Series Four. International Paid Media

Transcription

1 4. Series Four International Paid Media

2 1. Getting started with Naver One country which joins the league of local search engine giants is South Korea. Its biggest player is Naver, with over 49.75% of the market; it secures a larger share than what Google retains in the US. With a population of more than 50 million and an 84.1% internet penetration rate, Naver is a core platform for anyone looking to advertise. We ve compiled a list of 10 things you need to know to help you get started on Naver. We discuss features of the platform you should consider as well as the pitfalls to avoid. 1. Allow time for registration. Naver s paid search solution, Click Choice, will (like any paid account) require an initial set up. As an individual, this is often less complicated and requires nothing but the nod from Naver, but as a business (especially e-commerce) it will often require the submission of various documents. This review process is manual, and can take over a week so plan this into your setup time. 2. Account structure will be unfamiliar. Account structure between search platforms is often like the difference between a manual and automatic car: the principle is the same, a lot is familiar, but there are a few very important Naver has just one match type, exact. You will need to include plurals, misspellings, variants and mixed combinations differences. Most notably with Naver, is the relationship between keywords and ad copy the bottom line being that each keyword must have its own dedicated ad. This is of course great for relevance, but highly time consuming, as even keywords sharing the same ad must have it individually allocated to them. Plan and structure your account according to Naver s requirements, and be sure to include upload time into your project plan. 3. There is no such thing as broad match. Naver has just one match type, exact. This means a few things for your account build and optimisation most importantly: be comprehensive. You will need to include plurals, misspellings, variants and mixed combinations of keywords to ensure you are covering all search terms you would normally expect to cover with modified broad match. This also limits keyword expansion to using the provided tool (think keyword planner), or requesting support from the Naver Sales Team.

3 1. Getting started with Naver 4. Tracking options are limited. Naver offers no API access, and does not allow redirects, so any 3rd party tracking is limited to static URL parameters. If you choose to do this, ensure it is correct before anything is uploaded once posted, keyword level URLs can only be changed individually. 5. You can amplify your brand terms with special features. Alongside Click Choice, Naver offers the option to serve enhanced ads for brand search terms. They will always appear at the top of the search results which is of key importance if your competitors are bidding on your brand. Your ad will also be eligible to display several images, including your brand logo and products/ promotions of your choice. Brand Search is treated as a separate service to click choice, and as such is charged differently minimum budget is 500,000 KRW (roughly 290) and overall cost is based on the popularity and volume of your brand searches. If you wish to keep your search unified, it is of course possible to bid on your own brand keywords in Click Choice without these features. 6. Localisation is absolutely essential. The core performance of any search account relies on the quality and relevance of its keywords and ads, Naver is no exception. Understanding the local market and reaching them effectively is critical to success and the way to do this is through properly localised content. Working with professionals native to South Korea is key, as they will understand not only the language, but the local search behaviour, cultural differences and appropriate tools to research keywords. This counts for your landing pages too learn your demographic before making decisions. 7. Payment options are limited. Unfortunately, invoicing is not an option with Naver and all spend is pre-pay leaving two ways to allocate your budget. Firstly, credit/ debit card but only if your card is South Korean, not a likely option for many of us. More realistically, you can make an international bank transfer directly to a unique account number, granting credit to the account. This can take some time, generally a very minimum of 3 days so ensure budget is transferred well in advance of your go live date. 8. Consider currency and exchange rate. South Korean currency is South Korean won (SKW); this is also your only option for currency on Naver. Working out your USD/GBP budget in SKW is not difficult; you simply use the current exchange rate. What most people miss is that

4 1. Getting started with Naver the exchange rate fluctuates, sometimes significantly, throughout the month. This can play havoc with understanding your metrics if your aim is to convert them back to your native currency for analysis. Our advice: use one exchange rate throughout the month, based on how the budget was originally converted, this keeps everything consistent and allows you to make accurate decisions on your budgets and bids. 9. Display is entirely segmented. Unlike Google, who make the GDN a natural part of AdWords management, Naver sell their display service separately. There are a few options; the most comparable to Western platforms would be Rolling Board a pure CPM model that allows a nice variety of banners to be delivered via placement and demographic targeting. Also on offer is Time Board, allowing your banner to show on the main search page for 1 hour of time (advisable during your peak periods), and Shopping Box, an e-commerce tool similar to Google Shopping. Plan ahead and make use of the excellent Naver Sales Team to ensure the best performance for your display campaigns. 10. There is no English Interface, or offline editor. This is something you are very likely to have realised by now, probably the practical way. Naver does not offer an English language interface, making navigation of the tool essentially impossible unless you a) speak Korean or b) know the platform by memory. Most of the interface is untouchable by Chrome s Google Translate, although there are some exceptions on the reporting screens. There is also no option of an offline tool (e.g. AdWords Editor) meaning bulk changes need to be done in the browser interface. Assuming you don t have a local team, the best option here is to source one Naver is a complex platform and mistakes are easy to make, the best way to ensure top performance is to work with experts.

