Since I only had ten minutes I was forced to really ask myself what separates successful PPC marketers and really successful PPC marketers. I came up with three things — The ability to distribute your time effectively, embracing risk in your testing and management, and the last one which is connecting your paid efforts to inbound marketing. The second two will have to be covered in another post, today I really want to talk about that first piece — the ability to distribute your time effectively.

Why that one? Because its freaking hard. Like really hard. Like “whoa I need a glass of wine every night” hard.

Over the years I’ve really tried to focus on how I can be my  most effective at paid search management (returning the highest margins) and my most efficient (staying sane, sleeping, not snapping at family and friends). This can be a challenge because paid search marketing is a data game. Data piles up and it can drive you mad if you let it. So how do you get the control back? I think the key is to rethink how you are dividing up your time.

Originally I was trying to isolate out a plan for paid search marketing management. I came up with this:

What I didn’t expect is how finding something like this to guide me would motivate me to re-evaluate my overall time distribution. After all…why would I want to be my most effective and efficient at just PPC? There is so much more on my plate. How can I best manage those projects and the time I put into them?

I started asking myself – how do I prioritize what gets my time?  I freaked out when I realized that my approach to project management had become insanely reactive. As things pop up I handle them. Eeeek. Bad bad bad. I could probably write a whole post as to why things have become this way, but ultimately I think as marketers take on more and embrace the holistic landscape this issue will become increasingly more of a challenge facing all of us.

I came across this amazing video and it was like a really beautiful bitch slap right when I needed it. In Bing Gordon’s keynote address he talks about how the time we spend on things in our life should be both (a) prioritized by importance and then (b) given time relationally as they compare to each other. EUREKA!

For example if you have three things that matter to you but the first thing is twice as important as number two or three, then you would spend 50% of your time on item #1, and 25% on each of the other two items. Make sense?

I think we all have grasped the importance of knocking out our to-do list by order of importance, but this idea of weighting our priorities by how they compare is an interesting one for me. Below you can see the rough guideline I use for my own day…

I have five main goals at SEOmoz:

1. Grow the SEOmoz Customer Base
2. Grow the Retention Program
3. Be an Indispensable Employee
4. Continue to Learn from the Industry & Grow in It
5. Be a Great Colleague & Help Others Reach Their Goals

I mean there are always other goals that come up, and projects that don’t fit into one of these, but for the most part everything I do during my hours each day at Moz fit into one of these five. With that said there is a clear hierarchy among these. I was hired for #1, and my position has expanded to include #2. Then #3, #4, and #5 are things I’ve chosen to add to the list for my personal and professional growth. So #1 is twice as important as the rest, and #2 is more important than #3, #4, and #5, but those last three all need sufficient time comparatively. So the challenge is for me to break up my available hours according to this distribution.

I’m only about a month deep on it at this point but it really does help. If I find myself freaking out in the afternoon because I am not sure which project to start next I just revisit my list and see which of these I haven’t touched. Have I put too much time into one of them when it should have spent on another based on my distribution hierarchy? Each week I make sure that I have given all five of these the time they deserve.

I might have lost you a bit on those last few paragraphs but I think the point I am stressing is – when was the last time you revisited your approach to time distribution? Have you fallen into a groove that doesn’t actually match up to your professional and personal goals? Have you adopted a model that was there before you were? I anticipate I will have to revisit my current model a hundred times or so but I think that is exactly how it should be.

As months roll by my hopes for my job and my career do too…this should be reflected in your day-to-day activities. No more “where did 2011 go?” I’m over the “time passing blackout” that happens to super busy Type As (aka all of us). Instead I am embracing a more conscious approach to time management and time distribution. Won’t you join me? Trust me, things are way simpler over here. I even get to sleep once and a while…crazy I know.

Last night I was doing one my late night runs through the city (which come to find out is actually a pretty safe & normal activity here in Seattle) and I was like… “I’ll write a post about how I am going to commit to getting more posts up,” thinking that would be an easy foot in the door.

