Every fiber in my being tells me it’s wrong…

It shouldn’t be like this…

I shouldn’t behave like this as a professional marketer, psychologist, and family man…

And I know many of you will drop me down several levels of respect when I reveal it…

Because there are some things we shouldn’t do as marketers (human beings!) no matter what the rewards…

But I’ve got ONE deep, dark secret which I’ve been holding way too long and it’s killing me…

So I weighed the options, considered the consequences, and have decided I’m ready to reveal the truth.

And the truth is (I totally can’t  believe I’m going to say this)…

I LIKE “SOUTH PARK”

There.

It’s out.

The shameful truth… I’m so embarrassed.

It started about 10 years ago when I had an 11 year old patient who started talking about the show, and I needed to tune into what he was saying.   (At the time, I had to watch LOTS of adolescent shows and listen to adolescent music to stay “hip” and able to connect with the kids)

And, what can I say, it got me…

I would feel a sense of inner disgust (even if you love it, you’ve gotta admit, it’s totally gross and “wrong”), but was simultaneously glued to the screen, then finally laughing my a__ off… all by myself while my wife left the room.

I knew I was hooked when I kept watching even after I had retired from my psychology practice.  ”Just one more show” I’d say to myself.

So there you have it.

Someone you might think is perfectly respectable, a pillar of the community, known to rock a room with a suit and tie and a highly intellectual marketing speech, secretly and maniacally laughing at an adolescent TV show any chance he can get.

Why am I telling you this?

Because if I were in your target market and you didn’t know my deepest, darkest secret, you’d be missing out on a whole set of metaphors and stories to use to connect with me.

And you know what?

MOST marketers do NOT know their market’s deepest, darkest secrets.  Most marketers barely know their market’s demographics (and are stumped when I ask them the difference between the demographics of their prospects and the demographics of their buying audience)

Getting at the market’s deepest, darkest secrets is at the core of effective emotional marketing.

To do it, you’ve gotta know how to interview people in a group to get them sharing, and make it socially acceptable to share things which they think are evil.

OH… and you’ve got to be comfortable with your OWN deepest, darkest secrets as well, or else you’ll prevent your audience from sharing theirs with you!

In a few weeks I’m going to be launching a very low end monthly webinar all about emotional marketing…  I hope you’ll watch for it and join us.  (I’m going to price it at a no-brainer level at first, maybe even as low as $17/mo, because in assessing what people really still need who’ve been through my systems, it’s this kind of personal experience in critiquing sites from an emotional perspective, finding emotional hot buttons, and translating them into the right consumer language and imagery to drive purchase)

Keep your eyes out.

Dr. G

PS – “OMG, they killed Kenny!”

Hyper Responsive Club |  Total Conversion Code | Emotional Interviewing Service | Coaching |  Hourly Consults

Now there’s TWO quality scores to contend with… oh joy oh joy!!!

Even better, there are NEW CHANGES to MSN’s quality score which are about to rock your world.

Never fear, Nicole Mennicke from Rocket Clicks to the rescue.

Below you’ll find a SHORT MP3 and MSN Quality Score Cheat Sheet .

(Don’t ever say I didn’t give you nothin’)

Dr. G

RocketClicks PPC Management |  Do It Yourself |  Coaching | Total Conversion Code | Choosing Profitable Markets

In any case, it’s definitely THE starting point for understanding the components of Quality Score, especially the key role Click Through Rates play, and the VERY specific economic impact Quality Score has on bid price.  It’s something which EVERY AdWords advertiser should watch.  (Especially since it’s under 10 minutes!)

In my humble opinion, Quality Score is all about “Getting them there and keeping them there with relevant content”… which means (mathematically) a high Click Through Rate, a Long Time Spent on the Site, and a Low Bounce Rate.  What that means in Plain English, however, is that you simply have to know what your best prospects want, on an adgroup by adgroup level, if not down to the keyword.  What’s the best way to do that?  Join the hyper-responsive marketing club of course!

Things which Google themselves point out in the depth of their documentation…

Which have dramatic implications for how you manage the content network… it’s a real paradigm shift.  Without question, it’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned about Adwords this year, and it’ll only take you 15 minutes to go through.

