The second search marketing intensive session at ACCM 2008 was all about how to maximize your PPC search engine marketing efforts. The speakers were Ryan Gibson of the Rimm-Kaufman Group and Glenn Edelman, VP of marketing at The Wine Enthusiast.

Much of the initial advice covered the basics of keyword research and calculating ROI, but there was also a wealth of detail in the presentation that you don’t usually hear in a typical PPC presentation. For instance, many people know that you have to track ad performance to determine the ROI sweet spot, but how far do you usually go with it? Do you track seasonality? Do you know the differences in ad performance according to day of the week? It’s this kind of analysis that can lead you to greater ad refinement and thus a better ROI.

A lot of people treat keyword research as an event, but it’s really a process, which the presenters instilled in the audience by showing that the search volume for a keyword plus the word review has gone up dramatically over time; people are increasingly using Google for product research. Keywords and search engine user trends evolve rapidly with time, so you have to keep an eye on search trends and regularly re-evaluate not only your keywords, but also your ad performance.

The session offered other excellent advanced details such as how to budget your advertising spend after you’ve determined your most valuable keywords — “As much as is profitable!” That sounds like obvious advice until you put it into the context of a typical, strictly limited business budget. If you’re doing more conversions and making more money for every dollar you put into your PPC campaign, why wouldn’t you keep plowing money into it until you reach a point where it drops off? I think a lot of marketers overlook that simple truth.