marketers' guide on search engine marketing

Incitez SEM Guide

for Marketers 2011

Table of Content

  Introduction

  Goals, KPIs, and Targeting

  SEM Measurement with Web Analytics

  SEM Budgeting & ROI

  Branding & Brand Keywords

  In-house SEM Management

  SEM Outsourcing Guide

  Benefits of Content Network

Incitez | Data-Driven Digital Marketing

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Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

Incitez | Data-Driven Digital Marketing 3

SERP: Search Engine Results Page


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Sponsored search results (PPC Marketing)

Natural search results (SEO)

What is Search Engine Marketing?

  Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is keyword driven, demand generation marketing. It consists of search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click management (PPC).

  Almost half of all searches are to find a product or service to buy, and advertisers can pay for a click-through via sponsored search listing (PPC) for a qualified lead to a potential purchase.

  Note: In many Asian markets, when people talk about SEM, it just means PPC. This guide does not cover knowledge on SEO though the term “SEM” is adopted in this guide.


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Benefits of SEM

  Cost effective marketing. There is no cost to advertisers until someone shows interest in the ad by clicking on it.

  Targeted marketing. People search for what they are interested; unlike push marketing with mass media like TV, SEM is more targeted, permission based, and can be constantly optimized for better performance.

  Broad reach. With SEM, even SME can target worldwide with limited budget.

  Measurable. Incitez runs data-driven SEM campaigns which are measurable with radical improvement in campaign performance.


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Benefits of SEM

  Flexible budgeting. You can spend as much as millions per month or as little as a few hundred; it’s up to you.

  ROI driven marketing. With proper tracking, your SEM marketing can be measured against ROI.

  Timing. You can engage potential customers at precisely the right moment.


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Goal, KPI, and Targeting

Common Goals of SEM campaign

  To generate online sales. If you have an e-commerce store with online transaction capabilities, you want to generate sales online via SEM. Choices of KPI are:

  Cost Per Conversion or Cost Per Sale (CPS): SEM cost divided by number of sales

  Return On Advertising Spending (ROAS): a measure of the effectiveness of your SEM marketing program. ROAS is computed by dividing revenue resulting from SEM campaigns by the search engine spend.


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  To generate online leads. Drive your potential buyers to the site and get them to leave their contact details. Cost Per Lead (CPL) is widely used KPI for B2B SEM campaigns.

  To drive online registrations. Registrations are essential to online community sites. You want to understand the cost per registration value and keep reducing it.

  To drive traffic for awareness marketing. Take note of the bounce rate, average time on site, and engagement. However, if average time on site is too long could indicate a bad site architecture so that visitors find it very hard to find the right information.


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  Others. ALWAYS define a goal for your SEM campaigns; there must be more than visits you expect from online users. Here's a list of more goals you can define:

  Leave a comment

  Subscribe via RSS or Email

  Submit contact form

  Download a document

  Click on a link or a button

  Visit a specific page


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SEM Targeting

  Keywords Targeting. SEM is keywords driven marketing, enabling you a better targeted campaign.

 Geographic targeting. Either targeting a country or several cities, you can do so with all search engines.

  Language.


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SEM Targeting

  Related Websites. For finance products, you may want to targets finance websites visitors like those on WSJ.com, FT.com,. You can do so with:

  Placement targeting

  Contextual targeting

  Ad scheduling. Control the days and times your SEM campaigns target.


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SEM Measurement with Web Analytics

Traditional Advertising V.S. SEM

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted.

The trouble is I don't know which half.


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Luckily, what John Wanamaker said is not true in SEM marketing, which is measurable with web analytics.

Web Analytics

  Visitors. From your search engine reports, you can tell how many clicks are generated, which roughly equals to the number of visits.

  Bounced visits. Normal visitors landed on your site after clicking on your PPC listing; but he was not interested after a glimpse of your site, and he simply exit. This (bounce rate) is something you can get from most web analytics report.


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Web Analytics

  Content.

  Is your site content interesting and attractive enough to keep the visitors there?

  If you run an online store, you want to find out on which step of the checking out process do most exits occur.

  Can people find what you expect them to?

 Which are the top visited pages?

 Which pages have the highest bounce rates or exit rates?


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Web Analytics

  Traffic.

 Where are your visitors from?

  Search engine? Natural search traffic or paid search?

  Email campaign?

  Direct access?

  Referred by some other websites? Which websites referred traffic with high conversions?

 What search terms do people use to find your site in search engines?


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Web Analytics

  Conversions. Conversion is your goal of online marketing campaigns; different business may have different goals, but most goals can be tracked with web analytics.

 Which SEM campaign drives most conversions or sales?

 What are the top converting keywords?

  CPA value (cost per conversion or cost per acquisition).


