6 Essential Steps For Effective SEM

�Berry Network White Paper SEM Progam: Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program

SEM Program Management:Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program

Having your company’s website appear on the first page of a Google or Yahoo! Search. That is what every marketer wants for their company, because they know expo-sure on the first page will lead to more clicks, more calls, and more sales.

Unfortunately, few companies can obtain placement on the coveted first page. Why? Because for many categories there are thousands of companies competing for the same placement.

And while a carefully thought out and executed search engine optimization program will certainly increase your ranking in natural search results, for most companies the only way to get first page placement is to use a paid search engine marketing (SEM) program. One that promotes their website by increasing their visibility in search results through paid placement.


The number of US Senior-Level SEM Executives that feel their SEM program

will underperform or just meet their expectations.

The number of those executives that feel their SEM will greatly underperform their

expectations.

The need to be found on search engines is resulting in marketers spending an ever increasing amount of dollars on SEM programs.

A recent study released by Forrester Research, titled the “Five-Year Interactive Marketing Forecast Report” projected a 105% increase in U.S. SEM spending over the next five years. Spending in 2009 should close out at about $15.4 billion, while they project 2014 to top the charts at $31.6 billion.

SEM is the largest part of interactive marketing budgets as well. In 2009, SEM will comprise 60% of budgets. Through 2014, SEM is still poised to remain the leading form of interactive marketing .

That’s the good news. The bad news is that in another report released by [x+1], called “Search Engine Marketing in 2009,” 75% of U.S. Senior-Level SEM executives feel that their SEM programs will underperform or just meet their expectations.

These executives outweigh the 25% of executives that felt SEM in 2009 will exceed their expectations. Certainly, this indicates a complete

Executives Lack Confidence in Most SEM Programs

lack of confidence in the ROI in SEM from our own executives.

Given these numbers, today’s marketers need to take a critical look at SEM programs and re-tool their company’s SEM strategies to boost executive confidence. But that is easier said than done.

Before an evaluation takes place, a marketer needs to have a solid understanding of what differentiates a good SEM program from a bad one. They need to understand the six essential components of an effective SEM program as explained in this report.

75%

38%

It is hard to believe, but SEM has been around for nearly ten years. Goto.com (which later became Overture and then Yahoo! Search Marketing) began in 1998. Google launched its flagship AdWords program in 2000. Despite the years of history, some marketers still struggle with understanding the essential components of an effective SEM program.

When SEM first emerged, it was largely seen as a function that few people understood, and relegated to a select few people that knew the SEM lingo. And while today some

The Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program


marketers can identify the basic components of a high performing SEM program, they have a tendency to oversimplify them.

Greater understanding of SEM is needed by marketing executives if they want to truly manage their company’s SEM program. An effective SEM program must include the following six components:

1. Choosing Proper Keywords - This refers to selecting a set of terms or phrases that, when searched, will deliver your ad to those who are searching. Pick the right ones and you are well on your way to bringing targeted, qualified visitors to your site. Pick the wrong words and you will sabotage your SEM campaign.

2. Geo-targeting - If your business is in any way location-specific, you’ll want to take advantage of geographical targeting. Choosing where your ads will appear can be done in a variety of ways: At a city/metro level, based on a radius (in miles) from your location/service area, or the geography can be fully customized to include only the cities or ZIP-codes you want to reach.

3. Dayparting - Is a person conducting a search at 3:00 AM on a Tuesday morning a good prospect for your business? Targeting your advertising by time of day or day of

week is an effective technique that is often underutilized in SEM programs. It is an effective technique for driving conversions and reducing wasteful spending.

4. Landing Pages - A landing page is a page that appears when a potential customer clicks an ad. Landing pages need to be carefully thought out in order to convert a click into a sale.

5. Bid Level/Budget - Budgets are limited, so determining a maximum bid level for each keyword and developing daily and monthly budgets is vital to ensure funds are properly allocated throughout the year.

6. Measurement/ Optimization - To maximize your program’s results, you will need to measure its performance and optimize your program; adjusting keywords, geography, budgets, and other components as your business changes.

These components are complex enough that a white paper could be written on each one of them; however, for the sake of brevity, we will take a look at the fundamentals of each component that every marketer should know.

