eSearchVision Official US blog » Uncategorized

Search Engine “Recommendations”

esearchvision — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:55:50 +0000

If you’ve had a meeting in the last 3-6 months with a search engine account team, then you probably left the meeting frustrated. It appears that sometime in the last two quarters, the powers that be in the big 3 search engines have recognized advertiser’s dependency on them for strategy…so they’ve taken into their own hands to make the most of it. We’ve heard it all: “Holiday starts in October,” “Get ahead of the competition by ramping up spend,” “You’re missing 50% of available impressions…why not increase bids to get more market share [regardless of performance]?” Here’s my question: When did the search engines make the conscious decision to stop caring about customer satisfaction and begin to make recommendations with their own best interests at the forefront of the discussion? At least they used to pretend that advertiser performance was top of mind.

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

Tagged: account, bid management, impressions, marketing, online, paid search, search engine, search engine marketing, SEM

Breaking through the clutter – choosing the right SEM agency

rnathan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:41:23 +0000

“Best in class”, “We drive results”, “Industry leader”.
These are just a few of the things SEM agencies claim as their identity. Like everything else, advertisers are flooded with messaging demonstrating that each agency is better than the next but the question is, “why?” What makes Agency X the leader? What makes Agency Y the best? Agencies are great at calling themselves the All-star, but don’t always make it clear for advertisers just why they are deserving of these titles. As SEM is all about numbers, it is particularly important for advertisers to gain clear insight into the pros and cons of each agency and not just rely on a glamorous marketing pitch. Below are a few things to consider when researching SEM companies:
1. Technology. While agencies will usually provide information on their technological capabilities, it is a good idea to dig deeper than this. Find out if they developed their own technology or if they license it from another SEM company. If they license it out, what made them choose this specific technology? Do they plan to change anytime soon? Why or why not?
2. Internal intelligence. It is a good idea to investigate how the company is broken down. A company that is 80% sales, 10% account management and 10% engineers is going to perform differently than a company that is 20% sales, 40% account management, 20% analytical and 20% engineers.
3. Historical performance. Perhaps the best way to see the true colors of an SEM agency is to talk to past and present clients. Agencies should be able to provide references for more official conversations or advertisers can just ask around to get an idea of an agency’s past business successes and mishaps.
4. Personality. At the end of the day, numbers are what count. However, there is a lot to be said for account managers and sales teams that you feel comfortable with. As agencies will work as part of your team, likeability shouldn’t be ignored.
The bottom line is that SEM isn’t a fluffy form of advertising nor is it the most creative. While a flashy website or shiny presentation can be enticing, it is important for advertisers to focus on other factors when ultimately choosing an SEM agency. SEM is about results and results aren’t proven by an agency’s marketing, they are proven through true SEM capabilities and intelligence. By taking the points above into careful consideration, you will be set-up for both strong SEM results and a successful relationship with your agency.

The Human Side of Search

rnathan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:05:53 +0000

As the Search Engine Marketing industry continues its maturation, the old growing pains are making way for new ones. We are glad to see that search solution providers are becoming more transparent, particularly in encouraging advertisers to own their own search engine accounts or at least making the account data easily available. This is a significant improvement over the old days when agencies “owned” search engine accounts and it was nearly impossible for advertisers to get their own data, let alone logins to the account. However, a new issue, which is perhaps equally concerning, is the trend towards removing the human element from the search equation.

We see this in two ways:
1. Search vendors provide the technology and minimum training on the platform but do not teach the ins-and-outs and, in particular, do not provide search-relevant training to make a search engine management technology truly effective.

2. Search vendors suddenly concerned about cutting cost are putting huge swaths of search programs on automated strategies and not performing ongoing analyses to understand the ramifications and strategic optimizations.

As proprietary search technologies continue evolving to provide added functionality to the search engines, it is crucial that advertisers continue demanding not only transparency but also human expertise. Search Engine Marketing is not a “set it and forget it” operation, even with the most advanced platforms on the market. There are too many externalities to depend solely on automated strategies. In order to get the most out of a search solution, advertisers should expect to change their workload from execution to strategic analysis for greater search control and success.

Josh Krafchin

The Perfect Searcher

esearchvision — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:21:16 +0000

As a paid search marketer, one of our main goals is to drive qualified traffic to our clients’ websites in the most efficient, cost effective manner. These days, expensive keywords, fierce competition and the mystical Quality Score have forced us to find new ways to find this “perfect searcher.”

So how does one go about finding the perfect searcher? How do you find the right keywords for the lowest CPCs? Mainstream tools such as Trellian’s KW Discovery, WordTracker, Nichebot, and Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool are extremely valuable resources and offer many great keyword research methods and statistics. While these tools are a great starting point, when you’re ready to hone your campaigns to the level of maximum efficiency and ROI, the next step is to utilize the advanced keyword data available through tools like Google’s Search Query Report or our internal Raw Request report. These reports provide the actual search queries that are triggering your PPC ads.