5 2. The independent life of brands on VK Companies with truly global aspirations will try to reach out to every corner of the world, but some corners are harder to reach than others. In digital marketing terms, Russia is among these more difficult territories, due in part to home-grown social networks such as VK and Odnoklassniki. Big brands already on these platforms provide content in Russian, to engage with their consumers on a deeper level. However, large brands such as Apple and Nike, face a different phenomenon: users who selforganise to create groups and provide brand-related content, without any backing from the official brand. In many cases, these groups outgrow the official brand page by a significant margin. Don t dismiss unofficial user created brand groups Unofficial groups would potentially be viewed with suspicion in English-speaking contexts, but they shouldn t be dismissed entirely. Not only are there potential monetary gains from advertising within these groups, but more importantly, those who use them display exceptionally high loyalty to a brand, and they band together and pride themselves on being part of such a community. Unofficial groups also achieve popularity by providing an e-commerce platform for products that aren t widely available The content in this type of group is often not marketing oriented: it provides entertainment through satire, competitions, music, motivational quotes and more. A large quantity of this content has nothing to do with the brand at all its only purpose is to get people to engage with the group. These groups are not subject to brand guidelines and there are very few restrictions on activity. At the same time, the lack of constant direct advertisement is highly appealing to users. Ecommerce platforms attract users These unofficial groups also achieve popularity by providing an e-commerce platform for products that aren t widely available, especially luxury and non-essential goods. Though brands often create Russianlanguage Facebook and VK groups to engage with their audiences, these have a different dynamic: they focus on exclusive brandrelated news updates, product promotion and customers feedback. Unofficial groups are especially capable of

6 2. The independent life of brands on VK explosive growth in the absence of an official channel. For example, Apple doesn t have an official social presence on Russian social networks or a Facebook page in Russian. Instead, there are several user-created groups on VK for brand-loyalists. Currently there are more than 10 different groups with over 100,000 possible to provide regular content without spending a lot of time on research. Users interact in the gallery section of the group, by commenting and uploading their own photos of their devices, as well as having albums to play games such as hangman. Nike user created group four times bigger than official presence Another brand worth mentioning is Nike. Although it has an official presence on VK with collective number of followers around 400,000, there is still an independent group which is four times bigger (1.6 million users). The content of these groups present some interesting contrasts. Official social media channels are forced to keep within brand guidelines and are restricted on the type of content they can provide, whereas the only restrictions for unofficial groups are the internal VK guidelines. In the independent Nike group, plenty of content is not relevant to the brand, such as inspirational quotes, interesting facts and image macros. A large number of users in this group are under 18 (25%), which explains the popularity of this type of content. By posting images with the Nike brand on them, the group arguably raises loyalty levels and people feel proud of owning and purchasing Nike products in the future. This group has no gallery, and content is therefore limited to the constantly evolving timeline. Apart from the profits the groupowner receives from advertising within the group, this page links to an e-commerce web-site that sells a range of products from established sports brands. As with all pages of this type, the main indicators of engagement are likes and shares. Due to the fact that content isn t directly advertising Nike products, but rather providing entertainment based on the brand, it feels less commercial and more accessible for the general public. As mentioned before, another popular reason for forming an unofficial brand group, is to establish an e-commerce platform to sell goods which aren t easily available. A good example is a group dedicated to Toyota, which acts as an outlet for a Toyota specialised car-service and car-parts re-seller.