Measurement/Optimization

Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

Dayparting

The Six EssentialComponents

of aHigh Performing

SEM Program


Choosing the proper keywords for your SEM program sounds easy, but for those that actually do this it can be a daunting task. Since keyword selection is the first step in a SEM program, if not done correctly, it can lead to an inefficient, wasteful program. Below are some guidelines for proper keyword selection:

1. Start With The Obvious - Those words that are most relative to your business. In most cases you will create a list of keyword phrases, as most searches take place using multiple keywords. For example, “car repair” has two keywords while “car and truck repair” has three keywords.

Statowl.com, a site that contains comprehensive aggregate internet usage statistics, shows that as of September, �009, the majority of searches conducted contain three or more keywords. Once your initial list is complete, scrub it to make sure these are terms that

consumers actually use-not technical jargon or internal company buzz words.

Consider demographics, keep in mind the target audi-ence and use the words related to that particular group. Be sure to include all the common misspellings, abbre-viations, acronyms, and synonyms.

2. Use Website Analytics - Basic web analytic tools like Google Analytics can quickly and easily identify the keywords that consumers are using to get to your site. Not only that, but they can help identify the keywords that are actually converting into clicks.

3. Evaluate Search Volume - You have generated a long list of keywords—the question now becomes how do you prioritize these and determine how many searches are actually being conducted using these keywords?

Search Engine Key Word Count

Choosing Proper Keywords


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

Dayparting

Keywords

3 words30.55%

2 words9.09%

1 word 4.87%

7+ words 3.75%

6 words 6.77%

4 words24.47%

5 words17.50%


Sample Keyword Phrases with Local Modifiers

Florist 27312

Florist Fearrington Village

Florist Fearrington Village, NC

Florist Fearrington Village, North Carolina

Google’s Keyword Selector Tool and Wordtracker (and others) can show you search volume by keyword. These tools can also tell you how many competing sites are using those keywords. Caution is needed when using these tools though; high volume keywords are going to cost you more than low volume keywords. And just because a keyword or phrase has a high search volume, whether it leads to conversions is another matter (more on that later).

4. Add The Local Modifiers - If your business is in anyway location specific, you’ll need to add local modifiers to your keywords based on your targeted trade areas. Why? Because consumers are increasingly adding local modifiers such as a city name, town name, or Zip-code to their searches to generate more specific search results.

Considering that there are �0 states, nearly �0,000 governments, and �9,��6 ZIP-codes, adding local modifiers will increase your keyword list significantly.

Although the search volume of keyword phrases with local modifiers is low, these “long tail” keywords often have high conversion rates.

Why pay for clicks that don’t convert? An SEM campaign that does not use geographic targeted online marketing will end up wasting advertising money on visitors that are not potential clients simply because they live in another area or even in another country. So, unless your business is a virtual business that can sell products anywhere in the world, your SEM campaign will need to take advantage of geographical targeting.

Geo-targeting is the method of determining the geolocation (the physical location) of a website visitor and delivering content to that visitor based on his or her location. Choosing where your ads will appear can be done in a variety of ways - at a city/metro level, based on a radius (in miles) from your location/service area, or the geography can be fully customized to include only the cities or ZIP-codes that you want to reach.

Recognizing that consumers desire to receive local, relevant search results, the geo-targeting tools in search engines are becoming more robust. Google even lets marketer’s geo-target down to the street level.

Geo-targeting


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

Dayparting

Geography

6Berry Network White Paper SEM Progam: Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program

Sometimes referred to as “ad scheduling,” dayparting is the practice of dividing the day into several parts and determining when your ad will be served as part of the search results. Dayparting allows advertisers to optimize their SEM program by “dialing up” their campaign when they know it will generate clicks and conversions and “dialing down” their campaign when it won’t.

Targeting your advertising by time of day, day of week, or just those months that you have identified are most successful in converting prospects into customers, is a technique often underutilized in SEM programs, and is an effective technique for driving conversions and reducing wasteful spending. For example, a company that offers exterior household painting will most likely want to dial up in the summer months and place a heavier emphasis on the spring when home owners are refreshing their homes.

Conversely, the advertiser may want to dial down their programs in the winter months. In another example, a company that targets teens may want to dial down their program during school hours and dial up their program during the late afternoon and early evenings when teens are most active.

All the major search engine sites offer tools that provide the traffic data you need to analyze an SEM program. When developing a dayparting strategy you will need to ask questions like:

• When are the ads delivering the most activity? • When are the ads delivering the most conversions? • Are these patterns repeating day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month?

