3 Ways To Profit From The Google Display Network

January 31, 2014 By 24 Comments

Earlier this week, there was an interesting conversation on Twitter about the Google Display Network. IntelligentPPC made the bold statement that one should avoid the GDN like the plague. Many members of PPCchat disagreed, myself included. Check this link for an example of the debate that ensued.

If you’re running search and display campaigns together, then you certainly will lose money. The two are not the same and optimization tactics are totally different. But if you’re running distinct campaigns in display, then you absolutely can profit from it. Here are 3 ways to profit from the Google Display Network.

Promote a new product.

One of the rare times that keyword search falls down is in new product launches. Let’s say you’ve developed a great new product that’s totally revolutionary. So revolutionary that no one is searching for it. If no one is searching for it, keyword search won’t be much help to you. I’ve seen this time and again – low search volume for new products.

The problem is lack of awareness. If people don’t know about it, they won’t search for it.

Enter the GDN.

By running carefully crafted display ads targeting the right audience, the GDN will help increase awareness of your new product amongst your target audience. From there, people will buy – either directly from the display ads, or from searches performed later on.

We recently did this with one of our clients. They developed a product that was unique. No one was searching for it. We created image display ads with pictures showing the product in use. The ads led users to a video demonstration on the client site.

Not only did we increase traffic and ultimately search volume for the product, we also saw direct and profitable sales from display.

Get on prime web properties through the back door.

Let’s face it – targeting B2B customers with keyword search can be challenging. Right now I have a client who’s trying to reach B2B decision makers to get them to use their product. Problem is, their product is also something consumers search for. They don’t want to reach consumers, so we’ve used negative keywords to eliminate most of those searches – and now the client’s search volume is very low.

Immediately I started thinking “LinkedIn Ads.” But CPCs on LinkedIn are high – the audience for this client has a minimum CPC of $4.50, and you’ll need to bid much higher to get a good position.

Enter the GDN.

Yes, LinkedIn is part of the GDN. And you can craft a GDN campaign to show ads on LinkedIn for a lower cost than going through LinkedIn directly. You can even get image display ads onto LinkedIn this way – something that costs 5 figures when working directly with LinkedIn.

Build killer remarketing lists.

Awareness is a key component of any marketing strategy. If you’re only using keyword search, you’re missing those who don’t know about your product. Sure, you might hook some of them with broad, generic terms – but at what cost? I’ve seen broad keywords in the $30-$50 per click range. With conversion rates of 1% or lower, that’s usually not very profitable.

Enter the GDN.

Use the GDN to create awareness of your brand and your product. Then, create a remarketing list comprised of those who came to your site from the GDN but didn’t convert. Then remarket to them with a compelling offer.

By using the 2-step GDN/remarketing process, instead of paying $30 for a visitor with a 1% conversion rate, you can now pay $2 or $3 per click. That’s 10 visits from the GDN for one from search – and now they’re familiar with you because of the remarketing component. That means they’re more likely to buy. At a lower cost than from keyword search.

So should you avoid the GDN like the plague? Go for it – I’ll be happy to take the customers you’re leaving on the table.

How have you used the GDN to make a profit? Share in the comments?

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PPC and Content Marketing – Thought Starters

January 24, 2014 By 2 Comments

Back in December I ran a reader poll to see what my beloved readers want to hear about in 2014. While several topics got a lot of votes, the top vote-getter was PPC and Content Marketing.

Content marketing seems to be the shiny object for 2014. Everyone is trying to figure out how to create content and share it with the world. Content is being shared in a myriad of ways that didn’t exist even a year ago. Witness the rise of visual platforms like Vine, Pinterest, and Snapchat and you’ll see what I mean.

So how does PPC fit into the mix?

It’s not as simple as, say, PPC for ecommerce. In that case, you start bidding on keywords and sending visitors to product pages. Audiences may not even matter, if people are buying.

But PPC for content marketing is less clear-cut.

I’ll explore this in depth in future posts. And I want your opinions too – what have you tried? Here are a few thought starters that I consider.

  • Content audit. What content is available?
  • Audience research. Like keyword research in search, audience research is crucial.
  • Timing. In ecommerce or other traditional PPC, timing may not even matter. People might buy your product year-round. But content burns out fast.
  • Channels. Content can be promoted in many places besides Google. Google may not even be the best place for promotion.
  • Buyer journey. Is this content best suited to awareness, demand generation, or something else?
  • Integration. Who else is promoting this content? PR, media, sales, etc.?

