Stanley Black & Decker: Lillie Beiting, on What Is PPC?

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When Lillie Beiting of Stanley Black & Decker joined us early on in the show, she laid down a great outline of what pay-per-click is!

Danny:

Lead generation is a typical challenge for most, if not all manufacturing marketers. You have to constantly feed the beast. Now, one of the most often used digital tactics to help generate leads is utilizing a pay-per-click or “PPC” campaign. And when it first rolled out, it seemed almost magical. You just set up a list of keywords, and voila. Clicks to your website. Well, things have changed a little bit over the last few years, and it’s not as easy as it was. It’s way more competitive. You can spend a ton of money on it and get nominal results. And it’s not a “Set It and Forget It” type of thing. Things can change every single day among many other variables. So for today’s episode, we’ve got a very special guest. We have Lillie Beiting from Stanley who’s going to share with us her process on PPC and some tips and tricks on how to get the results that you’re after. Now there’s a lot going on in this, so we are going to break this into two different episodes. And today we’ll be focusing on, “What is PPC?” I’m Danny Gonzales.

Judson:

And I’m Judson Voss.

Danny:

And this is IndustrialSage. All right, so let’s jump into this two-part series of PPC. On this first episode we’re going to talk about “What is PPC?” What’s going on there? So before we jump into all that, Lillie, I was hoping you can tell us a little about yourself, your history, your background.

Lillie:

All right, so I am Lillie Beiting. I am currently working for Stanley Black & Decker, but I worked for one of their products called CribMaster. We are industrial vending solutions. And previous to that, actually I was in automotive. So I was in a whole bunch of different tiers of automotive, but I gave it up. I’m now on the industrial side. So a lot of background in digital marketing with that.

Danny:

Cool. Excellent. Very cool. All right, so I kind of want to lay a little bit of a foundation for our viewers who may not be as familiar with PPC. There’s a little bit of misinformation out there.

Lillie:

There’s a ton of misinformation.

Danny:

So just kind of let’s go basic. What is it?

Lillie:

So pay-per-click is just that. It’s a click you pay for. Now I know people think that it’s just AdWords or just what you see on a search engine. It’s a lot broader than that. And when I discuss it, I kind of use it as a generalized term because so much of pay-per-click is on so many different platforms and mediums now. So just think of it as that, but something like Facebook could be pay-per-click. Display can be pay-per-click. LinkedIn can be pay-per-click. Arguably even boosted content could be that too. So again, just think of it kind of as the medium in which you purchase internet advertising now. Video can be pay-per-click. It all varies.

Danny:

Gotcha. Okay, so it’s removing– Because I know a big thing is with that– You mentioned that you think, at least I know I did for a while, it was like PPC is just Google AdWords that that’s it. So it’s just anything else essentially, that could be–

Lillie:

Correct. And it’s actually important now to think about it in an abstract sense because people don’t really recognize channels as much as they did anymore. For example, YouTube is a search engine. I don’t think people think of YouTube as a search engine, but it is. And when people are, or clients are engaging with a business where they’re engaging in search, there are a whole bunch of different places it could be. So do think of pay-per-click as kind of an abstract concept of how a business can purchase advertising. It’s really the best way to go about it.

Danny:

Okay. Great. So I guess maybe the next question would be, how, I mean, I think, well, how would you use it? I mean, obviously it’s paid and…

Judson:

And it’s per click.

Danny:

And it’s per click, yes.

Lillie:

There you go. There you go. So you’re going to hear this a lot for all the questions you ask, but it really depends. So at a bare minimum for a business, I would say brand protection is the way to go. So anything that has anything to do with your brand. So AdWords, for example, or Facebook, just make sure you’re at least appearing for your brand. “Backyard protection” is what I like to call that. And then as you start getting into campaigns, or different goals, then you can kind of start looking through and figuring out what works out for you or what would be the best avenue for you.

Judson:

Okay. So on the brand protection side, where do you sort of start up from there?

Lillie:

Always, always, always protect your name. Absolutely. Because if you have competitors they are bidding on your name. That is the way of the world now.

Danny:

So, how might that, like, you mean like protecting your name, what would you do?

