UMass Boston Presentation - Pay-Per-Click March 2025

Transcript

1. Let’s Talk Pay-Per-Click Marketing March 28th, 2025
2. Hello, I’m… Jeremy Krantz (UMB ‘09), originally from Paris France, has been here for 20 years and I am a Director of Paid Search at a B2B marketing agency. I also serve as a board member and administrator of the Paid Search Association. I’ve managed over $1B in ad spent in my career across numerous accounts, small and large I live with my wife and daughter and have numerous interests including watching movies, cooking, tech, trivia, traveling, and pickleball.
3. Some accounts I’ve worked on include… Some accounts I’ve worked on include…
5. What I do for a living I work at Compound Growth Marketing as a Director of Paid Search. • I primarily setup and run accounts in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads • I set the strategies and manage the budgets, ad copy, and keywords • I create and adjust campaigns as needed based on performance, goals, and any other variables including testing schedules or events • I keep up-to-date on the latest in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape • I report on performance to clients on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis • Almost all of what we do is generate qualified leads with a a few of our clients also running some e-commerce campaigns
6. In-House vs. Agency In-House • Can be working for a startup, small or large company • Fewer brands or accounts to manager • Slower pace, less exposure to a variety of things • Typically a bit more stable • Requires most people to wear many hats and cover many specialties Agency • Typically part of a larger team • Likely to be more specialized into one specific piece of digital marketing • Fast paced most of the time, requiring a lot of juggling • More exposure, working on lots of accounts simultaneously unless on an enterprise client
7. Types of Digital Marketing Paid Search PPC or pay-per-click is a type of internet marketing which involves advertisers paying a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Paid Social Paid social works by allowing businesses to create and run targeted social media ads on various social media channels. Content Marketing Strategic approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a specific audience, ultimately driving profitable customer action The practice of orienting your website to rank higher on a search engine results page (SERP) so that you receive more traffic Search Engine Optimization Today’s focus
8. What is Paid Search? Paid search, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is a digital marketing strategy where businesses pay to have their ads displayed prominently on search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google, with the cost incurred only when a user clicks on the ad.
9. Anatomy of Search Results & Ads
10. What PPC Can & Can’t Do PPC Can’t - Fix bad landing pages - Fix a bad business plan - Drive a ton of awareness to a brand - Can’t fix a bad sales process - Be set and forgotten about - Guarantee success and profitable returns - Fix a bad product or service PPC Can: - Be deployed relatively quickly - Can help generate leads or drive business - Can help advertise across text ads, video and/or display ads - Capture demand in real-time
11. What is “The Funnel”?
12. Different paid search strategies can impact varying parts of the funnel, all working together cohesively to try and impact a client’s revenue pipeline Pay-Per-Click Funnel Stages
13. B2B Revenue Pipeline Stages 1 Leads Initial contact; typically from a dem o sign-up or form 2 M arketing Qualified Leads Does this lead m atch the Ideal Custom er Profile (ICP)? 3 Sales Qualified Leads Does it fit the profile for the sales team ? 4 Closed Deals H ello $$$$
14. Acronyms … everywhere. CPC CTA CRO CAC KPI CPC CPA CTR ROAS IMP CVR CONV UX CMS GA CPM SEO CMO CISO CRM DM tROAS tCPA RSS SLA SaaS SMM OOH CTV API B2B B2C CAC CIO DNS EOW
15. A simple timeline of major milestones 2000 2003 2005 Google AdWords launches Google acquires Urchin, rebrands it as Google Analytics Google Ads launches conversion tracking Urchin launches javascript tags to collect and display web data 2020 Google launches Google Analytics 4
16. "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”." John Wanamaker
17. Real Client Problem
18. Client Scenario: Winter Considerations • Client ran a National food truck booking service and had a tight budget • Temperatures drop in the winter time making it hard to use trucks • Client didn’t have any previous winter strategies and had just accepted that Q4 is just super slow for their revenue • In Q4 of 2023, the client had a return on ad spend (ROAS) of only 300% (for every $100 spent, they made $300)
