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Add comment December 18th, 2009

Bad Google ad of the week

Submitted to me by my good friend Tessa who searched for the term “photo” from somewhere in toronto. I’m not sure what she was looking for, but I doubt this was it.

Add comment February 10th, 2009

There’s no such thing as low-hanging fruit

The phrase “low hanging fruit” comes up a lot in marketing, particularly in online marketing. I guess this is because people think that online marketing automatically attracts the most obvious of consumers - those who are active participants in their media. And maybe this is true - maybe we’re most engaged and apt to buy when we’re online searching, or reading, or watching a YouTube video. Or maybe it’s just that the BUY NOW button is right in front of us, in all it’s shiny, rounded-edged glory.

Or maybe we’re kidding ourselves.

Are consumers who go online really the low-hanging fruit? Is it even okay to use that phrase when talking about our customers at all? Isn’t it somehow…demeaning? (and don’t get me started on the term “consumer” - but that’s another post).

I think there’s a common assumption that the online audience is easy pickings because they’re doing things like clicking on banners or search ads, watching video content, and, in general interacting with their media rather than passively being exposed to it.

And this may be the case for someone who is just about ready to buy that new t.v., or ipod, or $5000 treadmill. Still, how do we know much legwork other media has done before that low-hanging fruit was primed and ready to respond to that banner ad, text link or BUY NOW button? I mean, I’m no gardener but it seems to me that a lot happens before the fruit dangles low on the branch to begin with. If you’re planning media and you ignore that fact, then your bound to be dissapointed.

Take search, for example (of course we’ll take search. I live search. I breath search. I AM search…)

All too often I’ve been in meetings with clients or prospective clients who scratch their head(s) about their disappointing search results. They’re not getting converions, the cost is more than they expected, is this because of the competition?

But with search, like other forms of media, there really is no low-hanging fruit (unless you count brand terms - and even then, it’s with established brands, and how does a brand become established - lots of care and feeding…)

When a search campaign horribly disappoints it’s generally because the keywords are too broad, or the landing page falls terribly short of consumer expectations or half your traffic is coming from parked domains and error pages. So yes, lots of people may have found you by typing “blue suede shoes” into Google, but they left without those shoes because you sent them to a landing page filled with hot pink platform sandals.

And don’t you see? I don’t want hot pink platform sandals! I don’t care that you also sell blue suede shoes. Send me to a page that speaks to me!

But redesigning your web page, or creating landing pages, or culling a keyword list so that you’re getting rid of unwanted clicks suddenly turns low hanging fruit into high maintenance gardening. And that’s just as it should be. Because low-hanging fruit always starts off way out of reach and under-ripe. Plus it gets offended if you call it low-hanging fruit without really understanding all it went through before it turned plump, ripe and ready to pick.

If anyone can overuse a metaphor, tis I..

Add comment February 9th, 2009

Stop the Madness

It’s been two years since Google’s last groundbreaking announcement that they intended to change the rules on us regarding quality score. And what fun times those were! A few months after the new landing page algorithm was incorporated (in July 2006), I had campaigns where 75% of the terms were suddenly slapped with $5.00 and $10.00 minimum bids (in most cases, inexplicably).

In fact, I’m starting to feel a bit jaded and neurotic. What will this new change mean? Isn’t it contradictory to everything they’ve been saying related to each new “improvement”? How can I best explain this to clients?

It then occurred to me that the best way to get a handle on what the current changes may mean, is to look at the history of changes in the past.

Adwords - A brief History

July 2005 - The Quality Score is Introduced

This is when Google replaced the static minimum bid of .05 with a variety of minimum bid price points which were based on relevancy (as deemed by Google’s Quality factors) - Here’s a good chart that demonstrates the key factors in Google’s quality score before the August 2008 change. By the way, Google cited this change as something good for advertisers because it gave them “increased control.” Before the quality score, Google would have varying phases of keyword approval that included “on hold”, “in trial”, or “disabled” keywords. Setting minimum bids at varying prices (Google argued) gave advertisers control over turning poor-quality terms on or off. But for many advertisers there was no real choice - a term pegged with a $5.00 or $10.00 minimum was too expensive to keep live.

