In my opinion there will never be a substitute for solid keyword research, targeted creative messaging, and optimized landing pages. It is this ‘Conversion Success Triad’ and a lot of blood sweat and tears along the way, that ultimately drives the results for your campaigns and clients.

Now before I go on I need to first explain that this is not a dig at PPC campaign automation, bid management, or Conversion Optimizer, for these can each be perfect solutions when employed correctly. What I get annoyed at is when I either see or hear of people who claim that their conversion optimizer is all a Search Marketer will ever need to hit their goals, or even more dangerous, when a Search Marketer truly believes that conversion optimization automation (try saying that 3 time fast!) is actually all they need…

It’s unfortunate, because there is so much misinformation out there, or perhaps more succinctly, many young eager search marketers willing to jump onto the next big thing flying past and never get the opportunity to discover what is actually happening under the hood.

Automating conversion optimization will only truly be successful if the principles of the Conversion Triad are adhered to: Keywords, Ad Text, Landing Pages. – Automation then is pretty painless because you’ve already done the hard work to get the most you possibly can out of your campaign.

When Google first released Conversion Optimizer I thought, Great, yet another tool designed for lazy search marketers. Because, all of a sudden many time poor marketers saw this as a quick win for their clients – Oh let’s just set conversion optimizer going on the account and Google will do the work for us. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

But it happened time and time again. I’ve witnessed it first hand, and you know the worst part? It actually works well enough to get a job done. So no one, not the client, nor the noob search marketer actually know that they’re leaving opportunity on the table. This is why it’s so dangerous.

Google Conversion Optimiser, as an example, works – simple as that.

Turn it on, and it will optimize the bids and keyword positions to ensure that you get your conversions at or around the specified Cost Per Lead/Sale etc. (no guarantees on volume etc.)

The issue here is that if the account was not first structured correctly i.e  Keywords were poor,  issues with match types, bad ad copy, or bad landing pages, then the ‘Automation’ of  the account is based on sub optimal performance… Result -  Sub-optimal conversion optimization.

So by all means automate your account if required, and turn on Conversion Optimizer to give it a whirl, but if you have not already put in the hard yards to get everything humming along, then don’t expect Conversion Optimiser to be the be-all and end-all solution for your needs. After-all, you know what they say “Shit in, Shit out!”

If you can’t be bothered reading the post just yet, here’s Nick’s intro:

Search Engine Marketing agencies scale not by creativity or innovation but by overhead. This is a fact that many agencies deny but is the cold hard truth. This is true even for agencies that have developed in-house technology or license technology from others.  Even the “advanced” agencies are not very sophisticated – they will use rules-based bidding that works half the time because they still require humans to double-check if they actually care about their client’s bottom-line.

With these bidding systems being rules-based, they require account managers to make customizations (I believe the term is “settings update” after hearing a recent sales pitch) depending on the account/campaign.

So why did this article bring a smile to my face? Well firstly – Nick, solid post and some good points around the pitfalls of bid management. It certainly pays to be aware of this if and when you use various automation tools.

And while you may have generalized a bit to much. I think you’ve got your point across well…

I laughed because of this… Tell me, what’s wrong with this picture?

Check out the Sponsor Link, it’s Acquisio! These guys build PPC Bid Management Software for agencies, probably the very same agencies that Nick’s having a go at.  GOLD!

Ah…  still laughing….

Look I’m sure it was a harmless mistake, as Acquisio are a ‘Column Sponsor’ and therefore just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this is just too funny.

I’m’ sure Acquisio are laughing too. (not!)

Thanks for brightening up my day search engine land, much appreciated.