Then I thought, Jesus that’s lame. No one wants to be the “I am going to…” promiser, and never deliver. So instead of writing a post about my hopes for this blog renewal, I figure I might as well jump right in.

{jump}

You all see what went down today in the PPC world today? Those longer titles (that every single one of us knew was coming) finally got released today. Got to love Google and their not-so-sly way of testing things. I can name at least three Twitpics of people capturing this over the past few months.

So longer titles…let’s talk about it. What does it mean for us PPC-ers and our clients/companies?  Well more characters to start. I know all of us just took a deep breath while we had flashbacks to 26-character freakouts…eeek! Google will now be showing the first description line of our ads as the title for select ad placements (basically top position snaggers).

Why is Google doing this? Their words “we’ve seen higher click through rates.” Uhmmm, yeah duh. As we can all see these listings now look a bit more organic…pretty convenient huh? I guess all that colored background testing was getting a bit boring.

Few things to think about… (one) Google is only do this for some advertisers — at least for now, and (two) they said we can all increase our chances of being selected if our two description lines have proper punctuation and appear to be completely separate thoughts/lines. I kind of like this passive aggressive way of Google reminding us to adhere to the guidelines and provide a legit search experience.

I also enjoy the fact that those advertisers doing bulk ad uploads which result in awkwardly worded ads might actually be hurt a bit by this. Well maybe not since we know this will eventually roll out across all advertisers, but a girl can dream.

Anyway, my thoughts? I’m stoked. Simple titles like {site – Official Site} can now have a bit more pizazz and work for those longer brand names. Also, I can start playing with brand bylines as titles. Not to mention, this is a simple reminder that our “restrictions” are only restrictions as long as Google wants them to be. I like to see these changes rolled out.

At the very least it reminds me we still have people at Google testing out layouts that might actually help us brand effectively, and not just help them fool searchers into clicking (and subsequently blowing through my budgets).

Okay so those are my thoughts on today’s news. What you all thinking? Anyone against this? You guys over it, since we broke the story two weeks go? Or should we all go back to bitching about the lowercase display URL issue? Because, that one still ticks me off.

A few months ago Google launched the thumbnail image along side text ads above Google Images, and that was fine…only problem was there were two ads per query, and the spacing/format was a bit awkward if you asked me. I think invasive would be a good word for it. You can see what I mean here, from me searching “blue jeans” :

Yeah it’s better than nothing, but I, personally, haven’t seen huge CTRs from these placements. I think it was due to a combination of factors, but ultimately those ads just aren’t compelling. The good news is I think the Google Gods were listening in on all of our complaining and decided to make this sexy new placement as an option:

Dead sexy right? I’m not sure if you are all seeing what I am seeing…but it has something to do with %100 share of voice…or what I am calling “The Promise Land of PPC.”

So what are the details? Well they just launched this. I did a bunch of searches and haven’t seen too many showing up, so either people haven’t opted in yet, or they are rolling it slowly. Also this is all beta (like everything in the Google world) so they might introduce another ad up there in the same format soon enough.

So get on it. This is a great example of someone doing something all sorts of right. Let’s say I wanted a fancy pair of red heels for the holiday season and I did a search for “red high heels,” clicking through to Google images (Disclaimer: this may or may not be a real story…I heart shoes.) Anyway, look at Anne Klein. Holy smokes, now THERE is some coverage.

Even more interesting is taking a look at the Google results on the web results. Look who ISN’T anywhere on the first page (organic or paid)…

Yeah. Look at all of that competition they would have to compete with on the search network. Nutzzz.  Need another example, check this out. I was doing a search for “las vegas flights,” which from my experience working for TripAdvisor I can tell you is a pricey freaking word. Anyway, check out the competition on the first page of the web results:

Now, let’s just say I clicked through on the image searches (which I realize would be a bit unusual) but look what I got:

Well done AlaskaAirlines.  They are getting serious brand equity with that buy. #whoa #thatPPCstrategistdeservesaraise.