Highly Recommended,

Glenn

Rocket Clicks PPC Management |    Beat the $20/mo Price Increase (2/26/10)

PS – The thematic shift Jered presents is entirely consistent with the focus of my hyper-responsive club.  Essentially, you need to start thinking THEMATICALLY, which requires you to more tightly define what your entire site is about than ever before.  In fact, one way of understanding Quality Score is a recognition that if you don’t take the time to clearly outline your exact place in the world of keyword conversations, Google will define it for you!

I’ve thought long and hard about the best way to define your space, then conquer it with focus and determination in Google (both Search and Content) and beyond.   This is NOT  a technique or a fad, but a set of principles you implement with a step by step over-my-shoulder system.

I’m implementing one last price raise on February 26st, jumping from $77 to $97.   So if you’ve been on the fence following me, consider this your limited opportunity to LOCK IN YOUR RATES FOREVER.  (Note: I never raise rates on active members ) Beat the $20/mo Price Increase (2/26/10)

But what about getting higher scores on keywords which are already performing for you?

What about moving from 6s and 7s to 9s and 10s?

And more importantly, how do you maximize your PROFITABLE IMPRESSIONS on keywords which are already performing well for you?

Other than Google, I think perhaps no one knows better than Rob Sieracki, recently promoted to Chief Operating Officer at Rocket Clicks.

If you’ve got even one keyword which runs profitably in AdWords, I guarantee you’re going to kiss me for putting this interview together. (No complaints about the beard please)

Enjoy!

Dr. Glenn

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |  Advanced Adwords Seminar

It goes something like this:

MARKETER:  ”I think Google’s become entirely too random and unfair with their Quality Score system, so I’m just going to focus on SEO”

GLENN: “OK, well, where does SEO Traffic come from?”

MARKETER: “Uhm, well, I guess it comes mostly from Google”

GLENN: “So, what you’re saying is, you’re going to ignore Google and focus on Google instead?”

MARKETER: “Yeah, but on the organic side, you don’t have to deal with their crazy landing page quality scores, and it’s free so you beat the constantly rising bid prices”

GLENN:  ”Why would Google clean up one side of the street (paid ads) and not eventually apply what they learn to the other (organic)?”

MARKETER: “Um, OK, good point.  But Google’s not the only source of traffic.  There’s Twitter, Facebook, Article Directories, Digg, StumbleUpon, and more…it’s a very big internet out there”

GLENN: “Very true.  But are you talking about using these things because of the power they have to get indexed in Google, or in order to attract the people who come from them directly?”

MARKETER: “Both”

GLENN: “About what percent of traffic comes directly from the social media vs. from the indexing power social media provides in the search engines?”

MARKETER: “I don’t know.   Let’s say it’s 50%”

GLENN: “Which converts better, traffic from social media, or traffic from search”

MARKETER: “Oh, definitely search, because they’re looking to solve a problem, not interact with friends”

GLENN: “Right.”

MARKETER: “OK, I see where you’re going, but even if social media doesn’t convert as well, there’s a LOT of FREE traffic there, and you can always roll it out on the paid contextual networks”

GLENN: “So, you’re going to work with a very broad and diffuse audience while they’re  socializing, develop a website to convert them even though you can’t really pin down their core conversations and objections, and then go buy more traffic for that system?”

MARKETER:  ”Well, there’s affiliates too.  I can recruit an army of affiliates.”

GLENN: “Where do they get THEIR traffic?”

MARKETER: “Well, I could get into one of the CPA networks with an offer.  Have you seen the flood of traffic you can get there?”

GLENN:  ”Sure.  If you can build a website that converts like crazy, you can definitely do that.   How are you going to do that?  What traffic are you going to test it on?”

MARKETER: “I want my Mommy!”

—

I’m exaggerating above for illustration, and of course there IS traffic you can convert which never touches a search engine (especially blog visitors on other people’s sites, participating in forums, and/or good article writing–not the crappy seo articles everyone tells you to write), but here’s the point…

Google’s got the BEST leads.