Those are just a few considerations for a successful PPC content marketing campaign. We’ll explore them all in depth.

What do you consider when embarking on a content marketing play? Share in the comments!

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7 Questions To Expect From Your New PPC Manager

January 10, 2014 By 3 Comments

So, you’ve taken the plunge and hired a new PPC manager. Maybe you’ve decided to hire a PPC agency, or maybe you’re keeping PPC in-house but want someone to manage your program full time. Either way, congratulations on the new hire!

You’ll no doubt expect your new PPC manager to do keyword research, set up ad copy tests, manage bids, and track conversions. But PPC management goes way beyond keywords & ad copy. Here are seven questions to expect from your new PPC manager.

What are Your Goals for PPC?

The first thing your PPC manager should do, before he or she even logs into AdWords, is talk to you about your goals. A PPC campaign without goals is like traveling to a new city without a map. How will you find your way if you don’t know where you’re going?

Expect your new manager to ask specific questions about sales goals, cost per conversion targets, and overall business goals.

What are Your Key Products and Services?

If you’ve hired someone from within, they probably already know the answer to this question. Everyone else needs to ask it.

Even if your goal is just to use PPC to increase overall sales, it’s invaluable to know which products or services are your “must-haves.” This info is critical for prioritization, especially if you run low on budget and your PPC manager has to dial back your spend.

Who is Your Primary Target Audience?

Even your from-within hire should ask this question. Not only is it important for overall marketing strategy, it can also drive PPC tactics such as engine placement, geotargeting, and ad messaging.

For example, if your goal is to generate awareness of a new product targeted to women age 35-54, you might want to focus on Facebook ads. You’ll get zillions of impressions, and they’ll all be delivered to your target audience. If your goal is to reach business decision makers, you should try Bing – it works very well for B2B at a fraction of the cost of Google.

Are There any Specific Offers You’d Like to Promote?

Not all PPC is offer/promotion-based. But it’s still good to know what promotions and offers are out there so you can test them in PPC.

PPC is a great way to vet marketing messaging and get immediate response data without spending a lot of money on creative and traditional media.

You can use PPC to test offers and concepts before rolling it out to display and print. It’s an efficient way to see what resonates with the audience and avoid sinking money into messaging that doesn’t get attention.

What is Your Desired Cost per Conversion?

While this question is related to the goals question, it needs to be asked on its own. I’ve lost count of how many clients I’ve worked with over the years who have no idea how much they’re willing to pay to acquire a customer.

Sure, it’s possible to run PPC campaigns without a target CPA in mind – we’ll just try to get the lowest possible cost per conversion. But if you have even a ballpark number in mind, share it with your PPC manager!

I once had a client in a competitive vertical with CPCs upwards of $5/click. We were getting CPAs of around $15, and I was pretty happy with that. Turns out the client didn’t want to pay more than $5 per lead! We would have had to convert every visitor in that situation.

Get these thoughts out in the open before your campaign launches – you’ll both sleep better at night.

What Conversions are you Measuring, and How are You Measuring Them?

This is another question that a surprising number of advertisers answer with “I don’t know” and “we’re not.” If those are your responses, that’s OK. Your PPC manager can help you. But identifying key website conversion actions and setting up a way to track them will be their first order of business, before they even log in to AdWords.

If you’re tracking conversions, that’s great! If you have more than one conversion you’re tracking, take things one step further and make sure your PPC manager knows the priority of each conversion.

If you’re in ecommerce, online sales will probably be your number one conversion; but you might also be interested in email signups, contact form submissions, phone calls, and other actions. Knowing the importance of each conversion will help your PPC manager optimize campaigns accordingly.

What’s a Good Time to Hold a Recurring Meeting?

Nobody wants more meetings. But regular communication with your PPC manager is crucial, whether the manager is in-house or at an agency.

Meetings don’t have to be in-person; I have 30-minute monthly calls with several of my clients, and we rarely cancel. That’s because the clients know that we’ll discuss progress toward their business goals, how well we’re reaching their target audience, promotional offer results, cost per conversion, and conversions by type.

Sound familiar? It should! We discuss all the questions I’ve outlined here. And we talk about other things too; but the primary agenda is usually the first six questions in this post.

Even if your PPC manager isn’t new, it’s a good idea to revisit these questions with them. You’ll be glad you did.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Search Engine Watch on December 18, 2012.

