Live from Search Engine Strategies: Buying Search Engine Advertising
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Written By Reprise Media | August 8, 2005 | Share This
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Reprise Media’s Managing Partner, Peter Hershberg, reports from the Search Engine Strategies Show in San Jose, August 8 - 11.
The session is “Buying Search Engine Advertising” - an entry level course focused on defining the search engine marketing opportunity.
Dana Todd from SiteLab is first up to present.
Dana began by asking the crowd, by show of hands, to indicate how many people in the audience have been doing search for a year or less. It quickly became obvious that the session was overwhelmingly filled with search “newbies”. Good news for the panelists, who often feel that giving the same presentation at various SES shows over the course of a year gets a bit tired. More importantly, it’s good news for the industry-at-large. Depite the explosive growth search has experienced in recent years, conferences like SES continue to grow as new marketers explore the channel.
Next, Dana delved into the distinction between SEM, SEO, PPC, etc. In short, SEM is the top-level description for search engine marketing — everything else falls under it.
The presentation continued to define the market opportunities, by offering a brief description of paid search, contextual advertising — and now image ads. Dana (rightly) notes that once we’re talking about adding graphics and matching to pages based on general concepts, it no longer sounds like a decription of paid search advertising. As Yahoo! And Google have become broader media companies in recent years, these ad formats have started to converge. Still, the mechanisms for buying and optimizing them are the same.
Dana then gives an overview of many of the variables associated with the search marketing process, including:
- Match types
- Vertical engines (Shopping, B2B, etc)
- Yellow Pages/Local Search
The presentation then became a bit more technical, as Dana explained how advertisers can get started with paid search:
- Establish a keyword strategy
- Organize your Keywords into buckets
- Payment by Credit Card (or invoice for a large account)
- For CPM contracts, contact a rep to negotiate/design a campaign
- Set daily and monthly budgets
Once your campaign is up and running, there are a variety of potential issues to be aware of. They include:
- CPC inflation — Click costs rise 10%-25% or more/year. As a result, some advertisers may be priced out of the market
- No “set it and forget it.” — Lots of labor associated with managing a search campaign
- Bid wars with affiliates, dealers, channel partners
- Trademarks: Little to no protection
- Inability to cherry-pick sites
- Inability to fully understand your rank
- Competitor and affiliate fraud
- Paid links may be ignored by users who don’t like to click on ads
Dana also gave her thoughts on appropriate keyword strategies…
- Use 2-3 keyword phrases (although understand that it’s often the one-word keywords that drive volume/sales (e.g. flowers, sneakers)
- Understand your metrics. A good rule of thumb is:
Average gross profit x conversion rate = Break-even CPC point (don’t go above it) - Track at the keyword level
- Isolate words groups in different campaigns to control budgeting
…and offered some effective campaign tips
- Repeat the search terms in title and/or description
- Pre-qualify clicks with specific creative appeals
- Keep copy and landing pages fresh - change them both regularly
- Set day-parting and bidding rules
- If CTR is high on Google, try lowering bid
Dana ended on Bid Optimization/Management, offering the following tips:
- Top positions get more clicks
- Lower may get better ROI
Overall, Dana offered a good presentation, with the right balance between a general overview and specific tactics that can help an inexperienced marketer get started with an SEM program.
Next up was Dan Boberg from Yahoo! Search Marketing
Dan’s presentation focused on 3 key areas:
- Trends in Search
- Maximizing Search through multiple products
- Best Practices
Trends in Search
Companies are increasingly leveraging search campaigns to create brand awareness. They’re also conscious of their competitive positioning and want to know their share of voice relative to competitors.
Yahoo! (like everyone else in search) recognized the fact that advertisers want more traffic and leads. Search results pages can only provide so much, and as a result, they recently launched the Yahoo! Publisher Network. Yahoo! also promised to do more in the way of advertiser education and certification.
Boberg then gave a short overview of each of the YSM products. His point is that their impact can be most effectively maximized when integrated together. These products include:
- Sponsored search
- Content Match
- Search Submit
- Local search
Lastly, Boberg covered some SEM Best Practices. They were pretty consistent with what Dana previously covered.
Google’s, Richard Holden was up next.
To the relief of the audience, Richard indicates that he’s going to pass over some of his slides because there’s a lot of overlap between Google and Yahoo! products (interesting). He also acknowledges that the same best practices that Dan and Dana alluded to are effective for Google. This is good news for all those marketers who are worried about advertising across a broad set of engines who processes are different from each other.
One thing that remains a differentiator for Google is their ability to geo-target in both search and contextual.
Chris Churchill from Fathom Online was the panel’s final presenter.
Chris started out by talking about Fathom’s keyword price index (KPI). From Fathom’s standpoint, this helps advertisers understand the volatility in a market that has no rate cards and no negotiation. It’s all about what you’re willing to pay in the open market.
According to the KPI, the average price of a click is approximately $1.75, but it varies by vertical (mortgage, for example, has hit over $7/click)
Chris then touched on the concept of increased conversion rates, saying “to be a great keyword buyer, you need to be a great converter.” If you’re converting users at a higher rate, it’s easier to compete in the auction.
Fathom also uses a specific optimization schema when managing client campaigns. They start by focusing on ad copy, then keywords, then media type and then media property.
Chris closes his presentation by giving the following conversion advice:
- Focus on conversion - not bid price
- Optimize as above
- If you can’t afford tracking, work on ad copy
Topics: Microsoft |