Google’s got the PUREST leads.

Google’s got the MOST MOTIVATED leads.

Yes, Google’s very hard.

Yes, it’s getting more expensive all the time (that will stop only when it becomes cheaper for marketers to find equally good leads for less money in similar volume… a fact of life in a Darwinian economy).

And sure, we all pine for the days when you could just put up your money and slap up a one page site.

But if you suck it up and learn their system, you get the opportunity to build a site that converts, and you learn which keyword conversations really work for you. (THEN, if you really want to,  you can turn off your Adwords account and take it to the contextual networks.  THEN you can focus on social media.  THEN you do all your article marketing, etc.  But if you do it all right, you won’t want to stop buying PPC)

Because, despite what everyone says, Quality Score is NOT random, it IS fair, and you CAN master it.   Not by looking for techniques and tricks, but by learning certain principles of marketing which, in the end, actually benefit you more than Google.   (I know that’s a controversial statement which is going to earn me a lot of hate mail, but 8  years of PPC marketing experience, thousands of customers, hundreds of direct reviews, and dozens of agency employees  give me the confidence to make it, and it’s in your best interest to seriously consider what I’m saying)

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it’s something you MUST master if you want to succeed online.

The internet as a whole used to be the Wild West.  But the Sheriff is coming to clean up the town.    He’s gonna make his rounds everywhere Google’s got tentacles.    We can try to run and hide, but Google’s got REALLY BIG tentacles, and they keep getting bigger. (The analogy kind of breaks down here because we’re not really criminals… but you get the point)

Beyond this, I predict the organic side of the street is going to shrink this decade as Google figures out how to make sure people can find exactly what they want from paid advertisers, and learns how to minimize searcher complaints.

I’ll be turning my focus to Quality Score Principles (not techniques) in coming months, and you can expect to hear me say things no one else will tell you.

I know it’s hard to understand (because Google’s sheriff is more like Stephen Hawking than John Wayne) .

I know it hurts.

But we can fix this, and it’s good for us.

Suck it up,

Glenn

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |  Advanced Adwords Seminar

PS – The AdWords account banning spree is also NOT random or evil, but principle based.  It IS possible to develop a stable, secure AdWords account and still sleep at night.

PPS – If you’re spending anything significant in AdWords and you’re not coming to the Advanced Adwords Seminar, may I ask why?   (Comments below please).  In my mind, this is one of the very few seminars where you might learn something during the day, go back to your hotel room at night and immediately implement it, then start seeing financial improvements the very next day while you glance at your account on your laptop in the seminar room.  Plus, Perry’s good for his guarantees, I can tell you that.   (Thru the middle of the second day you can bail out and request an extra $500 plane fare).

I’ll be there personally with Sharon, and so will Rob (who is now the Chief Operating Officer of Rocket Clicks by the way).  But you know who you really need to see?  Bryan Todd.   Bryan’s Perry’s co-author, and is generally the quiet man in the background.

But if you push Perry on the point, he’ll tell you that Bryan is better at Adwords than he is.

Bryan’s also become a personal friend of mine (and not the kind of “friend” you hear marketers always talk about, but the kind you share deep personal thoughts with which go way beyond making money), and has given me some of the most profound insights into Adwords and the internet than anyone else I’ve known.

Bryan’s going to be teaching us how to leverage Facebook PPC, and I personally can’t wait.  Because I know this isn’t a presentation he’s just whipping up in a few weeks.  Over the past 18 months Bryan’s been periodically talking to me about his research into the Facebook project, asking me how to integrate it with my methods, talking to me about the psychographic data you get access to and how to use it, and how to integrate AdWords learnings.

I hope I’ll see you there Advanced Adwords Seminar

PPS – Yes, these are affiliate links.

Today I’d like to talk about a subtle distinction in marketing strategy which often gets obscured by the ruthless focus on increasing click through and conversion. Surprisingly, we might not always want these metrics to be as high as humanly possible.

It all comes back to what we’re trying to accomplish in our businesses in the first place.

