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

As search engine marketing evolves at light speed pace, new opportunities are constantly arising–making Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that much more challenging and harder for marketers to keep up with. PPC Summit recently surveyed 3500 past PPC Summit attendees who provided valuable insight on the top areas where Search Engine Marketers feel they need more education. 

According to survey respondents, the topics that Search Marketers want to learn more about to improve their ROI are:

• Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Optimization
• Integrating Paid Search, Organic and Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

While Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimization remain strong revenue drivers for online marketers, Social Media is rapidly moving up in importance. With social media sites like Facebook (500+ million users), LinkedIn (70+ million users), Twitter (106+ million users) and YouTube (300 million accounts) all securing their justifiable placement in the marketing mix, SEM specialists have to be on top of their game in order to keep up.

ISSUE #1 – Pay Per Click Campaign Optimization: The goal in pay per click marketing is to write compelling ad copy that directs prospects to your site or landing page and then entices them to sign up or buy your product/service. Easier said than done, right?

According to the Survey Results, 82.5% of SEM respondents feel they need to focus more on PPC Campaign Strategies by: 

• Improving their Quality Score. One way to improve your Quality Score–and pay less per click– is by properly using header tags (more here).
• Utilizing Website Optimizer & Google Analytics: Paying more attention to your analytics and constantly analyzing your cost-per-customer can really help your results.
• Fine-tuning Google AdWords PPC strategies: Save time and optimize your AdWords campaigns with the AdWords Interface.

ISSUE #2 – Social Media and Search Marketing Merge: Your customers are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more. Incorporating these social media sites into your marketing mix is a must in today’s SEM world. Use Social Media Marketing to complement your paid search and organic marketing strategy and reach a broader audience.

More than two-thirds of Survey Respondents ranked “Integrating Social Media with Search Marketing” in their top three priorities. Here are some quick tips: 

• Incorporate Keywords. Use keywords in your account names and all SMM communications ie. SEO blog postings, Tweets, Facebook updates, etc
• Develop Quality Content. This is critical in attracting quality prospects through the Social Media Channel.
• Social Media Time Management. Streamline your communications with automation tools.

ISSUE #3 – Search Engine Optimization: We have heard from attendees–countless times–how they invested so much time and money on creating a fabulous SEO campaign, but in the end conversions were low due to poorly structured websites or landing pages.

Up to 82% of the SEMs polled told us they need help with their SEO campaigns. You can start by: 

• Creating Appropriate Site Architecture. Customers should be able to find what they are looking for on your site in a click or two. If it’s more than three clicks, then you should re-think your site structure and messaging.
• Using Tools Many SEO Experts Use. Utilize the industry leading tools like:
  • SEOMoz (http://www.seomoz.org/) – full complement of SEO tools, to check backlinks, PageRank, keyword research & density etc.
  • Google Webmaster Tools – research search queries, keywords, crawl rates, backlinks, diagnostics, internal linking, robots.txt, etc.
  • SEOTools for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html);
  • Wordstream (http://www.wordstream.com/seo-keyword-management) – keyword research & management.

You can learn more about these challenges and how to solve them at the upcoming
PPC Summit Presents: Search & Social Media Successconference. We built a brand new three-track curriculum based on the results from this attendee survey. On Sept. 21-22 Marketing Professionals will gather in Los Angeles to hear from an impressive line up of experts in SEM/SEO/SMM who will share their top strategies to increase search and social media marketing ROI.

We look forward to seeing you in September!

Kelly Larsen
Director of Marketing, PPC Summit

Broad match is one of the keyword matching options offered by Google AdWords. If you’re going to engage in pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, it’s important to understand how the various match types work. In this article, you’ll learn how broad match works, why it’s useful, and how best to use it in your PPC marketing campaigns.

What exactly is broad match, anyway?

Google and other search engines make decisions on which PPC ads to display in response to keyword searches based on keyword matching options, or match types. Broad match is the default option. It’s the most lenient of the options, meaning that it allows your ad to display in response to the greatest number of queries. According to Google:

If your ad group contained the keyword tennis shoes, your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations. For example, your ad might show on tennis shoe or tennis sneakers.

Basically, this option lets you pick a term related to your business, and attempts to discover other terms that are also relevant.

The importance of broad match keywords

Your keywords are automatically set to the broad match option when you upload them to your AdWords account, so you should understand the impact of this setting.

The keyword you’ve selected will now automatically be matched against a broad array of related queries. This has two interesting ramifications:

• It helps you discover new, useful broad matched keywords – Broad match provides a host of new phrases that the search engines deem relevant to your business – often long-tail keyword phrases you wouldn’t be able to come up with on your own.
• You may be matched with completely irrelevant keywords – In addition to the good stuff this option will unearth, it will match your ad text to totally irrelevant terms. The search engines’ matching algorithms don’t always work perfectly, as anyone who’s ever gotten bad results from a Google search can attest.

So broad match simultaneously adds quality phrases to your PPC keyword list while spending some of your budget on unrelated clicks that won’t convert.

For example, if your broad-match keyword is “tennis shoe”, Google might match your ad to keywords such as “women’s tennis shoes,” “converse tennis shoes,” and “discount tennis shoes.” These all seem pretty good.

Unfortunately, because of the nature of broad match, Google may also display your ads against keywords like “dress shoes,” “basketball shoes,” and “tennis racquets.” This is known as “expanded broad match,” which means that the algorithm more aggressively matches your ads against what it deems relevant variations of your keywords.

