Archive for category Pay Per Click (PPC)

More on Facebook Ads and new Pay Per Click Rules - Podcast Episode 22

Episode Twenty-Two of the Legacy Learning Systems Affiliate Podcast is ready for your listening pleasure. Podcast on Facebook Advertising and Pay Per Click

You can listen or download below and you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. You can also listen to past episodes in our Podcast Archive.

This week on the Legacy Learning Systems Affiliate Podcast, I talk more about Facebook Ads, rotating your ads and writing compelling copy. I also talk briefly about our new Pay Per Click rules.

There was not much news to cover, but I did talk about the latest two topics in our 15+ Facebook Advertising Tips Series and the email I sent about the new Pay Per Click rules. If you did not get that email, please let me know.

This week’s short show notes are:

15+ Facebook Advertising Tips - Part Five - Rotate Your Ads

15+ Facebook Advertising Tips - Part Six - Compelling Ad Copy

Download Legacy Affiliate Podcast Episode One

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15+ Facebook Advertising Tips - Part Two - Demographics

There is an old saying in real estate that what matters is “location, location, and location.”Facebook Advertising Tips

In Facebook ads, it’s “demographics, demographics, and demographics!”

But how do you know the demographics? And how to you group your demographics? How do you target them better?

Well, I hope Part Two in our 15+ Facebook Advertising Tips helps.

The first place to start is our “Course Demographics” page in our Affiliate Tools Section. This will give you what I would consider a medium level view of the target markets. Broad would be “people” and narrow would be “women in the southeast U.S. ages 34-38, married and college educated, who like ‘Twilight’.” These demographics fall somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

So, for this lesson, I will focus on two examples. Our Learn & Master Home School Editions and our Learn & Master Ballroom Dance course.

What is the demographic for the Home School Editions?

Using strictly the demographics we provide,  you will first see that they tend to be lower middle aged, 25-44 years old with moderate to high incomes. They are typically married.

A little bit more research will show you that they are predominantly women (of course their are men, but as far as buyers, they tend to be the women).

Using Facebook’s Targeting, you can narrow it down even further. Here is a screenshot of an ad targeting Home School parents (click for a larger view).

Facebook Advertising Demographics

As you can see we narrowed it down to the United States only. You may choose to regionalize it more. Are there certain parts of the country that will tend to buy a DVD-based course? Perhaps more rural areas where there is not as much instruction available locally?

Then we targeted a small age group (27-32). I segment each broad age group into much smaller age groups. So for the Home School Editions I am targeting 25-45 year olds. I broke that down into 25-26, 27-32, 33-38, 39-43, and 44-45. Older women will typically have older kids and vice versa, so perhaps we may stumble upon the perfect age group in there.  No rhyme or reason really for those exact numbers, but you get the idea. You could literally do it year by year if you wanted.

I then narrowed it down to married women who speak U.S. English only.

The likes and interests part is the most important part in this example I think. I literally picked anything that has to do with “Home School” or “Homeschool” and ran with it. If they are in any of these groups, they ARE our target market.

Now for the example of Ballroom Dance, I decided to target an even more specific audience, but yet one that still reaches almost 300,000 people and has been getting super high CTR (click through rates) and impressions.

The ad targets married women and suggests they get their husbands to learn Ballroom Dance. It has a picture of two people dancing and the clincher is the subject line (more on that factor later in this series) and the ad copy. It plays on “Dancing with the Stars.”

So once again, I targeted:

  • the United States only
  • ages 25-50 (broken down into smaller groups)
  • women
  • married
  • English (US)
  • Likes and interests: ballroom dancing, ballroom dance, dance, Dancing with the Stars, and more.

One caution in targeting demographically: Be careful when targeting people who are TOO in your niche. An example of this might be targeting the Likes and Interest of “guitar” when running an ad for Learn & Master Guitar. These people already play guitar…therefore, they are not in your target audience most likely. Tread carefully there. I am not saying to NOT include that, but if you do, put it in its own ad and bid low and set a low budget.

OK, I think that is it for this part of demographic targeting in our 15+ Facebook Advertising Tips Series.

Until next time…

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Questions to Ask Your Affiliate Manager #14: Can You Install Tracking Code for Me?