December 2005 - Google introduces landing pages into the quality score equasion

This actually made a lot of sense. Relevant landing pages are important to a good search experience. The main issue I had with this was that pages created for Google campaigns were now often hit with quality penalties - kind of how Google frowns upon doorway pages in organic SEO. My feeling is that if I’m paying for an ad, I should have have the ability to create landing pages specifically for that ad.

July 2006 - Landing page quality update

Although landing pages were being factored into overall quality score as early as December 2005, the algorithm was “improved” in July 2006 so that they (the landing pages) impacted your minimum bid. This had disastrous results in many cases.

November 2006 - Landing page quality is extended to contextually targeted ads

The answer to arbitrage? A way to control the quality of those parked domain sites that are just a repository for Google ads? Probably - and so I didn’t worry too much about this one. Also, this change only affected minimum bid amounts and not ad position. Google’s advice was, “It may be instructive to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and closely examine what it is that leads you to explore and do business with a site rather than simply click the “Back” button.”

February 14, 2007 - A day of love, and more quality score changes

Google introduced more transparency to advertisers regarding keyword quality score. Now you could actually see what your minimum bid was to activate the term (no, you couldn’t see this originally!) and also glean some basic idea of what Google thought of the term (Great, Good, OK, Poor). Google also changed the quality score algorithm at this time, factoring in overall history for new keywords into the initial minimum bid, and not assigning quality to new keywords prior to the keyword accruing some history in the campaign.

August 2007 - Change to top ad placement formula

Google now put more emphasis on maximum bid for achieving premium ad placement, so that if you wanted the top spot, you could basically bid higher prices to be there. This was probably Google’s reaction to advertisers who tended to bid close to the minimum bid price. Now the top position was based more on how advertisers below you were bidding (a flashback to the true “Overture” style of auction-based bidding). But since quality score still factored into ad positioning, this didn’t really provide the additional control Google claimed. It just made everyone anxious and fueled higher CPCs overall.

March 2008 - Landing page load time incorporated into quality score

This one’s pretty straightforward. If you had a slow loading page, the time had come to fix it.

August 2008 - All hell breaks loose

Google anounced some new quality score “improvements” that include eliminating the minimum bid requirements, introducing a “first place bid” which (I’m assuming) replaces or augments the “top placement formula” introduced last August and figuring out quality scores in real-time, rather than basing them on historical campaign or account data and Google’s own history of the term. What does this mean??

I honestly don’t understand how quality score can be determined on the fly and not based on history. I don’t know what “performance” even means in the context of Google’s new announcement. I think this effectively removes the transparency Google briefly introduced in February 2007. We’ll now have to guess at the maximum bid amount and I imagine there will be a lot of head scratching when (for example) a keyword that seems highly relevant isn’t getting any search volume on Google. What can we do when that happens? Raise bids, I guess.

Google is once again touting this change, which seems to contradict all previous changes, as “better” for advertisers and (of course) Google’s users because it will allow them to show more relevant ads. Oh really? Relevant based on what? That’s not entirely clear. Personally, I base relevancy on conversions - CTR is a false metric. Anyone who has seen success on the content network can attest to that.

Do us all a favor, Google. Don’t tout these changes as better for everyone when they are untested and unclear. Perhaps they’re better for you, but that’s an entirely different post.

Add comment August 24th, 2008

John Battelle weighs in on search and other things

Dana Todd of Newsforce.com sent me a link to a recent DishyMix Podcast featuring John Battelle. I’ve been a fan of Battelle ever since I read his book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.

This book is essential reading for anyone involved in search engine marketing whether you’re immersed in campaign management and optimization (like me), or just want to gain a solid understanding of the foundation of search marketing and how the players have changed over time.

Battelle answered a lot of questions from top industry folks during his interview with Susan Bratton of the DishyMix. He touched on some of the key buzzword bingo terms of the web marketing moment (in my geeky opinion), including social media and Web 2.0, online video, blogging and of course search.

