Search Marketing Trainer

PPC marketing is still kind of a free for all when it comes to new media, but it's been around long enough to be rife with myths, legends and unrealistic expectations. Learn them, love them and leave them. Remember, you CAN handle the truth - as long as you can identify it, that is.

PPC Myths Revealed

• Myth 1: Search Marketing = Instant Gratification
  
  I hate to be the one to break it to you. Actually, that's a lie. I'm happy to be the one to break it to you - search marketing takes TIME and honest to goodness PLANNING and very real, very calculated WORK. Yes, you can launch a campaign in five minutes. Yes, sometimes that will work well for some advertisers, but mostly it will cost you money and you'll end up Googling "PPC Help", finding me and pleading with me to fix your awful campaign before it sucks you dry.

• Myth 2: If you hire [insert agency name here] your conversions will double, or your traffic will triple or your ROI will launch itself into the cosmos.

  Look, I'm not trying to talk my industry out of a job here or anything, but no one can guarantee you specific results. I don't care how fancy their automated tool is. The only certainty in this game is that proper management and optimization will improve your campaign 9 times out of 10. Hiring me won't make your bad landing pages better (unless you choose to listen to me and change them). It won't make a nonexistent audience suddenly appear, or somehow cause a highly competitive space to magically become less cluttered. Hire an expert to help you build a sound strategy and teach you how to leverage PPC so you can maybe, possibly take it over yourself some day, not because they promise to grant your every unrealistic wish.

• Myth 3: PPC works for everyone.

  Please see Myth #2, above, for a few scenarios that can negate the prospect of a successful PPC campaign. Too much competition, a horrible landing page, a product that won't sell, a very niche or specific audience, a geographic region that's so small it's practically nonexistent, etc. etc. etc. There are a lot of reasons why PPC campaigns fail - some of them are within your control, many of them aren't. It's a big fat myth that paid search works for everyone. Definitely test it (and do so strategically), but don't keep pushing it if it's not working for you.

• Myth 4: You don't need to abide by Google's terms of service.

  Look, we all like to break the rules. I spent three days at SMX Advanced last June listening to very smug PPC experts talk about how they love gaming the system. I also spent five horrifying minutes last week reading this thread on WebProWorld discussing just how easy it is to get yourself (or your client) banned from advertising on Google permanently. Do yourself a favor, learn Google's Advertising Guidelines and follow them. Bow to your king or he'll take your text ads away.

• Myth 5: PPC Marketing is Easy

  I'm not sure if this is truly a myth or just a pipe dream. SOME things about PPC are easy - handing your credit card over to Google, for example or writing bad ads in order to get a campaign up quickly. But I think the 80/20 rule applies to PPC just like it does to every other form of paid media. The difference is you can see a lot of the waste with PPC and cut it out so that after a few weeks or months, your campaign is a lot more efficient than it was when you launched. That is, of course, if you take the time to optimize it. Remember, anything that positions paid search as being easy (e.g., give us $500/month and we'll send tons of traffic to your site via Google, Yahoo and Bing) is probably too good to be true. Don't pay people for search engine traffic, unless those people work for the search engines. That doesn't mean you shouldn't pay people to help you launch and manage PPC - but keep as much control over your campaigns as possible or you'll most likely be trading quality leads for useless clicks.

• Myth 6: PPC Marketing is Hard

  I'm really not contradicting myself here. I've met a lot of potential advertisers (in my day!) that are overwhelmed by all the moving parts which are inherently a part of any PPC campaign. Google allows you to apply many different targeting criteria and variables to help you focus and optimize your campaign (for example). Sometimes Google jumps in with automated features such as opting every single new campaign into "content match." which may or may not be good for a campaign. When you get overwhelmed with all the settings and dangling bits of your PPC campaign, remember that it's not as complicated as all that. You are the expert in your business, after all. You speak your own language. Search marketing is keyword marketing and you have all the information you need to create good, targeted campaigns. Learning how to manage them in the engines is just a minor technicality (that's what I'm here for, folks!) Once you get that down, you're good.

• Myth 7: Google is Always Right

  If you consistently spend a lot of money on Adwords (the amount is debatable, but generally it's upwards of 20K/month for over three months), you'll likely to get an email directly from a Google Adwords representative who cheerily announces he or she has been assigned to help you manage your account. This is good news, because not a lot of advertisers warrant personal attention from Google. However, please keep in mind that Google is out to make money for Google and, as such, if they offer to optimize your campaign for you, take the time to review what they've done and don't be afraid to reject some or all of it. It is very possible, for example, that they may ad terms like "cheap children's clothing" when you are, in fact, selling high end children's clothing. True story. I kid you not. So, be kind and cheerful to your Google reps, but remember that you know your campaign better than they do. They are there to squeeze every last dime out of you. Who me, cynical? NAH!

• Myth 8: Lots of campaign changes should be made all the time and all at once AND you'll be able to assess their effectiveness immediately.

  Okay, this one's personal. Please don't expect any changes you (or I) make to your account to reveal their effectiveness (or lack thereof) instantly. It can take a few weeks to implement big changes to an account (such as a restructure) and another few weeks to really understand how those changes have effected your traffic, conversions and quality score. In fact, lots and lots of changes shouldn't be done at once. They should be rolled out gradually over the course of weeks or even months (1-2 months) so that you can really identify what changes are having the best impact and which ones are hurting your account. Please avoid the compulsion to go at your campaign with a sledge hammer because that's just counter productive.