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My Top 3 PPC Blog Posts of 2013

December 20, 2013 By 2 Comments

Here we are in the waning days of 2013, and the web is abuzz with “year in review” and “predict next year” posts. I actually find these posts to be fun – it’s interesting to look back and see if our predictions came true, and it’s good to have the “best of the best” in one post.

In true New Years fashion, let’s count down to the top 3 posts on my blog from 2013, as determined by page views. Enjoy!

#3: What’s Up With Bing Ads?

This post was written in September 2012, and yet it was the 3rd most popular post this year. As my longtime readers know, over the years I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Bing Ads. This post covers both good and bad at that time – some of the issues I ranted about have since been fixed.

#2: 8 Killer Landing Page Optimization Tips for PPC

In April, I asked the experts at PPC Chat to give me their best landing page optimization tip for PPC. They came through with flying colors in this popular post – and readers offered additional tips in the comments. This one is worth a bookmark.

#1: My Top 10 PPC Blogs

Here, I list my go-to sources of great PPC news and information. If you’re not reading these blogs, what are you waiting for? Again, readers shared additional resources in the comments.

I hope you enjoy these posts, whether as a review or in case you missed them the first time around. Happy New Year, everyone!

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Reader Poll: PPC Topics for 2014

December 6, 2013 By 2 Comments

Thanksgiving was last week, and people are still thinking about what they’re thankful for. I’m thankful for a lot of things: my family, my awesome job, my Michigan State Spartans, and much more.

I’m also very thankful for you, my blog readers. Without you, I’d be, well, talking to myself. Many of you I’ve never met; many others I have met in real life and we’ve become friends. Whichever camp you fall into, thank you.

Now is your chance to tell me what PPC topics you’d like to hear more about in 2014. Answer the poll below and let me know!

Got something special you’re thankful for? Share in the comments!

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The Top 3 PPC Engines That Don’t Want My Money

November 22, 2013 By 8 Comments

Here it is – the post I’ve been threatening to write. In today’s online advertising world, it seems as though new social media platforms are sprouting every day, and adding an ad network at the same time. Advertisers are excited about testing out new platforms like Promoted Pins and Instagram Ads.

Most of the new platforms’ ad interfaces are awful. Even some stalwart PPC engine interfaces are awful. Now it’s time to name names. Here are the top 3 PPC engines that don’t seem to want my money.

#1: LinkedIn Ads

I work at a B2B-focused agency, so naturally many of our clients are interested in LinkedIn ads. We’ve had good luck with LinkedIn – the nice thing about advertising with them is that if you reach just a handful of people in your key target audience, the ads pay for themselves. As a result, clients who try LinkedIn are often eager to spend more money once they see the results.

And what a challenge it is to spend more money. LinkedIn’s advertising interface has countless shortcomings, and they’re detailed in this wonderful post by Merry Morud over at aimClear, so I won’t rehash most of them here.

I have to mention the timeout issue, though. The LI interface times out after about 5 minutes, even if you are working in it. Yes folks, you can be in the middle of adding companies to a campaign (one by one, because there is no bulk upload), and then it times out. It’s enough to make me take my money and go someplace else, like Facebook which never times out.

The icing on the user interface disaster cake is that LinkedIn’s CPCs are well above industry averages. The minimum CPC on one of our campaigns is $4.00 – because we excluded entry-level people. LinkedIn, please take some of that exorbitant CPC you’re charging and use it to overhaul your interface.

#2: Twitter Ads

In Twitter’s defense, their ad platform is fairly new. They haven’t had a lot of time to work out the bugs. Also, audience data is limited to 140 characters – so it’s no easy task to achieve laser-focused targeting.

Still, Twitter Ads leaves so much to be desired. For one thing, their reporting is TERRIBLE. It took me about a week to even find out where to download a custom report.

Imagine you’re new to Twitter. Where would you go to download a report?

twitter report

I see the “CSV” button, but it’s not clear that that’s the button you click to customize your report. Even at that, the available stats are very limited.

The thing is, if I can’t download detailed results data, I can’t optimize the campaign. If I can’t optimize the campaign, I’m not inclined to keep spending money there.

Another big downfall of Twitter ads is the lack of dayparting. Businesses often want to promote tweets during business hours, not at 2am when Twitter is full of drunk college students. Want to do that? No can do.

Limited options mean limited spend, Twitter.

#3: Facebook Ads

I realize I praised Facebook Ads earlier in this post. They have many, many positive features.

