Search Engine Marketing
How To Pick A SEM Agency: Part 1 Search Engine Marketing
When picking a agency to manage your SEM (search engine marketing) you need to take into account more than just if they know Google Adwords. Today there are a multitude of factors that you need to consider to get a complete experience when it comes to your online marketing. We’ll be publishing all of the components that go into your strategy in the order listed below. The first of five part series will focus on SEM itself, but I want to stress that the other four components are very important as you look at a comprehensive strategy for Online Marketing.
- Search Engine Marketing
- Web Analytics
- A/B and MVT Testing
- Landing Page Optimization
- Online Marketing
Search Engine Marketing
Today Google owns roughly 70% market share, Yahoo 20%, Microsoft 5% and Ask 5%. These numbers constantly change, but your agency should know that a comprehensive strategy encompasses more than just Google. Different search engines produce different conversion rates across different verticals. Your product could work better in Yahoo than Google, so ensure that your agency tests them out to see which performs better.
You also want to see what services are included in your contract. Services vary greatly by agency or consultant. Some are bundled as packages, others claim to do ‘everything’. What you need to ensure is that everything is spelled out ahead of time so that nothing is left to chance. Some basic services include:
- Keyword Research
- Account Setup
- Geotargeting
- Dayparting
- Negative Keywords
- Ad Creation
- Content Network Research
- Conversion Tracking Implementation
- Account Management
- Reporting
Other services may be more complex, depending on if your agency or consultant needs include integrating with existing APIs, database or inventory management, web analytics tracking, etc. This will need to be discussed with the agency or consultant as to the extent of this involvement.
Paying for an agency or consultant to manage your SEM is still not yet standardized across the industry. Some work on a fixed monthly cost, others on an hourly or retainer basis. The most popular method though is working off a percentage of ad spend. The percentage varies from 8% to 25% depending upon the agency or consultant and the task involved. If your goal is to simply drive the cheapest traffic possible then it obviously requires substantially less time than if you had a product that has a finite quantity and constantly needs to be adjusted. Adding in performance based incentives, setup fees, or working for a mandatory minimum amount of ad spend is another way that some agencies and consultants operate.
Contract length is another topic that deserves some attention. A highly skilled agency or consultant has substantial front loaded time dedicated to properly setting up a segmented account, implementing web analytics, conversion tracking, keyword research, etc. To be fair I would recommend a six month contract. The first 90 days are filled with experimentation. As a client do you want to try bidding on competitor keywords (as long as they are not trademarked)? Do your organic keywords convert better or worse as paid keywords? These are all questions that time needs to resolve. Days 91 - 180 are when you truly get a firm understanding of what your ‘money’ keywords are, and has started to optimize your account.
Certification is something that I have been asked about quite frequently. Do you need to hire someone who is an Google Adwords Certified Professional or a Platinum Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador? The answer in my opinion is that these certificates are similar to what the IT industry has with certificates. Nice to put in a PowerPoint presentation, but not incredibly indicative of ability or skill. I have these certificates and would say that anyone who reads the Adwords Documentation for eight hours could pass this test. Do you really want to ensure your campaign to someone with eight hours of on paper experience? I once had someone who worked for me fail the test the first try, but who I considered my best SEM analyst.
Now that you have some of the basics use the following checklist if you’re looking for an agency to simply handle SEM. Future posts will outline a more comprehensive strategy which I highly recommend. The basic checklist should look like:
- Setup a meeting with several vendors
- Come prepared to explain your product, target cost per acquisition, etc.
- Request an RFP complete with costs, services, and forecasting
- Negotiate terms, reporting, consultation, etc.
- Account should be able to start within one to two weeks of contract signing off
- After 30 days meetings should be setup to assess progress
- Continue to actively monitor your progress on a weekly basis
I’ve tried to cover most of the basics, but for the sake of sanity I haven’t went so deep as to be highly confusing for a novice who is just starting out. For further explanation please feel free to comment or contact us.
