Aaron Levy is speaking on PPC at SearchFest 2016, which is being held March 10th, 2016 at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I sort of fell into the digital space when I was 20; thanks to pressure from mamabear I started scouting out summer internships FAR too early (we’re talking mid November), so I was getting a lot of “uhhh, what are you doing” responses. At the time, DuPont was building a co-op program, and had a last second drop out from another school. I happened to be at the right place at the right time, and wound up working full time for about 7 months there. I was largely responsible for Analytics there, but also ran a 6 figure search campaign. I worked at a few agencies around the Philly area (and ran my own for a very short period), so I gained experience working in a ton of different verticals, channels and with various sized teams.
I’ve been with Elite for about a year and a half, and oversee team “Northeast-but-not-in-NYC.” The team is about a dozen strong, with experience levels ranging from just a few months to 10+ years. My title (aren’t they fun?) is Manager of Client Strategy; In our world that means I’m both in charge of the team (though our model doesn’t fit the traditional boss mold), and for driving big picture strategy among clients.
2) You’re sharing the stage with Purna from Bing. How does AdCenter stack up against AdWords and where do you think AdCenter needs to improve most?
Bing Ads (AdCenter’s dead!) and AdWords are looked at as big and little siblings far too often in my opinion. Pretty much everyone follows the same mindset; I’ll build my campaigns on Google, port them over to Bing and never look at them again. Problem is they’re fundamentally different audiences. Bing and Google’s ad products share many of the same features, but the user behavior varies, techniques/tricks vary and a lot of the core features like match types and targeting are a good deal different.
Bing needs to work the most on usability, particularly for bulk changes. They’ve made huge strides in the editor they’ve developed, but it’s still painfully sluggish relative to AdWords. That and volume, but that’s where Windows 10 comes in.
3) What are the top 3 PPC metrics that you feel many search managers overlook?
Oh man, loaded question here but one that comes up a LOT. I’m gonna give two answers, one true metrics and one “alternative” metrics.
Conversion Rate: I feel like this one is gaining popularity as there’s more and more discussions around CRO, but it’s not just about “ooh move this button,” or “hey re-arrange the cart.” We need to start looking at the full customer journey around message match from keyword-to-ad-to-landing page. We can’t look at CVR and blame it on just one tool.
Impression share (both for you and competitors). You can pretty quickly spot shifts in competitive strategy if you monitor this over time, but most people look at it on a one time basis, catching changes before it’s too late.
CPC’s: Shocker, right? A lot of CPC is in our control, but a lot of it isn’t. We need to keep a close eye both on what we do (bid changes, effect of copy changes, match type swaps), and the overall dynamics of the marketplace. We can’t control everything!
….but that said, we need to break OUT of PPC from time to time to see how we effect broader businesses. Here’s a post I put together a few years back on digging deeper that still holds true. https://acquisio.com/blog/ppc-marketing/alternative-ppc-success-metrics-you-should-be-using/
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.