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.

This question often comes up when facing relatively inexperienced advertisers deciding between PPC and SEO. While I cannot refute any argument based solely on this logic (organic clicks are free and paid clicks are not), I can make a case for PPC even when SEO is at its best – which certainly is not the case for the majority of sites out there.
There are three distinct advantages that paid listings have over organic listings, and as a result these are the three most compelling arguments for integration of SEM into any marketing scheme:

1. If you don’t use SEM, your competition will poach your traffic. The competition has always been able to bid on your terms, but since AdWords changed its trademark policy to allow competitors to actually use these terms in their ad copy, it has never been more important to claim the real estate that is rightfully yours.

Consider the following query for [iphone]. In the first instance, both AT&T and Apple are in premium positions:

Now imagine if AT&T owned the entire premium position, without Apple:

In both cases, Apple SEO is perfect in placing Apple.com at the top of the organic listing. However, in the second search, where there is no Apple ad, my eye is drawn to the AT&T ad instead of the Apple organic result. If I am specifically looking for the Apple website, I may click on the organic link. However, it’s inevitable that many users will click on the AT&T ad because they will see it first.

1. SEM allows for customized messaging, whereas the text for organic links is determined by the search engine. While several factors can help to control the text in the organic link (including but not limited to the page description, title and header tags) it’s a significant process and requires some technical knowledge. Ad copy can be changed almost instantly using paid ads, allowing marketers to create and rotate in unique messaging for sales, promotions, product launches, and so on. Furthermore, marketers can test which ads work best, optimizing for CTR and conversion rates by optimizing landing pages.

Consider the following query for a Sony Bravia TV:

While the organic link is relevant, Sony is running a promotional offering of a PS3 or Blu-Ray player with a TV purchase. This efficient and enticing offer might sway a consumer who was intending on purchasing the TV from Best Buy to click on the Sony ad and purchase directly.
Of course, ads can be tailored for more than just promotional purposes…

3. SEM can be optimized for the consumer buying cycle. In their highly regarded book, Search Engine Marketing Inc, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt conclude that all search terms can be classified as: informational, navigational, or transactional. Informational queries are for research [best flat screen tv], navigational queries are for getting to a specific website [sony.com], and transactional queries show user intent to purchase [buy bravia xbr8 hdtv]. How is this relevant to SEM? Because ads can be customized for different types of queries, SEMs can create ads that are tailored to users in different stages of the buying cycle.

A consumer typing in an informational query is researching a product, idea, service, etc. Calling out this notion in the ad copy and driving traffic to an informational page where the consumer can learn about the product(s) in question will build trust and allow them to make their own way down the sales funnel. Consider the query [plasma or LCD TV?]. This query indicates the consumer does not know which kind of television to purchase. Driving the consumer to a product page for a particular TB will not yield a sale, whereas driving the consumer to a page describing the benefits and drawbacks of plasma versus LCD may yield a sale. Whether or not the sale is made in that session, the consumer is likely to trust the source of unbiased information when moving forward and purchasing the TV.

Following the same logic, building ads that are relevant for navigational and transactional queries will have positive ramifications. Understanding and classifying various keywords as informational, navigational or transactional is a significant step to understanding consumer behavior. Studying post-click consumer behavior using an analytics package (such as Google Analytics) will give insight into how effectively consumers can work their way through the sales funnel within your website – channeling those informational clicks into transactions.

Benny Blum

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

To be fair, this is not indicative of every team I have worked with. Some teams are more capable than others, and teams that handle more mature programs tend to deliver fewer of these pitches – instead focusing on new products beta tests. That said, if you manage a budget for a relatively new player in search, let this be a warning to take these meetings with a grain of salt. The account teams do a very good job of illustrating potential volume of incremental traffic however they fail to back up the data with a forecasted ROI. If you do happen to sit in on one of these meetings, I urge you to question the presentation. Force the team to do due diligence and provide logical insight for scaling the account efficiently and effectively.

While I generally try not to promote our company through this blog, this seems to be the perfect opportunity to plug the advantages of using an independent search agency and technology provider. Companies such as eSearchVision have employees who spend all of their time (including yours truly) analyzing this kind of data and developing best practices and strategies – providing a clear and logical pathway to extrapolate directional metrics into actionable insight with the clients best interest (ROI) in mind. Furthermore, we use proprietary forecasting tools to project ROI to back up or refute the expansion opportunities presented by the search engines. We are mediators – directing the search engine teams to focus on the right categories, filtering insight, and shaping strategies to efficiently scale.

Benny Blum

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

The question though, is how to know if a test is successful.

Criteria for success fall into two categories: Usability and Performance.

Usability

Pros: You can get a sense very quickly of whether the platform fits your day-to-day management needs. Is the platform fast-loading, intuitive, and flexible? Does it cut down the number of hours typically spent doing routine work? Does it provide easy access to reports and the ability to manipulate large chunks of data with minimal struggle? Within a couple weeks of a test, you will naturally get a good sense of whether the technology is making your life easier or more stressful. 

Cons: While easy to get a sense of, usability is difficult to quantify. Ultimately, this is a subjective decision, so you need to be careful to take a balanced perspective on the user experience.

Performance

Pros: Performance is measurable & definable: You can set specific goals and assess whether those goals have been met or not by using the platform.

Cons: All SEM programs are different. Depending on the accounts’ history and previous technology solutions, estimated results can vary. While in some instances, improvements can be found within a couple weeks, in other cases it may take months before finding the optimal way to take advantage of the platform. It’s critical to give an appropriate timeframe for measuring performance enhancements, typically 1-3 months.

Ultimately, a successful test will combine strong usability with a lift in performance. While SEM is all about improving results, it’s also important to go with your gut and choose the solution that will help you manage your SEM program as efficiently as possible.

Josh Krafchin