Archive for the 'Paid Search' Category

Geo-Targeting with Adwords

Published by
Jan
at August 7, 2008 in Paid Search. 0 Comments

So you have targeted different countries for your campaigns to run in, but are still getting conversions from users outside of your targeted locations. Now what? Well, we recently had to go through a whole exercise to exclude a certain country from one of our campaigns…

Let’s look at an example that is just weird: If you are for instance targeting the US and the UK with your campaign, you would think that people browsing google.com or google.co.uk, regardless of where they are in the world, should not see your ads, unless they are actually in the US or UK, right? Wrong… You might have noticed that your ads will still appear on .co.uk, even if you’re browsing from SA, like me, but not on .com. It seems that for some reason Google will check your IP when browsing .com, but not when browsing .co.uk.

There are a few ways to get around this. You could move from location or country targeting, to custom or area targeting. For instance, you could turn off the actual country in your target list and then select the actual states in that country. This seems to work, but end up looking rather messy when you’re looking at your campaign setup. This functionality is not yet available for all countries either.  The other option is to exclude ip ranges with the ip exclusion tool.

We are testing both options and will soon post our findings here.

Advertising with Limited Budgets

Published by
Jan
at June 20, 2008 in Paid Search. 0 Comments

Most online marketing agencies don’t like to take on clients with advertising budgets of anything less than R20k per month. There are a number of reasons for that, but the fact is that there is a place for smaller companies, or companies with limited budgets in the search specific advertising space.

Firstly, can you really expect a South African based company to whom internet marketing is still to a large extend a relatively new concept, to immediately start spending R20k per month on some new unfamiliar marketing channel? It’s not always an easy task convincing people to look further than the traditional marketing avenues when there are new budget allocations involved…

Secondly, depending on which industry you’re trying to market and who you are targeting, you can in most cases, easily prove to a client that search marketing or more specific, paid search marketing, will work for them with a monthly budget of R6k to R10k. One of the best selling points of PPC marketing is the great ROI generated by the channel. This will ensure that clients who start off on small budgets will in time see how their investments are working for them and increase their budgets accordingly.

In short what I’m trying to say is that if you have a marketable product, search marketing can definitely work for your company, even if you don’t have a massive budget to start with.

Is Google becoming an Agency?

Published by
Jan
at March 12, 2008 in Paid Search. 0 Comments

Yesterday, Google finalised their acquisition deal of DoubleClick, a company that offers an awesome range of online marketing products to advertisers, publishers and agencies.

One immediate question comes to mind:
What does it mean for all other agencies and Adwords advertisers?

In my opinion, it sure looks like Google is trying to position themselves as an agency. Just look at features on Adwords like the Conversion Optimizer, Budget Optimizer, etc. Now that they have a full blown campaign management system at their disposal, I think it might become increasingly difficult to sell bid and campaign management tools, etc as Google releases them for free on Adwords. This means that agencies will have to make greater effort to position themselves as marketing specialists and not just service providers with great tools. More companies will most likely do or try to do their marketing campaigns in-house.

If you take a step back and look at the internet and how it has become more user friendly over the past couple of years, especially with the immersion of web 2.0, one can start to see a trend. A few years ago, companies had to pay fortunes to get websites done for them and pay even more to have a content management system behind it. These days, with hundreds of web development tools, content management systems and blogs freely available, it has become much easier and cheaper to get your company online. I believe the same is happening with the marketing of these sites. It’s fast becoming much easier to effectively manage your own campaigns, etc. with the launch of every new product. The difference is that when you want an exceptional website or an exceptional marketing campaign, you still and will always need a specialist with passion for what he or she does, in order to make the project stand out from the rest.

In the long run I believe there will always be a need for specialist online marketing agencies as online marketing is not a science, but rather an art form, which needs a passionate artist to make it a big success.

Who’s who in the Adwords Zoo?

Published by
Jan
at March 9, 2008 in Paid Search. 1 Comment

Last week, somebody from Google made a crucial mistake, which sparked a flurry of cross channel marketing attempts.

On Friday morning when I looked at my inbox, I found a mail from the Google Advertising Professional team which at first seemed like just another mail from them asking advertisers to participate in one of their online surveys. In this case, the survey was to help them gather information about a potential new proposal document for advertisers to use when pitching to clients.

After reading the mail I noticed that for some reason the sender left all the “to” addresses in the mail, visible to everyone. As you can imagine, this list could be quite valuable as it is a real list, with real advertisers and no fake or generated email addresses… Almost immediately one of the recipients replied with an attempt to advertise his own marketing company. Soon after that the original sender replied, apologising for the mistake and asking everybody to respect their fellow Adwords advertisers and not to use the list for their own marketing attempts. The apology did not help and quite a few emails rolled in after that, some of them even stating that this is an opportunity not to be missed. Most of the opportunists asked for referrals and offered rewards for them.

Personally I don’t think spamming the list is the right thing to do. I did however appreciate the opportunity to go and check out my competitors without much effort in finding them. It’s easy to find the company website by looking at the email addresses. Looking at their websites, you can quickly get a very good image of the companies and decide if you want to try and align yourself or partner with them or not.

