Benny Blum

The responsibilities of an account manager will differ from company to company so I first need to define my expectations of an account manager in the search industry. At its highest level, the role of an account manager is to keep both the client and the agency happy with an account, focusing not only on their client relationships but also maintaining excellent internal relationships with all those who touch their account. For relationships to be successful they need to be built on solid business grounds and that means profit for both sides.

A great account manager is likable, smart, positive, passionate, dedicated, inquisitive and entrepreneurial. They must have skin thick enough to withstand the pressures of having multiple demanding clients. They also must have a finely tuned political antenna, have a strong understanding of their client’s company culture and be able to empathize with different types of people. They must be good at developing trust and be able to diffuse conflict and disagreement quickly. In terms of knowledge, a great account manager is well-rounded: they need to understand the PPC industry, their client’s industry and their client’s overall marketing mix. They must be good writers, have excellent presentation, facilitation, time management and analytical skills. They must be organized and efficient, possess a strong focus on quality and have a high level of attention to detail.

A great account manager ensures their client is happy by listening to their objectives and goals, making appropriate strategic recommendations and ensuring their account runs smoothly. They will know when to bring other resources (bosses, tech team, etc.) into the equation and when to tell the client that they are right or wrong. Of course, being buddies with the client doesn’t hurt either. A great account manager is not only a fantastic manager of clients but also a good manager of people, with the ability to effectively develop a team.

It’s tough to find one person that has all the qualities I’ve mentioned above. My advice is that if you find someone who does, hang on to them, just like we do at eSV!

Jacqueline Calderon

In his recent article A Guide to Choosing your Paid Search Management Tool, Josh Dreller reviews the basics of selecting a PPC vendor as well as providing some strategic tips for how to choose the best fit vendor for your specific business. Not once does Dreller mention using what you have “heard” or who the “industry giant” seems to be to influence the selection process. In fact, he advises the opposite: “Don’t just go with the first guy. Do your due diligence.”

If you still don’t agree that non “industry-leader” vendors shouldn’t be ignored, consider this logic:
PPC is one of the most cutting-edge advertising industries in existence. Naturally, in an industry this fast-paced, new and strong players are going to pop up all the time. In order to compete with the aforementioned “industry-leaders” who spend hundreds of thousands in marketing dollars to be perceived as such, the newer and smaller players must be extremely innovative and advanced in both technology and customer service.
Therefore, as it turns out, the smaller and less well-known SEM solutions providers may actually be the ones who will drive the best results for your business. Advertisers who resort to blind biases will truly end up missing out on key PPC opportunities.

The conference takes place at the JW Marriot Desert Springs, in Palm Desert, CA from February 22nd – 25th. The theme of this year’s show is Take Advantage of the Next Phase in the Retail Cycle and the agenda is packed with sessions and panels to help you plan your retail strategy. On February 22nd, our own Marc Wendling will participate in the Search Summit interactive roundtable discussion covering every aspect of SEM. The day will also include keynote presentations with speakers from multi-channel to pure play and promises to leave you with actionable means to maximize your SEM dollars.

We hope to see you there!

There is no doubt that autobid algorithms are important to a well-rounded SEM bidding strategy but they can also be detrimental. Success with autobid depends on a number of factors. Obviously, one crucial factor is how well constructed the algorithm is. Perhaps more important, though, is the level of customizability made available by the algorithm. Does it treat core and long-tail terms similarly, or is it specialized for success with a particular kind of keyword? Is it customizable in terms of defining quantity of data analyzed, statistical relevancy, convergence speed, and data tolerance leading to a bid change? Can you influence bid security, day parting, data aggregation?

Algorithms can be a powerful part of your bid management arsenal, particularly when tweaked and managed intelligently. As all businesses have different needs, if the algorithms you are working with are not customizable, you run the risk of algorithms being unable to respond to your unique business conditions. Be sure to ask what your customizability options are so that you can take advantage of algorithms that fit your requirements!

Josh Krafchin

The beauty of paid search marketing is that results are highly trackable. We can trace revenue back not only to the keyword and match type level, but also by the hour or even by the geography of the original search queries typed into any search engine.  This extensive tracking provides us the opportunity to understand not only revenue and cost implications, but a whole host of other criteria from visitor interaction with our website to offline conversions and gross margin. With this surplus of data and choice though, many marketers run into the dilemma of how exactly to define success. Shifting general business priorities outside of search, whether or not they relate to search specifically, can directly impact how we manage a search program.

