Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Google recently made a significant change in how they treat using trademarked terms in Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) advertising ad copy. Prior to this change, unless you had direct written approval from a trademark holder, you were pretty much out of luck when it came to using a trademarked term in your PPC ad copy. Even if you were an authorized reseller of a specific brand, you still could not use the brand name in your Google AdWords ad copy unless Google had express written permission from the trademark holder on file.

That has all changed. And that is great news for many e-commerce sites that sell branded items. If you are a reseller of goods that have a trademarked brand and if your landing pages give significant focus to the trademarked term, then most Google AdWords ads within the United States will now be approved to run on Google. Also, make sure the trademarked term is used in a text format on your website, as opposed to only flash, so Google can recognize the use of the trademarked term on your page.

The approval process for ads the contain trademarked terms is a separate process at Google AdWords. The ads are first approved to run for all other Google policies, and then they are checked so the use of the trademark and the landing page are in alignment with Google’s new trademark policy guidelines. This approval process may take a bit longer than the normal time you may have seen in the past for non-trademarked ads, so you will need to give Google AdWords ads containing trademarks a bit more time to show up on Google.

Also, you might notice that these trademark ads may show a status of “approved-limited.” This means that Google recognizes that the ad contains a trademarked term and that the advertiser was not given direct permission from the owner of the trademark to actually use it in Google pay per click ad copy. This does NOT mean that the ad will only show for a limited time or in limited regions, but it does mean that Google will check this ad continually to make sure it aligns with the new trademark policy. The content of your landing page will be constantly assessed by Google to make sure the trademark is still featured prominently, so be careful of any changes you make to your landing pages, especially after your trademark ads have been approved and are receiving click traffic.

This change is a real plus for anyone doing PPC management because we all know that if someone is searching for branded items, it certainly is nice to have that trademarked brand name in your ad. If I’m looking for Lexmark ink, I’m certainly more inclined to click an ad that has the Lexmark trademarked term in the ad, than on a generic ad that does not.

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Sure you can manage Google AdWords yourself, but do really want to? Do you have the time to really manage all of your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns as closely and as carefully as you would like to? Are you content with how they are performing and not really looking to save both your time and advertising dollars? If you answered “yes” to that last question, please just send me a check for $10,000 since you don’t mind just throwing money away.

The confidentiality of our clients is important so I am not revealing any names here, but I would like to share some actual numbers that we have seen here at JumpFly as a result of our efforts. I looked at some PPC advertising data samples from the first quarter of 2008 and compared them to the first quarter of 2009. Sure, I can make these numbers up, but it’s just much easier to show you the real numbers as they truthfully exist.

JumpFly Client #1

1st Quarter 2008 – 139 conversions at $351.55 each with a total spend of approx. $49,000.
1st Quarter 2009 – 295 conversions at $125.51 each with a total spend of approx. $37,000.

Yes, they spent about $12,000 dollars LESS but more than DOUBLED their number of conversions. True story.

JumpFly Client #2

1st Quarter 2008 – 205 conversions at $62.82 each with a total spend of approx. $21,000.
1st Quarter 2009 – 301 conversions at $32.47 each with a total spend of approx. $10,000.

Yes, they spent about $11,000 dollars LESS but increased conversions by nearly 100 more. True story.

JumpFly Client #3

1st Quarter 2008 – 252 conversions at $9.87 each with a total spend of approx. $2,500.
1st Quarter 2009 – 1,859 conversions at $5.91 each with a total spend of approx. $11,000.

Yes, the spend is greatly increased as we took their business to a whole new level, while bringing their conversion costs down. Huge sales growth with conversions growing over 1,500 compared to the same time period a year earlier. True story.

JumpFly Client #4

1st Quarter 2008 – 4,027 conversions at $9.04 each with a total spend of approx. $36,000.
1st Quarter 2009 – 5,204 conversions at $6.36 each with a total spend of approx. $33,000.

Yes, they spent about $3,000 LESS while growing conversions over 1,000 at a lower cost. True story.

And the numbers above don’t take into the account the time and worry these business owners took off their shoulders by outsourcing their PPC management.

I’m not saying that professional PPC management will produce the same results for every company, but very positive results certainly can come from having a professional pay per click management company like JumpFly assisting you along the way. During these tight economic times, can you afford not to?

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So you’ve taken Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter as far as you want to take them. Where do you turn next? What other pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program can you use? Which other search engine marketing platform can you take advantage of to drive incremental sales volume for your business? If you are primarily a business to business (B2B) company, then you certainly should take a look at the Pay Per Click program that Business.com is offering.

Here at JumpFly, we’ve been a bit hesitant to use Business.com because of some poor results in the past, coupled with the fact that they didn’t have their own simple-to-use conversion tracking system. I’m happy to report that situation has now changed on both fronts. I am currently working with a client who is now advertising on Business.com and we are seeing both a good volume of traffic as well as good quality traffic. Conversions are coming in on a daily basis, with a cost per conversion very similar to the results we are seeing from Google. All in all, it’s working well and we will definitely continue utilizing their PPC program. Their new conversion tracking is just as easy to implement as Google’s — just copy the code they provide and paste into the appropriate “thanks for your order” or “thanks for contacting us” confirmation page. That’s it. Then you’re off to the races.

Another feature that I absolutely love about Business.com’s PPC program is the way they have structured their ads. You can use up to 60 characters in title and 150 keywords in the description. Sure, short is sweet, but sometimes you really do want those extra words in there to really punch up your message. Another cool feature is the ability to use their Multilink functionality. You can use these other links to drive traffic deeper into your site. For example, let’s say you are a printing company and you are bidding on the keyword “printing company”. You can use the main link in the ad to drive traffic to your home page, but your ad can also display a sublink to your magazine printing page, your brochure printing page, and to your postcard printing page. That way, one ad can possibly drive traffic to five different pages on your site depending on the needs of your new potential customer. It is very cool.

If interested in learning more, contact a professional PPC management firm to assist you.

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