Without spending too much time on their definitions, Broad and Phrase match keywords have the unique ability to trigger ads by matching relevant search queries with keywords you are currently bidding on. Utilizing Broad and Phrase match keywords, search query reports will show you exactly how people are searching for your products or services. You have the opportunity to continuously harvest new keywords and expand your Exact match keywords, which typically have lower CPCs than Broad and Phrase match. In addition, if you find your ads are triggered byirrelevant search terms, add these to your negative keywords to weed out unqualified clicks, thus reducing unnecessary costs.

Another helpful report you can use to help understand searchers is a keyword click path report. Often, a buyer’s decision making process first involves carrying out research by searching for very generic, costly terms. When the buyer is closer to purchase, they will use brand keywords or more specific keywords in their search. While the expensive, generic keywords can play a vital part in the research phase, on paper they have low conversion rates and deliver a low ROI because they don’t get credit for the conversions. Keyword click path data gives you the ability to understand the entire consumer journey versus the traditional “last click wins” methodology. Now you can assess the value of all clicks in the consumer journey and take action. For example, you might increase bids on those generic keywords that appear at the beginning of the click path where CPCs would have previously been reduced.

Search query and keyword click path reports might seem a little daunting to a new paid search marketer. But utilizing these types of advanced datasets will definitely help in conducting good keyword research and finding the perfect searcher, which is crucial to the success of any paid search campaign in today’s complex market.

Jacqueline Brown

Tagged: adwords, CPC, keyword, search, SEM

Social Media – Finding a Balance

esearchvision — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:26:39 +0000

In the world of marketing, we are dominated by the digital media all around us. The evidence is everywhere: the rapid growth of mobile search, branding campaigns spawned by YouTube and of course, social media tools. If you don’t buy into it, try having a discussion with someone about current marketing strategies without the focus turning to Twitter.

Social media as a whole has gained instant popularity among marketers and advertisers – and why wouldn’t it? The tools, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Technorati, FriendFeed, SlideShare, MySpace and many more, encourage instant brand updates and have the capability to reach gigantic audiences all at once. Brand perceptions can be improved almost overnight with strategic messaging and blasting. To top it all off, they’re completely free!

Social media tools have some serious benefits, but getting the most from these tools isn’t always a piece of cake. Today, it is becoming more and more difficult to be the cutting-edge marketer the industry expects. With the continuous growth of the online social network and introduction of new web tools, simply keeping up with the latest development in the social internet world is a feat.

In spearheading our internal social media marketing effort, I have come across a slew of sites for uploading photos, sending out messages, sharing bookmarks and more. Though it’s exciting to find these different branding opportunities right at my fingertips, the question has become, how do I keep up with all this while still doing the rest of my job?

Registering my company’s name on the sites is continuously the top priority as “squatting” (brand stealing) is one of the negative byproducts of the free flow of information provided by these social tools. However, once I register our name on any and all applicable sites, I still have to spend time writing for and updating each site as taking full advantage of my social outlets is an ongoing effort. In this case, I struggled for a few weeks, trying to post regular updates across a few of the main sites and constantly debating how much time I should dedicate to this particular marketing instrument. And then I learned about Ping.fm at a local marketing meeting in Ann Arbor.

Ping.fm is a free site that allows marketers to update all social sites at once. I created an account and was presented with a list of over 40 different websites that I can add to my ping.fm network. Not only were all of my sites listed, but I got ideas for new social websites as well.

Select sites to ad on Ping.fm

I registered my top messaging websites and can now “ping” multiple outlets all at once! Of course, Ping.fm permits selective pinging, if I should want to ping only a few of my sites for a particular post. Ping.fm also allows users to send updates via text, email and through many of the social sites themselves. The customization options appear to be endless.

Ping.fm has saved me a ton of time already, and until the next tool comes along, I would recommend giving Ping.fm a try to achieve an efficient and consistent use of social media.

Rebecca Nathan

Tagged: marketing, ping.fm, social, twitter

Take Advantage of Mobile Search for Holiday 09

mwendling — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:15:50 +0000

In the retail world there are two seasons: holiday and the rest of the year. Companies will host a few other sales that bring in significant revenue, but everyone knows the big money comes in during Q4. With the influx of search opportunity, competition, and new technology during the holiday season, when we talk about the future of search, it’s applicable to look at both the short term [holiday 09] and the longer term [2010 and beyond].

