{"id":9526,"date":"2023-12-08T01:03:57","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T20:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ppcexpo.com\/blog\/?p=9526"},"modified":"2023-12-22T13:26:50","modified_gmt":"2023-12-22T08:26:50","slug":"ppc-optimization-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ppcexpo.com\/blog\/ppc-optimization-techniques","title":{"rendered":"PPC Optimization Techniques: How to Succeed with 1% Improvement Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a sculptor creates a masterpiece, it is achieved by endlessly chipping away the smallest of material, rounding the sharpest of edges and polishing the beauty underneath.<\/p>\n

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If the sculptor were to commit only to broad strokes and heavy strikes of the chisel, the stone would crack in unexpected ways and the masterpiece would undoubtedly be ruined.<\/p>\n

A true masterpiece can only be created as a result of many small, incremental changes.<\/p>\n

Of course, you are not a sculptor; you are a pay-per-click (PPC) marketer. But, you can learn a lot from this example of incremental change. It\u2019s a lesson that you can utilize in your PPC efforts, particularly in how you manage your campaigns.<\/p>\n

Too many marketers try and manage PPC campaigns<\/a> with broad strokes, but big changes may only yield short-term benefits and come with significant risks. And, they often aren\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n

Instead, successful PPC management<\/a>, like a masterpiece sculpture, requires small, continuous and positive changes. Over time, these small changes produce an accumulative advantage.<\/p>\n

Part 1: Understanding the History of Incremental Improvement<\/h1>\n

What Is The 1% Improvement Principle?<\/h2>\n
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Also known as the principle of aggregate marginal gains<\/em>, the 1% improvement rule is essentially the understanding that small gains (as little as a 1% change) will ultimately add up to massive improvement over time.<\/p>\n

By breaking large projects, such as PPC management, into its smallest components, it becomes easier to identify opportunities to make slight improvements.<\/p>\n

These slight improvements add up quickly. In fact, they add up exponentially. If you strive to improve 1% every day for a whole year, your accumulative advantage would equal a 3,778% increase.<\/p>\n

Not bad, right?<\/p>\n

Naturally, it\u2019s hard to keep a constant upwards trend and there may be days when that 1% change is in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

The good news is that positive changes have a much more significant impact than negative ones. An off day won\u2019t ruin all your hard work!<\/p>\n

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The Kaizen Method<\/h2>\n
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The origin of aggregate marginal gains is often attributed to the Kaizen method of Japan. Kaizen translates to \u201cchange for good\u201d and originated in Japan in the post-World War II era as a means to improve production methods.<\/p>\n

Toyota was an early adopter of the method. The company organized groups of workers that met daily to identify, analyze and solve current issues in the production cycle.<\/p>\n

Later, Masaaki Imai founded the Kaizen Institute Consulting Group, which brought this method of small improvements to businesses across more industries.<\/p>\n

There are ten principles of Kaizen that can be applied to improving PPC campaigns<\/a>. These principles are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Improve everything continuously.<\/li>\n
  2. Don\u2019t let anecdotal concepts or ideologies get in the way.<\/li>\n
  3. Don\u2019t let excuses stand in the way of progress.<\/li>\n
  4. Always be skeptical of new methods or PPC strategies; don\u2019t assume they will always work out for you.<\/li>\n
  5. Correct problems in your PPC accounts or campaigns right away.<\/li>\n
  6. Involve everyone in the process, even outside of your paid search marketing team.<\/li>\n
  7. Empower these people to participate and share ideas on how to improve campaigns.<\/li>\n
  8. Always understand why <\/em>you are making a change; how will this change affect your PPC efforts?<\/li>\n
  9. When small improvements result in money-saving opportunities, allocate those savings towards further improvements to your PPC campaigns.<\/li>\n
  10. Never stop trying to improve! Even if your PPC efforts are exceedingly successful, it isn\u2019t an excuse to start slacking on your responsibilities as a marketer or account manager.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The Proof Is In the Cycling<\/h2>\n
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    While this idea of continuous, 1% improvements can be attributed to the Kaizen method, it was the British Cycling team at the Beijing Olympics that gave it a new life.<\/p>\n

    It is the ultimate example of how aggregate marginal gains can lead to success.<\/p>\n

    To give some background, before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, British Cycling had enjoyed a solitary gold medal win in 76 years. In the world of cycling, Great Britain was a nonfactor. They were not even a blip on the radar of serious cycling teams.<\/p>\n

    Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they skyrocketed out of obscurity to the top of the podium. Britain claimed 7 out of 10 gold medals in cycling at Beijing 2008 Olympics.<\/p>\n

    Four years later, they repeated their victories in London (2012). Then, they did it again in Rio (2016). And, the success wasn\u2019t limited to the Olympics. British Cycling also began claiming almost yearly wins at the Tour De France.<\/p>\n

    How\u2019d they do it?<\/p>\n

    The success was large because of a new team direction headed by David Brailsford.<\/p>\n

    Brailsford was a fan of Kaizen and wanted to apply the principles of continuous improvement to the British Cycling team. The goal of shooting for the top of the podium was simply too improbable to plan for.<\/p>\n