Battelle seems fixated on the idea of marketing as a conversation. Per Battelle, “…if you’re going to engage in conversation with a potential set of customers or a current set of customers or both, you can’t just horn in and demand that people talk with you. You actually have to listen and understand what they want to talk about and then add value to that conversation.”

How does search play into this conversation? Well, my feeling is that search, alone, doesn’t. But, as search marketers, we need to be aware of the conversations that are going on all over the place, and make our clients understand how important they are to consumers.

Let me be clear - I don’t think it’s fair to relabel search marketing as “conversational marketing” (I’m not saying that’s what Battelle is trying to do) although at their core, both tactics are about language.
Let’s face it, search marketing is a pretty boring term when compared with the latest trends like “social media marketing”, “reputation management” and now “conversational marketing.”

But search is bigger and more meaningful than it sounds. Battelle hinted at the true greatness of search while speaking of Conversational marketing. He said in answer to a question about using conversational marketing to a b-to-b audience,”If you want to start a new conversation, you have to figure out what is it that people are actually interested in conversing about that might add value to their, in this case their work life”

This concept is inextricably linked to search marketing. Because when people go online to find something, it is always the beginning of a very personal conversation. The one that exists in your head when you’re flipping from Google, to Amazon to Ebay looking for that damned Disney DVD that’s been discontinued for ten years *ahem* Little Mermaid II and yes I DID pay $20.00 for that crappy movie on Ebay..If you’ve ever had a four-year-old who adores princesses, you’ll understand.
But I digress..

As search marketers, we are tasked with guessing what language people will use to find what they want. The keywords we target are akin to shouting into the void. And although we reach many people this way, we also spend a lot of money on wasted clicks because the language we use to catch these roving questers is wrong.

But this is where conversation comes in. Because really effective search marketers recognize that if you want to be found by the right people, you have to be in the same place, figuratively speaking, as the searcher. That means producing plenty of valuable, unique content that speaks the right language.

Battelle said this better than me when referring to the growing phenomenon of social media, “I have a feeling this majority of people who are going to come into social networks are going to do it without realizing that they’re actually doing it. It’s just going to be part of a useful application for them and it might be as simple as “Hey, join my Live Journal or my WordPress group so we can share pictures of the family.”

But, you know, this statement is exactly what happened with search engines ten years ago! It was a useful tool. A utility. Like the T.V. Guide or a remote control - a way to interface with the growing wealth of information and people online.

What I love about search is the connection between content and people and ideas. When you market via search, your ad is only the beginning of the conversation. The interesting stuff is way past the click.

Case in point. Once upon a time I needed information about cleft lip and palate because, at six months pregnant, I found out my baby would be born with a cleft. I began blogging about it when I was eight months pregnant, and to this day I keep up my blog and the story of my daughter.

I did this with the sole intention of reaching parents who, after getting the horrible news that their baby would be born with a cleft lip, would reach out online to find other parents who’d lived through such scary news. I also began writing about the unique treatment my daughter received, and my blog is visited regularly by dentists, surgeons and parents who want to learn about the techninque (nasoalveolar molding). And, yes, the blog ranks #2 and #3 in Google for that term.

If I had to coin a phrase other than search marketing, I might call it “found marketing.” The interactive nature of the Internet forces companies to think beyond their advertising. The idea that consumers can speak up about products and services (hopefully) forces companies to be more authentic about what they’re selling. There are lots of ways to search for stuff you want to buy online - the fun stuff involves consumer reviews, product-focused wikis (like Wetpaint’s Micro PC Talk Wiki) and multimedia search engines (think “iTunes”).

Where does Google and other search engines miss the boat? I think it’s with the purely automated nature of search - both on the paid and organic side. Google worships the almighty algorithm - everything, including the way paid ads rank - is dependent on a machine intelligence that can’t possibly know I want to hear a clip of music from Broadway’s Wicked and not just read about the origin of the play on Wikipedia (for example). When the algorithm gets it wrong -which is often - it’s very disheartening.

