Intro to PPC: SES Chicago Presentation

SES Chicago was last week, and as usual it was a great show with record attendance. This is one of my favorite search marketing conferences: it's close to home for me (a mere 4 hour Amtrak ride), it has a Midwest feel, and attracts search newbies. I've always enjoyed teaching others - I come from a long line of teachers in my family.

This year, I was honored to do a solo presentation on Intro to Paid Search. This session is an SES mainstay, with a storied history of search industry luminaries as presenters: Dana Todd, who was one of the speakers I heard at my first SES back in 2003; Matt Van Wagner, a dear friend and one of my favorite speakers of all time; and Brad Geddes, another good friend and great teacher of PPC goodness. Honestly, I feel pretty out of my league following these superstars, but anyway...

I thoroughly enjoyed giving this presentation - like I said, I love to teach people about PPC, and the session attendees were engaged and asked great questions.

So with that, here is the presentation for your viewing enjoyment! I'd love to hear your feedback: share in the comments!

Ses chicago 2011_mackey_intro to ppc

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Don’t Do What I Tell You To Do

As a mom, it pains me to say that. I’m constantly harping on my teenage twins to do what I tell them to do – and half the time, they do the opposite, thus frustrating the heck out of my husband and me.

So how can I bring myself to tell you, PPC friends, not to do what I tell you?

This week was a busy one in the SEM world with Pubcon Vegas, which wrapped up yesterday. Twitter was alive with Pubcon tweets – so much so that it was hard to keep up.

But there was one Twitter gem from Pubcon that stood out in my mind: “When a speaker says ‘do this’ you should hear ‘test this’.” Tweeted by Ryan Jones and attributed to my friend Brad Geddes, the wisdom stuck with me.

PPC is a smorgasbord of testing goodness – a veritable paradise for a numbers geek like me. Attendees at search conferences will come back with pages of notes full of new ideas to implement in their PPC campaigns. PPC newbies, especially, will be tempted to take the word of the “experts” as the law of the land. Heck, I’m one of the experts that will be speaking at SES Chicago next week, imparting wisdom upon PPC rookies.

Admittedly, there are some basic rules every PPC manager needs to follow. But in general, don’t blindly do what we tell you to do! What works great for one campaign may be a huge flop in another. Nearly everything that’s worth doing in PPC is worth testing first. That’s what I love about PPC – the ability to test just about anything and learn from it.

So next week at SES, when a speaker says “do this,” make sure you hear “test this.”

(Hey, maybe that’s what my kids are doing – testing it for themselves….)