I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to cultivate repeat customers, ravenous for what I’ve got to offer, eager to ascend to higher and higher value products and services, respectful of my customer service team, and interested in referring me to prospects of similar quality.

Moreover, I’m interested in developing a core FOCUS in my business.  Since I can’t be everything to everyone, I want my customers to share certain core values with one another and bond to me because of them…

That way my back end development is  crystal clear and I can keep my resources focussed.  I can also  move relatively quickly to introduce higher end products and services which will please the majority of my customers, rather than becoming fragmented into segments which drain my resources and prevent the development of anything spectacular.

Getting a high CTR and Conversion rate is only useful to me to the extent it serves these ends, and actually a distraction if it does not.    And because increasing these metrics beyond a certain point necessarily entails convincing more and more ambivalent people to purchase (remember–the most ravenous people in your market will buy from even poor advertising if they trust you… good advertising is about convincing less interested and more skeptical people), it’s something worth thinking about very seriously.

The point is, single-minded  focus on CTR and Conversion in the absence of STRATEGY (e.g., WHO are you trying to attract, who are you trying to repel, and why) may waste your advertising dollars on prospects who engage in TRIAL BUT NOT REPEAT.

You can also wind up attracting customers who burden your support team with complaints, threaten your merchant account with chargebacks and refunds (not something to dismiss lightly given the Visa/MC shakeup this year), and most importantly, diversify your customer base too broadly to allow you to effectively develop back ends and maximize customer value!

Now, from most of the advertising I see online, I’d say the vast majority of vendors in AdWords don’t really get this.  Or perhaps they don’t care because the math works for them, at least for the moment.

But, especially in a PPC environment where auction prices continue to rise, transactional thinking just isn’t going to cut it in the long run for your business.  You need to build on stone, not sand.

Let’s work through a real life example.

I have a friend who’s daughter has a debilitating condition called “Myasthenia Gravis”.    When I type this into Google, the FIRST link on the left hand side is for Wikipedia, and in the very first paragraph it says “there is no known cure”.   Subsequent organic links confirm this, though many offer hope of relief and cautiously optimistic treatment.

Here are two of the first page ads I see:

Now, I’m sure we could all jump in and talk about how to improve these ads, but that’s besides the point.

The point is the “Myasthenia Gravis Cure” ad is almost certainly getting a higher click through rate.

And if they’re carrying through their promise of a cure to the landing page (I didn’t review), they’re probably getting a higher conversion rate as well.

And I’ll bet you they’re making more money (a lot more) ON THE FRONT END TRIALS.

But are they building a business? Are they cultivating loyal customers? Are they producing evangelists for their products and services who will bring more high quality, loyal customers at zero cost? Do they have true back end capabilities? What about customer service problems? Merchant account issues?

If they’re promising a cure when there really is none (and then just dealing with the refunds because the math works out for them), I’d venture to say not!

In fairness, there MAY be a cure we don’t know about. The sites on the left may be wrong.  Maybe this “Cure” site really DOES have something special and in that case, more power to them for getting out there with full force.

But if not, what they’ve got is a temporary income stream, not a business. They’ve got a good ad, not good customers.

If they were my client I’d actually advise them to cut their click through rate and conversion, and go with  something more like the second ad instead.  It might not be as strong in creating trial, and the cost per initial sale would certainly be higher… but it would fill their business with grateful, loyal customers, higher long term values… and all the other good things above.

Now, the only way YOU can do this is if you REALLY know who you’re going after in the first place. And that’s where MARKET INTELLIGENCE trumps keyword intelligence, every time.

Because if you know the unique conversation in the prospect’s mind behind each keyword search (every keyword really is a unique conversation)…

If you know with confidence which keyword conversations define your center of gravity…

Then and only then can you begin to write your ads to attract hyper-responsive customers, repel the riff raff, and keep Google happy in the process. (Remember, PPC IS A THREE WAY JOINT VENTURE… you’ve got to provide value for Google, your prospects, and yourself… if any of the three loses, the system doesn’t work)

Which is the essence of Dr. Glenn’s Golden Rule #2:

“Sell Distinct Advantages to Hyper-Responsive Customers
Using Their Emotional Buying Language… And Actively
Repel Everyone Else”

And if you’d like to have confidence that you’re doing that  better than anyone else in your market, it’s definitely time for you to join the club!