My advice to the people who have the list is to use the list to find the companies you think would be good for you to partner with and then contact them via the appropriate channels and to stop spamming the list.

To summarise, I think it leaves a bad impression when you are supposed to be a credible search marketing company, but yet, make use of the first dodgy opportunity you get to market yourself… O yes, and of course it’s good to see that even somebody working for Google can make a mistake :)

Does the South African Market understand Online Marketing?

Published by
Mandy
at February 21, 2008 in Paid Search. 2 Comments

Of course there are several companies who have finally caught on to the worldwide trend of transferring a large percentage of marketing dollars to online channels. But as a whole I would say that there is still a severe lack of comprehensive understanding of the opportunities that online marketing and specifically PPC can offer South African companies.

I was pretty shocked yesterday when I spoke to the marketing director of one of the biggest car rental companies in South Africa when she said that she already has “an online strategy because she has a web designer”. EEK! Dangerous territory for a travel related company. Especially when the web is the preferred channel for 50% of UK users searching for financial and travel items. [Source: Equi-Media, February 2006] and that an industry study revealed that nearly 75% of travel buyers used search engines before making a purchase. [DoubleClick / Performics / comScore, “Search Before the Purchase”, March 2005].

Whether your travel company is an online operator or not it stands to reason that an effective online marketing strategy is vital to your survival.

I also spoke with someone who has an inside interest in one of the major food and beverage retailers in South Africa who was also at his wits end trying to convince the big marketing honchos of the need for and the effectiveness of search marketing.

It is amazing to me that anyone in marketing has no interest or understanding of online marketing channels. Even if they are over 50 and have to get their children to set-up their online banking profiles…one would think that on a professional level they would hire a young online marketing professional who could source and manage relevant agencies to establish their brand’s online profile.

These two incidents revealed to me just how much revenue and indeed national and international exposure big corporates in SA are missing out on.

It is my opinion that the South African companies who are already operating in the online space or who are considering including it in their marketing mix in the next year are going to have a massive advantage over their competitors who are too intimidated by online marketing to even consider its worth. These ostriches who bury their heads do not realise that online advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry already in the US and that every day they shy away from the leap to online is lost revenue and lost branding opportunities.

There has never been a more targeted channel that provides such massive opportunity for feedback on consumer preferences and purchasing habits. Wakey wakey Marketing head honchos!

When to change Adcopy?

Published by
Jan
at February 14, 2008 in Paid Search. 0 Comments

Everybody knows that it is extremely important to keep your adcopy fresh and updated, but at what point do you decide whether an ad is working or not working? The answer to this question is not a simple one and will be different across different industries. Different criteria will apply to different industries, but I have found that for us, the best way of deciding whether or not to change an ad, is to apply a set of rules or formulas to our ad performance reports.

I have come up with a simple set of rules that works well for us. It needs to be said that this formula should only be applied once a number of other checks have been done and you are absolutely sure that it is the ad that is the problem and not the keywords in the group, the bid price of the keywords, the positions you’re targeting, etc.

Once I am sure I need to change my ads, these are the formulas (adjusted for each client) I use to check for trouble areas:

Clicks > (a) AND Transactions = 0
Cost Per Transaction > (a)
Click Through Rate < (a)% AND Impressions > (b)

If any of the conditions above are TRUE, the ad needs to be changed.

Search marketing companies should always be looking at ways of improving their ads and this is just a guideline for determining which ads are not working, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the ads for which the conditions are FALSE, can’t be improved on.

I would love to get input from anybody on this topic.

Yahoo’s “Pay Per Chick” Ad Copy error on Google

Published by
Mandy
at February 8, 2008 in Paid Search. 1 Comment

It’s hard to believe that the second biggest search engine (admittedly a distant second!) can make such a fundamental error in their Pay Per Click (PPC) ad copy. “Pay Per Chick” is certainly a new take on paid search! What is particularly embarrassing is that this really unfortunate typo appears on their competition’s website and further drives home the point that Google gets the superiority prize again and again.

yahoo-pay-per-chick-advertising.jpg

I have actually emailed them to try and alleviate this embarrassing show of words but that was 2 days ago and the Ad still appears. I am assuming that this is an affiliate ad which brings up further points about whether brand management is at all possible if you open up your brand to PPC affiliate marketers.

Regardless of who is responsible for the writing of this Ad, as a pedantic editor (if you find spelling mistakes or errors on our website, please email us!) and writer I find it quite appalling that this kind of error occurs. It does, however, highlight one of my favourite pet subjects in the PPC arena. Most agencies will “wow” you with all sorts of statistics and metrics and numbers of clicks, impressions and conversions. Where most agencies fall short of a good paid search campaign, is their lack of attention to good Ad copy.