But these variations may not be all that relevant. What if:

• We only sell tennis shoes – Dress shoes and other tennis equipment aren’t keywords we want our ad to show against, in that instance.
• We only sell tennis equipment – Again, we don’t want our ad showing against dress shoes and basketball shoes.
• We only sell shoes – We don’t want our ad to show for tennis equipment and rackets. Also, we won’t want our ad text and landing page talking about tennis shoes when our ad is appearing next to dress shoes.

However, if we choose a more restrictive matching option like exact match, we may miss out on valuable variations of tennis shoes, like “shoes for tennis” or specific brand names.

So we need to find a means for implementing broad match without wasting money on irrelevant clicks.

Getting the most out of the broad matching option

The only way to utilize the expanded reach of broad match while restricting that reach to only relevant queries is to implement negative keywords within your account. Setting a negative keyword tells search engines “Don’t show my ad against this query.”

The challenge with negative keywords is much the same as the challenge with regular keyword research: How do you find all the possible keywords and variations that you don’t want your ad to show against?

Here are your options when it comes to discovering negative keyword candidates:

• Generic negative keyword lists – This is a decent way to get started, but remember that generic negative keywords may not apply to your specific niche, and many negative keywords you should be using are likely to be missing.
• Through regular keyword research – When looking for relevant keywords, you can keep your eyes open for terms that aren’t relevant to your business.
• Search query reports – You can find negative keyword candidates by scanning your search query reports in AdWords for irrelevant terms that have matched against your ads. (This can be a slow process, of course, and will need to be repeated.)
• Organic log files – It’s also a good idea to look for irrelevant keywords in your organic log files or the keyword reports in your Web analytics. This is more proactive, since it allows you to catch wasteful keywords before they trigger your PPC ads.
• A negative keyword tool – Another proactive way to find negative keywords, a negative keyword tool (like this one from WordStream) works like a traditional keyword suggestion tool but helps you find potential negatives.

Using negative keywords in concert with the broad match option helps put your ads in front of the broadest possible audience of interested users, while ensuring that you only pay for relevant traffic that is likely to convert.

The broad match modifier

Google AdWords recently introduced a new feature, called the broad match modifier, that can also help you get more out of broad match. This feature allows you to define a middle ground between phrase match and broad match – in other words, it’s more restrictive than broad match, but still allows you to discover interesting long-tail variations on your keyword.

To use the broad match modifier, add a plus symbol (+) before one or more words in your keyword – this tells Google that the specified word or words must appear in the user’s search query. For example, if you put a plus sign before “tennis” in the keyword “tennis shoe,” only queries that include the word “tennis” will trigger your ad, though you may see traffic from keywords like “tennis equipment” or “tennis gear.”

Using this feature strategically in combination with negative keywords will help you take advantage of broad match without blowing your budget on useless clicks.

Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing with WordStream Internet Marketing Software. WordStream is a manufacturer of PPC management software and keyword research and organization tools for SEO.

We’ve seen so many companies that are competent at traditional Pay Per Click (PPC) get destroyed when trying to advertise on Facebook.  Let’s cover the most common mistakes and how to solve them:

• Keywords are not interests: You have keywords on Google versus interests on Facebook. In the former, someone is actively searching for something and is expressing immediate intent. In the latter, you’re targeting WHO someone is, as opposed to WHEN they are going to buy. You’re likely hitting them weeks and months before they search, so your targeting and ad copy must be different. We’ve seen PPC companies attempt to peddle translation tools that convert search keywords into Facebook interests. You might as well make chicken salad out of chicken poop– not possible. In search you know WHEN, but not WHO– in Facebook, you know WHO, but not when.

• Ads take users away from Facebook: Users who are on Facebook don’t appreciate being yanked out of their browsing experience. So don’t send them to your website– send them to your Facebook fan page. But that also requires that you have a custom tab on your Facebook page — a landing page that is just as specific as any PPC landing page, whether sending people to a particular product page, video testimonial, store locator, or whatever. And that does take a bit of engineering effort as they are few app makers that can build FBML apps. WebTrends just bought Transpond for that very reason.

• The ad copy is too forward: Imagine you’re having a nice dinner with a friend. Then some loud salesman interrupts your meal to pitch his wares. You’ve never seen this guy before— he’s not a friend, and you aren’t exactly interested in buying his stuff right NOW, thought it’s something you might consider later. That’s what Facebook advertisers do today– they shout over the din of the other shouting advertisers, just as you see in the content networks. On Facebook, you don’t have to shout because you can microtarget and whisper quietly because…

• There isn’t multi-step engagement: Because advertisers are trying to go from impression all the way through to the sale in the same visit (yes, it works in PPC because you can target bottom of funnel terms), they fail. Instead, have one set of ads designed only to get fans from the right target audience. Then another set of ads messaging just fans. Then another set of ads for friends of fans. You wouldn’t say the same thing to someone off the street versus a friend you’ve known for a while, now would you? In Facebook PPC, you can segment your messaging by their level of engagement. And no, this concept is not available in mainstream PPC tools– those software companies are still trying to jam the round peg in the square hole.