Clever Search Engine Marketing Effort by Woot
A few days ago I was looking up the share price of Google and noticed a great ad that Woot had placed, which I captured in a screenshot above. With all of the market turmoil, recession talk, and financial collapse they capitalized with a clever ad reminding people that Woot is available to spend your last remaining dollars. Now I’m not sure what the CPL/CPA is from this strategy, but in my opinion it is one of those intangible brand awareness campaigns that cannot always be accurately measured. Anyone know who handles SEM for Woot or if they are in house?
Utilizing Adwords To Take Advantage of Metrolink Situation
On Friday a Metrolink train crashed in Los Angeles killing 25 people. This was the deadliest train crash in over 25 years. Almost immediately after this occurred lawyers started buying up keywords such as ‘metrolink crash’ advertising their services. While the practice is fairly common to take advantage of breaking news to buy traffic this seems a little shady. The lawyers who we saw engaging in this include:
- Larry H Parker
- Seeg Miller Johnson
- Get a Referral
- Eisenburg
I completely understand that everyone needs to make a living, but I can’t believe that this is great for your brand as a lawyer to be seen as an ambulence chaser, and possibly the companies or agencies running SEM for these lawyers are simply looking for leads. Has anyone else seen this kind of activity taking place?
Consistency When Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion
One of the more popular options when running SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns in either Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, or Ask is using a form of dynamic keyword insertion. There are several great guides written out there about the subject including this one from RedFly Marketing if you’re new to the subject.
Where I like to take it further is in the use of dynamic keyword insertion from start to finish. What I mean by this is that a user types in “Super Red Widget” in Google for example. Up pops an ad that has in the title exactly what I typed in, which is “Super Red Widget”. I think to myself, wow, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Note to readers: Dynamic keyword insertion is not the end all be all when it comes to text ads. There are several ads that I manage where traditional ads far outperform those which use dynamic keyword insertion, but this post centers around ads where it is effective.
After I see “Super Red Widgets” I as a user click on the ad which takes me to a landing page. Now traditionally this is where most SEM agencies and other marketers stop. Due to lack of control over the landing page or just not understanding what is possible with a decent web developer the use of dynamic keyword insertion is done. What I would suggest doing is talking with your development/technology group and asking them to try an experiment for you. Tell them you want to pass the keyword query from the search engine and insert it onto the landing page where you are driving the visitor. This can be in the form of a H1, H2, or H3 tag or it can be inserted as a Flash var if you have a Flash based website or header.
Sitting down with your developer and implementing some basic requirements is also helpful. If your keywords are particularly long you may want to put a keyword character length, similiar to what search engines do with default text in showing a standard keyword if the keyword exceeds that character length. Other requirements of capitalizing the first letter of each word and indicating a space are items you may want to take into consideration.
Don’t worry about fully understanding the implementation, but it shouldn’t take a developer more than a couple hours to implement and test this. In future posts I’ll get more into A/B and MVT solutions, but if you do have knowledge about these you can easily setup an A/B test provided that you only run this on ad groups that fully utilize dynamic keyword insertion. Send the traffic to the page without dynamic keyword insertion on the landing page and one group that has dynamic keyword insertion.
The end result is to test out the theory that having a consistent usage of the user’s keyword from start to finish results in a higher conversion rate than simply stopping at the SERP (search engine results page). You start with the user typing the keyword into Google, then seeing the keyword in your ad copy, clicking on it, and seeing it again on the landing page. In my experience this has resulted in a lift in conversion rate most of the time. There have been a few exceptions when it didn’t so my advise is to try it out, and monitor your results carefully. If it results in a lift you can expand into other ad groups and campaigns.
One tip with this is to ensure that you have all of your negative keywords properly attached so that you don’t have words associated to the landing page that you wouldn’t otherwise bid on. Chances are if you’re bidding on competitor keywords or other iffy terms you may not want to implement this strategy for the particular ad group or campaign. If anyone has implemented this or something similiar to it I would love to hear your results. Please feel free to post comments or to contact me with your results.
