Man v Machine – a look at Pay-per-Click Management Tools

There are several forum topics doing the rounds questioning which PPC management tool is the best! I don’t have the clear cut answer to this question however I do have an insight into a variety of bid optimisation/keyword portfolio management/ Pay Per Click management tools, whichever terminology you prefer.

Firstly it is worth knowing what the differences are and how this can influence your decision when entering into a contract.

Bid Optimisation

Allows you to set bid rules to manage the position of all your keywords automatically based on the strategies you set. Maximum bid prices, positional strategies & competitor bidding are just a few of the standard strategies you can set on most optimisation tools.

Bid optimisation tools allow you to set your metrics and automate the changes via Google’s API and to make changes based on when you need to make them 24/7.

Portfolio Optimisation

Portfolio optimisation or management is an automated way of managing your PPC campaigns to maximise ROI. This is reliant on conversion tracking data either captured by unique tracking codes or by API feeds that pull the conversion and reporting data in from the search engines.
This data is then analysed and based on rules that you dictate manually, bid strategy changes are dynamically implemented in order to achieve your goals.

For example:

Adgroup A is set to achieve a ROI of 500% or £5000
The auto optimisation looks at the history of those keywords and runs a strategic analysis to calculate the optimum position and price to bid in order to achieve the results on a keyword level.
Historic data is crucial here as without it there’s nothing to base the strategies on. It is also important to realise that as clever as the calculations and optimisation is, the tool will only change Cost Per Click Prices to influence the desired results.

Reporting and Analysis

Some tools available are there to help advertisers make sense of data. Rather than manage bid or keyword strategies or even offering 3rd party conversion tracking, they offer reporting templates and analysis.

Although these tools may not have the wow factor of the bid optimisation and portfolio management they can definitely add value by saving advertisers time churning through data, and often have alert functions to help identify the areas of campaigns that are not meeting goals. Reporting and analysis tools also tend to offer data feeds to upload online and offline marketing data to give an overview of all marketing activity.

These tools can sometimes be a challenge if they don’t offer 3rd party tracking as you are reliant on the conversion data per engine hence Google Yahoo, MSN and other analytics codes need to be applied to the relevant pages individually rather than having one universal code.

Conversion Optimisation

Similar to portfolio optimisation, tools which offer conversion optimisation including Google’s own tool offer a way to manage bids to try and achieve set conversion goals.

Google’s Conversion Optimisation tool only currently allows you to set a CPA target, however 3rd party tools will often allow you to set the rules, for example ROI value targets, volume of conversions, CPA, Cost per action and many more.

Again these actions are reliant on conversion or sales data, whether that is from the search engines themselves or a universal tracking code.

Website Optimisation

It is important to understand some of the confusion around website optimisation. This can be put in the same boat as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as elements of SEO are about optimising and improving your website. However in the context of this blog I am referring to the optimisation of a website to improve conversion rates.

Tools which offer website optimisation allow you to test and compare the performance of your web pages, landing pages and/or shopping baskets. One of the most important things when running successful PPC campaigns is the saliency between keyword, ad copy and landing page. Website optimisation can allow tests to be run by driving traffic equally to varying landing pages and identifying which performs the best based on your success metrics.

This can also be known as A/B testing which essentially explains the test environment of different pages.

Taking this a step further some tools can offer the implementation of test on the shopping basket process in order to improve sales conversions.

PPC management

These tools can be referred to as ‘search engine marketing tools’ as a generalisation but what they normally bring to the party which the other tools mentioned do not is the bulk upload and synchronisation of campaigns on the search engines.

These tools offer one interface or panel to access all of the search (and sometimes other online) platforms you are using.

Often used by agencies to save time managing multiple keywords for numerous clients’ accounts these tools offer value in time saving.

To manage multiple accounts across the major search engines can lead to frustrations with the search engines internal tools and these 3rd party tools can help alleviate some of those processes.

So what tools are there available?
I have listed a selection of the tools available in the market that I have come across, demoed and used over the years. Suddenly it becomes clear that although these tools are in the same market they all offer different elements of management, so it is down to your needs as to which provides the solution you are looking for.

• Acquisio
• AdCore
• Apex Pacific
• Atlas Search
• BidRank
• Clickable
• Coremetrics Search
• Keyword Max
• DoubleClick
• Efficient Frontier
• Kenshoo
• Marin Software
• Omniture SearchCenter
• SearchForce
• SearchIgnite
• WebTrends
• AdDirector
• DC Storm
• Podium

So with the variety of tools available surely we are spoilt for choice as search marketing professionals, although I am still waiting to find the tool which encompasses the essence of each of these and deliver a full solution. Maybe I am just greedy!

Taking into account the wonderful things these tools can do, they cannot manage a successful campaign without being expertly driven by a search professional. They cannot react to the volcanic ash cloud affecting sales, they cannot increase the bid on sun cream when today the sun is out and temperature is in the high 20’s, it cannot identify why one ad text is performing better than another.

This is the importance of understanding the search market inside out and utilising seasonal trends and real time reaction to current affairs to allow a tool to successfully manage your campaigns.

These tools are important and can help ad value but human PPC management is just as important and by using both you should see maximum returns.

Do you have any experience with the tools discussed here? What are the pro’s and con’s from your point of view? Leave a comment and let us know.