• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 12, 2009

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has emerged in the economic recession as a method to cut expenses and attract potential consumers searching the Web for deals to save money. The trend has prompted a slew of webinars on the subject to help marketers not only understand paid search marketing, but how it fits into search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, too.

For instance, Marketbright and Google plan to hold a webinar on best practices for Google AdWords next week. The session will cover optimizing B2B pay-per-click campaigns.

This week, David Szetela detailed three software tools and techniques that help advertising work through PPC campaigns more quickly. The webinar, sponsored by Marin Software, was hosted by Search Marketing Now, a division of Third Door Media.

Szetela, Clix Marketing's CEO, outlined the recommended three tools: Microsoft Excel, Google AdWords Editor, and The Permutator. "I'm sure it would take us 20 times as long to accomplish the same thing," he said. "My agency gets paid not on the percentage of spend, but rather percentage of profit."

That means doing the work as quickly as possible because increasing productivity means higher client billings. Boxer Software's Permutator lets advertisers paste lists of words into fields and click on a button to create every conceivable way. Then the advertiser takes the combined list and chops it into chunks that become PPC ad groups.

In a PPC brainstorms session, marketers will come up with a list of nouns, adjectives and modifiers before putting them together in every conceivable form. One column in a spreadsheet might include adjectives related to color or size, for instance. To make sure ads are displayed when a consumer does a search on a term related to the product or service, the advertisers must anticipate all the ways the person might express the need or desire.

Google has a free tool called AdWords Editor. Typically, advertisers using Google's, Microsoft's or Yahoo's services need to do campaign creation, management, reporting through a slow Web interface. Google's AdWords Editor is a downloadable piece of software that lets advertisers edit new campaigns, create long keyword lists and variations of text and non-text ads, and change bid prices--all from the desktop to eliminate lag time.

While the tools let marketers accomplish the tasks "10 times faster," Szetela believes the learning curve associated with PPC creates many challenges. It's not difficult to get started, but the tools and nuances are difficult to master. Similar to woodworking, "it's simple to nailing pieces of wood together to make a chair, but requires talent, skill and experience to produce a fine piece of furniture," he said. "It's a combination of art and science, which means having a knack for using software and knowing how to write a good ad."