I Am A PPC Farmer | Paid Search Gardening Tips

March 22, 2009 |

ppc farmer | paid search gardening THE FACT THAT I get up early in the morning before most neighborhood roosters makes me think I’d be a pretty good farmer. I have a strong work ethic, can be extremely patient and have a pining for owning John Deere equipment. All that combined with some fertile land and a little luck would make for an interesting side career in suburban Philadelphia. But seeing as though I don’t have much land or a fancy John Deere tractor I am resigned to planting a generous sized vegetable garden in my backyard. For now this will satisfy the farmer in my blood, my interest in self sustainability and eating locally grown food

In fact, this weekend, I got out my cow poo pots, organic soil and started the heirloom seeds I bought from Tomato Bob in anticipation of the forth coming last frost. This year I am planting a variety of tomatoes with delicious names like ‘Indian Dark Violet Beefsteak’, ‘Livingstons Perfection’, “German Johnson’ and of course the stately ‘Abraham Lincoln’ in honor of the President’s 200 year birthday anniversary. Alongside the tomatoes I am also planting a couple varieties of Summer squash - ‘Crookneck’ and the ‘White Bush Scallop’, a zucchini, Peruvian Purple Peppers and bunches of herbs. And while I was going through the process of filling the poo pots with soil and following Tomato Bob’s seed starting tips it began to dawn on me that starting seeds, tending to a garden or a crop and the timely results of the harvest is not much different than planning and implementing the various components of a paid search marketing account.

Sowing The Campaign Keywords

So how on earth is planting and managing a vegetable garden anything like implementing and managing paid search? Well, first and foremost you need to follow a fundamental, disciplined process in order to maximize your results. That alone should be obvious right? The not so obvious bits are in the way seeds are started and the ultimate design and layout of the garden. As Tomato Bob states in his tips ‘if you are starting many varieties of tomatoes or other seedings, you should have a separate starting container for each variety’. Hmmm… sounds very much like a well organized paid search ad group structure. As if keywords are the seeds of your paid search garden, keywords relating different products, styles, services etc. should always, always be separated out into their own ad groups (containers) making the ad group as highly targeted as possible for Quality Score.

In the initial stages of starting seeds it is essential to ‘check your seed trays 2-3 days to make sure they stay moist’. Okay, so we are not watering our keywords since that would probably fry your laptop, but in the first few hours and days after launching a paid search campaign it is necessary to monitor and assess the new keywords and make the required adjustments. If your keywords are in position 1 and you are paying too much for that position you may be in a situation where you’ve ‘over watered’ or set the Max CPC too high and may want to scale back some. The idea here is that, especially in the first few days, you can’t set and forget about new paid search implementations otherwise your account will be doomed.

Transplanting A Keyword

After some amount of time your seedlings will be ready to transplant outdoors. This will allow for your plants to begin to grow and produce efficiently. In the same regard, at a certain point, some keywords that perform well need to be transplanted or graduated into their ad groups in order to maximize their results. When we do this typically we will promote a broad or phrase match keyword to an exact match keyword. As an exact match keyword we are also more willing to pay a little more for that click since the expected conversion rate is higher than keywords set to broad or phrase matches. Setting up selected well performing keywords into their own ad groups not only has conversion potential, but also has the opportunity to receive cost cutting Quality Score benefits

Keyword Care In Your PPC Garden

Now that the seedlings have grown into plants and are safely transplanted to your garden they should be watered daily for the first week. At this stage the plants are still young and it is essential to take the proper precautions in order to keep the cutworms and hornworms from eating the plants you’ve worked so hard to start. Caring and protecting your keywords and your budget is no different. In order to make sure you are targeting the right audience and receiving the most qualified traffic, negative keywords should be in place from the get go. You might not identify all the negative keywords at first but with regular maintenance and mining search queries for more negative keywords to add to your ad groups and campaigns you should continue to prosper and deliver fruitful results.

PPC Garden Rotation

Year over year it’s a good idea to try and not plant the same vegetables in the same plot of soil. Planting in the same spot over and over again drains the soil of nutrients and your harvest will begin to suffer. Same goes for the need to continually keep keywords and ad creatives fresh. Otherwise if you keep keyword or ad group bids and your ad creative messaging the same, over time setting and forgetting those key components will begin to produce less than desirable results.

And of course, as it is with vegetable gardening or farming, you need to work hard at paid search and have a tremendous amount of patience. Some paid search implementations will produce bumper crop-like results and others will not. But if you keep at it and you are diligent about nurturing your ad groups, keywords, ad creatives and other components - with a little luck you’ll be sure to develop a sustainable program and never have to worry about selling the farm.

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