WHITE PAPER 11 Tips for Master Search Marketers Presented by Omniture, An Adobe Company Compiled by Ben Brutsch, who runs the Omniture search marketing program
INTRO Success in search engine marketing is a matter of scale; that is, dealing with the issues of growing scope. As a search marketer, you can feel like a wiz when you start out handling a few dozen keywords, and making a few adjustments here and there. But once those dozens of keywords turn into hundreds and thousands, and you re trying to broaden your strategy to integrate your search marketing with other online strategies like landing page optimization or remarketing through email, etc. your task becomes far more complex. Truthfully, it ends up being more than you can realistically do well or do at all. Success in search engine marking is a matter of scale; that is, dealing with the issues of growing scope. Transition from drinking from the SEM firehose to thoughtfully and strategically approaching search. This guide has been written to help you become a master search marketer. It helps you transition from drinking from the SEM firehose to thoughtfully and strategically approaching search. These 11 tips come from tried-and-true best practices from some of SEM s forward-thinking marketers. Consider how you would implement the different strategies as you read them. Not all of them may be for you in your business s situation. But, they will help you find the ways to automate and strategize your search marketing in a way that will help you grow as your SEM reach becomes broader and more complex. 1. UNDERSTAND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMPONENTS OF AN SEM CAMPAIGN When optimizing your search engine marketing campaigns it can be tempting to think in a silo. Improved copy equals a higher click through rate (CTR), better landing pages, better conversion rate. The truth is much more complicated. Take CTR for example. If by changing your copy you are able to increase the CTR on your ads from two percent to three percent, then you should expect about 50 percent more clicks assuming no budget constraints. What happens, however, if the increase in CTR is enough to bump you from second position to first? Just by being in a higher position, you should get another uptick in CTR. That means it s possible that the new copy nets you not just a 50 percent bump in clicks, but 60, 70 or 80 percent. Conversely, it s possible that the improvement in the quality score doesn t manifest itself in better rankings but rather in a lower cost per click, making the net effect of the content change 50 percent more clicks at a cost of 20 percent less per click. Another example of SEM synergies is the effect an improvement in landing page conversion rate can have on your campaigns. Again, assume that by using a new landing page you are able to double the conversion rate from your keyword campaigns from one to two percent. Upfront, this means double the orders for the same cost so the ROI on your campaigns doubles as well. Assuming that the keywords pointing to that page have been in second position because that is the highest position that can be justified based on the ROI, it s likely that bids can now be increased to raise your ads to first position and increase clicks and orders even further. You can see that a change that appears to make a specified difference (double orders) actually makes a larger than anticipated difference (more than double to orders at the same efficiency).
Populate your campaigns with unique words and phrases that you find on the sites you would like your ads to appear on. Marketers are allowing themselves to be managed by inefficient, suboptimal or even counterproductive metrics. Two keywords may both produce leads at a cost of $20, but one will be more valuable because its leads are twice as likely to convert. 2. CONSIDER THE CONTEXT OF CONTEXTUAL CAMPAIGNS The contextual advertising networks on the major search engines have gotten a bad rap from some in the industry for their supposed poor return on ad spend (ROAS). To understand why, try playing a little game next time you re browsing the Web: Every time you are on a site and see an ad served up by the contextual network that has seemingly no relevance to the page it is on, try to find the trigger word or phrase that might have brought up that ad. It is interesting to see how often you find a largely irrelevant ad triggered. For instance, when the author of a gardening blog, writing about begonias, briefly mentions her arthritis, it triggers ads for pain medication rather than a more appropriate ad for a garden trowel. By targeting sites rather than keywords you can eliminate or at least minimize this type of mismatching and dramatically improve your CTR, Qscore and ultimately your ROI. To do this, populate your campaigns with unique words and phrases that you find on the sites you would like your ads to appear on. Using our example above, the pain medication advertisers might have been better served to bid on the term rheumy a common abbreviation used by arthritis sufferers in online support groups. Building these types of campaigns requires more time and research but the improvement in performance should be more than worth it. 3. ANALYZE YOUR FUNNEL METRICS Too many marketers are allowing themselves to be managed by inefficient, suboptimal or even counterproductive metrics. This can be especially true when the conversion process has many steps and takes a while to complete such as lead generation and B2B marketing. The challenge many search marketers face is figuring out how to balance the immediacy and convenience of high-funnel metrics with the greater confidence that can be placed in customers and events lower down the sales funnel. For example, let s assume that you run a lead generation campaign from which generated leads are funneled to a lead qualification team which moves all qualified leads to a sales team that works to close the deals. The temptation might be to manage these campaigns to a cost-per-lead metric and leave it at that. This will almost always result in less-than-optimal campaigns since differences in lead performance down the line are ignored. Put another way, two keywords may both produce leads at a cost of $20, but one will be more valuable because its leads are twice as likely to convert.