The one exception to this is itunes. I love to perform keyword searches on itunes which lets me flip visually through titles, listen to music clips and toggle between podcasts and audio books (for example). Itunes produces very tangibl almost 3-dimensional results.
One final comment on Battelle’s interview. I wholeheartedly agree with him on one key point - “In order to be a media company, you need to act like one.” It’s time Google admitted they are as much a media company as a technology company. At least, in the sense of selling ads. It’s okay, Google, we won’t think any less of you in the morning. Please dole out a little love to your Adwords reps and the (small-to-mid-size) agencies they work with. Remember, a human touch can work wonders!

Add comment July 22nd, 2008

This just in! Google is #1

For some reason, Google being the number one search engine - a fact that hasn’t changed since 2002 - is hitting all the e-zines as the top news story of this Monday morning. MediaPost’s article “Google Stays at the Top of the Search Heap” does cite some interesting statistics, but the most fascinating thing about these numbers (in my opinion) isn’t that Google is at the top, it’s the sheer volume of searches being performed on sites and/or networks whose core focus is not search (e.g., Facebook, Amazon, MySpace).
According to Nielson’s latest stats, in May 2008:

• Google’s share of the search market is 60% or 4.7 billion queries for the month
• Yahoo’s share of searches was 17% or 21% (2.4 billion queries), according to Nielson or Comsore respectively
• There were 10.8 billion search queries across Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and AOL
• YouTube searches hit 2 billion in May
• MySpace had 395 million queries
• Facebook had 121 million queries
• Ebay had 449 million queries
• Amazon.com had 141 million queries

I often tell clients that search is expanding well beyond search engines. My own search habits have changed throughout the years, and I’m glad to see that destinations other than pure play search engines are showing up on these types of studies. I wonder if iTunes will make the list. I’m always searching for music and podcats via iTunes and rarely go to Google or anywhere else for this information.

To be fair, Google’s not going anywhere for a long time. Another interesting headline about Google’s popularity appeared in Ad Age today titled, “America Has Spoken: In Google We Trust“, which reports that Google has bumped Microsoft off the top of the list of the most reputable company in America, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll. Marketing Pilgrim also picked up this story this morning. In short, 82% of Americans feel that Google is a reputable brand. Google is the “best liked” company in America, winning out above Johnson & Johnson, Intel, General Mills and Kraft Foods. And all this without spending a dime on advertising. Long live the Internet!

Add comment June 23rd, 2008

New Changes in Google Adwords & Yahoo Paid Search

Google and Yahoo have recently added new features to their paid search platforms, some of which are extremely useful and some, well, not so much. It’s important for advertisers to pay attention to these changes because they often have a direct impact on your campaign. Here are a few of the latest changes, broken down by engine.

Google Adwords

Adwords Editor 6.0 was released on June 4, 2008. Advertisers can now create site-targeted campaigns, implement geo-targeting, export performance statistics to a CSV file, and a few other things which make this awesome tool even more awesome. Google provides a full list of the new features via their release notes. If you’re not using the Adwords Editor to build and manage campaigns, then you should download it immediately. As far as I’m concerned, it’s THE best tool out there to manage Adwords, plus it’s a great way to build a campaign which can be transferred to the other engines.

Landing Page Load Time Analysis is now available via the Keyword Analysis page if you log into your Adwords account online (thus, it’s not available via the Editor). Load time will be factored into Quality score any day now (mid-June according to Google). Needless to say, it’s important to check out your landing pages to see if your keyword quality has been effected.

Monthly Budgeting now Available - From the earliest days of Adwords, a campaign budget could only be set at the daily level, so if you wanted to spend a certain amount per month, you’d need to multiply it by 30. Now Google also gives advertisers the option to specify a monthly budget per campaign as well. This is a helpful way to assess how much you’ve budgeted per month at-a-glance, and I’m guessing they rolled it out to complement the “automatic matching” feature explained below. In my opinion it would be more useful if advertisers could set their budget at the account level, so you can never overspend. Yahoo actually has this functionality (go figure).

