Did I fall asleep? I turn my attention from Search for a few weeks (okay, so it’s really been a bit longer) and I return to find major companies running more than one campaign in paid search!
To many of you this may not be news; like I said, I’m playing catch up. Just the same, it’s new to me so let’s investigate and start with from the beginning as I think this is a huge change for Google and the industry.
Square one
In the beginning, Google restricted companies to one ad campaign on a given keyword. To most, this policy was irrelevant, smaller companies could neither afford more nor conceive of ways to run more campaigns on the same keyword. As a result, to some, it was a great equalizer; for big companies, big brands, deep pockets, and diversified conglomerates, running more than one campaign is a means of boxing out competition in search – forcing everyone to one per keyword prevents this.  Take, for example, a major travel site facilitating hotel reservations, car rentals, airline tickets, etc. On a search for “Hawaii travel” (I just got back from Kauai), a consumer wants a diverse set of options from which to choose; Google’s policy once ensured this, enforcing that search results present different alternatives. Now, major travel companies, so long as they promote distinct products or price points, can own two spots: Book a hotel in Hawaii; Cheap flights to Hawaii.
On one hand, this strikes me as a more appropriate marketplace; businesses have different products and services and should be able to promote them on relevant keywords. On the other hand, it makes it much more difficult for the small and self employed business owners who have neither the money, nor time, to play this game. Sure, the local travel agent could do the same but would they know how? Could they afford it? And really, how many major travel businesses can you count on two hands? Times 2 ads and the ad space is taken and small travel companies are out of the game.
Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Sign of the Economic Times
What I find more interesting is the underlying implication. Why the recent change in policy? What would search revenue look like for the internet giant if they had not done this; not reduced restrictions on the search marketplace? To be sure, better or worse for advertisers, what the change means is more competition for ad space; driving up rates and revenue during a time when they were likely in decline.
What frustrates is that the change does more to support bigger companies that the surface suggests. I’ve long struggled with and investigated the idea that known brands have an advantage on Google because the impact of Quality Scores – clicks on ads factor into position relative to what you bid. A logical model for Google (they make the most possible by favoring ads/brands that drive more revenue) but unknown companies have to scratch their way to some recognition, while known brands, with the deeper pockets, pay pennies for the same real estate. Now, the big brands can own double the space while still paying less per click – they’ve just gained an exponentially increasing benefit over small businesses.
I suppose what frustrates more is the loss of what was effectively a great equalizer. While the one ad policy may or may not have been the right choice for Google and businesses at large, it did equalize the opportunity to acquire search real estate, in some way. I’m increasingly a fan, a champion, of companies like eBay, crowdSPRING, oDesk, and free web services that compete antiquated paid models. The later includes businesses like Amazon’s publisher service, iTunes, Skype, Campfire (alright, yes, Campfire is a paid service I just think its REALLY cool), Tokbox, and admittedly Outright.com and our partners.  The former make it easier and cheaper to find or promote products and services. All, level the playing field by eliminating barriers to entry and putting players on the field to compete based on skill, not (so much) dollars or influence.  Google’s just moved a step from that crowd and I’m disappointed. In a strange twist of fate, it occurs to me that Google, who owns Google Docs (free web services that do as much against Microsoft Office), has just pulled an Apple iPhone App Store move.
I am very excited about the Unintentional Entrepreneur meetup next Wednesday! If in the Bay Area, I’d love to see you there! We’ll have pizza, drinks… the event is FREE!
We’re going to talk about some the fundamentals of a new business; managing income, expenses, and taxes; establishing and maintaining your brand online; and quick, critical marketing considerations such as SEO and network (social or otherwise). Kevin Reeth will be there if you want to pick a brain on startups or what we’re doing.
Lorna, founder of Search Marketing Salon and one of the best social and search marketers in the business, will share some thoughts on marketing your business. The chance alone to chat with her is worth the price of admission (free, by the way). I’ve had the pleasure of catching her at a few conferences and love her conscientious approach; she writes Green Marketing 2.0, aimed at helping activists, nonprofit professionals, and social entrepreneurs understand the basics of how to use web-based tools increase the visibility of important issues.
Register now we so know you’re coming; July 15th at 6 pm. We’ll take care of the food and drinks and open the doors to Langton Labs (which is a fantastic art gallery) to have some fun.