19. Analysis & Solution Solution • Exported all Q4 historical pipeline data, by city state to find out what areas have had repeat success historically • Used AI prompts in chatGPT to run those locations against the National average temperature to find out if they were above or below the average • Found out that 82% of all of their winter revenue came from locations above the National average temperature
20. Results Results • Removed all below-National-average locations from the geo-targeting strategies • Created 2 tiers of locations, the primary ones that had a lot of historical success and secondary one for prospecting • Allocated most of the budget to the primary ones to try and max out success while still saving some for prospecting and growth • Final results: Their return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) went from 300% to 2,000%
21. Additional Things We Work On
22. Audiences First-Party Audiences Information a company collects directly from its own customers and website visitors, such as purchase history, website interactions, email engagement, and demographics, without relying on external sources or data providers Third-Party Audiences Curated data sets made of specific segments collected and aggregated by data intelligence companies Example: rock music fans, romance book enthusiasts, taco lovers
23. Landing Page Optimization Using a variety of tools including ones like Hotjar, Mouseflow, Microsoft Clarity, or SessionStack, we can see how people interact with websites and web pages. How far they scroll down pages Where they click or try to click We can use this data to optimize the pages and content to increase conversion rates
24. Competitive Research The competitive landscape we advertise in is constantly changing and we must always monitor and adapt. Using a series of tools like Semrush, SpyFu and a few others, we’re able to get access to some competitor data that can help inform strategic decisions.
25. Testing & Learning We try to always test something across our client’s campaigns or website. Everything from messaging, bidding strategies, to call-to-action buttons to landing page formats or different image sizes or videos. The goal is to formulate a hypothesis and then let the accrued data tell us the story.
26. Artificial Intelligence
27. "You are not competing against AI. You are competing against advertisers who figured out how to use AI to their advantage." Frederick Vallaeys
28. Different Ways to Leverage AI Generate Assets AI can help accelerate keyword research or ad copy generation Custom GTPs You can create your own custom GPTs to accomplish a variety of things AI Can Summarize Things Call notes? Emails? Meetings? AI can digest and summarize it all and even guide decision making AI can facilitate customer or audience research or media planning Research
29. Build Your Own Ai Tools If you have a ChatGPT+ subscription you can build your own GPTs You could have them do nearly anything. I build my own to help me generate responsive search ads for Google Ads which feature: 15 headlines of up to 30 characters each 4 descriptions of up to 90 characters each I feed it a destination URL and a few sample keywords and it runs with it Paid Search Ad RSA Copy Creator v1.52 https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6744f16b46a881919d3a5ee4 befb77bf-paid-search-ad-rsa-copy-creator-v1-52
30. Other AI Use Cases Whether you use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or even DeepSeek, there’s plenty of options to help accomplish all kinds of things. Examples include: Tailoring the messaging and tone to specific audiences. Someone living in Paris might be looking for something very different than someone in London. Tailoring to cultural (or other) differences is always the best approach when possible. Just remember that broad prompts will result in very generic results but more specific ones will unlock real creativity. Other examples of uses case include building your own GPT that can match a persona. Example: a very skeptical reader. You could build that custom GPT and feed it your articles and have it provide highly critical feedback. Another example: a fact-checking reader. You could - again - feed it your content and have it check any and all facts to validate everything prior to publishing anything. The options are nearly limitless…
31. Resources • BeaconConnect • Communities on Discord, Slack, LinkedIn • Podcasts • Industry Websites • Artificial Intelligence prompts • Local and online conferences & events • YouTube • UMB’s Venture Development Center ◦ https://www.umb.edu/vdc/ ▪ Wheatley Hall, 3rd Floor
32. Things to Remember • Whatever strategy works today may not work tomorrow • Always try to keep up with the ever-changing landscape • Don’t be afraid to try and fail; you’ll learn from it either way • Always be curious and try to get to the bottom of the why
33. Thank you! Do you have any questions? jeremy@paidsearch.org linkedin.com/in/jeremykbkrantz speakerdeck.com/jeremykrantz