Search Marketing InsiderPay Per Click, Social Media and SEO Strategies – An Internet Marketing Institute Publication

by Heather Schwartz, Account Executive at Anvil Media, Inc.

It’s never too early to start getting ready for the holidays whether it’s shopping if you’re a customer or prepping your strategy if you’re a marketer.  Here are some things to start thinking about the upcoming 2009 holiday season for your online marketing efforts, specifically for Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.  First let’s look into last year’s holiday season and expectations for this year to get a good understanding of the 2009 holiday landscape.

Holiday Season 2008
According to comScore, e-shopping sales in 2008 were over $130 million, a 6% increase in sales from the 2007 holiday season, and among the top 500 internet retailer’s sales in 2008 increased 12%.  From this we can conclude that more people were shopping online in 2008 compared to 2007 and that larger retailer sales are growing at a faster rate.  In a study done by Coremetrics, department stores and gifting sites saw an increase in conversion rate over the 2008 holiday season, while luxury goods retailers saw a decrease in conversion rate.  Why you ask?  Because the department stores and gifting sites adapted to the economy, they offered early discounting, they changed their merchandising to feature value items at lower prices and they added buying incentives for customers, like free shipping.   The retailers who continue to change and adapt to their customers needs and wants (within reason) are the ones that will prosper.

2009 Holiday Forecast
In order to properly prepare for this year’s holiday season, some research needs to be done first.  Below are Coremetrics’ forecasts for the 2009 holiday season:
• Shoppers will be shopping earlier this year and buying value orientated, incentive driven items.
• Potential for increase in cost/order, because customers will be shopping in more sessions therefore clicking on more marketing programs.
• Targeted email and display ads will play a bigger role this holiday season.

So, here is your friendly reminder – get ready for the 2009 holiday season, consider offering more promotions, like free shipping and feature products that aren’t necessarily the most expensive on your site.  (Keep in mind you don’t want these promotions to negatively affect your bottom line, be smart about your offerings.)  Also if you’re already running PPC on the Search Network, consider running on the Content Network on sites that directly target your customers.  So, how should you get started for the holiday season?

PPC Ad Text for Holiday 2009
1. Look at your campaign history.  If you included holiday messaging in your campaigns last year, what types of ads had the highest CTR and conversion rates? For those top performing ads can you translate the messaging for this year?
2. Continually test ad text.  There are several options when it comes to A/B testing ad copy.  For the holidays, test what type of promotion increases CTR or conversion rate.  Test the headline on your ad, for example, one that includes pricing v. one that doesn’t.  Once you have collected enough data, pause the non-performing ad, copy the ad that performed better and slightly tweak the messaging to continue testing.
3. Competitive research.  Don’t forget to do some holiday recon, look at what your direct competitors are saying in their ad text.  What type of offers/promotions are your competitors offering?
4. Create a schedule for the launch of your new ads, paying close attention to the following dates:
      a. Black Friday, November 27th – only 28 shopping days until Christmas this year.  Last year’s holiday season was the start of the shorter time period between Black Friday and Christmas Day.  In 2007, this period was 32 days, which is over a 12% decrease in the number of shopping days from 2007 to 2009.  This decrease in the shopping period is influencing customer’s buying behaviors to start shopping earlier.
     b. Cyber Monday, November 30th – this day continues to be a bigger day each year, with more people shopping online.
     c. Christmas Day, December 25th – continues to be a big shopping day for people doing returns or exchanges, customers buying complementary goods, using their gift cards, buying additional gifts online and buying products that were forgotten.

PPC Keywords for Holiday 2009
1. What keywords performed well last holiday season?  Instead of setting bidding strategies based on last month’s performance, take some time to review last year’s performance and make decisions based on last year’s holiday season.  Was there a specific keyword category that did particularly well in terms of sales, will this be the same for this year?  Look to popular trends to help determine “top sellers” and manage budget accordingly. 

2.  Revisit your negative keyword list.  Are there any particular holiday related negative keywords you could consider adding to your campaigns?

3.  If you are bidding on holiday related keywords, keep an extra close eye on the CPA and ROI at the keyword level, often times these keywords are expensive and don’t show goal return.

