JumpFly Blog: AdWords, Yahoo & Microsoft Advertising

Welcome to 2009! It’s back to life, back to reality for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising after the holidays. First things first, turn off those Christmas ads - I’ve still been seeing a lot of “Free Shipping in Time for Christmas” and “Start Planning for 2009 Today” ads out there.

Have you looked at your PPC ad copy lately? Now is the time to take a look at your ad copy and make changes. If you have multiple ads running, is there a clear loser that you can pause? Is one of them performing really well? Can you test a variation of it to see if you can beat it, or use it in other AdGroups to improve performance elsewhere? If you are planning a Winter Sale, go ahead and do new ads to highlight it.

One thing I really wish the search engines had was start and end dates for ad copy. It would be wonderful to know a client was going to start a sale on a certain date, create the ad to start running on that date (instead of creating it and pausing it, then going in to make it live when the sale starts) and then having it end when the sale ends (instead of manually having to remember to pause the ads). In fact, Google is usually so far ahead of the curve on things like this, that I’m amazed they don’t have that feature already.

But until the search engines add this functionality, you’ll just have to remember to end your holiday ads and start and end your sale ads.

Another thing to check is your PPC advertising budget. Did you raise it for the holidays? Do you need to bring it back down to a lower level? That’s another thing you can look at. Did you do a new marketing budget for 2009? Now is the time to make changes to your PPC budget to be in line with your overall marketing strategy.

I wish you much success in your PPC marketing in 2009. If you are managing your own PPC accounts and spending over $1,000 per month, you should definitely consider starting the new year with a free PPC account review from a qualified PPC management agency. Many advertisers needlessly and unknowingly waste a large portion of their budgets by improperly using the constantly changing PPC platforms. Don’t be one of them.

 More about Nikki

Looking to drive sales this holiday season? Offer free shipping. Free shipping has huge perceived value and can pay-off in added sales.

Case in point: one of my retail pay-per-click (PPC) advertising clients that I manage here at JumpFly offered free shipping on any size order for the last 10 days. Business was brisk, to the point that they were running out of the small free gift they were offering on certain size orders. Their free shipping on any order offer ended at Midnight on December 1st, and they went back to their regular shipping offer (free shipping on orders greater than $75). How did sales do on December 2nd? Dropped by 50%.

According to Ken Cassar, an Analyst at Nielsen Online, “Free-shipping deals is a minimum cost of entry.” What does that mean? Unless you are the only retailer in your niche, if your prices aren’t the lowest of all your competitors, and you’re not offering free shipping, you have absolutely no enticement for someone to order from you. The Internet is all about comparison shopping. It takes one click to leave your site, and without a reason to come back, you’ve probably lost the sale.

Another case in point, I did an A/B test in Google AdWords for another PPC advertising client where we compared a free shipping offer versus a percentage discount. The dollar savings of the percentage discount was more than the free shipping offer; an end customer would have saved more money with the percentage discount. Surprisingly, at the end of the test, the free shipping offer outconverted the discount by a pretty hefty margin.

So what can you do if you can’t offer free shipping on any order? Offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount. If you already do that, like my client above who normally offers free shipping on orders over $75, than reduce that minimum dollar amount. One option is to figure out your average order size, than make the free shipping offer just a few dollars higher than that. (Think about Amazon.com and their Free Super Saver Shipping. I know that I’ve added another item to an order, just to qualify for that $25 minimum. How about you?)

And if you do offer free shipping, whatever the deal, make sure you highlight it everywhere on your site and in your ads at Google AdWords, Yahoo and Microsoft. Remember that it does no good to have it only on the home page if you’re sending your ads to an internal landing page. Make sure the offer is displayed everywhere, on every page, and on your shopping cart. You still have roughly eight more days of online shopping, depending on when your cut-off is for guaranteed Christmas delivery. Use that time wisely.

More about Nikki

The holiday shopping rush is under way. No doubt, you have already made some improvements to your website and your offers. But have you given any thought to your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns?

Here are some tips to making the most of your PPC Ads at Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter:

1. Highlight Your Holiday Specials

In your ads, be sure to mention any holiday specials you are running.  From price reductions to coupons to free shipping.  Include it in the ad.  People are looking for bargains this holiday season.

2. Set Your Budgets Higher

This time of year there will be more traffic on all of the product search terms.  Make sure your ads are showing consistently all day by setting the right budget and the right keywords bids. 

You should double-check your positions as well.  There are some terms that become highly competitive this time of year.  You may have been running happily at positions 2-3 for the last few months and all of a sudden drop to 10 because of increased holiday competition.  Keep an eye on this through the end of the month. 

For most B2C retail businesses, the holiday makes up as much as 60% of their total revenue for the year.  Your advertising spend should reflect this.

3. Consider Gift Terms

Be very cautious with the vague, generic gift terms.  However, you may find that gift terms specific to your product line will help you.  For example, if you sell coffee, consider “coffee gifts”, “coffee gift ideas”, etc.  As with everything, watch your cost per conversion on these terms.

The Google AdWords Team talks about some of these tips in their Inside Adwords blog. Applying proven PPC Management techniques is always critical, but especially during the holidays.

More about Kristie