Paid Search Bid Management By Excel Spreadsheet? Manual Bid Management Falters As Campaigns Grow – Will Your Methodology Scale?
By Sage Peterson
September 2004
Spreadsheets. Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Believe it or not, many marketers are managing their PPC search advertising spending using an Excel spreadsheet to guide their bidding activities.
They literally map out each keyword on which they’re bidding and note the bid price, number of clicks and conversion rate in different columns.
It boggles the mind that marketers or their agencies would use a tool as primitive as a spreadsheet to manage their bidding decisions – but it’s happening, and you would be surprised at who is managing PPC search advertising campaigns this way.
For many marketers, migrating to an automated bidding platform has dramatically improved the ROI, increased the number of conversions, and simultaneously decreased the overall search advertising spend. Yet for some reason, some companies, agencies, and even search engine marketing vendors are hesitant to migrate to automated bid managers for fear of cost, resources, or other factors that do not outweigh the improved outcome they could realize by making such a move.
As you might imagine, utilizing spreadsheets is cumbersome and not very responsive for managing a dynamic, open auction for any significant quantity of keywords. Some keywords become more expensive at different times of the day; sometimes conversion rates change by time-of-day or day-of-week; and weekends are lousy for some keywords in terms of volume and conversion.
Surprisingly, some companies and agencies who rely on a spreadsheet alone are succeeding – for now. Perhaps you’re wondering, “If my vendor is making money for me, why mess with success?” So you can save money, improve ROI, decrease your cost-per-acquisition, or otherwise improve the outcome of your campaign without spending any additional budget…… that’s why!
There are a number of vendors that offer marketers the use of their bidding platforms, as well as a number of search engine marketing firms who either manage search advertising campaigns using one of these bidding platforms, or, who operate their own automated bidding technology.
Automated bidding tools raise and lower bids on hundreds, sometimes thousands of keywords all throughout the day. And while it’s not a game of “set-it and forget it,” the more keywords targeted and the more competitive the bidding environment, the more an automated bidding agent’s advantage increases.
Is your SEM vendor, interactive agency, or in-house team managing your PPC search advertising campaign with the best tools available? Or are they relying on the analog method of tracking bids, clicks, and conversions with a spreadsheet?
Chances are, the spreadsheet approach worked fine when your campaign was smaller – targeting less than 10 or 20 keywords. I’ll bet that in the last year or two, your campaign has grown – and probably outgrown a manual method for bid management.
Here are two sobering statistics: According to research published by Jupiter, in March 2004, 47% of PPC search advertising campaigns targeted some 100 keywords and phrases. Some 22% of marketers reported that their search advertising campaigns targeted more than 1,000 keywords and phrases.
Why are search advertising campaigns growing and gaining such larger scale? Because many marketers are learning from experience that the big, expensive, broad search terms do not generate as high an ROI as the longer, less-expensive, multi-word, more specific keywords, and so are investing more heavily in them – in greater numbers, than in the past. “Insurance” now becomes “extended term life insurance” and “cruise” now become “St. Thomas 7-Day Cruise.”
Is your PPC search advertising campaign being managed with a tool that is up to the task of an ever-growing campaign? Can your management methodology flex and scale as bid prices rise, conversions change by position and keyword, and as your keyword target universe grows? If you have any doubts, it is time to begin investigating bid management technology, or a vendor who offers one.