The constant changes to their ads interface are not on that list.

Merry Morud strikes again with a nice comment on the latest changes:

FB ads

(Side note: If you want a good laugh, go read the whole conversation, especially Andrew Goodman’s response. You won’t be disappointed.)

I had the same challenge as Merry with updating URLs. Like most FB advertisers, to create new ads I duplicate ads and then edit them. I tried this in Power Editor, but it wouldn’t let me edit the destination URL. All I was doing was updating the Google Analytics tag – I wasn’t changing the URL itself. And what if I did want to change the URL? So what? Why can’t I do that, Facebook?

If I can’t track it, I can’t optimize it. If I can’t optimize it… You know the rest.

Honorable Mention: Bing Ads

Sorry Bing – I have to put you guys on the list for the recent login fiasco. You did not win friends and influence PPC’ers with that move. I was thisclose to pulling every dime out of Bing when I couldn’t log in.

Thankfully, the issue was resolved and we’re back to seeing the good results we normally do with Bing. I get that there were security issues, but this was not the way to handle them – especially when so many people are reluctant to use Bing due to low traffic.

I find it interesting that Google is all too eager to take our money (case in point: their “optimization” suggestions that equate to “increase your bids” – I just got one of these from them today), and yet their competitors throw up roadblock after roadblock.

Are they competitive with Google? Hardly. I’m not sure they want our money.

What do you think? Do you agree with my list? Got someone to add? Share in the comments!

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Why Agencies Need Better PPC Support

November 15, 2013 By 10 Comments

There has been a lot of chatter in the PPC community recently about Google Adwords support, or lack thereof. I’ve written more than my share of rants on the topic. It’s no surprise that Google would bear the brunt of PPC pros’ frustration – after all, they are the market leader and therefore are the platform we all use every day.

But step back from your daily annoyances and think about the big picture that is Google Adwords. They actually have built a decent platform for agencies, with MCCs and sub-MCCs. They have Adwords Editor. They have Google Partners.

I know Google Partners is nothing to write home about. But have you tried working in any of the social PPC platforms? Tried contacting their PPC support team? Gotten any nice gifts from them?

I thought so.

Here’s the thing. Agencies handle many (not all, but many) of the large PPC accounts out there. We are frequently the ones getting advertisers to try new things like Pinterest Ads. It behooves the search engines to give us the support we need to spend our clients’ money!

I’m sure that many of the questions crossing the desks of the engines’ PPC support staff are basic, and likely come from mom and pop advertisers trying to do PPC themselves. So why should the PPC engines offer any support to agencies when our numbers are relatively small? Isn’t general support enough?

No. And here’s why.

We are not beginners.

Sure, agencies hire new PPC staff all the time, and frequently these new hires have no experience with PPC. The fact of the matter is, though, the newbies aren’t always the ones calling Google or Bing for help. In the agency world, many of us who call are very experienced in PPC. Experienced PPC’ers see support calls as a last resort. We’ve already exhausted all other resources, including reading the help files and tinkering with the interface ourselves. We’re stuck, and that’s why we’re calling.

Therefore, we need dedicated PPC support staffers who are experienced themselves. This is where Bing really shines. We have a dedicated team at Bing, and they are experts. They are not the latest new hires cutting their teeth on the 1-866 number. They get that we get it, so on calls we dispense with the basics and talk strategy; and when we have a problem, they don’t read us the help files – they go in and fix it.

That’s what we want from you, Google – and from all the rest of you: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter… LinkedIn only offers support via email, and I don’t think Facebook or Twitter offer it at all. So when we do have a question or something isn’t working, guess what? We often pull our money and spend it elsewhere.

We handle multiple clients.

Like I mentioned earlier, Google is the leader by a long shot in making it easy to work with multiple clients. Bing has gotten better, but their MCC-equivalent leaves a lot to be desired. Facebook has a decent interface for multiple accounts – and they have Power Editor which is awesome. But their reporting is pretty terrible, and both the online UI and Power Editor are glitchy at times.

LinkedIn? Well, they sort of have an MCC but its usefulness is totally overshadowed by the fact that their ads interface times out after about 5 minutes.

A few weeks ago, I was creating a campaign for a client who wanted to target 100 companies. After painstakingly spending an hour entering each company one by one (since LI has no bulk upload function whatsoever), I hit “next” and got the login screen. Thankfully, LI did save my work – but why give people that heart attack?