• They aren’t refreshing ads daily: In PPC you can make some ads and they can live a long time. We have ads that are years old that continue to build good Quality Scores. We just leave those campaigns as is–set it and forget it. In Facebook, ads burn out in days. In fact, the narrower the audience, the faster the burnout. Google ads don’t burn out because it’s a different set of users searching on the keyword each day. In Facebook, you’re hitting the same inventory over and over– especially since the average user spends 7 hours a week on Facebook and consumes dozen of pages. With no frequency capping on Facebook, you better keep your ad copy fresh– not just because you want to split test, but because you don’t want to burn out by wasting inventory on the same people over and over.

• Their analytics is sending you the wrong message: If you’re measuring conversions, odds are that it’s the unspoken last click attribution. In other words, the user may have come to your site multiple times via organic, paid search, email, social, or other sources– but only that last click (likely a branded Google click) got 100% of the credit. In paid search, there is the concept of the “assist” and the “view through conversion” to give credit to other touchpoints prior to conversion. In the world of multi-channel marketing, where consumers take in multiple inputs before making a decision, you have to measure how many Facebook visits (or even impressions) resulted in an eventual conversion later. Facebook does have a conversion tracking tool and Ads API– but it’s still too buggy for mainstream users.

• They are going for exposure: True, when you have a new page, you want to get a lot of fans. If you’re a media buyer, you might even be looking for raw CPMs. But a fan is not a fan. You need to measure what those fans are worth. And there is no one size fits all– you can’t just use the ClickZ figure of $3.65 per fan and multiply by the number of fans you have. You have to measure how many of your fans eventually convert and then calculate back to an average fan value. If 5% of your fans eventually buy something and that something is worth $100, then a fan is worth $5 with full attribution. If you find the overlap is 33% between channels on average (3 visits on average between all channels prior to conversion), then your fan is worth $5 divided by 3–or $1.67.

There are no software packages that will save you from these pitfalls–you or someone in your organization must develop the targeting, ad copy, and landing tabs that reflect your unique selling proposition. In the same way that great traditional PPC has tight linkages between the keyword, ads, and landing page– on Facebook, you must have tight interests, ultra personal ad copy, and many interest-related landing tabs.

Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal, a Facebook advertising agency that has been serving brands and local resellers for 3 years. Come hear him speak at PPC Summit.

PPC Summit recently conducted a survey of leading bid management vendors and their customers.  Some common themes emerged, some of which were unexpected.  This article captures five of several messages search marketers are sending vendors.  See the full report for other expectations, challenges they’ve faced, and advice they have for their fellow marketers.

#1:  Provide Kick-Ass Support or Else

We interviewed more than 50 people and 41 organizations.  Of the 66 criteria they defined, support rated #1 by a long shot.  “Support” means a lot of things, though, not just an 800-number or Internet-based support.  And quite frankly, some vendors don’t even provide an 800-number.

Vendors better listen and prove they’re listening too, before and after the sale.  The level of support a vendor offers before a sale can foreshadow the level of service you may end up with after the sale.  Sure, some vendors have tiered customer service levels meaning if you pay them extra they’ll be at your beck and call.  With others the amount or type of support you get may depend on your spend level.  For example, you’re spending a couple of thousand dollars a month you won’t have a dedicated account manager but if you’re spending $50,000 a month you likely will.

My favorite pre-sale support story came out of Zappos from Assistant SEM Manager Tim Schaeffer.  When Schaeffer was evaluating vendors he had three companies on his short list.  He sent e-mail messages to all three at the same time and was surprised by the results.  Two of the vendors were located in the same time zone (Pacific).  The third, Kenshoo, was located in Israel which was Kenshoo.  It was midnight in Israel at the time.  Guess who responded first?  Kenshoo.  Guess who got the business?  You guessed it. 

Kenshoo responded immediately.  Both US vendors responded in about 4 hours and one of them was located a five minute drive away!  Oops.

The “support” bucket also now includes customer-requested product features.  Those companies who listen to their customers or solicit customer feedback and turn customer requests and comments into product features or feature enhancements are viewed as more “customer centric” than those who don’t.  Moreover, the customers who have witnessed their ideas transformed into product features are taking emotional equity in the vendor and its product to the point where some sound like a Windows 7 commercial:  “I’m a PPC (search marketer) and I invented [my favorite vendor’s product].”

#2:  Get the Lead Out

Vendors differ in a lot of respects but here we’re going to discuss time to market.  Some vendors have agile software release cycles ranging from about two weeks to three months while others still have annual or semi-annual “major release” cycles. 

Major release cycles are how software companies have traditionally built software:  They plan, build, test, and deploy a big software release that’s packed with all kinds of features and enhancements.  Traditional software development is a linear practice that moves a product down a line through several types of specialists who specify, build, and test the software, respectively.  Agile development involves software releases that are smaller in scope and released more frequently.   It breaks down interdepartmental fiefdoms like coding and testing, among other things, so software teams can develop better quality software faster and more collaboratively.

Among the people we interviewed the difference between traditional and agile releases meant a lot.  Companies with shorter (agile) release cycles are seen as more in tune with customer requirements and also more up to date with Google’s constant algorithmic modifications than companies with slower release cycles.

This finding also ties back to the point about turning customer ideas into product features:  When customers see product features a few weeks or a few months down the road that they personally suggested they become more loyal customers and they’re also amazed how fast their vendor of choice incorporated their idea(s).

#3:  Make Me More Effective

Almost everyone we interviewed had switched vendors at least once or dumped their agency because they believed they could do a better job in-house using the right tools and with the help of the right experts on the vendors’ account team.