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Web Analytics

  Search queries V.S. SEM Keywords   Search queries are different from PPC

keywords. Queries are the exact terms people use in search engines to search.

  SEM Keywords are what you use in SEM campaigns along with different matching options to target your potential customers.

  You need web analytics to "catch" all converting queries from SEM campaigns so that you can update your SEM with more targeted keywords. In addition, the search queries are helpful to your search engine optimization.


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FREE Web Analytics Tools

  Google Analytics

 Woopra (real time web tracking)

  Statcounter

  Piwik (open source web analytics)


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SEM Budgeting & ROI

SEM Budgeting

 What’s important to include in the SEM report for the management?

  Total budget

  Clicks / Visits

  Conversions (such as downloads, registrations, clicks, number of sales and etc.)

  Revenue generated online

  ROI (return on investment)


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Estimate SEM Spend on Google

1.  Generate a list of keywords with search engine keywords tools like these:   adwords.google.com/select/

KeywordToolExternal   tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/

seobook/

2.  Use Google traffic estimator to estimate the cost and clicks.   adwords.google.com/select/

TrafficEstimatorSandbox

3.  Take seasonality and promotions into consideration to adjust the estimate.


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Estimate SEM Spend on Other SE

  Referring to search engine market share in different market, relatively estimate the spend and clicks on other search engines.

  Refer to user demographic data in each search engine as well for more accurate estimate; but this sometimes requires experience.

  Estimating SEM spend takes time and experience; an easy way is to ask your agency to come up with a budget proposal with verifications.


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Estimate Conversions & ROI

Visits • Equals clicks (roughly)

Conversions

•  Conversions = Visits X CR •  Get conversion rate (CR) estimate from history performance

Return

• Return = Total online revenue - SEM spend (possibly including agency account management fee)

• No revenue directly generated online: assign a money value to each conversion

ROI • ROI = Return / SEM Spend

Branding & Brand Keywords

Impact of Branding on Search Ad Effectiveness

 Microsoft and Sony conducted a research study to evaluate the impact of branding on Sony’s search ad effectiveness.

  The results illustrate that exposure to search ad considerably lifted purchase intent and drove likelihood of recommendation.


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Impact of Branding on Search Ad Effectiveness

  Branded search terms proved to further enhance the value of search advertising. This study demonstrated:

  Exposure of search ad lifted purchase intent and drove likelihood of recommendation.

  Search ads with branded terms were more effective in driving brand lift than generic terms.

  Audiences exposed to Sony search ads had less positive attitudes towards competitors’ brands.


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The Brand Lift Of Search

  In a whitepaper released by Enquiro showed a significant correlation between companies in the top organic (natural search) and paid search (PPC) placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent.   A 16% point increase in brand association

when brand is in top ad and top organic listings

  A 2.2x lift in aided brand recall when brand is in top ad and top organic listings

  When brand is in top ad and top organic listings, purchase consideration increases 8% points

  Consumers are less likely to consider purchasing a brand that doesn’t appear on the search results page

  Even for branded queries, presence in top ad and top organic listings boosts purchase intent


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  The eye tracking study reveals consumer insights:

  Brand fixations occurred in the URL and title of the listing; not in the description

  Best practice: Place your brand in the title, URL, and as close to the start of the description as possible in your ad and organic listings

  Subjects with established affinity for the brand spent 25% less time on the top ad listing, jumping down to the organic listings 73% faster than the non-affinity group

  Best practice: Ad listings appear to have a greater opportunity to lift brand affinity among new customers; write and target them as such â€“ especially for upper funnel queries


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  Lessons:

  Your investment in brand advertising increases with search

  Advertise on unbranded and branded keywords

  Tailor your ad to prospects


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Identify the Trend of Brand Searches


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Find more online trend tools here: http://bit.ly/online-trend

How Search Branding Works


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  SERPs basically include sponsored and organic listings, each of which consists of title, description, and display URL.

Should You Bid on Your Brand Name?

  Your website probably comes first in natural result on brand name search; but what happens when your competitors or affiliates bid on that brand name too?

 Without bidding on your own brand name, your natural listing could show in the 2nd or even 4th position.


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Should You Bid on Your Brand Name?

  Bidding on your brand name allows you to control the ad copy that appears in the sponsored search and control the landing page.

  Appearing in both the organic and sponsored search engine results can increase click-through rates significantly.


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Search Branding Measurement

  Search branding can be measured through engagement. The following metrics can be helpful to you to get started:

  Average Time on Site

  Page Views per Visit

  Form submissions

  Downloads

  RSS / Email subscriptions


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In-house SEM Management

Should You Hire A PPC Staff?

  How much have you been constantly spending on paid search campaigns every month? More importantly, how much extra do you need to pay in terms of account management fee if you outsource to an agency or third party to do it?