Last week in the of the Questions to Ask Your Affiliate Manager Series, I wrote about asking your affiliate manager if you can design your own creatives.Questions for Your Affiliate Manager - Tracking Script

That was Question #13.

Question #14 is a simple one and yet practically no affiliate ever asks me.

Can I install my tracking script on your confirmation page?

Short Answer from Legacy: Yes! I highly encourage it.

This will allow you to track ad performance and keyword performance straight from your AdWords, Yahoo, or other interface. For more about tracking keyword performance check out part nine of my AdWords for Newbies Series on Keyword Tracking.

To install your tracking scripts on our confirmation pages, for example, just send me a plain text file with your secure tracking pixels (this means https:// not http://) via email and our IT team is usually able to get them up within 48 hours at the most, sometimes even within 2-3 hours. It’s that simple!

So make sure to ask your affiliate manager if you can install your tracking scripts on their confirmation pages.

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Coming Soon: 15+ Tips for Advertising our Courses on Facebook

Are you already advertising our courses on Facebook? Facebook Advertising Tips

Perhaps you have tried it and failed?

More likely, like most affiliates, you don’t know the first thing about advertising on Facebook.

Whatever group you fall into, you will definitely not want to miss my upcoming series that I am currently calling “15+ Tips for Advertising our Courses on Facebook.”  Why 15+ tips? Because I have about 12 already and have absolutely no idea how many I will end up with.

Facebook advertising is kind of a combination of AdWords, in terms of writing copy and landing pages, radio advertising, in terms of demographic targeting, and a little bit of tricky, stealth maneuvering to enhance the performance of your ads, with a dash of Mr. Belvedere and Tony Danza. Or something like that. Let’s just say that the bad news is that very few people know the ins and outs of Facebook advertising. And the good news is that very few people know the ins and outs of Facebook advertising.

Anyway, as of now, the series will launch probably in early July and continue until…well whenever I run of tips.

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Questions to Ask Your Affiliate Manager #10: Daily Conversion Stats

Last week I talked about asking your affiliate manager about the seasonality of their products (or courses in our case).Questions to Ask Your Affiliate Manager 10

Today, I encourage you to ask your affiliate manager about the daily statistics of their products/courses.

Such as this post that I wrote a while back that shows the daily breakdown of sales:

Daily Conversion Statistics

As you can see in that post, our best day for conversions is Thursday and the worst is Wednesday.

If you ask your affiliate manager (me) for the actual sales data of volume for each day, I am pretty sure he/she will give that to you as well.

Why is this a good question to ask your affiliate manager and how does this help you?

Glad you asked. It helps you:

1. Understand the sales cycles. Just as understanding the seasonality of things helps you know that summer sucks for us, knowing that Wednesday has lower conversions will help you not to panic when sales drop.

2. Dayparting your Pay Per Click ads. See this post about dayparting for more if you don’t know about this.

3. Knowing when to send emails to customers. If you have an email list, I would recommend sending them on days when our conversions are highest.

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In Case You Missed It: AdWords Campaign Experiments

Last month Google gave some good news to Canadian and UK affiliates with their Broad Match Modifier which was only available to advertisers in those countries.

I felt a little slighted being here in the good ole US of A though. Google made it up to me Tuesday when they announced the new AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) Beta, their new split testing tool currently only available by request to US residents.

For the first time through AdWords (so easily and free) you can split test various factors in your bids, from the individual keyword bids to group bids, adding new keywords to campaigns, etc. Below is a video from Google that explains ACE in depth.

As they point out, previously advertisers were forced to “test” changes like this by raising or lowering bids, adding new keywords, etc. and then seeing what happened. Results were never accurate as we know that too many factors can influence campaign results like holidays, economic factors, new reports and even Oprah Winfrey.

It’s probably a good idea to go ahead and apply quickly so check out the video and apply here.

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Lincoln, Elvis, Astaire, and the Yaz, oh My! And some stuff about Pay Per Click and Affiliate Marketing

Legacy Learning Systems Affiliate Podcast Episode Eleven is ready for your listening pleasure.

You can listen or download below and you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. You can also listen to past episodes in our Podcast Archive.adwords-obama-broad-match

In episode eleven of the Legacy Learning Affiliate Podcast I talk about the upcoming LEGACY Week III, lessons from the Gettysburg Address for affiliates, Google’s new AdWords Broad Match Modifier, ShareASale’s FixIt, and AdWords lessons from the Obama Administration.

