did-it.com 352 7 th ave, third floor, new york, ny 10001 © 2002 did-it.com, inc. managing paid...

Did-it.com 352 7th Ave, Third Floor, New York, NY 10001 © 2002 Did-it.com, Inc.

Managing Paid Placement ListingsSES SpringAug 13 2002

Presented byKevin LeeCEO, Did-it.com, Inc.212-631-0157 [email protected]


You need to measure granularly:

Sometimes your objective is not to have a positive ROI, or ROAS, but for most marketers, use a measurable metric of success.

• CPA or CPO Set a cost per action or order goal based on

+ Immediate profit

+ Lifetime value or blend

• Remember, know how many of an item are typically ordered if setting a CPO if e-commerce.

• Set Multi-objective campaign metrics if that helps keep on-strategy.

• Imperfect data, learn to live with it. There is no perfect system, but many systems provide actionable valid data. That is key!


Tearing your hair out:

See Bruce Clay chart.


Overall StrategyBefore you do any search engine marketing, develop

goals and a strategy that are aligned with your business objectives.

What do you want… really?

a) Orders (on or offline)

b) Leads

c) Registrations

d) Educate the visitor about a product for offline order

e) Visits

f) Stickyness/pageviews

g) A branding experience (on the site or with the listing)

h) The CEO to be able to brag to customers about first position listings… ARGH!!


Measurement and Action Strategy

Solution is measure goal attainment, by all pertinent variables: KEYWORD/PHRASE, ENGINE/VENDOR, and POSITION

How?

a)Do it yourself with unique inbound URLs, tagging and session tracking, tied back to source.

b)Outsource, Did-it.com, GoToast, Inceptor or other vendors?

Action

Tie back the results for each keyword to the goal, and adjust bids accordingly. Bids must be at a price/position that maximizes the by objective. If your CPO target is $25 and a listing results in a $39 CPO, allocate that money elsewhere (ie keywords that have position/volume potential and are under $25 CPO.)


Effectiveness/Conversion Issues:

The Compulsive Clicker:

The higher the position (close to #1) the more likely the surfer is to be a COMPULSIVE clicker. Compulsive clickers don’t read the titles and descriptions carefully and also tend to hit the “back” button, to look at more results. This lowers the conversion percentage, and therefore makes position #1 often less desirable than #3 unless your really need the volume, and can give up the decrease in effectiveness/conversion.

The Considered Clicker:

The CONSIDERED clicker reads titles and descriptions and therefore if your title and description accurately describe what that cliker will find when they reach your sitre, they are more likely to convert. Considered clickers raise the conversion percentage, and therefore increase effectiveness.


Overture Marketplace Issues:Overture Bid Gap Shift: Prior to the DTC change, there were bid gaps

(differences in the fixed bids which were actual prices paid by marketers) in the system. Now, there are still gaps, but they are the difference between what the marketers are paying. The Overture Bluff… Avoid gaming even though there is a temptation, but use a campaign manager to hide your true CPC maximum.


Overture Marketplace Issues II:

Overture Tie Bid Seniority Trap: In the older Overture bidding system, a tie bid was awarded to the more senior listing, giving him/her the higher position. However, now the tie bid really means that the older bidder's listings costs the exact price of their bid while the newer bid that is tied will often pay considerably less (paying less than their max bid). Reset the seniority timer if you don’t mind being in the lower position.


Overture Marketplace Issues III:

Position Drift:

With auto bidding, marketers may be tempted to change bids less frequently, and not manage by position. However, post-click conversion behavior varies based on position. So, a position #3 that resulted in an acceptable CPO or CPA often no longer works in position #1, even at the came CPC, due to a larger percentage of compulsive clickers. Similarly, the conversion behaviors may change between position #3 and #4, based on changes in the makeup of the Overture syndication network. Vigilance in campaign, position and bids is rewarded.

Keep Measuring, and Take Action Immediately when the metrics don’t support goals and objectives!!


User Experience Strategies:

Improve the user’s experience, drop the searcher on the most appropriate landing page on your site.

Why?

1. Conversions go up

2. This lets you bid more for that term if you want to, compared to poor landing pages

3. By having the flexibility to bid more, you can gain volume, and more volume means more sales


Google AdWords:

Google will soon be interacting with Did-it other Vendors and clients via a power Posting system, giving marketers more control than ever.

Remember, base price decisions on post click behavior objectives.


Overture and Google maximize revenues

On Google poor creative or keyword selection results in listing elimination, or lower ranking. Overture implementing a similar “feature,” a “Click Index” where “low performing listings” are removed. Both search engine vendors are acting to maximize their profit. (While also possibly improving user experience). Any time a listing is shown on Google, Overture or any search result for that matter, and not clicked, there is a revenue opportunity forever lost to the portal. Search listings are beginning to behave like CPM-based ads, and after all, that is what Google’s algorithm is doing when it calculates maximum revenue per listing, it is figuring the CPM, and charging by CPC… Now Overture joins the revenue maximization party…


Inktomi, AltaVista, Fast… Paid Inclusion

Your campaign decisions are easier, keep the page in the index if it “works”, remove it, or modify the page.

1.Inktomi’s Index Connect & other XML Trusted Feed programs from AltaVista, Looksmart and Teoma represent destination pages, not keywords. So, you have to make yes/no decisions based on pages/listings.

2. FAST paid inclusion is coming out of Beta, Did-it expects to offer these feeds as well.

Can your agency/vendor can adapt and tune your campaign based on performance or are you buying traffic?


Cool New Tools in BETA

YOU asked for this studff, and we developed it. It’s in BETA use at Did-it.com (Additional test users welcome.)

1) Phone order tracking: With complex purchases, sometimes the searcher wants to call you. This happens with high dollar item purchases, and high involvement purchases. Campaigns still need to be tracked and optimized correctly.

2) Push based chat functionality (proactive): We formed an alliance with ClickIM.com to allow clients to monitor site visitors in real time and initiate chat sessions, with or without a visible click to chat button. ClickIM shows the CPC, Keyword, and Referral URL to CSRs who can select high value prospects for proactive chat.


Conclusion:

For most marketers, the key strategy is to manage SEM campaigns granularly based on objectives, and post click behavior. Use internal tools or external vendors to help you determine the value of listings, search result vendors, creative execution and even landing pages.

Questions? e-mail Kevin Lee CEO of Did-it.com. [email protected]

did-it.com 352 7 th ave, third floor, new york, ny 10001 © 2002 did-it.com, inc. managing paid...

Documents