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

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 Heather F. Lutze – review by Mary O’Brien, Founder of PPC Summit

Many small (and larger) businesses put up a website and assume that the “If you build it, they will come” concept applies. Unfortunately, this wasn’t true when the internet started and it’s even less so now. Successful businesses get the fact that your website is now a critical part of your marketing campaign. It needs to be designed to attract search engines AND customers to be successful and Heather does a great job in this book of explaining why.

“Findability” in the title of the book refers to the critical need of every business to be visible on the internet (and particularly in search engines) at that crucial time when their prospect is ready to buy from them. Basically, it’s so competitive now that if you are not on the first page of search engine results you are wasting your time. And -  if you’re NOT there you can be sure your competition will be.

Heather has a great ability to translate quite technical marketing concepts in to terms that beginners and experienced users alike can relate to. I have seen her explain these concepts accepted time and time again, in training she has given at our Pay-Per-Click Summits, and I’m delighted to see that she has used this same relatable quality to get her points across in the book.

Search Engine Marketing can be a complicated subject, particularly for the beginning marketer, and this book does a great job in translating the technical jargon into actionable concepts that you can follow.

Heather describes it as a non-technical guide, but the basics are all covered in an easily readable way that allows a beginner to easily implement a successful Search Engine Marketing campaign. Readers will learn the basics of Pay-Per-Click and also how Pay-Per-Click and Organic Search work together to give you better search engine visibility for your business.

Advanced users might find it a bit basic, but that’s not who this book is designed for. This book is designed for those new to internet marketing who also know that Search Engine Marketing is an important web traffic driver for their business, need to get up to speed fast, and want someone to explain it sequentially.

There are more advanced books out there for those who need to delve into the nitty-gritty, but if you are just getting started, and are a non-technical person who wants easy to follow instructions, then this book is a must read.

You will learn:
•    A complete step-by-step approach to search engine marketing applicable to any product or service, in an easy-to-follow instructional style.
•    How to avoid common search marketing mistakes that cost big money.
•    How to set up campaigns in a smarter way to get better search engine visibility.
•    How search engines work, how search engine marketing works, and how to take advantage of both.
•    The online tools to use that make campaign management easier

The devil is truly in the details for paid search managers. I hope that this article will help you attend to more of the details in your accounts – like better ad text writing, stronger negative keywords and better bidding management. The bottom-line is that if you are not spending a tremendous amount of time on large account management changes, you will have more time to attend to those all important details that can make the difference between PPC success and failure.

AdWords Editor 7.0
AdWords Editor is Google’s free, downloadable campaign management application. Download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes, and then upload your revised campaigns.

Tool Description and Functionality:
This indispensable tool should be an integral part of your pay per click management arsenal. With account management features no account manager should be without for day-to-day maintenance for all your pay per click campaigns. The old way of managing large campaign templates are gone and now AdWords Editor has given us a way to not only easily manage your Google AdWords campaigns but also to export entire campaigns into a format that can then be converted to YSM and MSN campaigns quickly and easily.

Tool Review:
• Web Site: http://www.google.com/adwordseditor/
• Rating:  ****
• Benefits and features include the ability to:
- Navigate your account quickly and easily
- Make bulk changes to keywords and ad text
- Work offline, then upload your changes
- Copy and paste keywords and ad text
- Circulate proposed changes and get feedback
Cost: Free

AdWords Editor is without a doubt the best FREE tool on the market. Use this tool to do all you Google account edits locally.

Release Notes:
After you install AdWords Editor, you’ll be notified automatically whenever a new version is released. (You can determine which version you have by going to the Help Menu > About AdWords Editor.) The release notes cover what’s new and what’s been fixed in each release.

AdWords Editor Features and Reviews:

AdWords Editor’s “Top 10 Favorites”
Have you wondered how to make the most of AdWords Editor? Or, if you haven’t used the desktop application, are you interested in learning about its most popular features?

Annie Hsu from the AdWords Editor team spoke with users and compiled a list of the top ten reasons they love this campaign management application:

10. Find duplicate keywords in your account with just two clicks of your mouse.

9. Copy or cut and paste between ad groups, campaigns, or even across accounts.

8. Make bulk changes to destination URLs using the Add/Update Multiple tools or Advanced URL Changes.

7. If you need to edit your keywords or ads in a spreadsheet, copy the items to edit from the data view and paste them into a spreadsheet. Make your changes, and then paste the contents of the spreadsheet directly into the appropriate Add/Update Multiple tool.

6. Undelete and activate previously deleted text ads.

5. Search your account quickly. Perform simple word searches, or do an Advanced Search to find items that meet the multiple criteria that you specify.

4. Easily find and edit bids, destination URLs, and text for ads, keywords, or sites.

3. Submit multiple exception requests at once.

2. Automatically organize your keywords into ad groups based on common themes.

1. Save a snapshot of your account for archiving or for sharing. Later, you can import the archive file to restore your prior account settings.

Campaign Manager Review:
Best features of the AdWords Editor from the perspective of Senior PPC Account Manager follow. Katie Bivens has more than three years experience managing dozens of accounts with Google, YSM and MSN on a daily basis.

Here is what Katie likes best about AdWords Editor:
• Faster to use then working inside AdWords online
• Ability to export campaigns from Editor into an Excel document for importing into Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN
• Allows for the manual manipulation of Excel templates for all engines
• Easy bulk updates that would normally take hours in Excel.  Also includes fast bid changes
• Editor ad text counter tracks characters and turns color when there is an overage in character length

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Heather F. Lutze is owner of the Findability Group (formerly Lutze Consulting LLC).  She is a nationally recognized Internet marketing speaker, trainer, and consultant in search engine placement, cost per click models, natural search, and ad campaign tracking.   Her book The Findability Formula: The Easy-To-Follow, Non-Technical Guide to Search Marketing was published in January 2009.