“Help” comes in several forms including human assistance and machine assistance.  The human element we’ve already touched on; however, I can say the vendor account teams when they’re good are a valuable extension of the in-house search team.

Machine help is also popular among both experienced and novice search professionals.  Some systems have automated best practice engines that will suggest best practices automatically, kind of like contextual help.  The engines apply algorithms to historical history, keyword prices, the buying patterns of organizations inside or even outside your industry, and then compare the results with your current actions.

Experienced search marketers sometimes ignore the suggestions based on experience.  Seasonal keyword buys are a great example.  They nevertheless value a second pair of eyes, virtual or not, because it forces them to think about what they’re doing and why.  New search marketers like best-practice suggestions because it’s a great way to learn hands-on.

In terms of product features you may have noticed – and we point out in the report – that bid management isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to managing search programs effectively.  Vendors tend to categorize the additional features differently but reporting and campaign management are the two major buckets with the latter including bulk uploads and editing, Quality Score management, and more.

#4:  Help Me Do Business My Way

It’s wonderful some vendors have so many features available for every imaginable vertical market.  On the other hand, who cares?   If a company sells professional services it has no need to tie inventory to paid search because it has no inventory.  The message here is twofold:  1) Make me effective in my vertical and 2) Don’t make me wade through hundreds of features just to guess which 50 actually matter.

(Actually, you can do yourself a BIG favor by prioritizing what you’re trying to accomplish.  That way, what is and is not relevant will be more obvious to you.)

Search marketers appreciate domain expertise but it’s hard to know what you’re missing if don’t know a capability exists.  One gentleman we interviewed is convinced multi-channel attribution is impossible and yet other fellow retailers are doing it with varying levels of success and sophistication.

Vertical market nuances can also play out in sales.  A search marketer who works for a national insurance agency is spending lots of money but on very few keywords so a percentage-of-spend cost model doesn’t work for him.

Help Me Improve ROI

ROI is a moving target and as you well know search marketers are under constant pressure to improve ROI.  Many search marketers are looking beyond last click attribution to multi-attribution and multichannel attribution for two main reasons:  1) Last-click attribution rarely reflects actual human behavior and 2) Paid search is being integrated into overall marketing strategies more than it has been. As a result, paid search is increasingly being compared to, contrasted with, and optimized in relation to other marketing tactics.

Retailers are a good example of a vertical market making this move.  Admittedly, it’s the larger retailers that are pushing the trend forward but as always sophistication flows downstream over time.  Smaller retailers are already paying attention because they’re hearing more buzz about it generally thanks to AdWords search funnel reports.

Not all vendors provide this capability and those who do don’t necessarily support it to the same degree.  At the present time, some search marketers are doing the functional equivalent of sticking a finger in the wind to using complex data models to attribute costs to specific actions.

It’s a growing area and people are interested so expect to see a lot more about this (and more sophisticated solutions) in the near future.

Conclusion

There are a lot of reasons to hate bid management solutions and vendors, especially if their products and/or services don’t align with your business.  If you’re unhappy with your present vendor, you’re wise to take a thoughtful approach to vendor selection starting with your objectives.  Along the way, pay attention to things like responsiveness and a willingness to ensure your success, particularly if your spend level is formidable.

The main message is don’t settle.  You don’t have to.  Most vendors offer free trials so you can take their solutions for a test drive and all of them would be more than happy to be your next business partner.  Just make sure you’re in the driver’s seat or you may end up feeling like you’ve been taken for a ride.

Lisa Morgan is CEO of Strategic Rainmakers, a management and marketing consulting firm that helps organizations meet their strategic business and marketing goals.  Its services include in-depth research, marketing consulting, content development, and strategic initiatives, among other things.  Past and present clients include vendors, service providers, event producers, publishers, and associations.

By Kevin Newcomb, Editor, Internet Marketing Institute

Business-to-business buying behavior is an enigma to many, even those who spend their lives trying to sell their products to businesses. For the average B2B marketer, understanding what makes buyers tick can mean the difference between success and failure of their business, or at the very least of their own careers.

Last month, at the B2B Search Strategy Summit  in San Francisco, B2B marketers learned a new way of looking at B2B buying behavior. In the morning keynote address, Gord Hotchkiss, president and CEO of Enquiro, shared some findings from a comprehensive business-to-business marketing research initiative known as the BuyerSphere Project.

The research grew out of Enquiro’s own curiosity, as a market research and online marketing services firm that sells to other businesses, according to Hotchkiss. Like many B2B companies, Enquiro recognized that the buying process rarely went as planned, and so decided to find out why.

Enquiro — along with thought leaders from Google, Business.com, Marketo, Covario and DemandBase — proceeded to perform more than 100 face-to-face interviews with business buyers, hundreds of eye-tracking research sessions, and a survey of more than 3,000 business buyers. The results were published last fall in a 210-page report, The BuyerSphere Project: How Business Buys from Business.

The BuyerSphere Project debunks several commonly held beliefs about B2B marketing, including the idea that B2B buying is rational and emotionless, that it’s an organized and clearly thought-out process, or that the availability of information delivered online has made business buying easier.

Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Hotchkiss, who writes: 

“So this is what we have: a hunch that human decision making is more convoluted and irrational than we ever guessed, a realization that those same mechanisms are used at work just as they are at home, a limited understanding of how decisions are made when you have multiple people working within an organizational framework, and, to add an exponential dimension of complexity to everything, the explosion of information and communication opportunities presented by the internet. Our paradigm is shifting before we ever defined it. No wonder we can’t catch up.”