Last week, web site analytics engine Omniture agreed to acquire Mercado’s multi-channel retailer site search and merchandising businesses. Macy’s, Overstock.com, Williams-Sonoma Inc., Sears Holdings Corp., and OfficeMax, are just a few of the major retailers who use leverage Mercado consulting and technology services to vastly improve the effectiveness of their store’s navigation, search experience, and product merchandising to increase conversions.
Simply, Mercado enables a form of multivariate testing, enabling merchants to dynamically test thousands of variables to determine that which delivers your preferred results. Which is more compelling to your customers? Free Shipping or 25% off? While this can be tested with simple A/B testing, consider too that you might want to know if 10% or 30% is more effective. What about a free gift, upgrade, or a coupon toward their next purchase? Perhaps something simpler such as a ‘no questions asked’ return policy? With so many variables, a solution, like that which Mercado delivers, is the only way to truly optimize your online shopping experience.
Now, throw Omniture in the mix and the possibilities cause the mind to spin! Omniture, which not long ago aquired Hitbox, is a terribly sophisticated analytics engine capable of tracking just about everything that happens on, and in some cases off, your site. There have long been questions about the value Omniture delivers relative to Google Analytics (which is free); the most compelling reason to use Omniture is its tie to other solutions such as Mercado and SearchCenter.
Search Center is a suite of search engine marketing tools with the overwhelming advantage of being integrated with your site analytics (assuming you are using Omniture). Think of it as Marin Software or even just AdSense on steroids in that your SEM programs are already tied into rich performance metrics on everything from conversion to fall out, newsletter registrations to call tracking (conceivably), time spent to conversion rates. If you are managing search in-house, SearchCenter is well worth a close look.
How on earth did my mention of Mercado come around to search?
Interesting to me is that Omniture seems to be making moves to become an end to end marketing and analytics solution. Coupled with their best-in-class consultants, Omniture will be able to deliver search marketing solutions through landing page optimization, with the internet’s most advanced reporting platform smack-dab in the middle.
What struck me so directly, was how readily available and easily developed this insight was, once it occurred to me to try. 48 hours ago, I shut off a paid search campaign of over 10,000 keywords. The exact amount isn’t as applicable to you as knowing that this was the entire SEM campaign for a specific website. The results were not surprising so much as they were significantly important.
Experienced, was an immediate drop in organic, or natural, search traffic. Of almost 12%!
Let’s be clear for those of you unfamiliar with each channel from search engines to your site. Your organic search results are the listings for your website that automatically appear in Google and Yahoo. I hope you are practicing SEO or, Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of improving the quality of your site so that it appears as prominently and accurately as possible in search engines. On the other side of search you have SEM or, Search Engine Marketing (which is, personally, a confusing reference as SEO is technically also marketing). SEM usually refers to Paid Search or the keywords you buy directly from or through an agency into Google. This program costs you money but puts you more prominently on the page.
There has been some work on the idea of Search Synergy (I think I just coined that term for lack of a better way to summarize the study); that is, that paid search campaigns and how/where you appear in natural search can be optimized against one another. Performics has done some work in this space and every so often we see a study about the similarity between SEO and SEM. But little solid work has been done due to the complexity in tracking, benchmarking, and changing your organic search results to test things. What can be done, is testing paid search based on your organic search results. In effect, that’s just what I’ve done; on a comprehensive scale.
Shutting off all paid search resulted in 12% less FREE traffic. This is critical stuff. Your paid search budget, your campaign, has an ROI greater than you are likely measuring. Such a statement has been known for years and I’ve posted before how important it is that you completely track searcher clickstream to understand the complete impact of your paid search activity. Now, I have some concrete data validating that your paid search ads actually cause people to click on your natural search results.
The only way to really know the impact this has on your site is to do it. Luckily, I had results in 24 hours and gave it another 24 only so I could validate the days data. How do you do this? First, shut of paid search, only for a couple days, but you have to stop to get the insight. You probably have straightforward paid search metrics; such as, spending $20k a month on 10k keywords from which you get, say, 250,000 clicks to your site. Now watch how much your organic search traffic changes. In my case, 12% or a drop of about 5k clicks a day! 150k clicks a month.