So what makes this new ad type blog worthy? It’s an ad buy that a lot of very rich advertisers don’t know about. I suggest you get in there, and take advantage of this ASAP. Get creative with those display ads too… without any other ad there, the contextual experience is yours to control.

Whew…this just gets me all sorts of excited. Who is freaking out? Yeah me too.

I’ll be very interested in those results.

But either way, the issue sent me on one of those internal debates us PPC-ers love to participate in. I’ve always argued against bid war management styles, mainly because I believe too often PPC marketers shoot themselves in the foot with such tactics. When two people wake up everyday (or bid every few hours) with the sole purpose of outranking a competitor, they are raising the expectation of spend for everyone else.

Those two advertisers are letting Google know that word is worth more, and alas, overtime, our minimum bids increase across the board. It’s like getting  a bunch of advertisers in a room and having everyone start smacking each other. It really is quite silly.

So here I was today, reading that article up on my high horse when it dawned on me—how is that different from branding budgets? I have definitely participated in branding buys before for both companies and clients. (For those who are new to the PPC chaos—branding budgets are when a client or boss tells you that you have “X” amount of money, and rather than focus on a set conversion return, your primary goal is to gain share of voice a.k.a. be on the top…all the time.) For the record, I think most people would agree that branding budgets are a lot less common than they used to be.

These days we have so many different tiers of conversions and levels of success to use when quantifying a campaign’s performance, it seems a bit reckless to ever just spend to rank. But it stills exist–position bidding not just as a setting but as an overarching approach still exists, and oftentimes with great success.

With all of that said, I have to admit for a girl that has always preached against bidding wars, I have always been a fan of branding budgets. Alas, I guess that is why they say “the devil is in the details.” I definitely look forward to hearing the results from the poll mentioned above. What about you guys? Any of you still participating in bidding wars? What about branding budgets?

When it comes to managing PPC accounts this approach can come in handy. Clearly the “make it happen now” approach is great when gathering information, engulfing yourself in a vertical, setting up tests, collecting data, and building out new landing pages. The more you can get up and testing, the better you will be in the long run—for the most part.

But what about bid velocity? Is an aggressive approach always best? That’s been something I’ve struggled with for quite some time, finely settling on a simple “no, it’s not.” The truth of it is there are times you should absolutely decrease your bid velocity and focus your PPC management efforts elsewhere. This has little to do with your resources, or outside time line factors and everything to do with the life cycle of your keywords.

So what are some examples of times you should decrease your bid velocity?

Test Campaign Launches: No matter how long you have been doing PPC, anytime you introduce a new campaign, make sure you keep the bid changing to a minimal for at least a full week, if not longer. To collect quality data you need to see how those keywords are received through-out each day, and on weekends…independent of any bidding variables you may want to introduce.

Promotional Campaigns: This may seem counter intuitive, since promotional campaigns tend to run for shorter period of times. You would think success would be found in changing bids often and capitalizing, but ultimately your pre-launch testing and data should take all of that guesswork off the table. The promotional campaign should be kept as stable as possible, so at the end you can say it was the promotion (and not your bidding strategy) that decided its level of success or failure.

When Automating: If you are applying any sort of AI principles to your campaigns, try to keep them as macro as you can. Leave the constant bid tweaking to the humans. Yeah I know that just got a few of you all riled up, but hey that is what the comment section is for. Go have at it…

Smaller Budget Campaigns: For those advertisers out there spending a few thousand a month or less, keep in mind you face a whole separate bag of issues. One of them being your budget restraints already limit your data return sets, so decreasing bid velocity can increase the value of that data when you are looking to extract overarching truths to move forward with.

Okay those are just a few things to get you all started with. I’m not saying to freeze your bidding finger entirely, or that there aren’t exceptions to the above examples. However, too often new advertisers think once they get some data they should start applying it, mixing things up, and get the ball really moving. As fun as that can be, you can also shoot yourself in the foot, by inevitably countering your initial successes with too many bid changes.

When it comes to bid velocity and best practices there are always a ton of opinions on the subject… so PPC-ers, let’s hear them. This blog is officially open for all debates {metaphorical gavel slams on desk}.