Bid Management Software Review - Criteria?

[CoreyCreed]

Special thanks to Kal in the previous thread for providing some great insight into what to look for in PPC Bid Management software. I (like so many others have before and will after) am looking to select a PPC Bid Management program. It has been several months since Kal's review. So I am going through the process again. Therefore...

Can anyone help me with my review of PPC Bid Management software? I have determined what MY criteria for this software is, but I am curious of what others may feel is important.

I have downloaded all the free trial versions I can. They are running now for a week to 30 days each. I want to not only pick one for myself but also write a review that can be posted on the Internet for others to benefit from.

Here is the criteria I have come up with so far...

1. Price
2. Trial offering?
3. Simplicity of setup
4. Bid management rules available
5. Ability to handle multiple accounts
6. Interface design and usability
7. Return on Investment (ROI) tracking ability

Can anyone think of others?
Does the priority of these look appropriate?

Thanks!

I will be sure to post my results on my site and on this forum if any are interested. Please reply or e-mail me directly.

[Kal]

Hi Corey, you're very welcome :)

I would add data security to that list. You know, is your creditcard/keyword/bid data stored online via the software manufacturer's site? Is it stored securely? Also, is the software downloadable or Internet based? Does the price include future upgrades? Is it a time-based subscription or full product purchase?

These type of issues are important, IMO. If you decide to publish your review, do provide a link here. I'm sure many would be interested.

[CoreyCreed]

Thanks Kal:

I will make a note of your comments. They seem to be very valid and I had not thought of them.

If anyone is interested, the ongoing review is be posted at this url...
http://www.ppchippo.com/PPCBidManagementToolReview.htm

By the way, do you have any particular favorite programs now?

[Fredwat]

I have been using GoToast. To manage the bids of up to 100 keywords with approximately 10 PPC search engines the cost is $150. The bids are updated 2x a day. The cost goes up if you want the bids update more frequently.

The set-up for the bidding part of the service is not the difficult. Now the set-up for the ROI option is a headache.

Fred

[CoreyCreed]

Thanks for the info, Fred.

I have decided to avoid the web-based bid management software personally. My primary reason is because I just don't need to access it anywhere and I prefer the interface for non-web-based. PC-Based tend to be less expensive as well.

Thanks for your comments, though.

I would appreciate any comments on what people do and don't like on PPC Bid Management software.

[UB1]

Have you checked out the manual bid management services offered by a company called BidOptima? Its 24/7 - is done by professionals(which helps add the elements like intuitiveness - flexibility and an able to judge positions and take decisions better aligned to enhancing your ROI). Performance analysis is done to great depths - "bid gap analysis - measurement of variance etc.".
And the best part is the services are extremely affordable and all you have to do is select keywords and submit them along with the text to BidOptima.

The net impact is multiple times greater than any bid management software - the value that you derive for your precious marketing money is far greater.And all your PPC worries are taken care of.

[AussieWebmaster]

If you are using a pc solution you are working with your log files... there are some good basic programs but you still have to submit things with tracking codes and then have a pc program that can strip those and make sense of them... DynaTracker and maybe TabooTracker are the only ones I know that have PC solutions...

If you plan on spending 4-5 hours of each day with the PC stuff then you are in luck... if you need reports and stats daily and quick to access then the hosted solutions do all the work for you.

I like keywordmax they start as low as 19.95 a month I think... I use the enterprise edition... but also have NewTracker for the log files as a back up and a method to compare

[Search Engine Eyes]

We have been using Go Toast for some of our clients, It has a lot of features, but gets rather expensive if you want to scale up the numbers of keywords and search engines that you use. Also the interface is not very intuitive.

We are looking at alternatives such as WSPS Bidbuddy which has a simpler charging model. Does anyone know anything about the new bid management software from Doubleclick?

[Gregsta]

Hi there everyone,
It's been a long time since anything to do with PPC bid management software has been in this forum! I have just returned to internet marketing from a small stint away and I'm about to start managing some online advertising.

Our department is going to have a fairly good budget for online advertising and search engine advertising is going to part of it. Our adverts are going to be in different catagories and in different languages so as you can imagine this is going to be a big job.

The main ROI report I am going to be looking for is clicks to registrations on the landing site. With this knowledge I will be able to stop campaigns that arent doing well and use funds for ones that are.

What would you guys suggest I use as a PPC bid management tool for this job?

Have you had any success stories of your own you could share with me.

Any help with this would be great

Regards

Greg

[JohnC]

Hi Gregsta,

I have not used many of these programs (just started playing with the Google AdWords Editor Beta). But if the main report you are looking to do is a conversion report, you would probalby be much better off using the built in conversion tracking tools in the major PPC programs. Combine this with Google Analytics and you should have everything you need to do detailed conversion reporting.

[Gregsta]

Hi John.
I have used adwords in the past, I et the impression that google rather than trying to maximise your return on investment with adverts try to get you to bid more money....makes sense since it is a business. (I havent used adwords in a while so it may have changed)

I'll go into a little more depth the kind of questions I want to ask:

1. How many times does the advert show against how many times it is clicked on.

2. How many people go to the minisite from an advert against how many people register with us.

3. What times of day and what days give us the best ratio for question 2 on our minisites per keyword and per country.

I will also be bidding on Yahoo and one or two other search engines.

There are a few more questions I will be asking too. Even though the company I work for does have an allowance for a big spend on search engine advertising I want to get the return on investment I can with this ad campaign. It would be far too easy to waste funds that could be allocated to an increase in search terms that are working by just putting the loss down to brand awareness in the market place.

Basically I'm looking for a consolidated tool that will do this for me, but the actual tool websites are not the most helpful.

Greg

[ihelpyou]

Hi Greg, Have you all ever considered building the code of your site "right" so as to come up "for free" in the organic listings? If you are spending money for advertising with PPC, etc, why not get the code and backend correct on the site as well? :)

[Becky100]

Have you ever tried this software at [Removed URL]? I have been using it for awhile now and am pretty happy with the results I am getting.[Removed URL]

See Forum Guidelines (http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18677)

[Connie]

Hi Becky and welcome maybe. :hi: You have revived an old thread to promoted a web site. We do not allow self promotion and I removed the URLs from your post.

If you want to learn how to market your site, or improve the optimization of your site we are glad to help.

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