If you're a business-to-business advertiser, you might feel like the world of P-P-C advertising isn't entirely relevant, as much of it is focused on consumer Web searches. Enter IndustryBrains, an innovative P-P-C network exclusively focused on B2B advertising in specific industry categories. Participating sites where your ad can appear include Infoworld, ComputerWorld, PC Magazine, EETimes, Network Magazine and BusinessWeek. You specify your target audience and bid on appropriate keywords; your ad appears on the appropriate sites whenever a site visitor searches for that particular keyword or phrase. IndustryBrains also offers P-P-C advertising opportunities within industry-specific B2B directories, where you can bid to have listings touting your white papers, case studies, webcasts and the like appear within the context of appropriate research queries.
If you feel your site visitors would welcome a more interesting and interactive experience than a row of AdSense ads running horizontally or vertically on your page, then you might be interested to learn that AdSense includes click-to-play video ads. These video advertisements are created by the publisher and run from the publisher's website (meaning your bandwidth does not have to absorb the streaming media hit). The ads are 30 seconds long or less. Not only does this offer a potentially more engaging and clickable experience for your site visitors (and therefore more money in your wallet); it may also open up your site to new advertisers that are jumping into the video ad game with enthusiasm. You can learn more and get a sneak peek at sample ads at the site.
For those of you who get confused between Google AdWords and Google AdSense, AdWords is the one where you pay to run ads on Google; AdSense is the one where Google is running ads on your site. This handy little calculator takes the guesswork out of estimating how much you stand to make from AdSense ads running on your site. Your estimated earnings are based on the number of visitors you expect, estimated clicks and clickthrough rate and CPM (earnings per thousand visitors). Click, and voila! You are served up with daily, monthly and yearly totals for both clicks and earnings.
You can, of course, play with the numbers to see how you can better your program. A good tool because it's surprising how quickly the numbers add up when you take an annual overview of your program.
Atlas OnePoint (formerly GO TOAST) is a highly-regarded P-P-C bid management and optimization system which (at the time of this writing) supports 41 P-P-C networks. Tools include a CampaignOptimizer to automatically model, launch and optimize campaigns, a BidManager, a ProfitBuilder conversion tracking and analytics tool, a search listing management feature and a tool to support site indexing and product feeds. The company's incredibly well-organized and informative website offers an excellent overview of their sophisticated offerings. Several no-cost tools are also available, such as an auto bid simulator and the Atlas OnePoint Search Index Engine Rating tool, which will tell you where you stand in comparison to your competitors in terms of search engine visibility. A no-cost 14-day trial is available at the site.
Tools designed to detect and prevent click fraud are growing increasingly important to online marketers. ClickDetective is one tool that tracks return visitors to your site and alerts you immediately via email if there is evidence that your site may be under attack. You can also set up return visitor alerts that remind the innocent repeat clicker to bookmark your site, or that alert those visitors with less innocent intent that their movements are being monitored. In addition, unlike most search engine reports, ClickDetective's reports show individual clicks in real time so you have a detailed record of any fraud attempts. The service runs $49(US) per month for 2000 monitored clickthroughs (add $10 monthly for each additional 2000) and a no-cost trial is available at the site.
To enhance keyword research and find additional keywords, we like to use clustering engines like Clusty. Clustering engines group
search results into folder topics and can help greatly expand the breadth of a campaign.
Take a look at the following example. Using Clusty.com, the phrase "Kitchen Aid blender part" gave us the following results:
Appliances
Mixers
Food processor
Immersion blender
Replacement part
Amazon
Instead of honing in on "Kitchen Aid blender parts," these results provided us with ideas we used to create the following ad groups:
Kitchen Aid appliance parts
Kitchen Aid mixer parts
Kitchen Aid processor parts
Kitchen Aid replacement parts
How much is a click worth? This tool allows you to run live comparisons of keyword bid prices at multiple pay-per-click search engines, including FindWhat, Bay9, Ah-ha, Brainfox, GoClick, ePilot, Kanoodle, PageSeeker and Espotting. Prices are detailed for the top six positions. At the time of writing, a sample search revealed that the top position for the keyword "marketing" was going for 46 cents at Espotting and 1 cent at Kanoodle, which is useful information. While you're at the site, sign up to receive PPC secrets and tips via weekly email.
As their slogan says, "You can't manage what you don't measure." ConversionRuler is designed to track and report the number of catalog requests, email newsletter signups and orders for any Internet marketing campaign you execute, including email newsletters you send, online advertising you buy, partnership arrangements you negotiate and pay-per-click programs you run. While most PPC programs offer click-to-conversion tracking, if you are running multiple programs plus other marketing efforts it might make sense to consolidate things under the management of one tool. Pricing is small-biz-friendly, starting at $19.99(US) per month.
Efficient Frontier has applied Wall Street analytics to the management of a P-P-C campaign; essentially, their Portfolio Maximization technology incorporates portfolio management techniques that were first developed on Wall Street to manage large stock portfolios. Their clients tend to be large retailers with P-P-C campaigns involving 500,000 or more keywords, and we can all agree that a P-P-C monster of those proportions needs specialized management processes! Efficient Frontier asks clients to define those business goals that matter most, rather than focusing on individual keyword prices or positions. With a monthly budget and keywords in hand, their system then runs forecasting models, ROI calculations and hypothetical scenarios based on current P-P-C results to manage your campaign so that it delivers the desired results. Examples can be viewed at the site, which offers quite fascinating reading even if you have no intention of using their services. Currently Efficient Frontier supports Google AdWords, Overture and FindWhat.com. Campaigns are managed for an undisclosed monthly fee.