PPC Blog & Search Engine Marketing Worst Practices: PPC Villain

You’ve already use “the economy” as a cover up for several vacations this year (and why you didn’t answer your phone for 3 weeks), but what do you when you simply need a 4 day weekend? Or when funneling that spend into an offshore gambling account on a hot tip turned out to be a cold fish? Well, fear not. As usual, the Villain is here to help you slide by.

Blame Quality Score
Not enough impressions? Budget spent too much? Not enough? Explain how Quality Score is an evil beast that magically and mathematically is keeping you down.

Blame the Landing Page
Once again, call up on the mysteriousness of Quality Score and explain that the low QS is due to the landing page and that the client is going to need to take that back to the designer and re-do it.

Not Doing Enough
Need to make it look like you’re working? Use AdWords Editor, do a simple find and replace on all ad text and a few bid adjustments, upload and poof! It looks like you spend all afternoon making 70 meticulous account changes. If you’ve got an automated bid management system, set some very basic bid rules at a low amount and let the system take over!

Blame the Shopping Cart
We all know that 60% of online retailers have at least a 20% cart abandonment rate. (Thanks Yahoo.) Why can’t your client be in that 60%?

Blame the New Interface
If they can’t find it, they can’t bug you. Re-arrange the columns that are displaying and the order in which they display to create a shroud of mystery.

Use Conversions 1 per Click and Many per Click
Whichever one makes you look better is the one you should use. If the client asks about the other kind, make up something about last click attribution.

Use SEO and Direct stats
Take credit for at least 10-20% of those sales that come in off of searches and direct. You know that PPC influences those anyway and since the client didn’t want to invest in anything that wasn’t free, how can they prove that your ads didn’t bring in that revenue anyway?

Creative Reporting
We’ll explore this more in depth another day, there are some serious ways to make yourself look awesome without having done a thing. But for now, don’t use graphs, omit stats like cost per action and sales from PPC. Instead focus on big numbers like impressions, CTRs and overall site sales.

My Dog Died
This one is never old and should always be used. If you’re after just a four day weekend, go with the dog. If it’s a week, use grandma and if it’s a month use a girlfriend or boyfriend.

Changes in the Algorithm
Blame sudden drops in anything on an algorithm change. McDonald’s might not have changed their secret sauce in 29 years, but search engines are always “tinkering” and “doing updates.” Sprinkle in descriptors like that to add a sense a vagueness and eliminate follow up questions.

Flip Between Prepay and Postpay
Since each engine is a little different and accepts multiple forms of payment options and plans, confuse them with whichever one they’re on. If you overspent, say you had to “refill” the account. If you just needed some extra cash, then you had to issue and sent them an “invoice” because you were transitioning their account and totally covered their bill for them to avoid an interruption in ad service.

Use this list to gain every advantage that you can and cover your butt in any way possible. And yes, you’re welcome.