    What the team could achieve, however, were small, accumulative improvements. Earning a modest 1% increase in performance was a manageable objective that could be achieved daily. The goal wasn\u2019t to strive for perfection or winning but to focus on progress.<\/p>\n

    The team worked together (Kaizen principle #6) to break down cycling into tiny, small tasks. They collected these tasks into three categories: strategy, human performance, and environment.<\/p>\n

    For strategy, they analyzed aerodynamics in a wind tunnel to find ways to reduce drag. Human performance tasks included proper dieting, food preparation, and even better handwashing to reduce the risk of illness. Finally, environment improvements were made to the mechanics bay, team transport, etc.<\/p>\n

    Some of these improvements may seem small and insignificant on their own. Collectively, however, they create an accumulative advantage<\/em>. It is this advantage that leads Britain to podium success.<\/p>\n

    When possible, Brailsford and his team injected data to measure progress and analyze what steps yielded the most significant improvements.<\/p>\n

    The journey for progress became infectious. Everyone on the team began searching and discovering opportunities for marginal gains to be made.<\/p>\n

    But, it wasn\u2019t all easy riding. British Cycling faced some serious defeats. They quickly realized that focusing on these fringe improvements was great, but it didn\u2019t mean squat if the critical success factors weren’t addressed first.<\/p>\n

    They needed a core foundation.<\/p>\n

    Pareto Principle — The 80-20 Rule<\/h2>\n

    This realization that Brailsford and the British Cycling team experienced was the Pareto Principle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    We\u2019ll keep the history brief on this one. Management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle in 1941. He named it the Pareto Principle after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. In 1896, Pareto had written that 80% of the land in Italy belonged to only 20% of the population.<\/p>\n

    Juran discovered that this 80-20 connection had many applications in business management.<\/p>\n

    The Pareto Principle is essentially the idea that 80% of results come from only 20% of activities. In other words, not all the tasks you perform will return the same level of results.<\/p>\n

    For example, in PPC, 80% of your returns will come from 20% of your keywords. Some keywords, and some tasks, are more valuable than others.<\/p>\n

    What the British Cycling team didn\u2019t realize, at least at first, was the need to focus on the vital few, over the useful many.<\/p>\n

    The challenge, in any application of the Pareto principle, is being able to identify the essential few that will produce the biggest gains. Once these core, critical success factors are resolved, then the useful many can carry the marginal gains forward.<\/p>\n

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    Juran first coined the concept of the vital few<\/em> and trivial many<\/em>. Later, he revised the statement to be the vital few<\/em> and the useful many<\/em>, which suggests that you don\u2019t want to ignore the 80% of trivial tasks entirely.<\/p>\n

    But, you do want to square away the vital few tasks in the 20% first, as these lead to the best possible results.<\/p>\n

    Part 2: Applying Continuous Improvement and Accumulative Advantage to PPC Campaigns<\/h1>\n
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    Now that you understand the history of continuous improvement and the various principles that are involved, you can begin applying this learning to your PPC strategies.<\/p>\n

    PPC management is an ongoing and tedious process that can feel daunting at times. There are so many changes occurring and pieces moving in different directions.<\/p>\n

    It can feel impossible to take it all in at once, much like it felt impossible for British Cycling to reach the top of the Olympic podium.<\/p>\n

    Campaign settings, keywords, negative keywords<\/a>, traffic metrics, targeting options, landing pages, A\/B testing, conversions, attributions, the list goes on with the number of many components that make up your PPC strategies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Each one of these components plays an important role. Depending on the current status of your campaigns, some tasks require priority. How do you determine where to begin?<\/p>\n

    Review Your Goals<\/h2>\n
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    Before you begin digging into your campaigns and dissecting the various components to find opportunities for marginal gains, it\u2019s first important to review your PPC goals.<\/p>\n

    By reviewing these goals, you\u2019ll refresh your sense of purpose when utilizing PPC marketing. In other words, you\u2019ll remind yourself why you\u2019re doing all this for in the first place!<\/p>\n

    Your goal needs to be the center of attention when deciding which tasks to focus on first and how to split your strategies into different components.<\/p>\n

    Naturally, you want all of your PPC metrics to be at peak performance, but the highest marginal gains will come when you prioritize with this goal in mind.<\/p>\n

    Identify the Smoking Guns<\/h2>\n
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    Applying what you learned from the 80-20 principle<\/a>, your first task is to find the most critical success factors that need to be addressed first.<\/p>\n

    These are typically account- or campaign-level issues that need to be resolved promptly, before they cause too much damage.<\/p>\n

    Are there any problems that you can identify immediately, just from looking at your Google Ads<\/a> dashboard? For example, you may have a high number of clicks, but few conversions, resulting in a below-average conversion rate.<\/p>\n

    Or, your Quality Score has been slowly declining and you need to get to the bottom of this gradual loss of performance.<\/p>\n

    Fixing these vital issues is necessary to establish the foundation of successful PPC. They\u2019ll provide the most significant and quickest performance gains.<\/p>\n

    If your PPC account was your home, you\u2019d fix the most detrimental problems first, right? That light bulb that sometimes flickers in the backyard can wait until you\u2019ve repaired the leak in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