Lillie:

So if you’re buying keywords, so Google would be a place you buy keywords, Bing, Yahoo. Make sure that you’re protecting your name there. So CribMaster, for example, we buy CribMaster that specific word. And then you want to buy your own products too. So it tends to be a pretty cheap click if it’s your own stuff, but you want to make sure that base level, your names, your properties, your intellectual content is protected there. If you do nothing else at the very least protect that because as time is changing, a lot of these platforms are monetizing, right? So Google used to be fairly free from an SEO perspective. They’re trying to push more people into paid search because they make more money that way.

Judson:

Yeah.

Lillie:

Yes. So absolutely protect your name.

Judson:

Okay. And then the second tier sort of going after your competitors?

Lillie:

Ah, conquesting, I don’t actually suggest, in most situations because it’s extremely protective. So conquesting, for the audience, conquesting is essentially buying somebody else’s names or products.

Judson:

Okay.

Lillie:

Be very careful about that because if you don’t do it right, you can just, you might as well just burn your money.

Judson:

Okay.

Danny:

Okay.

Lillie:

You can also throw it around there are many things you can do. You’re wasting it essentially if you’re not extremely targeted and careful.

Judson:

Gotcha. So once we got ahold of PPC and all these different pieces that are there, you talked about autos and the different areas from a B2B perspective. B2B versus B2C how does that differ on a paperclip standard?

Lillie:

So I think B2B marketers especially like to think that we’re very, very different and there certainly are differences between B2C, but you’ve got to remember that everyone is glued to some kind of electronic device now and search engines, whether it’s Google, whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s going through class articles, magazines, what have you online is something that B2B decision makers make like they do that. That’s not unique to, you know, somebody looking up shoes online. That’s the way of the world now. So you do want to make sure that you’re protected for that, but you also want to make sure that you have a very nurturing relationship. Because a lot of B2B decisions take a long time, right? It’s not, again, the impulse of going to Nordstrom, “Here, my shoe’s done.” It’s making sure that you’re touching somebody at a regular point. So we may be getting into this in the next segment. But if you have somebody’s information, which is to say, maybe they went to your website, maybe you have their email address. If you’re super fancy and a physical location that people convert at, you can sometimes get information that way too. You want to make sure you’re nurturing them throughout the entire process. So I would say branding, that’s just a general thing for everybody. But as you’re going to that campaign level, if you’re going to that B2B model, maybe if you’re splitting down to a certain area, make sure you’re nurturing those people, and there are a lot of different ways you can do that that are much deeper and thorough than just brand protection.

Judson:

Okay. Then I guess one question that’s probably good to bring up now too, is: We’ve gotten the basics, we’ve gotten to understand the difference between B2B and B2C. And this might be really basic. What are some of the terms that people need to get familiar with to understand what the inner workings are going on, what they need to pay attention to?

Lillie:

There are so many letters just crammed together.

Danny:

Can we just start with the first 50?

Lillie:

Right and actually some of the letters and KPI’s is more letters.

Judson:

More letters for you.

Lillie:

Some of the KPIs vary depending on the platform. So an impression load in Facebook is a little bit different than an impression load in AdWords than it would be in DoubleClick, for example. So there’s a little bit of difference to it and just be sort of cognizant of that. Some of the most important things I would say, I am an impression share freak really. That’s what I really pay attention to. And that’s a term that’s specific to paid search within a major search engine like Bing or Google or Yahoo or any of those. So impression share essentially is how much of the market you own. There are only x amount of impressions because somebody, you know, they rely on how many searches there are. And impression share will tell you how many of those you’re hitting for. An impression is just how many times you show up, period. It’s not where you rank. It’s none of that. It’s just, if you appear in a search, that’s considered an impression, right? But again, usually there’s more than one person in the market or one entity in the market. So figuring out what percentage of that you own is some really valuable information to understand how people are interacting with your business. So that I really care about a lot. Click-through rate, also very important. That number and kind of the things I’m comfortable with or ranges I’m comfortable seeing also varies quite a bit. So you’ll see a very low click through rate for display. That’s usually like point teens I see that in maybe point twos versus something like pay-per-click. Not pay-per-click. No, ad-words. See, I’m guilty of it too. Versus AdWords where I expect to see it in the single digits or if you’re, if you’re really feeling fancy the teens.

Judson:

Okay.

Lillie:

Yeah.

Danny:

All right, so maybe we can break down a little bit to throw out a couple of words. I want to make sure that we’ve got a good understanding of what you– display, the impressions and click-through rate. So like display versus… like, let’s lay a baseline, what is that?