Automatic Matching - This is a new feature that’s currently in beta, so it’s not available in every account. Automatic matching is a setting at the campaign level which allows Google to automatically show ads for keywords that you’re not bidding on, based on the content of your web site compared with the terms in your campaign. The aim is to spend your budget in its entirety, so this option will only work if you’re not meeting your current daily spend limit. This can be dangerous, since many of us look at the overall daily spend across all campaigns, rather than the individual campaign daily spend. If you have been chosen to participate in this beta, you’ll see an alert when you log in (see screenshots, below). My advice is to opt out of this feature immediately! Google uses CTR to determine keyword relevancy, and we all know that can mean bupkus when it comes down to the bottom line.

If you’ve been chosen to participate in the “Automatic Matching” beta, here’s what you’ll see in your Account Snapshot when you log into Google.

CPA Bidding Out of Beta - Google recently enabled CPA bidding for all campaigns that qualify (you have to have received at least 200 conversions over the past 30 days). The way it works seems relatively simple - you adjust your CPA at the ad group level and Google automatically adjusts bids but never goes over your desired CPA. Per Google, “The Conversion Optimizer uses algorithms to predict, in real time, which clicks are likely to be most valuable. Based on these predictions, the Conversion Optimizer sets higher CPC bids for more valuable clicks and lower CPC bids for less valuable clicks. The predictions are based on your ad’s conversion history.” I haven’t tried this feature yet and it really seems too good to be true (thus it probably is). My recommendation is to test, test and test again.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Usability Enhancements - Yahoo added a bunch of enhancements to the search console in mid-May which makes managing keywords and ad groups easier. All disabled objects (keywords, ad groups or campaigns) will appear in red text, a status column now appears beside all watched campaigns which helps identify why a campaign is offline, and a host of other usability tweaks were added. Check it out on Yahoo’s blog when you can.

New Click Filter Report - This is a new report that Yahoo rolled out in April 2008 which lets advertisers see the number of clicks deemed invalid and thus not charged to your account. You can customize the report to show invalid clicks by campaign or ad group, which is very helpful in determining what categories produce the highest amount of invalid clicks. Yahoo suggests reviewing this report for sudden spikes and also comparing the total clicks against your web traffic stats in order to determine if there’s been any incidents of click fraud. You can file a click investigation request with Yahoo if you feel there’s a problem.

Minimum Bid Changes - In late February 2006, Yahoo implemented a change to their reserve bid pricing structure. Previously, all keywords could enter the auction at a minimum bid of .10 or higher. But throughout February and March, Yahoo changed the reserve bid to a variable amount which could be lower, but oftentimes higher, than the minimum bid of .10. In short, Yahoo is using a quality score system, similar to Google’s quality score algorithm, to determine the minimum bid for each keyword in the auction. Quality is based on various factors with CTR being the most important. Other quality indicators include keyword value (e.g., level of competition on a particular keyword) and that appears to be it for the moment (e.g., landing page is not currently a factor).

New Keyword Generator Tool - Yahoo enhanced their keyword generator tool at the start of 2008. The tool enables you to add up to 500 keywords to your account instantly, provides a list of related keywords for a given ad group, and provides suggestions for keywords based on a given URL or description.

Keyword Exclusion - Yahoo now enables advertisers to add up to 250 excluded keywords at the account and ad group levels (up from 50 keywords). You can only use excluded keywords on “expanded match” terms in Yahoo. Excluding irrelevant terms is an excellent way to refine your campaign and get more targeted traffic.

Add comment June 16th, 2008

Media & Search “Rank and File” People to Watch 2008

For the past twelve years, Ad Age has released a report titled “Women to Watch” which is, in their words, “a special report on the women in advertising, marketing and media whose accomplishments and potential have made them standouts.”

The 2008 Women to Watch are primarily women who work for large global, and extremely corporate entities the likes of which include Mindshare (owned by WPP), Citi, General Motors, McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson and MediaVest (a company that calls its media planners “media architects”).

