Seriously, great advice on AdWords. I work with a lot of small clients, and I love it when an expert has the courage to say “it depends”. PPC is great for some markets and companies, less great for others – it depends on ROI, implementation, commitment, competition, and a whole host of other factors. Real professionals aren’t afraid to let the data speak for itself.

Dr. Petes last blog post..The Two Levers of E-commerce

That he is an AdWords veteran shows because he doesn’t say things like – NEVER use a home page as a landing page – custom landing pages are the MOST important aspect of PPC, etc.

He knows AdWords is highly situational.

I also strongly concur that a major problem with Yahoo, MSN, and second tier PPC isn’t that they can’t supply some value, but that administrative cost in labor and distraction often offsets that value.

-Tom Hale
AdWords Specialist

Tom Hales last blog post..SEMpdx Inaugural PPC Hot Seat

Too many people dive into PPC expecting immediate ROI, then disregard PPC altogether when they don’t see the 1,000% ROI they thought they’d get. Typically, these companies didn’t plan a test-phase or test budget, they didn’t create meaningful KPI’s by which to track true success, and they didn’t set up or employ the “right” analytics by which to prove or disprove the success of the PPC campaign.

Here’s the workflow I recommend for anyone looking at PPC. You may see a pattern here:

1) Plan, and review KPI’s
2) Test
3) Test
4) Evaluate
5) Plan, and review KPI’s
6) Test
7) Test
Evaluate
9) Plan, and review KPI’s…