As we witnessed during the 2008 holiday season, consumers are shopping for a deal – even more so in times of recession. What’s changed since the last time around? Those big ticket items from last year are turning into the biggest marketing opportunities for 2009, namely smartphones (and other internet enabled portable devices such as iPod Touch). For SEM purposes, the biggest difference between a smartphone and a WAP enabled phone is a true (HTML based) web browser – as HTML mobile browsers can support standard ad copy. With the introduction of device targeting within Google AdWords, advertisers can isolate smartphones into a unique campaign and take full advantage of opportunities like geo-targeting and one-click purchasing. Imagine seeing an ad targeted to your zip code for the exact product you’re searching for at a store nearby, and instantly making a purchase with one click.

As mobile phones close in on saturation and more and more phones are web enabled, Google has released case studies documenting and projecting the rise of mobile search with no signs of slowing down; mobile search is projected to equal computer search in 2012. If consumers are searching on-the-go, any advertiser that isn’t reaching out to them is missing an opportunity.

The immediate question is: how do we take advantage of this opportunity? AdWords automatically opts all advertisers into mobile search by default, so there’s nothing that needs to be done, right? Wrong. Just like any search medium, mobile search is its own beast and requires a savvy marketing team to capitalize on the opportunity with a unique strategy. Google only shows one ad (assuming Quality Score is high) above the search results on a mobile SERP, and one or two below the results (both below the results if Quality Score is not high enough to qualify for premium positioning):

Search in Google Mobile [iPhone

This means that in order for mobile search to be effective, ads must have an average rank between 1-3 or impression share will be lost. Furthermore, an advertiser’s website needs to be relatively optimized for mobile browsers, making it possible for a consumer to easily purchase from a mobile device. As the purpose of this mobile strategy is to drive sales or at least drive customers to brick and mortar stores, rather than increase brand awareness, keyword and ad copy strategies will need to adapt to this. Keywords should be lower funnel terms – or transaction related terms – to control CPA/CoS, while ad copy for these terms should be hyper-targeted (geographically and/or demographically) to further qualify clicks and limit cost.

After the latest iPhone release (with a reported 1,000,000 sales in the first weeks) and the constant stream of competitors growing every month, smartphones have become readily available to consumers and are no longer limited to corporate BlackBerrys. Given this rapid growth, it’s safe to say that the next step in search evolution is upon us and will be realized during holiday 2009. With that in mind, it’s critical to develop a mobile-specific plan leading into holiday to ensure that Quality Score and strategies are in place when it really counts.

Benny Blum

Tagged: holiday, mobile, SEM

Paid Search and the RFP Process

esearchvision — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:25:00 +0000

The formal RFP is a preferred method for many companies desiring an exhaustive and standardized evaluation of multiple vendors. If you are thinking about issuing an interactive agency RFP that includes SEM, there are some unique characteristics that set paid search, and thus their RFPs, apart from other marketing channels. As regular RFP participants, we’ve learned a lot about how to get the most out of this process. The following are some recommendations for the SEM portion of your RFP.

Keep the SEM section focused on SEM. The word Marketing in SEM can be misleading as paid search success is fundamentally an analytics exercise and the channel is remarkably complex. Although it is important to understand how paid search will interact with other channels and how an agency will help accomplish overall marketing goals, keeping the RFP SEM section focused on SEM will trigger the specific and detailed answers you need to pick the right vendor.
Find out who your account team really is. Paid search workloads crop up in bunches and it’s important to have a scalable account team. Who is supporting your day-to-day account team from a technical, analytics and ad-hoc reporting/project perspective? Yes, the bios of your day-to-day contacts are important, but knowing how your account will be supported from a holistic perspective is also key.
Check out the technology. Even when looking for a multi-media digital agency, SEM mastery lies in the technical details. Does the agency offer extensive reporting, flexible bid solutions, quality score focused architecture, ad-hoc statistical analysis? Who developed the technology – if not the agency itself, how long will it take to get fixes or improvements? Have you had a live demo or asked for a test? SEM technology is complex, and it behooves you to exhaustively vet the agency’s solution before signing the contract.
Understand the methodologies. Technology and talent only take you so far – tried and tested SEM methodologies are ultimately the glue that pulls a program together and earn incremental benefits. Be sure your RFP asks for a comprehensive and thoughtful explanation of SEM methodology.
Get real-world proof. If you’re primarily looking for technology, ask for a 2-3 month trial period. Trial periods are becoming standard, and they are critical to evaluating if the technology is a good fit for your business. If you’re primarily looking for an agency, ask for an in-depth analysis of your existing program and specific recommendations of how the agency will take it to the next level.

All in all, RFPs are an important part of the due-diligence process and deserve thoughtful attention. Please share additional thoughts you have on designing and responding to quality RFPs that add value for everyone involved.

Josh Krafchin

Tagged: paid search, RFP, sales, SEM