I don’t get it. Hooray for women’s lib and all but, seriously, what makes these women “women to watch?” Aren’t the women to watch at the bottom, kicking and clawing their way up? I mean, good for you if you’re the Media Director at McDonald’s Worldwide, but this doesn’t make you an out-of-the box thinker. Hell, if I had 810 million dollars to spend on media, I think I could get pretty creative too.

On the other hand, if I was in charge of that much money, I’d probably just hire someone smart to be creative for me. And, come to think of it, when you have that much money to spend on media, you don’t really have to be creative. Try stretching a 20,000 budget across six months. You’ve got to put your thinking cap on.

It’s the small agencies, the junior planners and the start-ups on a shoestring that have the big ideas. The little guys have to really get creative to compete with big corporations.

These are the people and companies I work with every day. These are truly the people to watch. I want to give props to all the hard workers out there that are shaping the way we do business in online marketing and search. Oh and I’m not sticking to just women. We’re all in this together.

Jackie Dooley’s Media & Search People to Watch - 2008

Note: thefreedictionary.com defines “rank and file” as: People who constitute the main body of any group

Nick Lindauer, Director of Search Engine Marketing @ Torque | FKMA

At just twenty-six years old Nick has risen to the director role of Torque | FKM, an agency based in Houston. I met Nick in 2005 while freelancing for Acronym Media (a small SEM shop in NYC). He comprised their entire SEO department. Just Nick. He went on to work at NEO (the search division of Ogilvy) and in just two years rose to lead a team of twelve. During this entire time, Nick was the sole proprietor of an online retail store that sold specialty hot sauce. His tiny NYC apartment was lined with inventory. He did all the SEO for the site and it was naturally ranked at the very top of Google for the term “hot sauce.” He sold the business for a nice profit when he moved to Texas. Nick is a search marketing genius. He’s made me realize that anyone worth their salt in search marketing should have a rough idea of how to build a web site and/or maintain a blog.

Tessa Ohlendorf, Internet Marketer - Self-Employed

I met Tessa in 2006 while I was working at the world’s smallest online media buying and planning shop in NYC. There were five of us then, and I was the only one who really knew anything about online marketing until Tessa came along. Tessa is a savvy online media planner who has no trouble pulling all nighters, pitching in front of clients and pulling together a plan in less time than it takes most people to do their taxes. She can negotiate make goods and bonus inventory better than anyone I know, and she’s great at pulling interactive teams together on the fly, based on a the needs of a given client or project. I’m really impressed by how Tessa is able to enjoy her love of traveling without missing a beat at work. Since she’s a sole proprietor, she is extremely mobile. In the past two years she’s set up shop in Canada, New York City, California and most recently the Hamptons on Long Island. She knows her stuff and I’d definitely count her as a woman to watch for 2008.

Ula Tuszewicka, Online Marketing Consultant - Self Employed

It is the rare online marketer who can claim expertise in both media planning and search, but Ula can do both with equal skill. She’s worked on both large and small campaigns, and can set up a search campaign from the preliminary keyword list and see it through to the final report. I’ve referred Ula to more than one colleague over the past couple of years because she is so versatile and, like Tessa, is able to set up shop wherever she lands (she lives in Seattle but travels to Poland frequently to visit family). For me Ula represents the ultimate “woman to watch” in media. She understands the industry on her own terms, and actually gets things done. She’s an example of someone who jumped off the corporate ladder in disgust, and began building her own dreams based on an industry she fully understands.

Karin Blake, Search Account Manager, Retail - Avenue A | Razorfish

I worked briefly with Karin on some projects for Avenue A | Razorfish last year. At the time she’d been managing a very large retail campaign for a high profile lingerie vendor (and yes, it is THAT company). She knew everything there is to know about Atlas and patiently showed me how to traffic a campaign. Karin is young, extremely bright and an up and comer in the industry. I asked her to write a few words about herself…

“I started at AA|RF in 2005 after studying the moderately unrelated topic of Anthropology at Columbia. I think I was number 8 or so of the search team at that point in time (and 22.5 years old), and I sat in the corner next to a printer for about 4 months while we built the search program of a major financial services client. Over the next 3 years and a few acquisitions later, the search team scaled 4x in personnel and however many times over in $$, and I now lead AA|RF’s NY Retail Search group. I have a team of 5 search managers, covering 6 different clients. I have a search box tattooed on my back (just kidding). But I’ve thought about it.”