At the end of the day, that paid search program, the one on which you are spending $20k a month and measuring 250k visits, is ACTUALLY delivering 400k visits. You aren’t spending $.08 per click but, effectively, only $.05; you can either increase your bids and paid search budget to bring it back to an effective $.08 (in turn driving more traffic and revenue) or, call your boss and chalk up a huge win for the day
Has anyone else had a similar experience? If so, please share. As we wrestle with constrained budgets, higher expectations, and increasing need for justification, knowing that your SEM program results in more traffic through the free listings you have in the organic results could make all the difference in the world.
Keynotes include Bill Tancer and Google’s Tim Armstrong giving us a chance to get more insider tips on the skunk works that is Google AdWords. I’m looking forward most to the Local Search discussion featuring Mike Blumenthal, Steve Espinosa, Craig Greenfield, Eric Stein (no blog Eric?), and Tony Wright. Hosted by Greg Sterling, we have an exceptional panel that I hope (no! expect darnit!) makes mention of one minor, recent announcement in particular. Second, only to the Local Search panel, is a session on search dedicated to Retail. With Vintage Tub & Bath’s Allan Dick wrangling Vic Dabricky, Greg Hintz, Ken Jurina, and Stephan Spencer (with whom I’m still fascinated by the fact that their entire website, I believe, is actually a blog). I expect to hear that great news mentioned again as there is no better opportunity for retailers this holiday season! (tell me I’m wrong) Let alone a very interesting (if that’s the right word) session on Search Marketing For Newspapers & Magazines and another on Search & Branding; and that’s just the first day!
Squeeze in to that Searchbash, and a song AND dance I’ll be doing at 1 from the show floor on Tuesday, and you have the makings of what might be the year’s best search marketing conference. They even dabbled in that old fashioned, print marketing world to promote this thing! (*shudder* risky I know… how are they tracking ROI?!) I’ve got a booth on the floor so grab a map and come say hello or I hope to catch you at one of the networking events – drinks are on… well… I don’t know? Danny?
My heart bleeds with tears of sorrow at the discovery by iProspect and JupiterResearch that nearly half (45%) of search engine marketers do NOT integrate their search marketing efforts with offline channels.
How can we be doing this when evidence consistently shows that a majority of searchers are driven to search by an offline channel?!
Over half of paid search marketers integrate at least one offline marketing channel (a moment of silence please, in honor of those of you getting it right…) HOWEVER TV and radio integration trails direct mail and newspaper as though there is some collusion between print and search while TV and Radio (“MASS” communication) neglects that in the 21st century, people SEARCH for information about something they’ve seen, read, or learned.
Perhaps more disheartening, was the discovery that this isn’t the traditional marketers’ fault but that of the SEMs. Offline, marketers are at least including their website address in television commercials and the like but notice how drastically few are aligning keywords with search marketers. I can only infer then how embarrassingly few are running keywords that align with the offline marketing campaigns.
Two of the most often cited excuses? Budget (move the money!) and lack of management buy-in (is it not our jobs to maximize the performance of search??). I’d love to hear what we’re still missing. What makes this so challenging?
From my own experience it isn’t the lack of management buy-in but the inexperience of the traditional marketers and concern, over the threat SEM poses to traditional marketing budgets, should it perform as well as it does. All too often I’ve dealt with the TV or radio ad agencies and marketers who won’t share what they’re doing or are determined to run a search program themselves so the attention remains on them for the performance of their campaign. Frustrating, to be sure, as you are then left managing inconsistent search programs, poor bid strategies, and convoluted campaign priorities.
Bottom line is simple, you must integrate paid search with traditional and offline marketing programs. Do it for yourself and by yourself if you must as the data consistently shows that offline marketing creates demand; demand that will perform for you.
Poetic Prophet, Chuck, a Pop Labs super star and viral marketing genius (though they deal in SEO and search marketing) is turning interactive marketing concepts into original music. Here, a rap about making the right choices in your online marketing campaigns to increase not only traffic but the conversions you get.
I’m looking forward to a keynote from Chuck at an upcoming marketing conference; we could use the entertainment! Looking at Pop Labs though, I am left wondering, did I miss the trend in pop bottle logo design?
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