One of the big tug-of-wars is between ROI and volume. Because search is so measurable and trackable, companies have come to expect hitting and surpassing ROI numbers. In turn, this ability to consistently hit ROI makes paid search revenue highly desirable, and executives will push for more and more revenue volume from paid search.  Another tug-of-war is between cost effectiveness and maximum exposure on a broad range of terms.  A lean SEM program will not run on unprofitable key terms while conversely these terms may be among those typed into Google when “surveying” the company’s search presence.

Ultimately, our mission as an agency is to achieve our clients’ goals; if these goals shift from month to month or even week to week, we will be reactive and shift along with the direction clients want us to move in. That being said, it is still crucial to note that paid search is most effective as a ROI-driver.  Branding and awareness, while having paid search merits, do not take full advantage of what the search engines have to offer. At the end of the day, we always prefer first to hit ROI numbers and then use excess budget to explore new profitable growth channels.

Shifting business priorities are a reality, and it’s always critical to be reactive with a paid search program, but when push comes to shove ROI rules.

For this reason, we offer two different algorithms for automated bid management:
- Long-tail (tail): analyzes a bucket of clicks from a given set of terms and makes bid changes based on statistical significance.
- Core (head): analyzes past performance by week, day, and hour, making bid decisions based on a variety of statistically significant externalities.

Our automated bid management analyzes traffic patterns observed at similar times throughout an account’s history and makes preemptive bid decisions to effectively anticipate consumer behavior and minimize CPCs which effectively maximizes ROI. Automated strategies base decisions upon the smallest possible set of terms. If a given KW has enough data, then the decision will be based strictly on that term’s data set. The data set is expanded until enough data is available to make a statistically significant decision. The first expansion is to the ad group level, and then to the sub-category level in terms of the KWs portfolio group.

Jacqueline Brown

With over five years of SEM experience, we are experts in innovation. We have developed several of our own unique features to ensure advertisers have access to the newest and best SEM techniques:
• Catalog management – the ability to optimize and report independent of search engine account structure. Makes highly-targeted, large accounts extremely manageable.   
• Day-parting at the Keyword Level – the ability to pause/activate and make bid adjustments on a keyword independent level based on the time of day/day of week.
• Automated Day Parting – algorithmic day parting designed to maximize exposure in hourly ranges with the highest user interaction
• Automated strategies at the Keyword-match type level: four options (custom rules; rank strategy; 2 algorithms: core/predictive and tail/reactive)

In addition of our own strategies, below are some new and helpful tips to keep up with this fast-paced SEM world:
1. Isolate brand terms from branded terms, i.e. ‘the widget store’ vs. ‘widget store baseballs’ to get further insight into the ROI of both types of terms
2. Isolate top cost-generating keywords and write specific, dedicated ads for each
3. Take a portfolio approach to scale – identify the most cost effective campaigns and scale in order to maximize efficiency
4. Don’t weight all conversions equally unless they are all of equal value to your company. Instead, optimize to sell products with a higher margin

Through a focus on improving relevance, maximizing control and building scalable programs, we are able to successfully stay ahead of and take advantage of rapidly changing SEM industry trends. Our best practices are also centered around maximizing Quality Score and not just bid management. We see the key to constant innovation and improvement to be frequent and methodical tests followed by careful analysis while keeping the core of our methodology simple and strong.

Jacqueline Brown

Read last week’s installment here.

Managing Quality Score

Relevancy, Relevancy, Relevancy

As it has become abundantly clear, Quality Score (QS) measures the potential revenue a keyword and ad combination have on a query-by-query basis. The higher the potential, the more opportunity the keyword and ad combination have to be displayed.

Without having the actual components of the algorithm available, an advertiser must rely on the controls available to them to ensure their ads are displayed when most profitable. Essentially, these controls help advertisers improve their relevancy. Basic techniques to improve relevancy include landing page testing, ad copy testing, and negative keyword management. Search engines use the same technology to crawl paid advertisement landing pages as they use in crawling for natural listings. Ensuring the product or service in the paid advertisement is prominently displayed and described on the landing page improves the score of the landing page, and, in turn, has a direct positive effect on QS.

