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A white paper from
Are you evaluating PPC software to license?
Here is what we learned
and how we made our decision.
Author
Irv BrechnerEVP & Founding Partnerirv@acquirgy.com
© 2009, Acquirgy, Inc.All Rights Reserved
Feel free to let colleagues know that they can request this white paper by email: irv@acquirgy.comAre You Evaluating PPC Software to License?
Introduction
For 6 months we evaluated leading PPC technology platforms including Marin, Kenshoo, Aquisio, SearchForce, Omniture, Clickable and others. Using a SWOT analysis, we compared their capabilities for small clients, as well as clients spending more than $1million a month. We also explored their value for both lead generation and ecommerce clients.
About Us
Acquirgy is a leading direct marketing search agency. We represent major PPC advertisers including Intuit, CDW and Oriental Trading. Our team originally utilized our own proprietary PPC tool, so we were in a unique position to evaluate platforms.
Our Evaluation Processes
It's important that you understand the essential requirements that are most important to you, because some software vendors will tell you that their platform is the best at everything. Our essential requirements were functionality, tracking conversions to ROI, and navigational ease of use. To our knowledge at the time, we were the only agency that conducted an independent review. We ultimately chose Marin Search Marketer®, and here are our findings restated as questions along with answers.
© 2009 Acquirgy, Inc. All rights reserved. www.acquirgy.com . 727.576.6630Are You Evaluating PPC Software to License?
(1) Can I manage multiple accounts, sites and (3) When I change to this platform, do I need to numerous campaigns across the three major alter my URLs or worse, re-create them?engines in one interface? If so, how does that work? Some of the vendors we evaluated had a very elegant and simple system of importing existing campaign The easiest interface that we found in some, but keywords, ad copy, ad groups and URLs from the not all, cases, is where you have one single login, three major engines, without any human intervention, and you can switch between accounts, sites and and better, without the need to make time-consuming campaigns via tabs or pull-down menus - and you changes. Whether you have five campaigns or five do not have to go in and out of different accounts with hundred, this is pretty much a required process. You their own separate logins. You also need to be able to don't want to spend days or even weeks changing or work on Google, Bing and Yahoo! from with the same recreating URLs and related information. We pretty interface. One of the biggest "pain points" we found is much eliminated those vendors that did not have this that having to deal with the three engines via separate functionality. logins was very annoying and counterproductive. As it turns out, in most small to medium size companies, people assigned to managing search also wear other (4) Does the software offer automated bid hats, so ease of use and efficiency is critical. One management along with an override function, vendor we evaluated, for example, only allows you and if so, how effective is the automated bidding to import and edit 24 campaigns in one day. While process?not a limitation for everyone, this was still an issue with our people who use the application every day. Clearly, as you would think, this is a very important We're used to dealing in "real time" with clients who issue, and the way different vendors treated it want successful campaigns to be replicated quickly, varied widely. While it's easy to be attracted to the so that's why a limitation like this is a negative. total automation of bidding, I think most people realize that it's necessary to have the ability to override automatic bids and set up circumstances (2) How easy is it to upload keywords, copy and where certain keywords or groups of keywords related information and replicate campaigns are to be managed manually. When looking at the across the three major engines? functionality in this regard, ask how the automated bidding works and how the algorithms were created. This was a big issue for our agency, and in ta... [download for more]
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