Archive for October, 2007
The NMA always provokes an interesting number of points, and the 11.10.07 edition was no different. One article in particular stood out, that about Pricerunner dropping The Search Works in favour of bringing the campaign in-house. The article itself was no great shakes, however it was a quote by Mattias Berg (from Pricerunner) that particularly grabbed my attention
“When bringing The Search Works on board in June 2006, we were hoping for an increase in performance, but we didn’t get that” he said. “The plan was to grow the campaign with an increase in ROI. But what we’ve seen is an increase in spend but not the same in ROI”.
Now I would like to add, we are in no way affiliated with either parties mentioned above, however I would suggest that Mattias Berg’s comment is a comment that is often repeated. Whilst I do not doubt The Search Works experience, nor the level of work in deploying the above campaign, however one thing I would suggest - is that when a campaign is judged on ROI, little is done from a website perspective in order to maximise the ROI, instead relying on the quality of the leads to provide the increase in ROI.
I am not saying this is the case with Pricerunner/The Search Works, however I personally have worked on a number of ‘above, below and online projects’ where the primary aim was to drive traffic and convert online, however whilst full detail has been provided to the planning, buying and deployment of the marketing material, little attention was given to the actual conversion of the customer, whether it be targeted landing pages (for both online/offline), conversion analysis or refinement of the conversion process (companies wanting too much information via initial content - KISS always works best in my opinion).
As such, as customer journeys are not monitored, fallout points not picked up and conversions not analysed (apart from the ROI analysis that many organisations perform as standards), the campaign continues to underdeliver, despite more resource being thrown at it.
At the end of the day I would suggest, the deployment and physical structure of many search campaigns, is eventually going to look fairly similar, and it is therefore the closing of the loop from a conversion perspective that is ultimately going to result in the required increases in ROI.
This is a point that I feel is often missed, and one that can ultimately cost far more (in terms of missed opportunities in the long run than doing the job properly in the first place. E-Gain in particular have always placed significant focus on the campaign from start to finish (and is one that has paid dividends for us and our clients).
Whilst I agree, SEM is always going to be about lead generation, however as search engine marketing /internet marketing agencies move towards a more ROI/conversion based results structure, then ensuring that a campaign is built to convert is going to be more and more important.
October 26th, 2007
Interesting article in this weeks NMA (New Media Age) magazine. According to the article based on research by the AAR - the failure to listen is the main factor in the breakdown between an agency and a client.
Second in the list of criteria, was the quality of the agency personnel, with agencies mentioning the lack of ambition on the client side as the second biggest factor in relationship breakdown
October 25th, 2007
This is probably slightly out of position as the second part of the ‘Effective PPC Management’ series, however I would suggest most people reading this probably are more concerned with getting to the bottom of Paid Search management issues, and as such it seems appropriate to include this earlier.
Google Adwords is one of the primary reasons, Google is the behemoth that it is today. Adwords is designed to make Google money, and it certainly does that, over and over and over again. For this reason, it is imperative that your campaigns are carefully managed, constantly optimised and refined. If you don’t understand the system, it is very easy to get burned.
1) Know your networks
The number of times I have gone into a campaign, and seen huge volumes of impressions, and clicks, and very little ROI from campaigns which have the content network included is phenomenal. Whilst utilising the content network isn’t bad, many people do this without careful analysis of the potential audience, and without careful thought to budgets, and by the end of the month, have a very big bill, with very little ROI. I will use a local solicitors we were helping recently, on a campaign supposedly set up by a PPC expert - however careful analysis showed that despite some good keyword research - many of the fine tuning of the campaign had been forgotten. For example
- Content network activated on loosely related generic phrases. i personally have used Content Network, where a niche exists. Content network basically displays ads on sites which have related content (and who are part of Googles publisher network - Adsense), however this relationship is determined by Google rather than you personally and as such, the link can be somewhat ropey to say the least. The more generic the phrase therefore and the more competitive the industry, the less inclined I would be to use the Content Network - particularly if budget is an issue.
- Content bids are the same as Search bids. Browsers entering as a direct result of search network activity are often more ‘qualified’ than content network browsers and as such are generally (not always) more likely to convert. Therefore I would suggest if you are going to use the Content Network - pay careful attention to your content bids. Careful management of this aspect of the campaign can save you a lot of money
2) Keyword matching
By default, Google defaults keywords to broadmatch. Leaving your phrases broadmatched will lose you a lot of money, again particularly if you are working within a competitive sector such as debt, insurance or real estate.