There are three steps to fixing this type of inefficiency: To see how Omniture customer Vintage Tub&Bath used deep funnel metrics to learn the difference between high-revenue keywords and highprofit keywords, visit: www.omniture.com/ offer/669 I. Implement the type of tracking infrastructure than makes data from the entire funnel available, such as: lifetime value, repeat purchases, offline conversions, and sales cycle data. A system like this often requires crossvendor integration with CRM, sales cycle, and email solutions. II. Use the data provided to gain a complete insight into the connection between your campaigns and each stage of the funnel. Answer questions such as: a. The average time lag between each stage of the funnel. How consistent is that timing between campaigns? b. The effect of up-funnel conditions on low-funnel metrics. In other words, do customers brought in by different campaigns behave significantly differently after a purchase or are the differences limited to earlier behavior? c. Make reliable assumptions about customers based on things you know about them early on. III. Using the concrete answers to those questions, work with management to get buy off on an intelligent measurement and optimization plan. This might mean that day to day optimization decisions are made based on early data (leads) but that those decisions are always verified by following up with data that comes in later but is more reliable. To see how Omniture customer Vintage Tub&Bath used deep funnel metrics to learn the difference between high-revenue keywords and high-profit keywords, visit: www.omniture.com/offer/669
4. USE AD COPY TO BE EFFECTIVE, NOT JUST DIFFERENT TO BE DIFFERENT When writing copy, some feel like they need to write something outlandish or shocking, etc. In reality, to be effective, you need to have an understanding of your core business competency. Why should a customer go with you instead of the competition? Because of your prices? Service? Warranties? Features? Your copy and other content need to focus in on what makes you the best. A common mistake among marketers is the overuse of broadmatch keywords. Your copy and other content need to focus in on what makes you the best. For example, Bob s Computers competitive advantage is price. Bob s should write copy that either includes the price of the item searched for, or a generic low price guarantee. If Bob s competitors have chosen to focus their messaging on service, selection or shipping (knowing that Bob s has the best prices) that doesn t mean that Bob s should fall in line. Trying to pretend to be something you are not is a bad way to do business. When businesses position themselves appropriately, then customers are better able to find the company that is right for them, wasting less time for them and less money for you spent on advertising. 5. USE MATCH TYPES TO REFINE CAMPAIGNS A common mistake among marketers is the overuse of broad-match keywords. While broad matching has a place long term in your campaigns (branded terms), it should be viewed as a temporary placeholder until you find replacements in more targeted exact-match phrases. This is done through the use of exact query mining: The way this works is you are given a list of exactly what a user searched for when they were broad matched to your keyword ad. These keywords are then classified as either desirable (keywords you want your ad to appear for) or undesirable (those for which you don t). The desirable keywords are added to your campaigns as exact match and the undesirable are added as negative match. Once confidence is gained that all significant traffic has been accounted for the original keyword can be converted to exact match and the process is repeated with other keywords. This process has always been possible using log file mining, but that leaves the marketer beholden to IT and tends to slow down an already cumbersome process. Using Omniture SearchCenter, Omniture customers can instantly get an actual query list for any time period and for any of their keywords making this type of analysis not only possible, but even pleasant.
6. FENCE OUT THE WRONG KEYWORDS Every search marketer knows the feeling of being called into their boss s office to explain why the copy on a given query is not relevant to that query. Usually it s happening because of campaign crowding. Campaign crowding occurs when an ad from one group is being shown for a keyword in another group due to a higher ad score. Using Bob s Computers as an example again, Bob s has two ad groups in their storage campaign: disk drives and hard disks, with relevant copy for each. The problem comes when Google decides to broad match the ad for hard drives to a query like best disk drive because of higher competition (and thus higher bids). This problem can be mostly contained by limiting the use of broad match queries, but campaign fencing can also help. Campaign fencing is the process of adding keywords that you bid on in one campaign as negative match keywords in another campaign to ensure that the proper ad is always delivered for each query. If Bob s had negative matched the term disk to their hard drive group, the mismatch would not have happened. This example illustrates one of the dangers of fencing: when taken too far, it can cause a leak of qualified customers. Someone searching for hard disk drive would no longer see Bob s ad despite being qualified.
7. BECOME THE SEARCHER Spend time walking a mile in the shoes of those to whom you are selling. This can help you recognize how you re catching buyers in your net, and why you re gathering folks who aren t potential customers at all. Spend time walking a mile in the shoes of those to whom you are selling. During keyword expansion efforts, never bid on a word or phrase that you haven t browsed through the search engine results pages yourself. This act has assisted marketers in avoiding costly and embarrassing mistakes. It helps them realize how many people might be searching on their keywords for completely unexpected and unrelated reasons. Take, for example, the term bid management. Likely you assume anyone plugging this term into a search engine is looking for help with their paid search campaigns. In reality, bid management is a term commonly used in the construction industry. Site content that refers to bid management software generically might gather a lot of unwanted clicks from those not at all interested in PPC.