After digging into the buying behaviors of thousands of businesses, the Enquiro researchers were able to distill some key findings in several areas, including: 

1. The Risk Gap

The Risk Gap refers to the way the typical “Risk and Reward” process falls apart for B2B buying. The idea that our decisions are based on avoiding risk or attaining a reward is not really applicable to a B2B buying scenario, where the “reward” emotions are far outweighed by the “risk” emotions. That’s because the person making the buying decision doesn’t usually stand to personally benefit from a B2B purchase, but the penalties that might come from making a bad decision are ever-present in the buyer’s mind.

 Add to that the concepts of personal risk vs. organizational risk, or the varying degree of risk in repeat purchases vs. “blank slate” purchases, and the Risk Gap takes on even more importance. The old maxim, “99% of business buying is about covering your butt,” holds true today, which means that B2B marketers need to figure out how to use the tools they have to minimize the risk and provide buyers with a reason to trust them.

2. The Myth of the Funnel

The marketing concept of a “buying funnel” — where a buyer progresses neatly from Need to Awareness to Consideration to Purchase to Use — is a myth, according to Enquiro’s research. Buyers do pass through those areas on the way to a purchase, but it’s rarely done in a logical, rational, and linear way, according to Hotchkiss.

In the pre-Web model, geographic and resource limitations would force a business to take a disciplined approach to identifying and developing a market before it even thought of marketing and selling to that market. Face-to-face, feet-on-the-street selling was the only way.

The Internet appeared to offer a shortcut, where prospective buyers would find the business online, instead of the business having to go out and find the buyers. While this drastically broadened the number of prospects at the top of the traditional sales funnel, too often those prospects never made it to the final sale. Without the face-to-face reassurances, many potential buyers bailed out when their concerns about risk were not adequately addressed.

The BuyerSphere Project reveals the need for a new model, one that puts people back in the center of the process and combines the strengths of online and offline channels. Online and offline both need to be integrated into the process of identifying and developing a market, marketing and selling to that market, and servicing that market.

3. The Buyer-Doer Gap

 Anyone who has ever bought or sold a product for business knows that most of the time, the person who is going to use the product is not the same one that does the buying. And yet, B2B marketers often fail to address the needs of both the “doers,” who will be using the product, and the “buyers,” who hold the purse strings.

Enquiro’s research unveils a gap between buyers and doers in relation to risk assessment. It boils down to the fact that doers are looking to evaluate the product, while buyers will evaluate the vendor. For the doer, the risks revolve around whether or not the product will make the user’s life easier. For buyers, the concerns involve whether they can trust the vendor, if the vendor will be easy to work with, or if the vendor is financially secure.

A B2B marketer needs to address risk concerns from both parties, in various stages of the buying cycle. Generally, the doer will be evaluating the product early on, to see if it does what they need. Once you can convince them it will, then it’s time to convince the buyer that it’s safe to do business with you. 

These are just a few of the findings of the BuyerSphere research that Hotchkiss discussed at the B2B Search Strategy Summit last month. If you missed the B2B Search Summit, check out the upcoming PPC Summit Presents…Search Marketing and Social Media Success coming to Los Angeles in September — learn more about this comprehensive training event at www.PPCSummit.com.

By Dennis Yu, The Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of BlitzLocal

You may have read these HitWise numbers  on how Facebook has overtaken Google as the most popular site in the United States– now at 7.07% of all visits versus Google at 7.03%.  At 400 million users and 25% of all traffic (not visits), it’s not just teenagers anymore. Did you know that Facebook serves 150 million search queries a day? Industry estimates place Google at 250 to 400 million queries per day.

Thus, “search” is not a website– it’s a function that occurs across any site or application. Think of websites as vertical bars, while applications such as search, commenting, and user participation as horizontal slices that go across these sites.  Even the concept of a “website” is being blown away– note that most users of twitter are interacting not at twitter.com, but via a 3rd party tool or within another blog. Whether it’s @anywhere or even the APIs being released by CitySearch and Foursquare, it’s clear that there’s a increasingly shared data layer underneath these websites. Think of the sewer and electrical grid that is below Manhattan.

I had a chance to sit down with Alex Schultz, who runs online marketing for Facebook– he is also in charge of Facebook’s SEO.  He mentioned the concept of “interestingness squared, boringness squared”. Let’s say you have 500 friends and each friend, on average, has 20 things they do each day that could be shown in the feed.  Thus, with no filter, you would see 10,000 items in your feed on your Facebook homepage. Impossible to sort the noise on what’s important or most relevant to you.

Facebook must choose what to show, based on the influence of each user, their track record (are they spamming others or is their stuff being actively shared and commented on), and general “karma” FriendRank-like factors.  Thus, the things that are interesting get promoted in the social graph– to quickly become viral.  And things that are boring get buried, never to be shown in activity stream.

This morning, Facebook released some insights into how their search works.  It’s worth a read if you some time, but let’s just say that they’re serving personalized search results based on proximity (of the many “Jose Gonzales” in the world, show the one that has the most mutual friends in common), popularity, and context. I’m in Boulder today, so my search for cosmetic surgery here should ideally yield a different result than someone searching from Chicago.  Google’s Caffeine and the introduction of personalized results from your friends only starts to approach what happens on Facebook.