Agencies are in PPC interfaces all day. Don’t time them out! Facebook and Twitter never time out on me, and neither does Google. Bing only does after several hours of inactivity. C’mon LinkedIn – if you want agencies to spend money with you, don’t force them out of the ads interface every 5 minutes.

I joked on Twitter a while back that I was going to write a blog post called “The Top 3 PPC Engines That Don’t Want My Money.” Let’s hope we get some fast improvement, or I may yet write that post.

What do you think? Is agency PPC support just a pipe dream for all but the largest spenders? Found a way to get better support? Share in the comments!

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Conversion Rate Optimization: Whose Responsibility Is It, Anyway?

November 8, 2013 By 7 Comments

Used to be, in the agency world, we had to sell clients (or bosses – when I say clients here, I’m talking bosses too) on the idea of PPC. Heck, we used to have to sell clients on the idea of a website once upon a time.

As recently as 5-6 years ago, clients didn’t know what PPC was, or that it even existed. That’s all changed now. I’ve met few clients who didn’t have at least a basic understanding of PPC. They may not be experts at it, but they know what it is.

Nowadays it’s not hard to convince clients to engage in PPC, or even SEO for that matter. Driving qualified traffic to your website via search is something almost everyone wants to do.

The challenge today is what happens once people get to the websites.

Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, has been around for a long time. Entire companies exist to help website owners with CRO. Entire books have been written about it. Great blog posts like this one are being written about it. And still, it seems, few companies are actually doing it.

As a PPC manager, then, how much can we be responsible for conversions? And how can we lower the cost per conversion without touching the landing page?

It’s a constant challenge for both agency and in-house PPC’ers. When I worked in-house, I had more input into website optimization than I often do now in an agency setting, but our in-house web development resources were stretched thin. There were always 20 other projects ahead of CRO.

In the agency world, it’s both better and worse. Sometimes we have a budget for CRO – that definitely falls in the “better” camp. But sometimes, clients are unwilling or unable to optimize their websites. I’ve had clients who can’t even install tracking codes, much less use them to optimize for conversion.

So what’s our responsibility as a PPC manager, then? Well, of course there’s still a lot you can do:

  • Optimize ad copy & keywords for conversion rate or cost per conversion
  • Optimize for CPC
  • Pare down the program to the best-converting keywords, ad networks, etc.

Those are all good things to do, depending on the situation. In my opinion, though, a good PPC manager will do one thing no matter what the situation:

Make recommendations for improvement.

So often I see advertisers whose campaigns have been optimized to within an inch of their lives, and yet the website is terrible. It practically scares visitors away instead of enticing them to convert. And of course, conversion rates are low.

It’s our job as PPC managers to recommend simple site changes that could make a big difference in the conversion rate. We may not be the ones to implement the changes, but it’s our responsibility to suggest them.

What do you think? How have you convinced your client or boss to do some CRO? Is CRO your responsibility as a PPC manager, or is it someone else’s? Share in the comments!

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What’s Up With Bing Ads in 2013?

November 1, 2013 By 5 Comments

One of the most-viewed posts on this blog is one I wrote in September 2012 called What’s Up With Bing Ads? In that post, I commented on their constant rebranding, interface and editor issues, and support challenges. That post is consistently in the top 10 most-viewed posts on my blog.

Let’s fast forward 13 months and see what’s changed. I just got back from Bing Ads Next, an exclusive event held at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus. About 20 of the biggest names in PPC were there, and we spent a day seeing Bing Ads’ version of the future of search.

The highlights of the event have already been covered elsewhere, so I won’t rehash them here.  Instead, let’s review what’s changed with Bing Ads over the past year or so.

Online UI and Editor improvements.

In my 2012 post, I complained about issues with the online UI: it timed out too fast and, despite its overhaul, was still clunky to navigate.

In my opinion, most of the interface issues have since been fixed. It no longer times out after 15 minutes – I’ve been able to stay logged in most of the workday. The import function from Google seems to work well (more on this in a minute). The reporting interface is very fast, and in some ways is better than Google’s.

All that said, there are still niggling things missing from the Bing Ads online UI. During the Bing Ads Next feedback session, Matt Van Wagner said what we were all thinking: Why doesn’t the online UI show conversion rate? It’s 2013, for crying out loud – this is a must-have metric and why it’s not available in Bing Ads can only be a gross oversight.

I won’t even get into the login and account creation issues. The Bing Ads team has heard the PPC community loud and clear on this one. Let’s hope there’s a fix in place before this becomes mandatory in 2014.

