We’re involved in two upcoming webinars and would like to extend an invitation to all of our readers. We hope you can attend and gain some valuable insights.

When Best Practices Fail

Best practices are called such for a reason–they usually work. However, in some instances, best practices will lead you astray. That’s especially true in the fast-paced bidding environment of pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising. Join us for a fun and adventurous look at best practices, why they are best practices and the pitfalls associated with them.

This webinar will take place at 2pm ET / 11am PT on Wednesday November 15th.

You can register here.

The Future of PPC: 2018 and Beyond

We all want to be able to see the future, especially when it comes to the world of PPC. With the industry constantly changing, it’s easy to feel behind and like your competitors are one step ahead of you. But luckily, we have a panel of experts who are psychic – okay, maybe not psychic – but have been watching the trends and are excited to share their predictions for what is coming in the world of PPC… in 2018 and beyond.

Join AdAlysis’ Brad Geddes, Elite SEM’s Aaron Levy, and Hanapin’s Carrie Albright as they share the exciting journey that PPC will take in the coming years and how you can be prepared for it.

This webinar will take place at 1pm ET / 10am PT on November 16th.

You can register here.

I recently spent an hour with the #SEMRushchat on Twitter.

If you’re looking for some good PPC do and don’t insight across the market; SEMRush does a great recap on the chat.

Here’s just one question:

You can see the rest of the chat and recaps on the SEMRush chat article.

In 2013, Bryan Eisenberg made a bold statement; “In the next 3 years, 80% of all PPC professionals will be replaced by an algorithm”.

It’s been 4 years, and yet the job market is still quite strong for PPC managers. Indeed lists over 2,000 open positions right now in the United States; many starting over $85,000/year.  When we look overseas, there are more than 500 available just within London.

Now, I’m not throwing Bryan under the bus for a bold prediction; as there are many jobs that will be automated. No one spends all day setting bids any longer; a machine can do that. No one should be spending their time defining simple tasks – like telling a computer we’re testing ads – a computer can automatically start any test and tell you when it’s done.

PPC Tools have become quite powerful and do automated recommendations.

What we should be looking at is what jobs will be replaced and which ones are robot-proof. The job you were doing 5 years ago is not the same as today even if your job title is the same (within the PPC industry). The PPC practitioners job has evolved. So Understanding these trends will help you ensure that you are training for the correct skill set or going up the proper path within your company so that your job will remain safe.

There’s a very interesting site at https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/ that takes the data from the scientific paper from the University of Oxford The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? to make it easily viewable the chances your job will be taken over by a robot.

When we think about PPC, there are 5 job areas that fall into these predefined categories:

• Sales
• Account managers
• Market research
• Statisticians (analytics)
• Writing

Let’s take a look at these groups; and then see how each will need to evolve (or not) from a robot overthrow standpoint.

Keep Reading…

The last AdWords Workshop for 2017 will be in New York City on October 23 in conjunction with SMX. We’ve also started updating our schedule for 2018 if you can’t make it to New York City.
Keep Reading…

The last AdWords Workshop for 2017 will be in New York City on October 23 in conjunction with SMX.

You can attend SMX, only the workshop, or both.

If you’re looking to stay on top of AdWords trends and get the most out of your account, it’s a good day of intensive learning.

We redo the topics each year, and here’s what we’ll be discussing in October.

(more…)

Why You Must Test Ads

Testing ads is an essential part of any marketer’s life. Your offers change, your competition changes their offers, people change how they interact with messages, and without ad testing, you will quickly fall behind the competition.

By testing ads, you are ensuring that you are constantly trying to improve your marketing. When we look at accounts that do a lot of ad testing, especially in competitive markets, we generally see one of two trends emerge.

The first trend is where you see improvements; and then your account declines, then you test more and see improvement, and then you see declines.

This is common when your competitors are constantly changing ads or when the market conditions are always in flux; for instance, in the mortgage industry, there are market changes due to mortgage types, interest rate changes, and parts of the year when people are more or less likely to move.

(more…)

PPC Week is a free week of PPC tips & tricks from the experts.

Hear from:

• Brad Geddes
• Adobe
• Microsoft
• Unbounce
• Fred Vallaeys (ex-Googler)
• and more..

The topics include:

• Ad & Landing page testing
• Audience targeting & strategies
• Excel tips & tricks
• Analytics & reporting

Once you register; you’ll have access to the recordings after the event if you can’t make it live to ask questions.

We hope you’ll join us for PPC Week.

Register here.

When we think of AdWords, we have many channels to choose from:

• • Search (brand, generic, products, info)
• • Shopping
• • 1st party audience targeting
• • 3rd party audience targeting (Similar lists, affinity, in-market, etc)
• • Display
• • etc

Not all of these channels perform the same way; and they shouldn’t – they reach users in various parts of the buying funnel.

Often when we explore attribution models and account expansion; we’re not just looking at last click attribution; but mapping out the customer journey, fall off points, and areas where we want to bring in more traffic.

For example, if your brand terms and product terms are most of your account traffic, you probably have a very high CTR and conversion rate; but not huge amounts of traffic. In this case, you want to focus higher in the funnel to bring in more total traffic and leverage audiences in your marketing.

If you are using mostly display and generic keywords; you have a lot of top of the funnel traffic, but not a lot of users who are ready to buy.

By following a straightforward approach, you can increase your funnel traffic strategically:

Keep on reading!

After 8 years of silence; bgTheory is back 🙂

It’s a long story; and we’ll soon post it all on CK (and here); but bgTheory has been resurrected as the home for:

• • Brad’s blog posts (yes, there will be new articles on a semi-regular basis)
• • Advanced AdWords Workshops
• • New internet based training at Simplilearn
• • PPC Consulting & AdWords Audits

And an overall central repository of information for Brad’s offerings, articles, and thoughts across the web.

The name…

I’ve never addressed this before; but it amazes me how often someone will say, “Yeah, it’s bgTheory, but I’m not really sure what it stands for” and then later (sometimes years later) say, “Oh, I get it, bg stands for Brad Geddes – this is all about your theories of the web.”

That’s why it is not bIg Theory; as my middle initial isn’t I (that would work out well, wouldn’t it?). It’s bgTheory: Brad Geddes’s theories on digital marketing (with sidetracks to productivity and other interesting tech musings).

Upcoming Articles

As a return first post (excluding this one); there’s a good one coming out next week – so stayed tuned. If you’re not subscribed; you can do so here.

A Free Week of Web-based PPC Information

The summer is slow (thankfully – we all need a break after the crazy spring and before fall holiday insanity starts); but that also means there’s not a lot of news or conferences.

Good news – there will be a conference this summer – and you can attend – for free!

It’s online; 100% virtual, and if you signup – you can even get the videos at a later date.

To learn more, take a look at PPC Week (you won’t be disappointed, the speaker lineup is fantastic).

Anyway – we’re back – and next week we’ll start posting great content on a somewhat regular basis again 🙂