Hope it helps,

Dr. G

PS – In keeping with this post, let me please say that unless you’re already operating a very profitable online business, you won’t get rich in the next few months using the hyper responsive marketing club.  It’s not even within the realm of possibilities.  But you WILL learn a way of strategic thinking which is different than what anyone else teaches online, and which is linked to a step by step approach which will last you a lifetime!  join the club

• Don’t judge the success of the content network without cleaning it up first.  Aggressively look for site and category exclusions (in the content placement report AND the standard user interface for the campaign).  As a last resort consider managing effective placements discovered on a CPM basis while you gradually throttle  down the automatic placement campaign (you can drag and drop placements between two campaigns using the Adwords Editor)
• In your most profitable adgroups, don’t necessarily split test a new ad with 50% of your traffic unless you’re very early in the game and you’re fairly sure you’ve got a good change to beat the control. Instead, use the Adwords Editor to make several copies of the existing ad, and change only ONE of them.  This way, you’re only exposing the TEST to a small percentage of your otherwise profitable traffic… if it’s a bomb, you lose a lot less.  If it starts to look like a winner, you can delete many of the other copies to increase the exposure frequency of the test ad (but be careful not to delete the CONTROL copy with all the history until the winner has been firmly declared)
• Don’t be content using just text ads. Local Business Ads, Ad Extensions, and Ad Site Links are very effective yet underutilized media for many businesses.  (And in the content network, don’t forget to test display advertising)
• Test something wildly and insanely different from your existing control ad. I mean, something which kind of irks you to try.   Onesentance.org is a good source of inspiration for ad copy in this light (thanks to David Bullock for pointing this out).   Another good source is to write a controversial ad which goes 100% against all the benefits your competitors are touting.  For example, in the adwords market itself you used to see ads saying “You will make money tonight”… so what you’d do instead is say “Some of these animals are lying!  Be the tortoise, not the hare”… see where I’m going?
• Take advantage of Google’s Betas, especially if you’re a more traditional e-commerce marketing with an actual catalog of products sold through a shopping cart.
• Don’t use the same copy or landing pages  in the content network as you do in search. Content surfers are READERS, searchers are SCANNERS.  (We’ll do more on this in a future audio)
• Go through the reporting center once a week to see if there are new metrics available which could be of use. (These days, new data points seem to be accelerating on an almost monthly basis)

And for heaven’s sake, if you’re not a member of my Hyper Responsive Club already, get out there and join before the price increases forever on Friday (or when I hit 1,000 members, which is looking like it might happen before then since Perry Marshall decided to tell his list of 250,000+ people to jump on board today).

Because without the information in this club, I can virtually guarantee you haven’t carefully defined a very specific keyword target to conquer online with focus and determination.  And if you haven’t done that, I know you’re suffering with much lower click through, conversion, and quality scores than you’d otherwise have. Join now

I know everyone hesitates to join a new monthly club, and no one wants to commit to a new monthly expense. (Note: you can cancel any time, and even the first month is refundable if you decide you don’t like it for any reason, or no reason at all)

But the thing is, hardly anyone is sorry once they’ve joined mine.  Join now

That’s because:

1) YOU’LL SEE A REAL BUSINESS BEING DEVELOPED: This club is one of the very, very few places you can actually watch a real business being developed from scratch. In other words, I don’t only TALK about what to do in some electronic classroom in the sky, I actually SHOW YOU me DOING it as I develop a REAL business.  Join now

2) YOU GET 6 To 12 HOURS FOR MUCH LESS THAN WHAT OTHERS CHARGE FOR ONLY 1 HOUR: While most other gurus are charging $97/mo for only an hour or two of  THEORY, Glenn’s delivering virtually a whole seminar (6 to 12 hours/mo) for much less.  Join now