    This is precisely how you want to approach making incremental improvements to your PPC account.<\/p>\n

    When There Are No Smoking Guns<\/h2>\n
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    Most PPC campaigns won\u2019t have a smoking gun. As a PPC marketer, you\u2019ve long dealt with any major issues within your campaigns and your metrics are all relatively solid.<\/p>\n

    What then?<\/p>\n

    Once you\u2019ve ensured that there are no major, underlying issues with your campaign, then it becomes about identifying opportunities for peripheral and tangential marginal gains.<\/p>\n

    This means going beyond your daily PPC routine of tweaking the obvious. Now, you need to dig deeper and find the littlest of components that may produce a 1% incremental gain.<\/p>\n

    When the British Cycling team adopted the Kaizen method in their daily training, they looked at every little, tiny piece <\/em>of their strategies.<\/p>\n

    It wasn\u2019t just about training harder and better; it was about improving everything<\/em> across the board, even down to handwashing techniques and the dusting routine of the mechanics\u2019 area.<\/p>\n

    Everything matters. This is incredibly evident in PPC marketing. One small increase or decrease in one metric can have a ripple effect that impacts other areas.<\/p>\n

    Thus, you cannot focus only on the most direct areas of concern, and ignore the others, because they all contribute to success.<\/p>\n

    Your Critical Success Factors Are Always Changing<\/h2>\n
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    Unfortunately, a lot of PPC marketers tend to ignore the peripheral stuff and exclusively focus on what they\u2019ve decided are the critical factors of success.<\/p>\n

    The problem is that the PPC environment is always changing, which means your critical success factors are ever-changing too.<\/p>\n

    The metrics that are playing the most prominent roles in increasing PPC performance today may not be the same tomorrow.<\/p>\n

    One day, the best area to focus on is keywords, but days later, it may change to a problem with a landing page design. Then, the next day, it shifts again, and targeting options need to be addressed.<\/p>\n

    As these critical success factors move to different areas of your campaigns, it\u2019s difficult to immediately recognize that a shift has occurred and identify where the new success factor is.<\/p>\n

    It creates a vicious game of whack-a-metric, where you\u2019re constantly trying to chase the areas of your campaign with the most impact to offer.<\/p>\n

    Often, you\u2019re focusing on an old success factor, without realizing that your attention is better served elsewhere.<\/p>\n

    The Advantage of Continuous 1% Improvements<\/h2>\n
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    PPC marketers follow this trail from one focus to the next because optimizing everything <\/em>at once feels impossible. And, arguably it is.<\/p>\n

    There are too many factors, components, and metrics at play that optimizing everything at once is impossible. There isn\u2019t enough time in the day.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s the advantage of the 1% improvement principle. You aren\u2019t worried about optimizing everything at the same time, just like British Cycling wasn\u2019t focused on a gold medal finish.<\/p>\n

    The goal is continuous progress.<\/p>\n

    By setting the goal of making just a 1% improvement each day, you can cover all of the bases of your PPC campaigns, without exerting a ton of time and effort each day.<\/p>\n

    As you make these daily improvements, you\u2019ll hit some of the vital few tasks and the critical success factors. You\u2019ll also take care of some of the smaller, peripheral marginal gains that nudge your campaigns further towards success.<\/p>\n

    Again, these small, continuous changes have a compounding effect. At the end of the year, your accumulated growth is not 365%, but rather 3,778%.<\/p>\n

    The correct formula is: 1.01^365
    \nNot 1% daily change \u00c3\u2014 365 days of the year <\/strong><\/p>\n

    The Exponential Mindset<\/h2>\n
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    Understanding and predicting exponential growth with the above formula is not always intuitive. Many people don\u2019t think in terms of exponential growth. They don\u2019t realize its potency.<\/p>\n

    For example, if you were to offer a child the option of $1 a day for a month, or a penny the first day, then two pennies the second day, four pennies the third day, and so on, most would choose the first option.<\/p>\n

    What this child doesn\u2019t realize is that, by the end of the month, the exponential growth on that single penny would equal $10 million, which anyone would agree is a lot better than the $30 they\u2019d receive from getting a dollar every day.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s not easy to get in the mindset of exponential growth. Often, businesses want the best and most immediate results. Like the child in the allowance example, it\u2019s hard to predict how and when that single penny will grow into a tangible return.<\/p>\n

    With exponential growth, it\u2019s not only the results that increase but the growth rate itself. This creates \u201chockey stick\u201d growth, where progress seems to mirror incremental growth, before suddenly skyrocketing upwards.<\/p>\n

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    As you discover areas of possible improvement<\/a> and make decisions on which path to follow first, you have to maintain an exponential mindset. You need to make decisions that yield exponential growth, not just short-term gains.<\/p>\n

    Part 3: The Challenges of The 1% Improvement Method and How to Resolve Them<\/h1>\n
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    Adopting the 1% improvement principle has its challenges. You\u2019ve probably thought up a few of them yourself.<\/p>\n

    If you haven\u2019t, here are some of the biggest obstacles facing PPC marketers trying to gain an accumulative advantage:<\/p>\n