Let’s talk about Bing Ads Editor for a second. I use Editor all the time, and it’s improved a lot over the past year, too. The import from Google function is nearly flawless. Editor stayed on par with Google’s move to Enhanced Campaigns – and I can only imagine what a curve ball that was to the Bing Ads development team. The fact that they were able to offer the same features as Google, with the same timing, is a Herculean feat of engineering.

But Bing Ads Editor continues to have silly bugs in it, too. The most recent one is that changes you’ve posted still show bolded in Editor, as if they didn’t post. And, only some of them show up this way. So it’s not clear whether all of your changes posted or not – you’ll have to go look them up in the online UI to be sure.

Bing Ads Support.

Here’s where Bing Ads really shines – far outshines Google and their joke that passes as support. When was the last time Google invited a bunch of PPC influencers to the GooglePlex to talk about Adwords? Anyone? Bueller?

My Bing Ads rep was at all the social functions held during Bing Ads Next. He’s a true partner in helping us succeed, and is knowledgeable and responsive. The weird support issues that I outlined in my 2012 post have, thankfully, gone away. Bing Ads Next attendees universally praised Bing Ads support, both their assigned reps and those who man the Bing Ads Twitter account.

So What’s Really Next for Bing Ads?

Only time will tell. I liked a lot of the new things we saw at the event. I love the fact that Bing Ads is listening to us.

But one comment I heard this week is that there was a little too much talking and not enough listening at the event. Bing, if you’ve brought in what amounts to the best minds and biggest influencers in search, ask them questions! Spend twice as much time listening as you do talking! Learn from them! Don’t lecture them about stuff that they already know. Show them more new concepts and ask them what they think!

Amid rumors that Yahoo wants out of the Bing Ads deal, I don’t think any of us truly knows what’s next for Bing Ads. At its core, Microsoft is a software developer, not a search innovator. Their pace is too slow and their products too bloated to keep up with Google. But I love that they’re trying. With advertiser support that’s far superior to Google, and with better ROI nearly across the board, I still think they have a chance.

What do you think? Is Bing Ads going in the right direction, or are they doomed? Share in the comments!

 

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The Top 5 Ways To Use Pivot Tables For PPC

October 25, 2013 By 7 Comments

PPC managers live in Excel. We use it for everything from keyword research, to ad copy creation, to results data crunching. We love Excel so much that a recent PPC Chat discussion centered on it.

Pivot tables are one of the most powerful features of Excel. I discovered the magic of pivot tables fairly recently – I started using them in earnest about 3 years ago. Once I got the hang of them, I wondered why I’d waited so long to use them.

If you’re not using pivot tables to manage PPC, it’s time to start! Here are 5 resources that will help you get started.

Ultimate Visual Guide to Pivot Tables for PPC Data by Mark Jensen at Get Found First.  This is your starting point for learning how to set up pivot tables. You’ll want to bookmark this fantastic resource as you’re learning how to use pivot tables for PPC.

The 10 Reports that Made Me Fall in Love with Pivot Tables by Sean Quadlin at PPC Hero. Sean walks through 10 ways to use pivot tables to analyze your PPC data. If you’re trying to figure out exactly what’s going on with your PPC account performance, try running some of these analyses using pivot tables.

Wasting Money In Your PPC Accounts? Pivot Tables Are Here To Help! by Dave Rosborough at PPC Hero. If you’re a visual learner, check out this how-to video. Dave does a nice walk-through for using pivot tables to figure out where you’re losing money in your PPC campaigns.

Brad Geddes Presents: How to Identify Google AdWords Quality Score Problems by Brad Geddes for PPC Hero. My good friend and PPC Moses Brad Geddes has a guest appearance at PPC Hero with a video on how to use pivot tables to analyze quality score. I first learned about this technique from Brad at HeroConf 2012, and I’ve used it ever since to optimize PPC quality score.

How To Manage Big Data with Pivot Tables by the brilliant Annie Cushing at Search Engine Land. If you’re having trouble with Excel, head over to SEL and read some of Annie’s posts. She’s probably the top expert on Excel in the SEM field. This post is a how-to, complete with screen shots, on culling insight from large data sets using pivot tables.

I use pivot tables weekly, at minimum. My favorite way to use pivot tables for PPC is for ad copy analysis. Finding the best-performing ad is easy with pivot tables.

What’s your favorite way to use pivot tables for PPC? Share in the comments!

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