A current e-commerce client has regularly shared the following insight: “assortment drives sales.” He learned this wisdom before he’d even launched this division of his business, at the feet of a major star in a popular online sales category (roughly speaking, disguised slightly, let’s say it’s sports memorabilia). Mikkel (name changed to protect identity) had actually visited the “belly of the...
How Modern Portfolio Theory Sheds Light on PPC Strategy
In Company-Building, Beware the Cargo Cult
The notorious eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was 6’4” tall. To reassure himself that the details of his empire were sound, he reportedly rose at 4:00 a.m. once a week on Mondays, eating a snack of cold barbecue chicken before poring over detailed accounting records for each of his companies. After a five-hour marathon session, he would return to bed, sleeping much of the day. Hardly any of...
Ten Telltale Characteristics of Failed PPC Accounts
Much of the thrust of The Science of PPC – like much of the published literature in our industry – is to provide advice. Tips and tricks, even. “What to do” is generally the stock in trade of marketing-related content. I guess you could consider this week the “What Not to Wear” of digital marketing. To all of you slovenly, shabby, outmoded, career-limiting accounts: your friends and family have...
The New World of Competitive Metrics: Life After “Avg. Pos.”
Many PPC’ers were distraught when, in 2019, Google sunsetted the average ad position metric in Google Ads. That metric was one of our go-to decision criteria for bid aggressiveness. Even if your approach to bidding should align with financial KPI’s like CPA (Cost/Conv.) or ROAS (Conv. Value/Cost), you don’t want to “bid through the top of the auction,” so monitoring position would be useful to...
Nudged: The Science of (Ignoring) Google Ads’ Optimization Score
A bit of context for this week’s installment: it may be helpful to reinforce what we’re all about here at Page Zero. Ever read content by a digital-first company such as Basecamp, GoToMeeting, Zoom, or Dropbox, extolling the virtues of remote work? No one should be surprised that they write about that, since their products are premised on that very thing. They’re simply selling (and, yes, eating)...
