Efficient PPC: A Must Have Tool

By Josh Chambers, Strategy Specialist :

Building out a pay-per-click advertising campaign can be a tedious and, dare I say it, slightly boring process. The strategy that takes place leading up to the build-out, and the optimization that takes place post build-out, is challenging and enjoyable. However, the build-out itself is just good old fashioned grunt work.

Well, Trace recently discovered a program called Efficient PPC that has changed our PPC build-out lives forever.

We used Efficient PPC in the past to build-out a massive campaign; but until recently we hadn’t tapped into the full potential of this angelic app. Yesterday, when building out a large PPC campaign, I dug in a bit and discovered the power of Efficient PPC. Basically, creates multiple campaigns, ad-groups, keyword lists and text-ads in one fell swoop.

Here’s how it works (For the sake of this example, I’ll ignore the campaign level and geo-targeting and pretend all these ad-groups are part of one big, messy campaign--which would be incorrect; but I don’t want to write all day):

Let’s say I’m advertising a chain snowboarding shop in the DC Metro Area and I only want to target people in the specific cities in which these shops reside. With Efficient PPC, I simply create a list containing the specific cities (Arlington, Washington, Bethesda etc.) and call it “City-words.” I create another list containing all the keywords in the snowboardingvertical (gnar gnar, radical, sick, etc.) and call it “Snowboarding-words.” These lists have now become tokens and are implemented by using braces ( {city-words} ). Here’s where the genius of Efficient PPC kicks in. Rather than manually creating multiple ad-groups with separate keyword lists and text-ads; Efficient PPC automatically populates my ad-groups, keyword lists, and text-ads based on the lists I’ve created. That’s probably still a bit confusing, so check this out:

Old way

• Ad-group names: “Arlington,” “Bethesda,” “Washington DC” all need to be manually created.
• Keyword lists: If I want city names in my keyword lists such as “Arlington snowboard shop,” I have to manually create each list for every city I am targeting.
• Text-ads: Again, if I want non-generic ads that contain city names in the ad copy, I have to manually create each ad for every city I am targeting.

Efficient PPC way

• Ad-group names: {City-words}
  
  • Result: “Arlington,” “Bethesda,” “Washington DC,” etc.
• Keyword lists: {City-words} {Snowboarding-words}
  
  • Result: “Arlington snowboards,” “Bethesda snowboards,” “Washington DC snowboards,” etc. These lists match each ad-group accordingly.
• Text-ads: I create my text-ads and insert the token {City-words} wherever I would like the city name to appear. For example, “Buy Snowboards in {City-words}.”
  
  • Result: “Buy Snowboards in Arlington,” “Buy Snowboards in Bethesda,” “Buy Snowboards in Washington DC” etc. These ads match each keyword list and ad-group accordingly.

Efficient PPC also has other great features like creating negative keyword lists, creating keyword lists with multiple match types, creating separate campaigns and creating multiple text-ads. If you’re interested in checking out the program, they have a very generous demo download. However, I will warn you; their video tutorial is pretty bad.

Let me know if you have any questions. In summary, go and try Efficient PPC.