5,000 new businesses join Facebook each day.  Google has about 570,000 advertisers on AdWords. Do the math.  Who has the deeper relationships and has 50% of visits from users that log in at least once a day? Facebook is on track to hit a billion dollars in annualized revenue, if they haven’t already.

Are you using Facebook’s self-serve ad platform yet?  For the 2.5 years, we’ve treated Facebook PPC as another paid search channel, just behind Google, while ahead of Yahoo! and Bing.  And the results for Facebook lead gen and consumer product have been phenomenal.  They will continue to be so long as the territory is still new to advertisers and agencies– and clients understand that social media, properly targeted, and integrated with other channels, is quite effective.

Google has discussed that they’re incorporating social signals into ranking factors.  An article that a couple years ago might have generated 50 links might today generate 10 links and 300 mentions on twitter and Facebook.  Facebook now opening up pages to be indexed, along with many other previously private default options, means that you should be sending stronger signals in social media to influence search results not just on Facebook, but in traditional search engines, too.

So what does this mean for your business?

1. Create and pimp out your fan page immediately. When you get to 100 users, grab your vanity url at facebook.com/username. Get customers and friends to comment and participate regularly, knowing this can generate a viral effect, plus generate links to your fan page (links between pages are votes for Google, while fanning on fan pages are votes for Google).

2. Start testing Facebook’s PPC.  Run traffic to both your fan page and site, to build up a fan base and generate a viral effect. Use proper analytics and attribution, determine the effect of the “assist” on organic search traffic and direct traffic, much like a view-through conversion.

3. Run demographically targeted ads on the Google Content Network– this is a good proxy for what will work on Facebook and MySpace self-serve, given your display creatives and demographic targets are in alignment.

4. Focus more on offers and “interestingness”. Remember what Alex Schultz said about “interestingness squared” earlier? With the rise of local, social, and mobile games– or platforms like Gowalla that effectively are video games, make sure what you are saying doesn’t sound like a shameless ad.  Make it cool, interesting, or perhaps even offer a coupon.  Is it funny or shareable in some other aspect?

5. Begin reaping the rewards for being a first-mover. The spammers were first, but your legitimate brand is still early in the game. 

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Dennis Yu is an entrepreneur and internationally recognized lecturer in search engine marketing. Areas of expertise include search marketing technical analysis and pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign development and optimization. He is co-founder and chief executive officer of BlitzLocal, a Denver area firm that provides local search solutions for enterprises of all sizes. Dennis is also a regular speaker at leading industry events like AdWords Advantage Online Summit and the upcoming PPC Summit Presents…Search & Social Media Success.

By John McPhee,  Senior Account Executive at Anvil Media

I think we all know by now that social media is here to stay. Yes, it’s true the sites we participate on and the tools we use will all change from time to time, but social media isn’t going anywhere. Looking at these current social media statistics is staggering.

•  4 out of 5 computer users are active in social media
• 13 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Over 3.6 billion photos have been uploaded to Flickr
• 70 million photos are uploaded to Facebook daily
• 19 million tweets per day

Are Companies Monitoring Social Media Usage?

So with all of this social media activity happening, how much of it do you suppose happens at work? Are companies monitoring employee usage? My guess is social media use at work is quite high, and yes, companies are monitoring employee usage. Let’s take a look at a survey conducted by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) and the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) to determine how companies are currently monitoring social media use in the workplace. Roughly 65% of companies are doing some sort of employee monitoring while at work, however, the biggest segment uses a “passive system” and will only act when an issue arises. Sounds dangerous to me.

 
From the survey, 24% of respondents said that an employee has faced disciplinary action due to their activities on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. However, the percentage of disciplinary action in the public sector (33%) was much higher than the private sector (13%).
 

With all of this activity going on at work, and companies spending time, energy and resources monitoring it, doesn’t it make sense to embrace social media and accept that employees will use it? I’m not talking about lying down and letting employees freely use it as they please, but it makes good business sense to take advantage of this medium while you can, and what better way to do that than to empower your employees to join the conversation?

Set the Stage for New Hires

So where, and when, do you start training employees in social media? How about setting some ground rules, a foundation that every employee can learn, understand and use. Creating a social media training course is one of the best ways to start molding your employees into social media marketing machines. Ideally this training would happen during the new hire orientation process. This way every employee understands from day one that social media use is accepted and encouraged, but there are guidelines that must be followed or disciplinary action will be taken, which could lead to immediate termination if the rules are broken. Employees must be held accountable for their actions, or in this case, the words they write via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, etc. 

Get the Old Dogs to Fall in Line

If you do implement social media training in the new hire process, what about your current employees, the old dogs that have been working for the company for years?  Maybe they’ve been using social media already, and are used to doing things a certain way? How do you handle this situation? It’s important to let them know that there will now be guidelines, and a training course (could be a couple hour session, doesn’t have to be extravagant) that must be taken by every employee. Let them know you appreciate what they’ve already done within social media, and you’ll continue to encourage them, but in order to protect the company they’ll need to follow specific guidelines. I would suggest you focus on things that they can say, not what they can’t. This puts a little more positivity to the guidelines.

Creating a Social Media Policy

Looking at the explosion in social media use over the past few years, you have to ask yourself “how many companies actually have a social media policy in place?” In a study conducted by Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law, 69% of companies said they didn’t have a social media policy in place.