7 2. The independent life of brands on VK Posting photos of Toyota cars along with audio tracks as well as newly available carparts, the group provides a platform for users to interact with each other. It also facilitates indirect interaction with the brand. Other luxury brands that are officially sold through VK are L Oreal, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Omega and many more. This method of purchase is attractive due to a personal delivery option (the federal post service isn t very reliable) along with the ability to consume information in a familiar format. User created groups form around wellestablished brands Overall, only well-established consumer goods brands who have a high level of engagement with their customers will have unofficial groups forming around them. Although the VK community is wellestablished and there is less chance of new unofficial groups forming, there is still demand for a specific type of entertainment content for users under 25 that official accounts are unlikely to meet. As for the e-commerce side of VK, this segment is likely to continue to grow as the supply of luxury goods decreases, following recent sanctions against Russia from EU and US. Unofficial groups provide a more relaxed platform for interaction, can and should be used by the large brands to investigate social sentiments towards the brand and the potential for future sales, as pointed out by Econsultancy. For a long time VK has been seen purely as a marketing platform to boost brand awareness. Over the last two years, however, it is increasingly being recognised (especially in the retail and travel industries) as a revenue-driving channel that is outperforming traditional marketing channels such as search and display in terms of reach and ROI. Econsultancy, 2015

8 3. Google customer match: What you need to know Google chose the recent Ad Week New York to announce its new advertising product: Google Customer Match. Google s aim is to help both large and small advertisers target consumers when they are most likely to engage with their messaging. The search engine giant can hardly be credited with striding ahead when it comes to customer targeting. Facebook launched its Customer Audiences in 2012, which allows brands to use their offline client database to find customers online and then market to them directly; or use audience profiling tools to find audiences similar to their client base. However, for Google this is still a major move towards an audience-centric approach. What does this mean for your paid media strategy? Google Customer Match is available internationally and there are clear opportunities for multinational brands to use this new functionality. If you are entering a new market without a large client base, being able to use known audience profiles to find similar audiences will help you to build your brand. Where you have already had positive interactions with a customer, Customer Match provides the added advantage to talk to a customer that already knows you and to serve them a personalised message. This advantage is particularly significant at those key touchpoints in the customer purchasing journey when they are researching and comparison shopping prior to making a buying decision what Google terms the zero moments of truth. These are the moments when brands need to maximise their presence in front of the customer the better visibility you have during these moments (whether on search results page or on wider internet through Display and YouTube re-marketing) the better chance you have to favourably influence the customer to shop with you. In terms of the customer journey, this feature is going to be tactically important for prospecting as well as re-engagement and brand loyalty building activities. An example of a prospecting campaign can be where the Customer Match feature is used to target the existing customer base with information around new product launches. With the similar audience feature, we can relatively quickly expand our reach, while ensuring that we still have a well targeted campaign.

9 3. Google customer match: What you need to know Previously we used cookie-based visitor data as a targeting base for our re-engagement campaigns. Now we can use your customer data base to do it, so we are no longer constrained by the maximum cookie period which is 6 months for re-marketing lists. This means that we can reach out to a customer who purchased a Winter coat from you in your January 2015 Sale with new Winter catalogue ads, as well as Christmas deals! Using a sophisticated audience management system together with Google Customer Match, we can now do cross-device, crosschannel personalised campaigns for each customer segment. This really allows us to put your customer at the centre of your marketing plan. The feature also lends itself brilliantly to branding exercises. Focusing on Google inventory across its Display, Mobile and YouTube networks, we can now support highly targeted content lead brand building campaigns in a cost efficient manner. Content that actually answers customers requirements, whether it is case studies, product guides or industry insights, is ideal for establishing new relationships in foreign markets. Balancing your paid media mix In terms of channel mix, the accuracy of targeting offered through the new Customer Match is likely to encourage many brands to consider expanding their campaign mix to include more Video and Display. So for example, if you are a travel operator with a customer who has already booked a family August holiday for four to Turkey; you will be able show targeted Search and Display ads to this specific person in the future. It may be that you want to simply target them at the same time next year with interesting holiday destinations tailored to their interests or look at enticing them with half term and Easter holiday offers. To make these campaigns more scalable, brands and advertisers will look to aggregate similar sets of customers to create specific segments and personas. Brands with large client data bases, well maintained and connected Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and effective analytics will be able to fully realise the opportunities with personalisation and cross-selling. Pitfalls to avoid For Customer Match to be effective, you

10 3. Google customer match: What you need to know will need to have a fairly rigorous audience management system in place. You will also need to look at the sizes of your customer data bases as Customer Match will have the most potential for those with larger audiences. Do consider the frequency with which you target a customer it could be easy to become spammy especially given the ability to transcend device. Don t forget to consider the potential conflict with existing remarketing, this may mean that you will need to exclude certain lists which could limit your audience size. To ensure integrated yet contextually relevant messaging across devices and platforms, advertisers will need to focus on ad copy personalisation, testing and ongoing optimisation. Currently neither Russia s Yandex nor China s Baidu appear to offer a similar customer match product, however, you can be sure that where Google leads other major search engines will follow.

