AMA about PPC Advertising. Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, whatever...

[Eskil]

Thanks guys, solid advice.
My site is basically a one page sales letter. I've got links to legal pages and a blog with some content on there as well. Right now I'm linking to the homepage, so keyword relevancy might be one of the issues as you mentioned.

Will see if creating a targeted page for the main keyword makes any difference and go from there.

Yeah relevancy and 'user experience' is what Google want to see. Let me know how it goes.

Can't believe I didnt think to make a generic landing page with full product injection.

Take template > Inject data. Nice. Simple. Should be pretty easy with my asp.net sites (I dont use php).

Thanks again. I'd give you more speed, but you'd probably get booked.

Lol, thanks for the speed. Yes if you can set up a good generic enough page that you can inject data into on the fly - it will save you lots of time. This technique is great for e-commerce stores with many products.

 

[Eskil]

Is there a way to get some free facebook marketing dollars, like a voucher deal, etc? I know they used to give away $50-100 worth before.

Yeah you can still come across coupons like that from time to time. Often times, FB will send out coupons to newly opened businesses. You can also do some searching on Google for "facebook ads coupon 2013", or even go on a place like Fiverr and see if people are selling them (yes, people have been known to sell $50 coupons for $5 there)

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Eskil]

Hey Tourist,
I can't give a general recommendation as to whether multiple URL / page variations should always be made for physical products, as is often the case; "it depends" on the product, the market, number of product varieties, depth of demographic, etc.

But taking your raincoats as an example - I'll assume that you're selling them for a few different uses and maybe to kids and adults.
You said you only have six styles. Whether that means for men/women, or for casual or hunting, I don't know but either way - let's set up an example approach.

Look at your current products and try to group them by WHO they are for, and WHAT they are for.
For instance, if you have a couple of raincoats that are for designed for hunting, this campaign will use keywords targeting men, hunting/raincoat related keywords, and have a landing page that appeals to that demographic.

This page needs to emphasize the benefits of this particular raincoat, why it's ideal for taking into the woods, how it's made from a durable material, has large pockets for stuff you will carry with you, etc. Also, hunters or guys looking for this type of gear are probably less concerned with price, and more interested in ruggedness, features, and maybe a brand (vs. feeling like they are buying something generic).

Then there's your other raincoats who are cutesie little raincoats for kids. The people who shop for these are most probably women, and they will want to find not only something of quality - but something that will make their kids (and themselves as mothers) look good. Price might also be more of a factor here since young mothers are savvy in finding deals.

Again - maybe you're not even selling raincoats for kids or hunters, so these are just my examples. But my point is this; review your products carefully and try to visualize one or more "typical customer" personas. Then try to your best ability to find what benefits and/or features those people would be looking for. The whole goal when you set up your keywords, campaigns, AND landing pages - should be to give those personas what they expect or want to see.

Now - if your products are pretty much all the same, with just some different colors - and maybe they are unisex and more generic raincoats, then I would try to do some research on what the most important things are when people look for raincoats. I'm sure you still could at least split it up in a men vs. women landing page since with items like clothing, men and women usually look for different things.

Either way, your landing page(s) must always try to do the following:
- Benefits / highlights of the product's properties
- The benefits of why they should shop at your site and not somewhere else
- Convey a sense of value. Both through the benefits above, and also with things like price, shipping terms, return policy.
- If possible, provide social proof like reviews or a mention of "more than x raincoats sold!"
- Convey a sense of trust and legitimacy. Secure checkout, trust icons, professional look and feel, transparency with contact info, etc.

For keyword research, I once again recommend Bing's Ad Intelligence tool, which is an addon for MS Excel. Of course use Google's Keyword Planner too - but Bing's Excel tool can give you lots of additional and interesting insights on demographics.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Eskil]

Hi Eskil! I started FB Ads today. I read one of your posts recommending to start lower than the bid range FB recommends. Is this still valid? I'm bidding fairly high within the range, but do not get any impressions. However, the campaign was just approved 2 hours ago. Potential reach is 250k. Do I simply have to wait longer? Any suggestions what to do in order to get impressions?

You should have seen impressions by now. You could try to slowly increase the bid in increments by like .05 every 30 mins or so to see if they start kicking in. If not, it might be a dud campaign and I would try to re-create it, but this time with a slightly higher bid (still within their range - OR try again with bid below the range). I have had campaigns just start as duds for some odd reason - while others who were basically identical just kick off right away.

 

[Eskil]

Any advice about getting a new FB account up and running if for some reason you got banned?

I'm not sure how they check this anymore, but it used to be where you could just create a new account from another FB profile (even on the same IP & credit card for funding).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[HsrJames]

I was wondering if you have any tips to get back on adwords after having an account suspended arbitrarally. I was suspended for some affiliate marketing I did years ago that no longer meets their TOS. I now have my own website that I want to market. They said not to open another account but I wonder if I could open one in my business name with a business credit card. Thanks.