 
That is shocking to me, especially considering the amount of social media use that happens at work. Aren’t companies concerned of the risk they are taking by not having a formal policy? The biggest reason stated for not having a policy is companies aren’t sure what to include, which 25% of respondents stated.

So you’re a company that has created an employee training program, and are looking to also create a social media policy? Where do you start? Well, that’s easy. Look at what other companies are doing and determine which route you’d like to take. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. Will it be like Dell, very short and sweet? Or will you decide to provide your employees with a full arsenal like the American Red Cross’s social media toolkit? I think the Mayo Clinic did a good job at providing information about what employees can do, versus what they can’t. Even ESPN has a policy, although I see it as a tad overbearing, prohibiting anyone from writing a personal blog containing sports. Kinda broad and all encompassing, don’t you think guys? A personal blog where you can’t write about sports…hmmm. But hey, at least they have one. Now all ESPN employees know exactly what they can, and can’t, do.

The Bottom Line

Knowing that employees are going to use social media, whether it is at work or outside, the bottom line is that all companies should create some sort of social media policy. This will protect the company in any negative situation that involves an employee, social media and some undesirable words. At the same time, I would highly suggest that companies do what they can to reap the benefits that social media can bring, especially from a trained staff. If the entire company has been trained and understands the goals, social media could be an entirely new medium to obtain new customers, or help retain current ones. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a plethora of others, can all be used to your advantage, and in a down economy, these inexpensive (most are free) tools can work wonders.

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John McPhee is a Senior Account Executive for the Portland-based SEM Agency, Anvil Media. He has expertise in all aspects of search engine and social media marketing with extensive experience in the hospitality/travel and environmentally-friendly consumer goods verticals. He has provided guidance for a number of B2B clients as well.

By Leisa Hall, Senior Account Executive, Anvil Media

The Mistake
If you are currently managing an AdWords account, please, please, please, for all that is good in world do NOT – I repeat, DO NOT – ever run the same campaign on the Search Network and the Content Network at the same time. If you are doing this, you are likely throwing money out of the window. If you are not sure whether or not you are running on Search and Content, chances are good that you indeed are. This is frequently the case for unsuspecting advertisers because when a new campaign is created in AdWords, the default is to opt in to both networks. So if you are unsure, go right now (this very instant before you read past this paragraph) and look. We’ll talk more later about what all of this means.

How can you tell if this impacts you?
Go to your Campaign Settings and view the Network settings. Your settings should look like one and only one of the following:

• Google Search: This means your campaigns’ ads will show up on Google.com properties only (including Google’s international sites, if you are language targeting). This is a wise setting for advertisers who have tight budgets, as often Google’s properties will perform better than the Search network, but they can also carry slightly higher CPC’s.
 

• Google.com + Search Partners: Means that you are running on Google properties (as described above), but also on Google network of search partners. For example, AdWords powers ads on AOL and Ask.com, among many other sites. Opting in to Search Partners will often gain you additional visibility at slightly lower CPC’s.

 
• Content Network : Means that your ads can be shown on third party websites (not Google or Google’s Search partners) that are in Google’s Content Network. This is great for branding or generating awareness where you aren’t being actively sought. Your ads will be based on their contextual relevancy to the content of these third party sites. Your ads can be in text format (same as on Google), or you also have the option of running display ads which can be more eye catching and brand-focused.

The Strategy Behind Segmenting Your Campaigns
Why shouldn’t you run the same campaign on two different networks? Because they behave differently, are very likely to perform differently and as such should be structured differently.

When you run ads on the Google and Search Networks, your ad is displayed in response to a keyword you’ve bid on and that keyword matching to a query performed by a searcher. When you run ads on the Content Network, you ad is shown based on a context that you create with a list of keywords or based on sites that you specifically target (or a combination of the two – we’ll leave that for a future article).

 Google.com & Search Partners
When someone is performing a search, they are in theory actively seeking out the service, product or information that you offer. Your message to them should be very direct since you know, again in theory, what it is they are actively seeking.  If you sell kitchen gadgets, specifically the hottest, most coveted silicone heat-proof ergonomic turkey baster ever created, then you would include keywords such as “turkey baster”, “silicone turkey baster”, or “best turkey baster”, for example. Your ad group would be very specific to the keywords that you want to match to because these are what will drive the best return on your PPC investment. Your ad to go along with the keywords in this ad group might look something like:

You’re using your main keywords in the ad copy and making the direct sale because you know that the searcher is looking for what you sell.

Content Network
Things are different on the Content Network. When someone is browsing an article online about how to properly cook a turkey, for example, your ad may be displayed to them based on that contextual targeting. So if you’re still selling the world’s greatest turkey baster, then you may wish to have your ad placed alongside that article about how to cook a turkey because it is contextually related – someone who is reading about turkeys (or, more specifically, reading about how to cook turkeys) is likely to be interested in your product.

However, since the user is not actively seeking you out, you would need to be somewhat more explanatory in your messaging and would structure your keyword targeting differently. In this case, you would want to focus your keywords to build a context about where you want to appear. Selling your fabulous turkey baster, you know that people reading about cooking, turkeys, entertaining or Thanksgiving may be very inclined to be interested in your product. Knowing this, you need to build a keyword list to tell Google that is the type of content you wish to appear alongside. In this instance, in your ad group you would include keywords such as “cooking”, “turkey”, “entertaining” and “Thanksgiving”.