Ad Age doesn’t often write about the 22 year old who gets stuck pivoting spreadsheets next to the printer for 8 hours a day, but that’s why I’m here! Kudos to Karin, for making the industry a smarter place.

**more to come**

Add comment June 9th, 2008

Bad Google ad of the week

Here’s why you need to proofread your ads, or at least run them through a spell check.

Notice the spelling of the word “because.” How does an ad like this even get through Google’s editorial filter? Who knows, but it happens. Even computer geeks aren’t perfect! This ad came up when I searched for the term “autoresponder” - so it’s also completely irrelevant. It links to a page that boasts the headline, “How To Build a Large Mailing List That Will Become Your Own ATM Machine” which also doesn’t contain the term “autoresponder” and only has one possible action - give up your name and email address for further information.

They’re probably paying a high CPC for poor quality and the landing page looks unprofessional (at best) and not entirely on the up and up (at worst). So I can’t imagine conversion rate is great, but who knows. Maybe there are a lot of people out there who think a mailing list can magically earn them money. This smells like a get-rich-quick scheme and this type of page is probably a contributing factor to why people are clicking less on paid search ads.

Stay tuned for future bad ads!

Add comment April 1st, 2008

Should search agencies charge a percentage of spend?

Okay, I’m coming out of blog hibernation (blibernation?) to wax poetic about my strong feelings AGAINST pricing out search services as a percentage of the media spend. First, as I’ve written in the past, search management is different from media management.

The gist of my last post on media vs. search management is this: online media planning isn’t the same as offline media planning, and search media planning isn’t the same as, say, buying banners. What’s different? Well, in a nutshell:

- Search planners manage keywords not vendors (sure, vendors are involved, but let’s be honest. There are only two that really matter - Google and Yahoo - unless you’re doing an extensive local campaign or dealing with online shopping engines, and that’s a different post altogether.

- Search planners continually test, rewrite and refresh ad copy

- Search planners have to deal with Google’s quality score and Yahoo’s quality restrictions.

I could go on, but really, the bottom line is that an effective search marketing campaign takes ongoing management. And by ongoing, I mean daily and weekly changes should be applied to the campaign to make it a positive and, dare I say, fulfilling, experience for the advertiser.

It doesn’t matter if you’re spending $10,000 a month or $100,000 a month on search ads, you still need to manage the campaign to make it work. This is really why charging clients a percentage of the media spend doesn’t work.

I know a lot of people wil disagree with me here. Obviously it works in the agency’s favor when the budget is 100K/month. So in an agency setting, the larger campaigns pay for the smaller campaigns. But in the real world what happens with the smaller clients is they suffer from poor management of their campaign compared with the bigger spenders.

There. I’ve said it. Moving on.

I think the best way to start with any search project is by charging a monthly fee based on estimated hours. There are many variables to starting a new project that have nothing to do with the actual budget amount. Keyword and competitive research, historical campaign data review, the number of search engines included in the initial plan and the level of reporting all factor into the fee.

I’m also in love with the idea of performance-based pricing once a campaign has been launched and running for about three months. This involves getting paid per lead or sale instead of being tied to a specific number of hours.

This often entails a bit of a loss from the management side of things for the first month but it’s an excellent incentive for me to put in more hours to really get a campaign performing. The emphasis here is that agencies are motivated to make the campaign a success (success is defined by the client’s goals) and not by the amount of money they spend. If you spend money on search just to meet the forecasted budget, and this can be done in any number of ways that do not benefit the client, then your campaign will fail.

Clients and agencies both need to to ask themselves if the “percentage of media” model works for them. In the vast majority of cases, the answer is probably not.

Add comment March 20th, 2008