 

[Wuping]

Hi Eskil!
Since I'm competing in the Fastlane Forum Competition I've started looking more into Adwords.
Right now I'm in the brainstorming phase. I'm therefore using Adwords to test out the need of my different ideas which I really like so far.

However, I want to ask you more about your experience with PPC. How is your typical approach when starting a campaign?
Do you start with really broad keywords, let it run for x time of y click. Analyze the data and change keywords etc?
Could you please explain more in detail about your approach?

And if you don't mind, can you share any success stories you've had with Adwords?

Looking forward to it!

 

[Eskil]

Great thread! Big thanks!

Is it possible to set up an affiliate site without relying on SEO? Google doesn't approve sites affiliate sites that link to amazon, do they?

Yeah it's doable, but very hard if at all on Google anymore. Try a social site like PlentyOfFish or Facebook for starting out with ppc to affiliate offers.

 

[Deleted11391]

Hi Eskil

Very kind of you to share your knowledge!!!

I have a question for you...

In your opinion is PPC a viable option to promote a paperback book?

What im getting at here is that over the last few years ive dabbled with adwords but have found the CPC to be too high to make it a profitable venture.

Obviously due to the relatively low margins on a paperback book it is tricky to find PPC sources at a price which makes it worthwhile (in my opinion)

What would you recommend for this type of promotion?

Thanks in advance
Brian

 

[Likwid24]

Thanks Eskil! That's exactly what I did. I guess I made the right choice. I ran 3 ads starting today. If you want I can show them to you (But your going to have to tell me how. lol).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[JaySoriano]

IRT Facebook, thoughts on using FB ads on posts to increase engagement and thus increase your "EdgeRank?"

 

[Stu_Hefner]

Yeah it's doable, but very hard if at all on Google anymore. Try a social site like PlentyOfFish or Facebook for starting out with ppc to affiliate offers.

Hi, I have recently tried to drive traffic to cpa offers and clickbank products through POF to no success.
My CTR is horrible, and a lot lower compared to some of the exact same campaigns I have tried to run on facebook. I've tested a bunch of banner type of ads but they are not doing any better.

Is there any tips you can give regarding making ads that draw attention and increase my CTR? I've tried copying some case studies from reputable PPC/CPA marketers but to no success. Could you tell me where I can be going wrong and what I can do to improve?

I'll be more then happy to email you and show you some of my creatives if you have the time to give me some feedback?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[sammich]

Eskil,

If you're developing a website via wordpress and have the site access blocked off until its ready for launch by lets say http status code of 503,
does that hurt your in terms of SEO/SERP placement upon launch?

Does developing your site within a subdomain of the main domain hurt SEO/SERP? In other words, if you have the exact same content as your main domain say at www.domain.com that you're using for development on www.dev.domain.com, does google count that as duplicate content?

 

[Vick]

Thanks for the links! I'll go through these tonight. Cheers.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[frieden70]

When you run a Facebook ad, and it gives you the suggested bid per click, is it necessary to stay in that range?

It's been about 8 months since I bought media on Facebook and I've heard there have been some changes but when I was doing a fairly large amount of buying there, I never went for their recommended bid.

I always started at about half and worked my way up if need be (and rarely needed to).

In my mind, you can always bid more if you aren't getting the clicks and the traffic, but I personally find that moving my way up vs down worked better.

Hope that helps.

 

[Stu_Hefner]

Is there a replay of the conference call in the INSIDERS forum?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Talisman]

eSkil, I have a question.

How the &*@!(# do I do this! (picture attached)

 

[MNentre]

Eskil,

I've been digging around and cant find much info on this. How does the bidding work if say i want to buy traffic for a large brand name. Currently the branded company is the only ones marketing for their brand and google says cpc is 10 cents. If I target the same traffic, will I be able to rank second for only 1 cent/click? is 1 cent/click the minimum?

Also, is there anything against bidding on a brand and selling something similar but not anything related to the brand. i.e. hypothetically buying traffic for Oakley and selling a sunglasses cleaner product.

Thanks!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Eskil]

Your always giving up the goods bro. I would like to know what you use to track your campaigns and what do you think about software like CPV Lab for tracking? I own it but have not yet used it for tracking my campaigns, but plan to in the future.

You have been doing this for a while and I would like to know what you use to test, track and rotate campaigns, and what you recommend based on your past experiences?

I use just Google Analytics for the most part these days, but I was also an avid user of Tracking202 for a few years. That is still a good tool, especially for quick testing of new campaigns, and for A/B split-testing. It's up to the last-second accurate - whereas GA can give you delayed reporting of several hours. Overall though Google Analytics is unbeatable for all the amount of data it gathers for you. I've never used CPV Lab, but have heard good things about it. I think it was originally designed as a tracking tool for people running on pay-per-view type networks.