PPC Landing Pages for Holiday 2009
1.  If your ad text has holiday messaging be sure this gets translated to your landing page.  Same goes for promotions.
2.  Imagery.  Update any relevant images on your landing page with holiday related imagery.
3.  Revisit the conversion funnel on your site; make sure the appropriate merchandising is holiday related for cross selling and recommendation opportunities.  Do you have any gifting options on your site?  Also, make sure your internal search engine delivers gifting related results to relevant inquiries.

In summary, today is not too early to start planning your PPC campaigns for the holiday season.  Before it’s too late, determine your key benchmarks and goals for the holidays.  Start testing different verbiage or promotions now so you have a leg up on the competition before the holidays hit, and if something is working in one medium try to translate that across all your marketing efforts if applicable.

I hope the above takeaways regarding ad text, keywords and landing pages get you excited for the 2009 Holiday Season and jumpstart your PPC strategy.

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Heather Schwartz is an Account Executive at Anvil Media, Inc.  Heather  graduated from the University of Oregon with a BS in Marketing and a minor in Communication studies.  Heather has been working with Anvil Media in Portland since 2008 specializing in B2C ecommerce clients such as lucy activewear, Tea Collection and Ellington Leather, developing SEO, Social Media and PPC campaigns to increase clients online visibility and ROI.

Article 2 of 3: Drive Best-in-Class Results by Integrating Your Pay Per Click (PPC) with Other Online Marketing Channels

By Mary Huffman, Executive Vice President, Ionic Media

In the first article in this series, we reviewed the workhorses of online advertising:
* Pay-Per-Click search marketing (PPC)
* Search engine optimization (SEO)
* Display advertising (e.g., banners)
* Email (to house list)

Each marketing channel has a sweet spot for the type of product or situation in which it performs best.  The same is true for the six marketing channels we are exploring in this article:
* Mobile 
* Online PR
* Blogging
* Viral /social media
* Email (to rented list)
* Affiliate marketing

In this article, we will explore relatively new media options along with tested media vehicles like email to rented lists and affiliate marketing.  At this time, the new marketing choices are riskier than the ones we reviewed last time, but there are some stand-out results that cannot be ignored (especially among the adventurers out there).

First, let’s review how the six marketing vehicles we are focusing on perform on the “Branding” vs Direct Response” two-by-two matrix.

The six marketing vehicles we are reviewing in this paper are spread out across the branding vs direct response spectrum.  Now let’s review the summary and then we can dig into the detail on each of these more newly-minted marketing vehicles.

Now let’s look at each of these marketing vehicles in more detail.

Mobile Marketing:
The mobile marketing umbrella includes a number of different marketing vehicles.  Let’s look at each one individually.

Banner/Text Ads On Phones:
* Using a mobile ad network, marketers can place display or text ads on websites viewed with phones or on content sent to mobile phones (like daily weather updates)
* Allows you to reach a young, tech savvy audience
* Also allows you to reach older audiences, though at lower volume
* High response rates currently (likely because the technology is newer)
* As mobile coupon technology improves, this will be a great way to push coupons to users who are in-store and more likely to purchase

SMS Messaging Campaigns:
* Using a mobile service provider who furnishes a short code, you can entice people to “Text sweepstakes to 22456 for a chance to win a new car.”  It is the beginning of a mobile or email communication that must be managed carefully
* Most mobile service providers have a relatively high monthly minimum cost so it is not easy to test these types of campaigns unless you go through an agency (like Ionic Media)
* While the largest population using messaging is younger, don’t count out the 30-54 year olds, as they are the fastest growing segment for mobile messaging

Mobile Search:
* Using existing search engine ad interfaces as well as those from new companies, a marketer can choose to display a paid listing within the results when mobile users make a search
* Costs little but often delivers few leads

Mobile Applications:
* This can involve either developing a custom application, or sponsoring an existing application
* The trick is aligning the brand with an application that addresses what users care about and want to do while mobile

Mobile Website:
* Note that for many of these campaigns, you need a mobile website
* Some smartphones (e.g., iPhone, G1, Blackberry Storm) can render “regular” websites pretty well
* But most phones require a scaled-down mobile site

Online PR:
* Online PR is an easy and effective way to drive more buzz about your company
* Existing press releases can be uploaded to syndication sites that drive the story across online press sites
* Each time you upload a press release, the syndication site charges a fee (up to $200 depending on the site and the package)
* This can be an effective way to drive authority for your site (lots of relatively good inbound links) which helps with organic ranking