Another common problem is customers ending up on a page of your site not related to their search. This indicates a disconnect between expectations and what was actually delivered. While a focused conversion experience is often best, too few options can also alienate visitors, driving them off your site. Ultimately, you need a good Web Analytics solution like Omniture SiteCatalyst to measure user behavior throughout your site. What all marketers can do is use organic and paid listings to allow their users to self segment and give them a more customized experience. 8. MAKE SEO AND PAID SEARCH WORK TOGETHER In many organizations, search marketing and SEO are under different management and sometimes even in different departments. This can lead to a silo-ed approach, which leaves money on the table. Often, marketers wonder if they should be prioritizing words for which they rank well organically or if they should be bidding on them at all. The answer in large part depends on individual strategy and goals. What all marketers can do is use organic and paid listings to allow their users to self segment and give them a more customized experience. What this means is, if your organization is ranking well on a keyword organically and you intend to bid on that keyword as well, you make sure that the two messages are different but complimentary enough to attract two different prospect profiles thus, you cast a wider net. For the keyword hard drive, Bob s Computers has figured out that most of their prospects are either in research mode (learning more and possibly buy down the line) or desperation mode (hard drive failed and they need one). Bob s ranks well organically for this phrase due to a page on their site that full of useful information on hard drives. The text showing in the SERP appeals to an education focused audience. Knowing this; Bob s should make it a point to emphasize speed and convenience in their paid keyword copy and then follow through on that promise by making the landing page as quick and easy as possible. Even if you don t have all of the visitor psychographics discussed above, it is still possible to make a reliable estimate of who you should be targeting with each of your listings. If you have two main target audiences, make sure each listing targets one. Or, if your target audience is fairly homogenous you can use the two ads like complimentary banner ads on one Web page. Discuss price in one and service in the other. Something to keep in mind is to make sure that the message and tone is similar enough that a user instinctively knows that these two ads are the same company, this builds credibility and trust.
Omniture SearchCenter allows users to report on and manage keywords in bulk. 9. TAG KEYWORDS WITH CLASSIFICATIONS Manageability is one of the most common frustrations that search marketers face. Campaigns might be organized around products or product groups, but within each group there might be keywords that need a special management technique or more frequent attention. Pulling these keywords out into their own campaign decreases campaign tightness a campaign with keywords about different products doesn t look attractive to most engines. This problem is solved for marketers who have a tool allowing them to apply multiple classifications to keywords regardless of where they reside in the campaign structure. By leaving these keywords in their relevant product campaigns, but classifying them as top priority, tightness is retained and management becomes a snap. Omniture SearchCenter allows users to report on and manage keywords in bulk using classifications as if they were separated out into their own campaign or group. One way we use classifications at Omniture is born on date. This technique, used by Omniture customer Vintage Tub & Bath, labels each keyword with the date that went live in the accounts. Previous to this, answering a question like When did we start bidding on keyword X? required a trended impression report with the start date of the report sent as far back as possible. The keyword was considered to have gone live the day that impressions began to be registered. Now, that answer comes much more quickly and easily.
When a marketer wants to know which campaigns are working, the answer depends largely on the definition of success. 10. USE THE RIGHT ATTRIBUTION METHOD FOR ANALYSIS When a marketer wants to know which campaigns are working, the answer depends largely on the definition of success. These questions apply to keywords as well. Here are three common questions: 1. How did you originally find my customers? 2. Which campaigns positively influenced your prospective customers? 3. What ultimately compelled your prospect to make the purchase? Each of these questions requires a different approach in analysis. An information architecture can credit the first marketing touch (or keyword searched), the last touch, or the combination of each touch. Some marketers are forced to choose one of these methods for all of their reporting, and this trade-off compromises their ability to accurately answer the other two types of questions. Ideally, a search marketer can choose the appropriate approach to the question at hand. For example, if the business goal is to find new prospects, a first touch analysis will find keywords that happen early in a buying cycle. If the goal is to intensify keywords that have a propensity to convert to a sale immediately, a last touch analysis is appropriate. These approaches are also convenient because they typically credit only one keyword or marketing campaign. However, much marketing is designed not to be the first or last touch point before a purchase or conversion event, especially in a complex sale. These situations require the comprehensive view of all touches that influenced a conversion, and allow for comparisons between campaigns. Omniture customers are facilitated in this choice because their data is in a centralized location. 11. AS GOALS BECOME CLEAR, AUTOMATE MANAGEMENT ACTIONS Much of search engine marketing, while time consuming, thankfully can be automated. For example, many of the reports needed for internal communication and analysis can be scheduled on a reoccurring basis. Monitors and alerts can be set when metrics fall outside a normal range. Furthermore, the two dynamic landscapes of external bid marketplaces and internal conversion rates can be married together with bid rules based upon those conversion rates. Finally, marketers with an automated testing platform like Omniture Test&Target can serve relevant content, serving the keywords that searchers used, throughout their user s experience on their Web site.
CONCLUSION The scope of your SEM strategy can grow out of control very quickly and easily. Use these 11 tips to broaden your search marketing in a calculated, measured way. Take advantage of the tools at your disposal like Omniture SiteCatalyst and Omniture SearchCenter to help you automate and regulate a large portion of what you do. That will free up your time to spend on strategy to spend more time thinking through how these tips apply to you. *** If you would like to learn more about the Omniture SearchCenter, contact your Omniture Account Manager or call (866) 923-7309. For internationally-located businesses, visit Omniture.com for the office information nearest you.
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