Lillie:

Sure. Okay, so display versus AdWords, actually display can be housed under AdWords depending which channel you’re using. So if you’re using just AdWords for paid search, that’s those little ads that appear at the top of Google. Sometimes you’ll see a whole bunch of stuff underneath them. Sometimes it’s like two or three lines. It kind of varies. Now display are those ads that follow you around. They’re like digital billboards, I guess, would be the best way to describe them. But they’re getting a little more complicated than that. Because it used to just be sort of a static image and it used to be that you have to pay for the sites they’d appear on. Now there’s an extra level of complexity where they can follow you around depending on you going to the site. Or they can say, “Hey, I’ve already collected your information “because you’re a Google user. “I know you’re this demographic and that demographic “I’m going to serve you up a feed with this “that’s not just an image. It’s a bunch of products “my research is telling me you’re likely to engage with.” So it’s those ads. But think of them as visual. Those are what follow you around.

Danny:

So display being graphically driven. Visual.

Lillie:

Correct. Correct. And then kind of the sister to display would be Pre-roll. Sometimes you see Post-role too, but those are the little video ads that appear before your cat videos on YouTube. But they appear on a lot of different areas. So just think of Pre-roll is like a mini commercial. Sometimes it’s a long commercial actually. I’ve seen companies do like 15 minute, 20 minute Pre-roll but you have to be HBO pretty much to make that work out. If it’s “Game of Thrones” people watch.

Judson:

So Pre-roll is the thing you sit there and wait to click five seconds from now on?

Lillie:

Correct, correct. And then you have some other iterations of it too. So sometimes you’ll see in Twitter marketing, you’ll see in Facebook marketing and there are a couple of different avenues you can use. So there’s my business, which is when you pay and then you can also boost posts within your own business page. And I know that that’s kind of a hard distinction to make, but those are two very different ways of pay-per-click. And again, I consider boost post– Post boosting pay per click. There’s a little bit of a debate on that, but I think it falls into there.

Judson:

Yep.

Danny:

All right, so that was helpful. Thank you. And then, when it comes to impressions, just kind of want to lay the framework. So you mentioned, let’s say we’ve got a display out. Let’s say there’s an image of something we’re trying to drive people to our website about a new product or something that we’ve got going out there. And you mentioned with impressions. So what is, for our audience, just explain what does that mean like in terms of what is an impression relative to impression load, click-through rate, all that stuff, those metrics?

Lillie:

So an impression period is just how many times something appears. So if it’s paid search is just how many times your little text ad appears. If it’s display, it’s how many times your little video appears, or excuse me your image appears. If it’s pre-roll, it’s how many times your video appears. If it’s Facebook, it’s how many times, whatever you’ve decided goes in Facebook appears. So in something like Facebook or display if you’re doing kind of broad audience targeting, it can appear as many times as you want, right. There’s really no cap. It’s not finite. If you’re looking at something like retargeting. So you’ve got a set list of people you can use or a captive group, maybe it’s people coming to your site, that is a finite amount. So you may see more projections of share based on that, because again, fixed share, finite amount. No share, I mean, it’s like a billboard, how many times can you count it being there, right? Yeah. So that’d be kind of the difference that you see there. Were there other ones that you wanted me to describe a bit?

Danny:

Click-through rate, just in terms of like, okay, the amount of, it’s the percentage of the amount of actual clicks that you get from. Yeah.

Lillie:

Correct. And that’s when you get charged typically. So there are a couple of different ways that you can run pay-per-click. So on the average side, you’re always going to be paying for the exact clicks. Sometimes you may see what’s called a CPM model and that’s cost per thousand is what that stands for. So that may be them charging you for pockets of a thousand of how many thousand impressions they’re serving up. So you may see that too.

Danny:

Right. And when you’d be using those, just depending on what the objective of the campaign is?

Lillie:

Correct.

Danny:

So maybe an example is if you really just want to build your brand awareness and get out there, you want people to see your name and maybe your display ads, you might want to be looking more at impressions. And that’d be more of an important thing vs, “I really want to drive people to our website for “whatever, our webinar or for whatever that may be.” And so the click through-rate and all that’s going to be a little bit more important on that.

Lillie:

Correct.

Danny:

Is that all right?