Careful consideration should be given to your choice of keywords, and I would suggest research should play an important part of your Paid Search campaign. If you check the phrases your ads are being shown for on many of your broadmatched terms, you will find Google is really pushing the ’semantic envelope’ on some of them.
For this reason, I would suggest looking at the following:
- Negative keywords - Some thorough analysis of your analytics will often highlight a number of terms which provide traffic, but often result in high bounce rates and very low conversion rates. Many of these terms can be ‘removed’ without adversely affecting the scope of visibility of the phrase itself
- More targeted matching - Rather than broadmatching, there are other matching options available that will give you far greater control over what terms your ads display for. These include ‘phrase match’, ‘exact match’ and the afore mentioned ‘negative match’. Strategic use of these matching options will often result in significant improvements to your ROI.
3) Impressions
High numbers of impressions are not necessarily a good thing. High impressions and Low CTR (click through rate), can often be indicative of issues elsewhere in your campaign, such as your Ad-creative or the like.
However more pressingly though, high impressions and low CTR damages your quality score, which results in you having to pay more for every click.
4) Multiple campaigns
I have seen a number of ‘campaigns’ where multiple clients are managed under one account, or hundreds of diverse adgroups are run from one centralised campaign. Don’t be afraid to split the account into multiple campaigns (broken down by theme, budget allocation etc).
Doing this not only allows for easier management of your campaign, but also will allow:
- Greater control over where your budget is spent - Rather than allocate 100% of your budget to one campaign, allocation can be split over multiple Adwords campaigns providing better scalability, and focus, particularly where a good ROI has been established.
- This will also allow you to get a clearer idea of where volume is, either in terms of impressions or clicks. From an ease of management perspective, this will allow you to analyse and fix any potential bottlenecks that exist
5) Analyse your keywords
Don’t just monitor your campaigns at campaign/ad group level. Delve deeper - get your fingers dirty, and analyse the campaign at its root. Looking at ROI and conversion rates at keyword/phrase level can often uncover some gems, often missed during the campaign setup, which given some time, and attention can result in significant improvements to your Adwords ROI.
This is possibly one of the most important parts of the optimisation process. Careful analyse of your keywords not only uncover the gems, but also the snakes, which as mentioned above can often be the difference between successful PPC management and failure.
6) Targeted Adgroups
We covered this to a certain degree in part 1 of the Effective Pay-per-click management series, however this is one that can really pay dividends. The more targeted your ad groups, the more targeted your creative can be. Reinforcing the points made from point 4 - having relevant ads will often result in a higher CTR (due to the relevancy of the ads vs the searched query thus a lower minimum bid), which therefore means you pay a much lower cost per click.
7) Landing Pages
We discussed the effects a well structured and optimised landing page can have in the first part of ‘Effective PPC Management’, however again it is worth highlighting the benefits of focusing significant time and effort on getting these right. Thorough analysis of user behaviour on your landing pages is paramount to establishing how your users browse and convert and thus capturing the best way of converting ‘wannabe’ customers into ‘confirmed’ customers
Adwords is not easy - many of the biggest (notice I didnt say best 
) companies out there such as Latitude, Starcom and the like have years of experience behind them - however I would suggest it is the process of doing the above well that determines the success of many of their campaigns.
October 23rd, 2007
We have been undertaking more and more Paid Search campaigns over the last year or so, and I have to say the ‘art’ of effective PPC management is one that intrigues me nearly as much as my main baby SEO.
Paid Search is a mesmerising mix of effective copywriting, good design and strategic planning. Done correctly it can be a potent part of any search marketing mix, done badly it can be a money pit.
In the first part of a series of effective PPC Management, I thought I would cover the landing much, which I find to be the hardest sell to clients, used to offline advertising, and who often do not appreciate the significant benefits a well thought out landing page can deliver. So what makes a good landing page
1) Look and feel
I could start with something more technical, however I think this is another point often overlooked by a lot of the techies. People do judge a book by its cover, particularly within the retail sector. Whilst I will back this up by saying in some sectors this is not the case, in many it is, and therefore it is import to portray a modicum of professionalism within your landing page design.
2) Focus
Whilst I have put this down as point 2, it probably should be point 1 given its importance. Success can be won or lost by incorrectly implementing a landing page.
Focussing your customers thoughts where you want them is imperative, and therefore the inclusion of other detractions should be very carefully considered during landing page design. I myself doubted this for years, however the proof in many cases is in the pudding as far as this is concerned.