Blogging:
* Using easy-to-install blogging software, a marketer can create an on-site or off-site blog where one or more people can chronicle their thoughts and opinions
* A good blog with lots of followers can drive organic ranking and therefore organic traffic
* To ensure good pickup, blog often and reach out to potential readers to become loyal followers
* This marketing vehicle takes a commitment to the activity.  Blogs should be updated at least once a week and better to be updated every other day or even everyday.  That takes a high level of commitment

Viral Marketing:
* Viral marketing is a catchy name for an ill-defined group of marketing tactics.  For example, all of the following would be considered viral marketing:
     * An on-line widget that lets you upload photos to turn your friends into dancing elves a la Chorus Line
     * A video of claymation bunnies frolicking in New York City to advertise the Sony Bravia television
     * An email message you send to a friend with Bob Dylan holding up cue cards that display your message and which    ends with a plug for his latest album
     * A video of preppy white boys doing a rap about throwing a tea party (to advertise Smirnoff)
     * A widget with a man dressed in a chicken suit who performs whatever action you command him to (Burger King’s Subservient Chicken)
     *  These are all wildly popular examples of viral campaigns.  There are 2,356,744 other campaigns that companies tried to make popular but did not, in the end, “go viral.”  Note: That number is approximate and might be off by a lot
     * MarketingSherpa reports that the most experienced viral marketers report that only 50% of viral campaigns break even and only 1 in 80 are home runs
     *  So, the message when you are starting a viral campaign is to be creative, turn to the experts and run 80 campaigns at a time so you can get one home run (that would work, right?).  Actually, just be thoughtful when you are planning your viral campaigns and watch your costs as most do not deliver on the hype

Email to Rented Lists
* Historically this medium has delivered poor performance to marketers
* It can be used effectively to drive awareness and action if you carefully select the list provider of the leads

* When looking for a rented list to email with your message, check for the following:
* How was the list assembled?  Did they scrape websites or did people sign up for a special offer for information one individual at a time?
* Is the list single or double opt-in?  Double opt-in is the gold standard.  If it is opt-in, what do the people think they opted in for (information from a certain vendor, information for a series of vendors in a category or a chance to win a long-past sweepstakes)?
* How old are the names on the list?  If everyone opted-in to the list within the last 30 days, you should be willing to pay more than if the list was built over 5 years ago
* How often do they mail to this list and what are the response/opt-out rates?
* Consider a co-branded email campaign with another, more established brand.  Use that brand’s email list and send a dedicated email that has an implied endorsement from that brand

Affiliate Marketing:
* Affiliate marketing includes the broad reach of affiliate networks such as Commission Junction as well as working closely with a small number of “super affiliates” who carefully drive leads and sales to your business
* Working with affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and ShareASale makes affiliate recruitment easier (as they have hundreds of thousands of members) but you have less control over the quality of the affiliates and the messages they are putting out to your target market in your name
* Creating super-affiliate relationships with a handful of sites is more work but can deliver a better end result in terms of volume and quality of leads/sales
* And the bounty is often a key driver here.  If you are willing to pay more per lead or sale, more affiliates are going to give you more attention and drive more volume

While these six marketing vehicles are not the online marketing staples from the first article in this series, there is a lot to be said for testing these media.  Each medium listed above requires either time or money to make it happen.  For any given company only two are likely to be a strong fit with the target market of that particular product.

In the last in our series on the online marketing landscape, we will be looking at how to intelligently integrate your PPC marketing with other online vehicles for maximum effect.

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Mary Kingsley Huffman is a co-founder and Executive Vice President at Ionic Media, a firm with deep experience driving bottom-line results for clients using search and online marketing. Previously, she was Director of Marketing at Overture Services where she was responsible for the acquisition marketing and communication departments, leading all advertiser acquisition efforts and customer communications. Prior to Overture, Mary was an Engagement Manager in the London office of McKinsey & Company, specializing in marketing solutions. Mary has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from UCLA.

By Alissa Ruehl, Manager of Website Effectiveness Consulting, Apogee Search

Now more than ever, marketers are hyper-focused on getting the most out of their online advertising investments.  Here are 7 strategies to give your current paid search (Pay Per Click) campaigns a boost and get the highest quality of visitors coming to your website.  These techniques can be implemented fairly easily, and are highly effective at maximizing your campaign ROI. 