  How many markets do you target? Do you have the resources to handle difference languages?

  How many search engines do you use?


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SEM Qualification

  Web Analytics. Be familiar with the basics of web analytics; not necessarily the exact web analytics software your company uses. If your company uses Google Analytics , sponsor him/her to take the IQ test.

  Search Engines. Depending on your target markets, it's important the search marketer has got experience in top search engines of each market. However, if a person is very familiar with one search engine (especially Google), it won't be a problem to get used to the others.

  Language Abilities. This is a must. The person you are to hire must be capable of reading and writing in all local languages in your MAIN markets.


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SEM Qualification

  Experience.   Related industry experience   Optimization. What have been done to

optimize the campaign?   Past campaign objectives and outcome.

Is it just driving traffic or ROI driven campaigns?

 Monthly budget one has handled independently (and, you may want to ask how your candidate did budgeting).

  Business Acumen. SEM is not technical work; someone without business acumen can hardly work out a proper SEM strategy.


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Set KPIs for SEM Team

  Total Conversions from PPC

  PPC ROAS

  PPC Cost Per Conversion

  Conversion Rate


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SEM / PPC Outsourcing

When You Might Want to Outsource

  Limited staff but too many products to promote

  No experience managing SEM in-house

  Return on the PPC investment was not what you were looking for

  Lack of capabilities in certain markets (especially language abilities)


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Alternative to SEM Outsourcing

  In-house SEM

  Ask for help from Search Engines

  This might be difficult when you have to deal with multiple search engines in several markets

 Not all search engine account managers are concerned about your business performance from search


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With Incitez, you can completely outsource your PPC campaigns or have our optimizers to work with your in-house PPC staff.

What to Ask for in SEM Request for Proposal (RFP)

  Company registration certificate

  Years of experience

  Past accounts handled

  Past accounts managed in the same industry and the produced results

  Bio and qualifications of the staff who will manage your SEM campaign; roles and responsibilities; and, how many accounts each person manages.


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What to Ask for in SEM Request for Proposal (RFP)

  Who builds and maintains the keyword list (and how)

  What bidding system the agency uses. If they have their own system, it's a good sign. But you want to know more details of the bidding system. You don't want to pay an agency tens of thousands every month who rely entirely on machine's input.

  How the agency handles seasonal effects and promotions

  How frequent a report will be submitted and the content of the report

  Who will analyze the campaign performance


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What to look for?

  Meet the guy who is actually managing PPC for you and find out the years and industry of experience

  KPI. Ask the agency to recommend a set of KPI after sharing your business objective. If only very basics like clicks and CTR are recommended, stay away from those agencies.

  Fee. Are they charging a fair amount of account managing fee? Compare and ask agencies to verify what services are included.

  Tracking and reporting. If you are not into web analytics, ask for a reporting template and see whether it makes sense to you.


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Benefits of Content Network

Search Network V.S. Content Network

Search Engine

Search Network

Search Engine

Property

Search Partners

Content Network

Websites Products


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Contextual Matching

Placement

Benefits of Content Network

  Reach. If you want to reach broader audience, content network helps. Just Google AdWords content network reaches over 70% of unique Internet users around the world.

  Awareness. The content network has the advantage of reaching potential customers at different points of the buying cycle. If you are to launch products of a new category, search can hardly help (unless you run off-line campaigns) without content network driving awareness.

  Branding. Most search networks (one exception is Baidu) only allows text ads, which makes content network more valuable for online branding campaigns. You can run text ads, image ads, and video ads on content network pages.


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Google Content Network

  Ads on the Google Content Network can be an effective way to gain additional conversion beyond those you get via search.

  When used in combination with Search, the median advertiser has a content CPA that's within approximately 2% of their Search CPA.

  The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertisers

  Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.


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Content Network Recommendation

  Consider complementing your search campaigns with campaigns on the Content Network, if you haven't done so already.

 Use tools for content optimization such as the Conversion Optimizer, Placement Performance Reports, and the Site and Category Exclusion tool. They can help you further tailor your Content Network performance to meet your advertising goals.


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About Incitez

About Incitez

  Incitez is a data-driven digital marketing company providing digital strategy consulting and digital marketing campaign development. We partner with clients to identify their opportunities in digital space, address their challenges, and advance their businesses with custom digital solutions.

  You can find out more about us at our website: www.incitez.com


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Incitez Search

  Data-driven search marketing; campaign performance are constantly measured and optimized

  Performance-based pricing; you pay for what you get (more conversions; higher ROI)

  Certified search specialists by Google and Baidu

 Multilingual capabilities

  Solutions: search strategy, in-house training, campaign management


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For more, please visit: www.incitez.com/channels/sem

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Contact Incitez Rocky Fu

E: [email protected]

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