After all the geek-speak and lingo is thrown at you, its no wonder that clients of PPC agencies forget to discuss the core brand message that they aim to portray online. Good Ad copy that clearly states the sales or service offering and has a clear brand message is admittedly a challenge when we are reduced to 3 lines of 25, 35 and 35 characters. But it is entirely possible. Only when the agency works closely with the client to develop this message can the PPC industry truly claim to be advertisers. Just because we are using the Internet as a medium does not mean we can forget about the basic rules of advertising, marketing and brand identity.

Sorry Yahoo! this is not a great reflection on your marketing team or your affiliate marketers.

How do power cuts affect South African SEM’s?

Published by
Jan
at January 25, 2008 in Paid Search. 1 Comment

With the recent power outages we’ve been experiencing here in SA, I felt it necessary to provide some info regarding its effects on South African search engine marketing companies.

Unless there’s a big team of staff members to keep busy and therefore lose money because of loss of productivity, there really isn’t much impact on the business compared to some other industries at all, especially from a client’s point of view. That is of course assuming that there’s minimal server downtime and that power is available for at least a couple of hours a day, which it has been. There is always the issue of websites not loading due to the servers being off and this can have a serious effect on businesses choosing to host their websites on SA servers. That being said, if the client is hosting with a professional enough company, they will hopefully by now have generators or ups systems in place to ensure the uptime of their clients’ websites.

Unfortunately as SEM’s, we’re not always in control over where our clients host their websites, but in general, if websites are hosted by professional local or overseas companies, the impact of power cuts on our ability to provide a service is minimal. This is largely due to the fact that search engines don’t stop showing ads because of power cuts in SA. Search campaigns don’t need constant monitoring by humans either. The downside to that is of course that if a website is affected and the campaign manager can’t access the internet, he or she can’t switch off the campaigns and it will inevitably cost someone some money…

To summarise: Your ads will continue showing, and if your website is up and running, it will continue to receive targeted traffic, whether the company responsible for managing the campaigns have power or not.

Broad, broader, totally unrelated…

Published by
Jan
at January 17, 2008 in Paid Search. 0 Comments

Is Google trying too hard to think for advertisers?

Any search engine advertiser knows that there are very good reasons for knowing exactly what search terms users are really finding your ads for. There are quite a few ways of getting this information, which is not what this discussion is about, although I might delve into that another time… For now though, all I intend to discuss is Google’s way of trying to “help” advertisers by matching terms that Google sees as related, to the actual terms advertisers choose to bid on.

When looking at the actual phrases your ads are actually showing for, you might be very surprised and even shocked. Your ads could be appearing for terms or phrases you would never dream of bidding on and that have absolutely no relevancy to your site. Best of all is that you would never even be aware of it if you don’t check your data… As we all know, there are three types of keyword match types for advertisers to choose from, namely Broad, Phrase and Exact match. The aim of this discussion is not to teach anybody about keyword match types, but rather to delve into the “Broad” match type a little.

Before I go into my explanation of broad match types, I feel it is necessary to say something about why I even use broad type keywords: When launching a new campaign, there is absolutely no way of knowing exactly what the keywords are that people are using for your specific product. Not even the most extensive keyword research can give you all the words people in your target market are using. You can get a good indication using various available tools but in order to find out what people are really using, you have to make use of broad type keywords. Using broad types can be rewarding, but could be more damaging than anything else if you don’t know what you’re doing. Combine your gathered search phrase data with your various groups by adding relevant terms and adding irrelevant terms to your negative list and you have a winning recipe. How you do that is not to be disclosed here for now… (Most good advertisers will know exactly how to anyway!)

So, what I actually want to discuss is Google’s initiative to show your ads for terms you’re not specifically bidding on. Here’s an example of what I’m referring to: Say for instance you’ve got a website selling tennis equipment. On your site you have a tennis shoe section, for which you have created a specific adgroup with specific keywords and specific ads that go to specific relevant landing pages. You might have the term “tennis shoes” as a broad match type in your keyword list as it is absolutely related to your site and specifically this section. By having this key term in your list, you would also be able to pick up and gather new terms related to tennis shoes, which will help you build and expand your keyword list. The reason I say that you should check your data every day is because even if your ads aren’t supposed to, it might also show up for searches like “sport shoes” or anything to do with sport and shoes… In some cases this could be very helpful, which is obviously the reason Google is doing it, but in other cases, it can destroy your budget if you don’t pick it up. I know that very few advertisers even use negative match types, which makes me wonder, just how many millions of dollars are spent daily on clicks by totally unqualified traffic to websites across the internet. This Google technology is called “Expanded Keyword Matching” and is only intended to show your ads for searches that are still relevant to your terms, but as I’ve been saying, that is not always the case as what Google sees as relevant to your site, is not always the same as what you might see as relevant. On the other hand, it is also this very technology that helps advertisers who know how to use their data, build and expand their keyword lists.

So how do we use this to our advantage?
By simply using the data at our disposal to regularly add relevant terms to our keyword lists and even more regularly add irrelevant terms to our negative match keyword lists. Remember to make sure you know exactly how negative matching works before you start blocking traffic to your site though…