I also have a very special offer in the podcast so you have to listen to find out :)

Here are this week’s show notes:

LEGACY Week III Hub Page

Gettysburg Address Writing Lessons for Affiliates

Language Lessons from Frank Luntz and George Orwell

Politics and the English Language Essay

AdWords Broad Match Modifier

AdWords for Newbies Series

ShareASale FixIt

AdWords Lessons from the Obama Administration

Podcast Episode 10 with Jason Rubacky (Contact Information Included)

Download Legacy Affiliate Podcast Episode One

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AdWords Lessons from the Obama Administration

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC - not the Southeastern Conference as I suspect 74% of Tennessee residents would think), a government agency, filed a lawsuit against the huge bank Goldman Sachs. Perhaps you missed it in the Twitter clutter :)

At the same time, the Obama administration and the Democrat leadership in the U.S. Congress are currently trying to sell the public on their financial reform package, much of which rails against Wall Street and their perceived lack of regulation of the financial industry.

Personal politics and agreement or disagreement with the bill or the sponsors aside, Obama’s political team did a brilliant job of capitalizing on the lawsuit and used the internet, particularly Google AdWords, very effectively.

Let’s face it, whether you agree with Obama’s policies or governing, his team has been absolutely brilliant at using the internet to get their message out. Their use of AdWords last month is a perfect example.

Right after the lawsuit was filed, a search for ‘goldman sachs sec,’ goldman sachs fraud,’ or simply ‘goldman sachs’ would produce ads from the president imploring you to “Help Change Wall Street” and directing you to BarackObama.com.

AdWords Lessons from Obama

Simply brilliant!

Econsultancy did a post on this subject back in April that I have meaning to write about since the day it went up. Alas, now I have the time :) In it, they point out three components of the ads that make them a perfect example of a highly strategic AdWords campaign: careful selection of keywords, timeliness, and narrowness. They go into a bit of detail on each and the detail on point one really sunk in for me.

So, what can you learn from the Obama team? Well, they wrote the post, so I will leave you hanging and direct you to their article here.

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Unique Opportunity for ONE Pay Per Click Affiliate

EDIT: This opportunity has already been given. Sorry, but dang that was fast!

I have a unique opportunity for ONE Pay Per Click affiliate that I want to share privately.

I will share this idea with the first affiliate to IM me or DM me on Twitter. Please keep in mind, this could be a really stupid idea :)

So hit me up here:

AIM - legacyaffiliates
GoogleTalk - legacymatt
Yahoo Messenger - legacyaffiliates
MSN - legacylearning@live.com
Skype - matt7267
Twitter - @LegacyAffiliates

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UK and Canadian Pay Per Click Affiliates - AdWords New Broad Match Modifier

Earlier today Google released their new broad match modifier to UK and Canadian affiliates. It’s an open beta there and hopefully will come to the U.S. and other countries soon.

According to the Google AdWords blog, the feature allows you to “create keywords that have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match.” Hooray! Now, when is it in the U.S.? :) AdWords Broad Match Modifier

Using it is simple, you just put a (+) symbol in front of any of the words in a broad match keyword. Any keyword with the (+) in front of it must appear in the search exactly or as a close variants. Synonyms like “learn” and “study” are not consider to be close variants by Google, nor are related searches, such as “piano” and “keyboard.”

Google gives a nice graphic that demonstrates the reach of the various keyword matching types. Click on the image on the right for a full-size view.

Here are some examples of how Broad Match Modifier works:

Example One

Currently the keyphrase “dvd guitar lessons” might be matched to such unrelated keyphrases as “musical movie dvds.”

Using Broad Match Modifiers though you can limit the possibilities. You can add the (+) to the word “guitar” to be sure that the word “guitar” must appear (or something more similar than “musical.”

Now “dvd +guitar lessons” might still fire on a search for “guitar hero videos.”

So you can qualify it even more. You get the point.

If you are in Canada or the UK, give it a try. Test some things out. And, if there is any way that I can help, let me know.

Learn more about it in the Broad Match Modifier section of AdWords Help.

More information about AdWords in our Ten-Part AdWords for Newbies Series.