In particular I would draw your attention to a landing page I found recently for Churchills Stairlifts (from search for stairlifts), which highlights the points above. The PPC manager in this case has carefully thought out what is important namely:
- Focus on the product namely stairlifts - top navigation has been removed
- Inclusion of conversion mechanism - feedback form to the right.
- Easy to access information as core part of the design
I will compare this against a number of other campaigns in order to highlight the point. Recently I was looking for a W910i. I looked at a number of sites, from the Google UK results with the following results
- T-Mobile - sent me to an OOPS - Sorry we cannot find this page. All I am going to say is that this must be costing them a fortune, and I am suprised that this hasnt been tested prior to going live. Surely all the bid management tools in the world are not going to save you money here.
- O2 - Generic landing page - whilst this is better than the last attempt surely focussing maintaining the users focus on the product typed in rather than the brand would result in a higher conversion rate/lower bounce rate.
- Dialaphone - whilst I would suggest this was getting more towards my line of thinking with a dedicated Google W910i landing page - I was also advised that ” Sorry, there are no deals available, please amend your search criteria and search again.”. With the thoughts of customer focus in mind surely an alterior call to action would have been more acceptable - ie something along the lines of - “Sorry there are no deals available online - Please call our customer sales team on ….”
Given the recent Omniture study which surveyed a number of different landing pages, the above was all the more suprising. The Omniture report refered to ‘friction’ namely the more you make a customer work - the less likely the are to convert, and the more likely the are to leave your page. Given other reports with a suggested four seconds to impress your clients - the requirement for focussed landing pages is altogether more important.
3) Do your research
There is no point developing a landing page that is unsuitable for your clients. Use the two searches above - namely stairlifts and mobile phones. Your stairlift audience I would suggest are going to be 35+ (carers, family and people personally requiring stairlifts whome I would suggest would be 45+ - if there are any advertisers out there - would be nice to have some correct figures) many of whom are not going to be particularly IT literate. Therefore bamboozling them with fancy interactive gizmos, and too much content is just going to bamboozle. I would also suggest that this target market would be far more likely to be ‘turned on’ by features of the product and soft selling such as reliability (’Quality conscious’ rather than videos, 3d modelling and the like.
Contrast that with any of your mobile phone vendors, I would suggest your younger demographics are going to be far more succeptable to such technical integration. I personally would suggest the integration of such interactive elements would possibly enhance conversion (particularly on such a targeted term). I would also suggest that this demographic is going to be far more ‘price conscious’ than the afore mentioned stairlift consumer.
4) Test, Learn and Refine
You will be very lucky if you hit upon the magic formula first time round particularly with a new client, however that isnt the end of the world. Many of the biggest PPC agencies out there, constantly test, learn and refine their landing pages, in order to ensure that these pages perform as well as they possibly can. This includes straplines, imagery, calls to action, layout - really anything on there landing pages, that could possibly affect conversion.
Again, this possibly should have been further up the page, however its importance cannot be emphasised. Even if you think you have the perfect formula, I would suggest it can still be bettered.
5) Quality Score
Thought I would leave till last, however it should always be considered that landing pages are a factor when it comes to both Google and Yahoo’s quality score (I know Yahoo Panamas isnt called this - but it’s a similar principle). Relevant Landing pages can therefore save you money - and isn’t that as good a reason as any.
October 21st, 2007
The IAB has today launched an updated version of the IAB search marketing charter, following months of collaboration between the IAB, Search Marketing Council and the Direct Marketing Association. The new charter sees a new section dedicated to working with affiliates.
Taken from the charter the new affiliates section include:
- SEMCo will declare to the client if they carry out affiliate work on an account that they manage.
- SEMCo will encourage / facilitate client and affiliate communication.
- To ensure affiliates keep SEM messaging on brand a SEMCo must be proactive in driving communications between the client and affiliate.
- SEMCo and client must provide a clear dispute procedure.
- To create a clear process for affiliates to dispute a declined earned commission.
- To ensure a timely process for communicating any changes to keyword policy between all parties.
- To facilitate better working relationships between affiliates, SEMCos and ultimately, the client.
- SEMCo must publish a point of contact for their affiliate manager.
- Affiliate manager must provide SEMCo with landing page documents to include HTML and appropriate graphics and Flash files.
- To ensure that a SEMCo understands the structure of a landing page to fully optimise a campaign.