3) YOU’LL LEARN FROM AN AGENCY OWNER: I’m not only a marketing educator, I’m a Rocket Clicks founder and I’ve seen hundreds of business models from the inside out. Which means, I don’t just guess about what’s working and what’s not, I’ve seen the dollars in vs. dollars out reports. I’m not talking theory, and I’m not going to pee on your back while I tell you it’s raining.  You’ll get the straight truth, even when it’s not sexy.  Which is what you NEED in order to succeed, rather than just to feel good for a few months while you consume another piece of intellectual entertainment.  Join now

4) I’VE LIVED IN THE REAL WORLD: I’ve consulted for dozens of real companies … Lipton, AT&T, Novartis, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Colgate-Palmolive, Bausch & Lomb, Nextel, etc. I might be known in our circles as “the guinea pig direct response guy”, but my techniques are explosive in these circles because they come from an entirely different industry.  Join now

5) I’VE DONE WHAT I’M TEACHING: I’ve launched over 17 markets profitably, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with the IM crowd. I’m not a guru who’s done nothing but be a guru.

6) I’M HONEST: You won’t get rich next month using my work. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. But you WILL learn how to build a secure foundation for your business so it can grow and grow and grow.  Join now

7) YOU’LL LEARN A DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK ABOUT MARKETING: Perhaps most importantly, I’ll teach you a different way to think about marketing which will last you a lifetime.

BEAT THE PRICE RAISE (On January 1st): Join now

And have a Happy New Year!

Dr. G

One of the easiest places to find money is still, believe it or not, in your AdWords account.

So I thought I’d end the year with a list of 8 unusual things never to do in AdWords, one per day.

Watch the blog, work the system, and let me know how much money you’ve saved in the comments OK?

The first unusual thing NEVER to do in adwords (if you’re following the Glenn Livingston method) is:

• NEVER let a keyword run in the RED ZONE for Quality Score for more than 2,500 impressions (Red Zone = Quality Score of 4 or less)

Some experts will certainly argue with this, suggesting there’s no other way to pick up the impressions and profits on certain keywords, or that their sites are so wildly profitable they don’t care how inefficient their advertising is.

But here’s the thing…

When your Quality Score runs in the red zone, you not only start paying more per click, you lose impression share… fast.   On top of this, you develop an account history as an advertiser who runs poor quality keywords.  Although this is admittedly not the most important factor in determining your overall performance, it definitely does play a role, particularly on new campaigns and keywords as you roll them out.

What Google’s Red Zone is telling you is you’re pushing beyond the boundaries of what their algorithms think is relevant for your ad-site combination.

GLENN SAYS:  Your entire Google account, other than those few adgroups and keywords you’re testing and aggressively monitoring to improve, should always run at a Quality Score of 5 or above. I’m NOT talking about an AVERAGE Quality Score, I’m saying  the MINIMUM Quality Score across your entire account should be no less than 5.

What to do with those poor performing keywords?

Well, you can gripe about it, bang your head against the wall, get on the forums and talk about how unfair and tyrannical Google’s being, how ridiculous it all is, how they’re being stupid and why won’t they just take your money, etc.   You could also call my Mom and ask for her sympathy (she’s really a very sweet woman).

But the bottom line is… you can’t fight City Hall.  Their algorithms are the ONLY ones that count, period.  And if you’ll rise to the challenge, you’ll come to think of Quality Score as your best friend (really).

Here’s how I personally handle it if the keyword is important to me.  (If it’s not that important, I’ll just delete it)