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Mother’s Day Creatives, Wedding Season, Keyword Grouping, and Advertising Tax Pandemonium - Legacy Affiliate Podcast Episode Eight

Episode Eight of the Legacy Learning Systems Affiliate Podcast is recorded and ready for you to listen and learn.Affiliate Podcast Advertising Tax Weddings

This week I talk about the new Mother’s Day creatives on ShareASale, as well as wedding banners and other holiday creatives, how to group keywords by where people are in the shopping timeline, and discuss the advertising tax in Tennessee, Connecticut, North Carolina, and California.

You can listen or download below and you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Here are this week’s Show Notes:

Haiti Recap

New Mother’s Day Creatives | Mother’s Day Category on ShareASale

New Wedding Creatives - link coming soon. I will post it here on the blog later today. (EDIT: They are live now!)

Joe Sousa’s Blog

Keyword Grouping Blog Post

Advertising Tax Updates from the PMA

Connecticut Action Items from the PMA

Download Legacy Affiliate Podcast Episode One

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How Do You Group Your Pay Per Click Keywords?

Keyword Grouping for Pay Per Click campaigns is absolutely essential.

PPC veterans know this, but even some of them are missing out on some qualifiers. Newbies may not even know what keyword grouping is, so I suggest they check out part eight in my AdWords for Newbies Series which is all about keyword grouping for Google Adwords.

Keyword grouping, as I point out, is especially useful for optimizing ad copy by putting keywords into small, targeted groups and writing ad copy that focuses on those keywords. It is also great for building targeted landing pages. The end result is better click through rates, higher conversions, and ultimately better ROI.

One important way to qualify searches is by their position in the buying timeline. I like to categorize people into three groups listed below. I will use the Learn & Master Piano course for example.

Browsers - These are people not even sure of what they are looking for. They are specifically in the “information” stage of the process. They know they want to learn piano, but have no clue where to start. Keywords would include: ‘how to play piano,’ ‘learn/learning piano,’ and ‘piano playing methods.’ These are “how-to” people. They want to know what the next step is. Once they have this information, the become…

Shoppers - These people know they want something, like ‘piano lessons,’ ‘piano learning courses,’ ‘piano instruction book.’ These people will typically want to compare different products, narrowing the choices down over time. Other buzz words include: ‘compare/comparison,’ ‘review(s),’ and also some words that are more common overseas such as ‘assessment.’ Other words for our specific course might be ‘what is’ and ‘information about.’ After comparing products, shoppers become…

Buyers - This is the most obvious of all qualifiers. At this point, the searcher has become a buyer. Keywords include: ‘buy/buying,’ ‘purchase,’ and similar words. Other words might include ’sales,’ ‘discounts,’ and ‘price.’

I highly suggest using these guidelines to segment your ads. I hope they help!

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Legacy Learning Affiliate Tools Section

Quick post since a lot of affiliates have asked me about it.Affiliate Tools Keywords ShareASale Tutorials and More

Have you checked out the Legacy Learning Systems Affiliate Tools Section? If not, you should.

In it you will find ShareASale Video Tutorials, an article and news archive, keywords for Pay Per Click, FTC disclosure guidelines, content for your site, an archive of our Affiliate Insider Newsletter, course demographics, and more!

It is updated frequently and you can follow us on Twitter or stay tuned here for updates.

I hope the tools help you!

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Keyword Check Time - Try No Spaces

I was just thinking about something so I figured I would share it with you all.

Are you using keywords with no spaces?

Let’s face it, people type quickly and make mistakes. Also there are common typos which are not technically typos and various ways to spell the same words or phrases.

Here are some examples of words to bid on:

learnguitar? |? guitarlessons? |? homeschool music lessons (as opposed to home school music lessons)

learn piano athome? |? pianodvd lessons? |? paintinginstruction

While the volume may not be high, you might get a ton of cheap keywords that still convert with these.

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Daily Conversion Statistics

Earlier today an affiliate emailed me to ask for our conversion data for each day, so I thought I should share it with all of you.

Here are our overall affiliate conversion rates by day of the week.? Of course, depending on your site and how you refer visitors to us, your results may vary, but this should give you an idea of the day-by-day breakdown at least.

Sun 2.839%

Sat 2.759%

Fri 2.793%

Thurs 3.297%

Wed 2.754%

Tues 2.819%

Mon 3.110%

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