1. Trim the fat on your PPC campaign
The hard work with PPC budget reduction is that you don’t want to just lower your daily budget on the search engines, lower bids across the board, or do other sweeping things that will also cut your lead flow by the same percentage that it reduces your spend.

Some campaigns are highly optimized, making fat trimming more difficult, but most campaigns are wasting a portion of spend on audiences that will never convert. Now is the time to refine your campaign to ensure that you pay only for relevant traffic.

2. Add negative keywords
Run Google search query reports to see what actual search terms are driving your traffic (and costing you money). If you are using broad match at all, chances are there will be some irrelevant terms in there. Add these irrelevant terms as negative keywords in both Google and Yahoo!

Are you seeing a lot of lines like “108 other unique search queries?” Most analytics programs will show you a list of the search queries that brought traffic to your site, and you can supplement Google’s data with these reports.
Don’t just focus on reducing unwanted clicks, also trim out irrelevant impressions. Why do this when you are only paying for clicks? Because it will actually reduce your costs. Google has put more and more emphasis on its quality score algorithm, and one major element of a keyword’s quality score is the click-through rate. If adding negative keywords removes 20% of your impressions on a keyword (those that were so irrelevant they weren’t generating any clicks), that would increase your click-through rate by 20%. The corresponding increase in quality score should increase your average position or decrease your cost per click.

3. Refine ad copy
Stop wasting money paying for clicks from people who will never fill out a lead form. Many companies default to exciting ad copy that is focused on grabbing attention and generating clicks. In a tighter economy, ads need to be targeted to attract only relevant traffic.

Make your ads specific, and make sure they accurately represent your company. Often it makes sense to use your ads to actively qualify prospects.

4. Add dayparting
Another good way to reduce spend without reducing overall performance is to daypart–turning your ads off entirely at times of the day that don’t deliver quality traffic. Google allows you to pause campaigns at certain times, and also to selectively lower bids. Turning your campaign off entirely on the weekends might be overkill, but automatically reducing bids 50% on weekends might give you a similar number of qualified leads with less cost.

5. Test all major changes to your website
Not all site changes increase conversion rates. Some companies redesign their sites to have a better look and feel, but then see a decrease in conversion rate despite positive feedback about the design. Even landing page best practices don’t work in every instance.

There are many great testing platforms out there, and some, like Google Website Optimizer, are even free. It is relatively simple and painless to test everything but minor changes to your site.

If you launch a new landing page, A/B test it against the one you were previously using. If you are making several individual changes to a landing page, home page, or any page on your site that affects your PPC campaign, consider using a multivariate test to see which variables have the most impact and which combination is the best.

A word of warning: these tests can quickly add up to dozens of possible combinations. If you have a low lead flow, these tests can take months to accumulate statistically significant data. Be sure to limit your variants to a level that your traffic can support, and consider sticking with A/B testing if you usually see less than 100 leads a month.

6. Track past online conversions
If you are not tracking your paid search campaigns all the way through to sale, you won’t know which keywords or even which campaigns or search engines are generating the leads that are turning into sales.

This data takes a while to accumulate, since you must wait until leads make it all the way through your sales cycle. If you have a long sales cycle or low lead volume, it can be many months before you have any statistically significant data.

Work now to integrate your PPC (and SEO) data into your CRM system so you can have solid ROI numbers for each of your online campaigns—before you need those numbers.

Once you get enough data, you can start optimizing your campaign toward activities that are generating revenue rather than leads that go nowhere.

7. Keep an eye on the competition
Stay aware of what your competitors are doing, but don’t imitate them. Your strategy, analysis, and data all might be stronger than theirs. When watching competitors, get an idea of their sophistication level by looking at their tracking system and tracking syntax, keyword coverage (on both relevant and irrelevant keywords), ad copy, and landing pages.

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Alissa Ruehl is the Manager of Website Effectiveness Consulting at Apogee Search. Prior to opening this new division, she managed the paid search department at Apogee for over three years, and during that time was personally involved in the management of paid search campaigns for over 100 companies.  In Apogee’s Website Effectiveness division, Alissa has supervised and delivered successful conversion consulting engagements for dozens of companies.  She consults on goal setting and metrics, analytics installation, integration and usage, overall website usability and conversion rate, as well as design and testing of paid search landing pages.