11 4. Understanding Russia s VK Social Network VK, better known as VKontakte, is a Russian social network ranked by Alexa as the second most popular website in Russia after Yandex. At 300+ million registered users and around 85 million active users, VK has a lot of potential to attract customers to your service. VK appeals to an audience of mainly under 30-year-olds, with the older demographics preferring the OK.ru social platform. Following last year s change of management, VK s new CEO has been paying more attention to revenue-producing aspects of the social platform, working towards better advertising integration and new ways of delivering paid content. If you are looking to enter the Russian market or are already operating there, but want to optimise your impact, then VK has a number of features for you to consider, as well as a couple of pitfalls to be avoided: deceptive CPC prices, ad approvals and frequency caps. Effective targeting VK s ad platform is able to deliver results and has an English interface that is easy to navigate. It provides clicks from chosen demographics from across 11-hour zones in Russia and Russian speaking countries, driving your website visits and brand exposure. As you would expect from a major social media platform, VK s targeting options cover age, geography, family status, OS, job title and many more. Having ads on the side of the menu along with the ability to promote posts within user s timelines makes it attractive for a wide range of advertising campaigns. There is also an option to advertise within groups and, an ad-exchange section is available for that purpose. An ad exchange section of VK As an advertiser, you are able to see demographic breakdowns for each group (group behaviour and interface is similar to pages in Facebook), so that you can select the best groups for the campaign. From the advertiser s perspective you can request to be advertised in a group and set the price you are willing to pay; from a group owner s perspective the ad gets evaluated and then it s either processed to be scheduled for advertising or rejected. This methodology works especially well with younger audiences, provided that the promoted content is relevant to the group and its readers.

12 4. Understanding Russia s VK Social Network Side menu advertising is available in three sizes: Small image and text (90x65) Large image (90x120) Exclusive (90x160) The Large image (90x120) option works well as it provides an image large enough to be noticed along with a reasonable CPC price. Ruble is currently the only currency that can be used within the platform. Similar to Facebook and Google AdWords, VK offers a retargeting option. It can collect a list of users who visit your website and have a profile through a tag on your website, making retargeting easy. Additionally, if a database of users ( s, phone numbers or VK IDs) is available, you can upload the data to such targeted users. Avoiding pitfalls VK, like many social networks, does have some areas for improvement. For example, a frequency cap is not an option. This is one of the reasons why VK will spend all dedicated budget and provide clicks, no matter how many times users have been served an ad. A simple solution is to turn off the content based on how many times an ad was shown to an individual user, e.g. once it has been shown times. One more thing to keep in mind: look out for suggested CPCs, which do not correspond to their true value. After some experimentation, we have found that it is possible to decrease estimated CPC by 50% and still receive the required clicks. Lately, political censorship has been increasing so don t be surprised when innocent-looking content does not get approved due to violating Terms and Conditions. The VK team conducts evaluation of ads, each one assessed based on its text, imagery and destination URL. Policy is similar to other advertisement platforms, however topics loosely related to forbidden topics (alcohol, drugs, gambling etc.) can also face disapproval. In the case of disapproval, it is possible to request reevaluation or question the reasoning of a disapproval through VK support service. If you are promoting your brand, products and services to Russia, VK is a flexible platform and an effective gateway into the Russian audience for a reasonable price and accessibility with an English language interface.

13 About Oban Digital Oban Digital is one of the UK s leading international digital marketing agencies. We ve been thinking global, acting local since Our ethos is to improve the performance of global websites and online platforms using local market knowledge and real cultural influence. The most successful online marketing strategies always put local insight first. That s why you ll find us in more than 30 countries worldwide, optimising campaigns to markets and people not just languages. Our unique combination of cultural search and cultural conversion optimisation delivers a consistent consumer experience wherever the click happens. Clients trust us to deliver better digital campaigns globally. We work wherever business needs to be. Go online and discover how we use local insights to get the best campaign results in-market. Global knowledge, local insight. That s Oban Digital. International search and conversion.