I suggest you give Tracking202 a try (I prefer installing the self-hosted version). Depending on your technical level, it may or may not be for you. It helps if you know some have some basic php language. If you're more of the kind that like things as simple as possible - you can do just as well with what Google Adwords/Analytics gives you (Website Optimizer, etc).

 

[Eskil]

I've been digging around and cant find much info on this. How does the bidding work if say i want to buy traffic for a large brand name. Currently the branded company is the only ones marketing for their brand and google says cpc is 10 cents. If I target the same traffic, will I be able to rank second for only 1 cent/click? is 1 cent/click the minimum?

Also, is there anything against bidding on a brand and selling something similar but not anything related to the brand. i.e. hypothetically buying traffic for Oakley and selling a sunglasses cleaner product.

This issue is somewhat divided. The thing is that if the brand wants to protect anyone else from using their brand name in ads - they have the rights to tell Google to prevent that from happening. They must prove to Google that they are the rightful trademark owners of the name, and Google in their terms say that you cannot bid on other advertisers' trademarked terms.

However.. I have seen more than on one occasion where I was in charge of an account for a client (who rightfully owned the trademark), and where competitors (wrongfully) used their brand in their ads. Despite filing complaints with proof of trademark - Google's response was basically that they cannot stop other advertisers from using the brand in their ADS - only bidding on keywords. But again, they contradict themselves here because if you try to set up an ad with the words "Coca Cola" - Adwords won't even approve the ad...

So, long story short - you're not supposed to, and they may stop you, but you may also get away with it (for a while?). I think it's a sign that Google's ad/keyword verification process isn't perfect.

 

[Eskil]

Hey bryce,
I responded to this in your progress thread just now. For others who want to read it, go here:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/yo...read-video-game-costume-store.html#post271482

 

[biophase]

Any ideas on how to rank better for Google Product Listing Ads besides increasing CPC? Also, any ideas on how to get your brand listed on the side column of brands in the product listings?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[LightHouse]

From what i saw when i was running base feeds, all that you could really do when optimizing is what Eskil said and that's to add all the possible information you can to the feed. Even then, authority brands still take precedence and there was no solid data on a way for smaller merchants to optimize for it. Now it's paid so the only real option (which at least it is there) is to increase CPC. The whole thing is a pain, but google is tossing their weight around there for profit.

 

[Eskil]

I see what you mean. I'm not entirely sure, but my guess is that it would be based on the most 'prominent' brands in the given category, probably based on amount of listed products each advertiser has, their individual sales performance, or both.

Did you notice if your brand showed up there after sales through PLA were picking up?

 

[Eskil]

To add to Eskils comprehensive answer, the question of multiple LP's depends on how much you want to blow for clicks. Relevancy and CTR boil down to your quality score. The closer you tie your KW groups together with a LP, will not only get you a better QS and a lower CPC in return, you will also see a higher conversion rate as well.

Also, set up conversion tracking, even if it is a simple snippet on the sucess page. You will want that data later to see what KWs actually got you sales. Working off of only clicks and raw traffic is a huge mistake and waste of time, unless you have nothing to sell or acquire

Yes indeed!

 

[Money mania]

Eskil,
Thanks for putting this up there. Looking forward to learning more about PPC, campaigns, etc. I am new in this niche and feel I understand the high level overview of this space, at least from what I know you buy traffic at one level say 100 views for $5 and hoping that a % of those 100 views for $5 actually convert at a higher rate to make the spread, is that correct? Could you give some insight on how to better understand the guts of this, such as setting up the moving parts like the lander page, merchant accounts etc. Either any books, websites, posts you would suggest on the "how to" of this business for someone just starting out. It is very exciting and I learn well by examples. Thanks again.

MM

 

[AgonI]

I agree with the poster above, a CASE STUDY would be awesome

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Scuderia]

Edit.

 

[The-J]

I'm starting to get into affiliate marketing to get a little bit of cash and I've decided to use Facebook CPA as my platform. (This is a little bit outside the scope of Fastlane forum, but you seem to be knowledgeable)

What techniques have you used to improve CTR? And how specific do you target niches when you advertise? Thanks (this will also help me with my business, as I'm going to start advertising on FB soon)

 

[Eskil]

I was wondering if you have any tips to get back on adwords after having an account suspended arbitrarally. I was suspended for some affiliate marketing I did years ago that no longer meets their TOS. I now have my own website that I want to market. They said not to open another account but I wonder if I could open one in my business name with a business credit card. Thanks.

My apologies for not seeing this sooner!
I would honestly just contact their customer support and explain the situation. They want your business as long as you can prove that you are using their service for what they consider "clean" purposes. You shouldn't have to circumvent it all with a new business card, id, and everything. If you were just trying to do more affiliate marketing however, that would be a different story.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.