Yes, really.

Google is going to take those keywords and decipher, as a group, what kind of context they have and will map that context to content on the web – such as an article about how to properly cook a Thanksgiving turkey. Clearly, you would NEVER run the keywords “cooking”, “turkey”, “entertaining” or “Thanksgiving” on the Search Network – they are far too general and would likely be far too expensive to effectively drive conversions and ROI on your PPC spend. But if you bid on the same keywords for the Content network that you did on the Search network (“turkey baster”, “silicone turkey baster”, or “best turkey baster”), then Google would be likely to decipher “turkey basters” to be the context of those terms and look to place your ad in content about turkey basters – which, though probably targeted, would severely limit your visibility to potential customers.

On the Content Network, given that you are trying to catch the eye of the user who isn’t actually looking for you, you would write ad copy to be more attention getting and less focused on keywords. For example:

Conclusion
Since the types of keywords you will bid on with Search and Content are so different, and you set your network settings at the campaign level, this is why you always want to segment any Search campaigns from Content Network campaigns. The audience is different, the message is different, and most importantly, the keywords you should target are different.

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Leisa Hall is a Senior Account Executive at Anvil Media, a boutique search engine marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs the PPC strategy for the agency whose clients include large ecommerce retailers such as Lucy Activewear and Dr. Marten’s, Fortune 1000 B2B and B2C companies, universities, and large publishers as PC World. In addition to providing agency-level strategy, Leisa is very much in the trenches on a day-to-day basis
directly managing PPC initiatives, as well as SEO and Social Media strategy.

Drive Best-in-Class Results by Integrating Your PPC with Other Online Marketing Channels

By Mary Huffman, Ionic Media

In the first two articles in this series, we reviewed a variety of online marketing vehicles:

• Pay-Per-Click search marketing (PPC)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Display advertising (e.g., banners)
• Email (to house list)
• Mobile
• Online PR
• Blogging
• Viral /social media
• Email (to rented list)
• Affiliate marketing

Now that we have looked at each marketing vehicle individually, we would like to explore why you should and how you can effectively integrate your PPC marketing with other online media.

First: The Big Kahuna of Integration: PPC and SEO
• People regularly ask us which type of search marketing they should use to drive site traffic and the answer is, “Both.”
• Having multiple listings on the same keyword is mutually reinforcing (people believe you must be relevant!).  So, users end up clicking more than if you had only one PPC or organic listing.  The result is that you get more than your fair share of clicks
• PPC works now, you can control it, and you can always run it profitably – even if it does require cash outflow
• Organic works over the long haul, brings in targeted traffic cheaply, but is not controllable

Second: Integrate PPC with Your Brand Building Efforts
• While it is an effective online vehicle, PPC is not a demand generator so you have to drive demand with other media
• That said, PPC is great as the “catcher” of other efforts to drive demand
• Use display advertising, PR, e-mail, and offline to drive buzz and generate demand
• Ensure PPC is in place to capture all of the opportunity you have created with the other media
• A very large company (to remain nameless) ran an expensive Super Bowl ad but failed to integrate it with a search campaign.  While search volume on target keywords spiked an astonishing amount after the ad ran, the advertiser was nowhere in the search results and clever competitors ran special ad copy to capture the opportunity.  Don’t let this happen to you.

Third: Integrate PPC with Your Direct Response Efforts
• PPC is in itself a great direct response vehicle and can deliver even more value when integrated with other direct response vehicles
• The bottom line is that having multiple channels with which you touch your prospects is smart (hint: they convert better)
• When you run an e-mail or mobile campaign, be sure to have an equivalent PPC campaign in place to capture searchers driven from other media

Get the Right Tracking in Place – It Makes a Difference
• Assists are important and can be an important part of the equation showing which media is effective
• Ad serving allows you to track across PPC and display advertising (e.g., DART for Advertisers and Atlas are two ad serving systems)
• Yahoo Analytics allows you to track PPC click assists with e-mail campaigns
• Yahoo Analytics allows you to track PPC click assists to SEO clicks but not vice versa

The benefits of marketing integration are clear and, in most cases, easy to capture.

We hope this three-part series has been helpful in laying the foundation for you to explore the variety of online media that exist to help make your business succeed…and to do it smartly.  Good luck!

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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.

Results of our recent PPC Summit Internet Marketing Education Survey revealed:

• Respondents prefer a mix of online and in-person training
• One or two day in-person educational meetings with multiple tracks/multiple presentations won out
• Networking is an important component of in-person events for most of you
• Relevant vendors add value for 70+% of attendees
• Facebook is the most used social media site amongst those who responded, closely followed by LinkedIn, and over 80% of you are using social media
• Many of you are looking for more advanced strategies for both Pay-Per-Click and SEO

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Congratulations to Jenna, Doug and Ronald who won $60 iTunes Gift Cards for completing the survey. 

If you would like to be included in future survey, sign up for our newsletter now. 

Speaking of the newsletter, Mark from California let us know, “I run two hotels and manage my own PPC programs. I was heading towards a $250,000 spend for 2009 until I picked up a simple tip from a PPCSummit.com email newsletter: “turn off broad match.”  I checked search terms  that were triggering my keywords and found that about 35% of my clicks were not targeted and irrelevant to my adds. (The search engine supposedly had ‘“broadened” its broad match parameters.)  I believe that this “ONE TIP” will save me $80,000-$100,000 over the next year.”