Joanna Lord will be speaking about “Advanced PPC” at SearchFest 2010, which will take place on March 9th at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.

1)       Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.

I am a search engine marketer with a love for both the number and content side of things. Currently I am a paid search consultant working with small to medium business clients. I am also an entrepreneur at heart, and co-founded YourJobStop.com, a job search site that helps job candidates understand the power of social media during the job search process. My background is a medley of online marketing fun…I’ve done PPC, SEO, content creation, product management, and more. Blogging has always been a favorite piece of the puzzle for me, and you can now find me weighing in on social and search topics either on my blog or for the number one social media blog, socialmedia.biz.  

2)       What are some of the top mistakes made by businesses that self-manage their own paid search campaigns?

I think the biggest mistakes occur in the processes rather than the management when it comes to in-house PPC management. Too often the proper analytics aren’t set up, testing isn’t being utilized, and communication between the paid search team and the product or engineering team isn’t leveraged. Without taking the time to make sure everything is set up correctly, and efficiently, paid search teams waste valuable time when it comes to management. Businesses that self-manage need to take a break from pressing forward and address their internal management system—do they have the right analytics? Are they really using the platforms? Do they have a strong CMS in place? What about campaign creation…do they have automation in place? Then hit the data, are you using your testing platform to its full capability? What do you do with the data?

For me the top mistakes are rarely in the bidding and strategy but more in the processes. Small businesses can increase their ROI across the board by properly addressing the processes in place for the paid search team.

3)       Are Yahoo’s & Bing’s paid search offerings worth utilizing for companies only utilizing AdWords?

I get asked this a lot by new clients. Although the landscape is always changing on us, I think it’s beneficial for any advertiser to at least have a presence on Yahoo & Bing. There is a lot to be gained from using their paid search offerings…more than just increase in share of voice and a higher ROI. You learn other platforms, you can test different users, and you can create audience segmentations that aren’t available if you just use Google.

    With all of that said, I usually work with a client to get them set-up and streamlined on Google before we tackle any other option. You can’t deny the heavy hand Google holds in paid search, so get in there & figure it out. Once you do that, it’s definitely worth it to expand into Yahoo & Bing, as well as some of the social network paid platforms. When it comes to paid search you never know where you might find some low hanging fruit or ride the wave of the long tail. As we all know for some companies and brands just a few words performing amazingly can hit their monthly goals.

    Beyond just the fact that you need to explore different user bases the other engines allow any search marketer to use a variety of tools & applications, helping us all become more holistic marketers. For search engine marketers returning a profit should always be the primary goal but learning and expanding our skill sets should be a close second.

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