By testing ad copy, an advertiser can quickly learn what is compelling to a consumer. With further adjustments, the advertiser can run the most persuasive copy possible. However, bringing massive amounts of traffic to a website is one thing, but bringing relevant (read: profitable) traffic is a whole other thing. Advertisers should use as many controls as possible to ensure that their ad is displayed to the most relevant queries as possible.

One basic, yet effective technique to exclude non-profitable queries is to put in place an extensive negative keyword list. Depending on the search engine, an advertiser has the option to have negative keywords at the campaign level or at the adgroup level. Due to the increased control, negative keywords are most valuable when they are at the adgroup level.

After time, depending on the QS, an advertiser becomes less risky to the search engine. This allows the advertiser to add new keywords at a lower initial CPC since the search engine “trusts” this advertisers overall relevancy. This is another reason why managing QS is essential, as once an advertiser begins to increase their score, their overall performance is also lifted.

Advanced Techniques

With an advanced solution, like the eSearchVision platform, advertisers can take Quality Score (QS) management to an even higher level. To run the most efficient campaigns, an advertiser should attempt to increase the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) while simultaneously lowering the Cost-per-Click (CPC) per keyword. Our proprietary tracking, advanced reporting, and automated analysis tools provide the ability for sophisticated QS optimization techniques such as:

• Match Type Control
• Top Keyword Isolation
• Long Tail Management

Match Type Control: Controlling the traffic to bring it in at the most specific keyword/match type combination possible increases the CTR. Since each keyword/match type combination has its own QS, the increased CTR will improve the QS, thus lowering the CPCs paid. eSearchVision’s exclusive reporting allows unique match type analysis to ensure that traffic is brought in at the lowest Cost-per-Click (CPC) possible.

Top Keyword Isolation & Long Tail Management: Isolating “top keywords” (keywords that account for 50% of the total spend) into their own campaign allows an advertiser to enlist very specific controls to that campaign. As their number is limited, (Top Keywords very often account for 1 – 5% of the total number of keywords), it really makes sense to isolate them and monitor them closely. The time spent managing these keywords has to be aligned with the revenue they generate.

Changes in Top Keywords will have the largest effect on the overall campaign performance, therefore isolating them for close attention and tailor made optimizations is crucial. For instance, by placing these keywords each in their own adgroup, highly specific ad copy can run to increase CTR.

Additionally, adding long tail keywords in highly-specific match types (i.e. Exact match), improves the QS for those keywords, and moves the traffic away from less-specific, more expensive match types (i.e. Broad match). Grouping long tail keywords with similarly behaving keywords allows for mass updates.

eSearchVision’s automated analysis tool identifies known long tail opportunities that are not yet realized. Gathering information from our proprietary tracking, our analysis tool discovers queries that are bringing in traffic under non-exact match types. By sorting these queries by the clicks and conversions they each bring, an extensive long tail keyword list can be created using more specific match types.

Changes to campaign and/or adgroup level reporting due to moving keywords to a new campaign and/or adgroup might deter an advertiser from restructuring their campaigns as effectively as possible. eSearchVision’s catalog management feature adds additional layers to the search engines’ “Campaign-Adgroup-Keyword” structure, providing ultimate flexibility in organizing a campaign for maximized ease of use and efficiency. By providing a way to tag a campaign, adgroup, or keyword with user-defined values, this feature allows business-centric reporting to continue.

Managing Bids vs. Managing Quality Score

Achieving optimal results takes more than making the right bids; it also takes understanding the importance of managing Quality Score (QS). An advertiser can make optimizations that will increase their QS and decrease their Cost-per-Clicks (CPCs), while still finding the sweet spot on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Instead of increasing bids to achieve this spot, an increased effort in smart QS optimizations will ensure an advertiser runs the most cost-effective campaigns possible.

In the end, it is important to effectively manage bids with efficient processes to increase the time available for advanced optimizations that will increase QS. Whether working as a full-service agency or when building our campaign management solution, eSearchVision merges these two fundamental ideas together to provide the highest quality service and most innovative technology on the market.