Lillie:

And again, think about it conceptually, differently, too. So depending on what kind of business you are, if you are someone who’s product based. So again, back to the example of Nordstrom’s, click-through rate’s super-important for you, because you can very clearly trace when somebody engages with your ad and eventually converts to buy something. But at the same time, if you’ve got somebody who is, or a customer has already been to your site, so you cookie them and you’re able to keep serving them up that ad, sometimes it’s important just to see how many times you’ve hit them. Maybe you’ve hit them too much, that can happen. Or what it takes to kind of see that average amount of that kind of impression delivery per client per conversion. So there’s a lot of granularity you can really get into, but make sure you identify what you care about before you take a look at these metrics. Because there’s tons of numbers and they all kind of click together with each other and understanding how they work is very critical to seeing what’s profitable for you.

Danny:

So pun intended, you said they all click together. Okay, I see what you did there.

Judson:

Excellent.

Danny:

Yeah, so one other question there– I guess two other things I want to, again, lay a little bit of the framework and get a little understanding. Cookies, being a big thing, I mean.

Lillie:

Yes.

Danny:

It’s kind of generally accepted that people kind of get an understanding of that. But relative to, I know we touched on this too as retargeting. Maybe give it a little bit deeper explaining on that. Because that’s very, that’s exciting and that’s something that’s accessible to everybody.

Lillie:

Yes. It absolutely is. And retargeting again, so think of this very broadly. I know people tend to think of retargeting as just display. Again, that’s an avenue for it. Google’s really kind of conditioned us at this point for the market, but–

Danny:

They’re doing a good job.

Lillie:

Google owns us. It’s their world. We’re just living in it. But think of retargeting as serving up people you already know about. So you may have a captive email list you can use, and you may have somebody who pretty much, if you have a Google property, whether it’s a YouTube account or a Gmail, Google knows everything about you. So if you have access to that level of information, but it’s again, think of it as a captive customer, it might just be somebody who comes to your site that you’re able to cookie. It’s that kind of contained group of people you’re able to reserve in different ways. And then you can get to very specific layers of granularity with retargeting. So you can say, okay, well I’ve got all these people in my pool and usually it’s thousands and thousands of people or IP’s really if they’re not a Google property. That’s again kind of PPC. 201 more so than 101. But if you have that information, you can start breaking it down further and saying, “Okay, well I really only care “about people in this age range who “make this much money who have this many children.” so you can get much, much more granular with it. But think of it, it kind of as audience control and serving up more specific messages based on an audience profile that you already own.

Judson:

Gotcha. Can I–

Danny:

So– I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Judson:

I think that’s really important in B2B where you might even be living in a world where there’s 500 people in the whole world that care about what you have to say online. So that gives you the opportunity to really focus in on that and not sort of shotgun it out there.

Lillie:

You make a great point. You make a great point. And Danny, I think said in his introduction that you can just throw away money at doing this, especially in the B2B world, because like at Stanley, I’m on the industrial side, there are only so many factories, right? There are only so many power plants and what have you, and being very much in control of that, it might be more expensive per acquisition per client, but it’s so much more efficient and really monitoring that journey and appealing to that customer is a great way not only to get them to convert, but to engage with them and not alienate them, and maintain a regular relationship. So retargeting there on– Sometimes you hear it called remarketing, but essentially, you know, think of it as a much higher tech CRM system. It’s monitoring who you’re communicating with and how often and what kind of communications go to them.

Judson:

Good.

Danny:

Excellent. I think this has been a great framework just to kind of lay the land of PPC and what it is. So I think that maybe it’s, that’s a good part, the good time, I can’t talk about that. There’s so many things going on here, cause you know, I thought PPC was just really simple, right? You set it and forget it?

Lillie:

No, it’s extremely complicated.

Danny:

So this is just a little bit of a framework, just a quick little, you know, 30,000 foot view of what it is, maybe a little areas on how you might be able to use it. So our next episode we’re going to jump into is a little bit more tactical on the process, different use cases on how you might want to use this and how to really set up the framework and get some results. So thanks Lillie for this part one. Will join us for part two here, right after this?

Lillie:

All right, thank you for having me.

Danny:

And thanks again for watching this. If you like what you see here, be sure to like us and we have all of our videos and content all over social media and we have an email list, so you can subscribe to that to get these emails to you sent to you weekly. We also are on iTunes, so you can subscribe there. I can’t talk today. So I’m just going to go ahead and wrap up this episode before I can’t talk anymore. Thanks for watching.

 

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