Search marketing companies that adhere to the charter can highlight their compliance with an IAB ‘best practise’ icon published on their website and/or additional promotional company infrastructure.
The further development of the charter appears to be another major step in the right direction. As we have discussed on here previously, surely the development of such best practise exercises can only be good for Search Marketing as a whole, but from a business perspective, given that on the whole the only thing that holds many clients back from either further expansion only is perception of online in comparison to other ATL and BTL activity.
PS - SEMCo = Search Engine Marketing Company
October 17th, 2007
I am often amazed just how the SEO community has evolved. The evolution of social communities on Facebook and the like has only served to enhance this perspective. For example, on my friends list you will find people like Danny Sullivan, Andrew Girdwood, Jon Myers, Bill Slawski and Gord Hotchkiss - none of whom I have ever met face to face - but people who I have learnt to respect due to their posts and articles on various aspects of search marketing.
In particular, it is this sharing of knowledge that separates Search Marketing from many other industries. I cannot count the number of times I have read one of Bill’s patent application related posts or debated an aspect from one of Gord Hotchkiss’ columns, all of whom are happy to share knowledge and expertise with other members of the community either via the own personal blogs, their corporate blogs, or via the many conferences and seminars that organisations such as SMX organise across the globe.
Whilst I am in no doubt that these individuals do not share all their secrets (well would you?), they do share a hell of a lot, and this is something that keeps many people constantly testing and refining their own theories and concepts which are often then share again and again and again. What other industry can say that?
At the end of the day, with search marketing in its infancy (in comparison to many other sectors), surely this sharing of knowledge is invaluable to the continuing growth of the industry. We are not able to reference text books, we do not have a hundred years of learnings to develop tactics from, and above all - we work within a sector that is changing - from day to day - even hour to hour.
What an exciting place to be ….
October 16th, 2007
I was reading Ian McNerins blog with interest this morning and in particular his post on a ‘new’ line in the SEMPO signup process namely
“Business Conduct. In addition, the applicant agrees to engage
in Search Marketing practices which are not in direction violation of published guidelines from Google, Yahoo!, and other search engine providers.”
My main issue with signing up to bodies such as SEMPO and to a certain extent the IAB has been the fact that I have to pay for the priviledge, and priviledge that neither gives me an advantage nor differs me from any of my unethical SEO friends down the road, nor differs me from a web development only agency ‘that does SEO’.
Whilst in principle I think I am 100% behind an individual body, such a body has to represent the industry as a whole, not just the select few who want to pay the money, particularly if no criteria is associated with membership. Therefore imcorporating such measures into SEMPO membership is a major step in the right direction.
I think Ian says it best - “Heh - maybe I *can* work with these guys. It’s certainly a step in the right direction. There is no indication of any kind of enforcement, so it’s not perfect, but a couple of years ago you would not have seen this, and it would have created a huge controversy if you had. Maybe our little industry really is starting to grow up.”
October 9th, 2007
If a report by complete.com is to be believed then yes. According to the report, Yahoo is the best search engine for getting users to click on their search engine results (at least for the period May to August 2007).
The figures are compiled by complete.com, which collates data from a number of ISP’s as well as some other proprietary methods of data collection. The report went on to say
“…Lower search fulfillment numbers mean that on a percentage basis fewer search queries on that engine resulted in the searcher clicking on a result link. So from this perspective one might consider Yahoo! more effective at getting consumers the results they want….”
This to a certain degree backed up a recent Websidestory report that Yahoo was indeed the most convertable search engine, however I think one has to further explore why this is
- Volume - Google in many Western European countries is the search engine of choice - in particular the UK and the USA. For this reason it receives substantially more click throughs than any other search engine, and thus is more succeptable to dilution in figures.
- Competition - Whist this varies significantly by sector, Google often has significantly more competitors in terms of rival advertisers. More competition means more choice, and thus you have to pull out all the stops in order to maximise the effectiveness of your ads, and maximise your SEO in order to raise visibility on the search engines. This would obviously be more applicable to paid search management
- Search Network - I am presuming this does not include any non-search network traffic. I have personally found Yahoo’s paid search matching to be somewhat ‘iffy’ when it comes to their search partners, with the majority of clicks on high traffic/high profit terms coming from third parties rather than the search engine results themselves
- Bounce rate - as above - what was the bounce rate from these referrals. Referrals are one thing - accountability is another
I would love to find out more about how this data has been collated for one and just howfar the research went. Ultimately what the reasons were for ’satisfaction’.
October 1st, 2007
