The SEM Automation Playbook

Introduction

Whether you’re a PPC veteran or a PPC novice you know that when you manage large PPC campaigns things get overlooked. You might have tens of thousands of keywords and thousands of ads and ad-groups

As the search engine marketing industry grows, so does the popularity of PPC automation software. Large PPC campaigns require automation and automation technology is gaining credibility among advertisers, significantly boosting the effectiveness of search advertising campaigns.

As Search engine marketing professionals we ask ourselves honest questions about how we might plan to manage our activity using automation. How is it going to benefit us? How much is it going to cost? How much time will it save? These are all valid questions, but perhaps the most important one of all is… Do we really need it?

The core debate around using automation software has always been “could we instead employ/delegate someone to do these tasks?” is this, in essence, a simple man versus machine argument? Or are there other fastest to this discussion?

Building and Optimizing: The Two Parts of PPC Automation

Automation comes in two different forms: automating the campaign creation process and automating of the optimization and reporting processes.

Building Campaigns

The first part of automation is automating the building of campaigns with all its ad-groups, ads and keywords. Automating this process will take some time to set up, but the bare great rewords. You will need a platform, such as adCore, that allows you to upload a feed (ideally one that updates automatically reflecting the most up-to-date information from the website you’re advertising). Then build the campaign with a template. The idea is that as changes are made on your website (products go in and out of stock, prices change or products go on sale) the information is reflected in your advertisements on the different search engines.

And so the question is raised, do we as search engine marketing professionals really need this kind of solution?

If you’re advertising a substantial amount of inventory the reasons you need a software to help you are clear. Automation comes in to play when building a campaign, not just for updating it. Automation software will allow you to build keywords ads and ad-groups based on the data feed you generated, making sure you are not missing out on advertising any products, or any keywords that might add to your campaign’s conversion rate. A detailed, well-structured feed with a powerful SEM automation platform will also allow you to build different levels of campaigns, targeting your audience wherever they might be along the search funnel.

You might think that if you’re advertising a small selection of products, then automation isn’t required. You could build a few ad groups, adding relevant keywords and ads to each one and manually adjust bids. You might think that the process is simple enough. But the truth is that it’s not about the amount of inventory, but the amount if changes that happen on your website, on a regular basis.

If you have inventory where the prices constantly change, a powerful automation software will update the prices automatically. Access to search engines application programing interface

(API) allows you to update some information without losing the statistical information that is associated with changes that happen to the ad. For example, Google AdWords allows you to update two numerical parameters through the API, Bing allows you to update 3 Alfa-Numeric parameters.

Automating different parts of your building process:

-          Keywords- automating the creation of the keywords is a big part of the process of creating a dynamic campaign. The power of automation is reflected in both the multiplication of keywords in different match types, the manipulations you can make on the data that is creating the keywords and creating a keyword list that is automatically updated and reflects inventory.

-          URLs- The creation of URLs at the keyword level. Even with tens of thousands of keywords, automation allows you to set the destination URLs at the keyword level. The destination URL will eventually determine the level of campaign your building and where on the search funnel you are trying to target. Automation software should allow you to set the URLs at the keyword level whether you are sending the searcher to a product level page or a brand and category level page.

-          Ad creative – Using automation to write ad creative making it highly specific and targeted. The more specific the ad creative the lower the CTR will most likely be but on the other hand specific ad creative will also most likely give a higher conversion rate.

-          The price- including the price in the ad creative makes it more specific. However, if you have competitive prices it is proven to help with the conversion rate. Using an automation software will allow you insure that the prices in your ads are always up to date and reflect the latest changes to your website.

When you decide to automate the campaign creation process be sure to automate as much of the process as you can. Many will use automation software for a specific purpose such as only building long-tail campaigns.

Be sure to choose a software that is a solution of the full spectrum of the buying funnel and enables you to create campaigns that hit the preaches stages of the funnel (product level campaigns, with product level destination URLs) as well as the consideration stages (brand and category and sub-category campaigns with relevant destination URLs) and awareness stages of the funnel (display campaign, banner ads, etc.)

 Optimizing Campaigns

Optimizing large scale campaigns, with tens of thousands of keywords and thousands of ads is complicated and time consuming. With the competition ever-changing, as a search engine marketer, you need to be on top of your game. It’s important to make sure that your campaigns are constantly being looked after so you can hit your targets.

Automating the optimization process is the only way to insure that your campaigns are constantly and consistently getting the attention they need. Search engine platforms such as Google AdWords or Bing ads offers different levels of automation, from simple automation rules, to scripts for more advanced, technically savvy users.

However, working with a powerful PPC automation software will give you additional options for automating your optimization. At the end of the day, automation of the optimization tasks is as accurate and detailed as you make it out to be. The more tailored the rules are for your campaign the better the results you will get, and the faster your targets will be hit.

Here are only a few examples of different optimization tasks that you should be automating:

-          Adding search terms in to your campaign

-          Pausing underperforming keywords

-          Pausing underperforming ads

-          Bid management on the keyword or ad-group level

These are only the most basic of tasks.

All campaigns are different. They get different amounts of traffic, have different goals and might target searches in different stages of the buying funnel. Since each campaign is different, each one of the actions mentioned above should be custom built to fit the different campaigns.

When choosing to automate optimization activities, and with the right tools, you can choose to by as milled or as aggressive as you like. Software that gives you full flexibility, and lets you customize the algorithms you are working with, will allow for adjustments to fit your comfort level.

For example, SEM managers add search terms from for the search query report into campaigns regularly. However, best practices vary from manager to manager and from campaign to campaign. In order to form an effective algorithm you’ll need to think of your rule of thumb, or best practice, for when you usually move over search terms.

Depending on the amount of traffic your campaign is getting, you might want to move over search terms when:

-    Conversions – the search terms have converted a certain number of times.

-Cost- the search terms have run up a certain cost and would like to bring them in to control the bids.

-  CTR – the search terms have gotten a good number of impressions and satisfying number of clicks.

A combination of any of these concepts is recommended if you are planning on fully automating this process.

Additionally, as discussed above, the final values (number of conversion/clicks/etc.) attached to each algorithm should vary between the campaigns.

 Conclusion

The questions of automation is not only a simple man versus machine argument. Scaling you are activity, advertising you entire offering on different levels of the buying funnel, and making sure your campaigns are constantly and consistently up to date is not an easy challenge. More so when you have multiple accounts to manage and cautiously optimize and client and managers to report to. Automation isn’t meant to replace you as the account manager.

It allows you to scale your activity in a way you couldn’t without a tool or software. And it’s not just the access to the Application Programing Interface (API). Knowing your campaigns are attended to, your bids are being managed, your ads are getting updated, while your attention is elsewhere, allows you to spend your time on the important task of testing and strategizing. At the end of the day, an algorithm only works as good as the manager who wrote it. Automation is what you make of it. Commit, closely monitor and test test test.