• First, I check the quality score indicator for that keyword by hovering my mouse over the little icon in the user interface next to the keyword itself in the keywords tab.   If I’ve got landing page, load time, or keyword relevance problems, I’ll build another landing page system (including a few linked pages with an article or two specifically about the keyword).  Note: If your quality score is below 3, you’ll probably need to call Google and have a human editor review the changes before anything will change… it won’t get picked up algorithmically
• Usually the above is not the case however, in which case I can conclude my primary problem is CLICK THROUGH RATE (CTR is 65% of Quality Score)
• So the first prong of attack (assuming I’ve been running broad and/or phrase match) is to look in the Search Query Report for longer tail QUERY phrases which have been getting high click through… and then construct an ad using those phrases and split test it against the existing one.   (Note: This almost always increases CTR… and I generally will NOT let the split test run to full statistical significance because I want to eliminate the poorer performing ad as quickly as possible to get my Quality Score up.  I do NOT want to accrue any more poor quality score impressions in that adgroup than I absolutely must.  Thus, the risk of inadvertently choosing the losing ad due to ending the test too early is much less, in my estimation, than the risk of a further downgrade in Quality Score.  It certainly IS a risk however, so decide for yourself!)
• Of course, anything and everything else you can do to split test yourself into a higher CTR for that adgroup is of paramount importance.  (See Perry’s and Howie’s standard books).   As a very rough rule of thumb, I find that if I can DOUBLE my click through rate, I can move a QS of 4 fairly quickly to a 6… and then once it’s run stably at that CTR level for a few thousand impressions, it starts to inch up to the 7 and 8 range.  But I’m pretty sure this isn’t a linear formula… I think it’s normative, which means it depends very much on the other advertisers in that particular keyword auction, and it may have certain key threshold values.
• If you can NOT get your click through rate high enough to get out of the red zone, but you still want the associated traffic, what you want to do next is delete the keyword itself, but install it’s “component parts” as individual adgroups.    You can find the component parts in two places (1) the search query report; (2) the keyword expansion tool within the adgroup itself.   Essentially, look for the high volume, longer tail related phrases (especially those getting high CTR in the search query report) , and the most related longer tail “buckets” google wants you to consider expanding to from that group (those  on the top of the list in the keyword expansion tool)
• Remember, whenever you delete a keyword from an adgroup, install it in the same adgroup as a negative

Now, here’s the REAL secret sauce no one’s talking about because it’s not at all sexy.

As keyword auctions become more and more competitive, we think what Google REALLY wants to see is entire sites devoted to those keywords.   So, for example, it’s going to get harder and harder to compete for “migraine” traffic on a site about “headaches”.  Eventually, you’re gonna need a site all about migraines.  On the other hand, if your site IS all about migraines, the odds are pretty good Google will push you into the headache traffic on a “migraine” broad match (I hope that makes sense).

Of course, for most advertisers, developing entire sites just to hit one keyword doesn’t make ANY sense until they’ve exhausted the other means available (like the ones above, which really DO work very well and probably will continue to for a few years).  But for high volume, ultra lucrative keywords which don’t respond to the above, that’s the strategy to consider.

Anyway, I’ll bet  you’ve all got good money sitting in your account which you can pick up by the end of the year if you spend some time examining what you see above.

For the purpose of simplicity, here’s the short-short story:

• The minimum QS across your entire account should always be 5 or greater.  Don’t let keywords run in the red zone for more than 2500 impressions
• When you’ve got an important keyword in the red zone, first check to see if you’ve got landing page, load time, or keyword relevance problems and fix them before trying other things
• Then work on your CTR using longer tail phrases ultra-related to your problem keyword (from the search query report and/or the google keyword expansion tool in the adgroup itself),  as well as all the normal means
• Get the low performing ad out of the mix as soon as you’re reasonably certain you’ve got a better one
• If the above doesn’t work, delete the original keyword and install new adgroups consisting of it’s “component parts” (longer tail ultra-related phrases, for example “how to stop a migraine” and “natural migraine supplements” instead of “migraine”)
• Remember to install the deleted keyword as a negative in the original group

OK, that’s it, I hope I just bought your family a few Holiday presents

Dr. G

PS – As the hyper-responsive club has developed, it’s evolved to include more and more about my adwords methods since these are most frequently requested by my best customers.    Why not come watch me build a business step by step, and apply the cheat sheets and over my shoulder videos to your own dream?  (The price is going up again on January 1st or when I reach 1,000 active members, which ever comes first)  hyper-responsive club

PPS – I’ll be SPEAKING in Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Seminar.  Grab your early bird spot and come meet me there, won’t you? (Rob Sieracki, the Director of PPC at Rocket Clicks will be attending and also speaking in his own slot … truth be told, he knows way more than I do at this juncture!)