! This week, we’re excited to be featuring submissions from our friends Chris Soo and Chad Summerhill. Enjoy!
The possibilities alongside Google AdWords are seemingly endless for businesses of all sorts. We have witnessed the success of strictly profit-based PPC advertising campaigns, but there is a long lost brother here that we often overlook. What about non-profit paid search advertising? In his latest article, Chris Soo explains that Google and its PPC interface can be quite useful and generous toward charity organizations. He indicates that Google offers grants of up to $10,000 per month in return for a minimal amount of data at the conclusion of each quarter. Not bad for a free $10,000 to kick-start your campaign! Soo has also outlined a few key considerations for you to remember when promoting a charity via AdWords. Check out his article for the full scoop!
Oftentimes, it is helpful to visualize the data generated by the ad testing in your PPC campaigns. Chad Summerhill, a guest blogger at Certified Knowledge, shares his way of visualizing ad testing data using cumulative metrics. He explains that by going through this process, one can identify erratic behavior in ad testing. This is important because knowing whether or not your ad testing is being done in a reliable and statistically significant manner is essential for decision-making (which is especially true if you are contemplating taking your talents to South Beach).
Have you taken advantage of Adwords Campaign Experiments (ACE) yet? Google rolled out this tool last year in Beta for testing different aspects of your PPC campaigns. Before you start, check out some ACE tips and experiences from Melissa Mackey at Search Engine Land. The post takes you through some of the more confusing aspects of the ACE experiment and control settings, as well as areas that could really do with some tweaking. The tool is still relatively new, however, and I think over time, Google will really transform it into a greater value than it already is!
Adcenter is changing their policy on trademarks. According to PPCBlog.com, Adcenter will begin to allow bidding on trademarked terms on March 3rd. But, there are certain conditions: your ad can include a trademarked term in the ad text if it is evaluated by a third party source, you must present the trademark in the context of the research that it is cited and you have to feature the related research clearly and prominently on the landing page that your ad links to. So be sure to keep that in mind as you write ads after March 3rd.
Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Accounts have been around for a while now, but never has there been such a concise review of it as Marc Poirier’s article on SearchEngineWatch. His report breaks down the entire process for advertisers, from determining the type of engagement you want, to picking tweets to using Twitter’s reporting tools. It’s a worthwhile read for advertisers who have the current ability to use this feature and for those who are considering it for the future.