Retail

Finance

Rela

tive

Conv

ersi

on R

ate

Hour

Hour

Rela

tive

Conv

ersi

on R

ate

1am 4am 7am 10am 1pm 4pm 7pm 10pm

1am 4am 7am 10am 1pm 4pm 7pm 10pm

+60%

+30%

-30%

-60%

Avg

+60%

+30%

-30%

-60%

Avg

An additional benefit of dayparting is the ability to determine “slow times” and develop targeted advertising for these times. For example, a plumbing company that finds itself with open appointments on Friday mornings could run a campaign offering ��% off service calls during 8:00-��:00 a.m. on Friday’s.

Sample Keyword Traffic Data

Dayparting


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

DaypartingDayparting


Getting a customer to click on your ad is one thing, converting that click into a sale is a whole other matter.

One of the more common reasons for poor conversions from SEM programs are landing pages that don’t fulfill the promise of the search keyword or search ad. Sending prospects to your website home page will distract the consumer. As they wander through your website they become sidetracked and the opportunity to connect with them is lost. That’s why landing pages are so important.

A landing page is a stand alone page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

In SEM programs, the landing page should be customized to measure the effectiveness of different advertisements. By adding a parameter to the linking URL, marketers can measure advertisement effectiveness based on relative click-through rates.

Sending prospects to your website home

page will distract the consumer. As they

wander through your website they become sidetracked and the

opportunity to connect with them is lost.

Two types of landing pages: reference and transaction. A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, a list of relevant links, or other elements. Reference landing pages are often used to educate and to generate further interest on behalf of the consumer. Reference landing pages will have a clear call to action, and usually includes some form that allows the visitor to ask for more information or sign up for a newsletter. The goals of reference landing pages are often to capture the lead. This information is used in marketing efforts to promote a future sale.

A transaction landing page seeks to convert the visitor into a customer by promoting a single prominent offer. Rather than capturing the lead, a transaction landing page is designed to make an immediate sale.

A visitor taking the desired action on a landing page is referred to as a conversion. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by its conversion rate - the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action. Since the economics of many online marketing programs are determined by the conversion rate, marketers routinely test alternatives and make improvements to their landing pages.

Landing Pages


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

DaypartingLandingPages


The goal of a landing page is to get the prospect to take your desired action. So what makes a good landing page? Here are some basic tenets of good land page design.

• The landing page headline should reflect the ad copy that drove the click. This will keep your visitor focused and engaged.

• Provide a clear, strong call to action. You need to tell your visitor what they need to do. It is a good

your landing page. This includes navigation bars, visual clutter, and links to other sections. Stay focused and make sure everything on the page is relevant to the headline and offer.

• Test, test, test. Changing landing pages is relatively inexpen-sive, so why not experiment a little to see what works best? Try different headlines, calls to action, and copy to see what combinations leads to the highest conversion rate.

idea to test different calls to action to see what works best.

• Put your most critical landing page elements in the upper part of the page: Usability research shows that over half of site visitors will NOT scroll “below the fold.” So forget the warm-up copy and get right to the point.

• Stay focused on your goals. It is easy to get carried away with writing extensive copy and filling the pages with fancy graphics or animation. Remove all irrelevant material from


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

DaypartingLandingPages

Sample Reference Landing Page


When it comes to managing your SEM budgets,

no other factor is more important

than determining the maximum

bid level for your keywords

So you’ve got an annual SEM budget. It doesn’t matter if the budget is $�0,000 or $�,000,000, the big question is how will you manage this budget in terms of developing keyword bid levels and monthly SEM budgets? SEM uses a bidding model in which advertisers that are willing to pay the most “per click” generally appear first (relevancy also plays a role), with others following in order of spending.

SEM budgeting requires careful planning in order for your program to deliver full impression delivery throughout the day, week, month, or year. Imagine if you were a manufacturer of air conditioners and your SEM budget for the summer ran out of money only two weeks into July. Faulty bid level strategies can result in costly mistakes that drain your budget and prematurely halt your campaign.

You may not realize it, but if you have properly targeted your keywords, developed a geo-targeting strategy, and a dayparting strategy, much of your budgeting work is already done. Using SEM bid management software, you or your agency can set the rules for your SEM program. These rules will impact just how much money you spend on a daily basis. For example, you bid on �,�00 keywords in �� markets, with ads running between the hours of �:00 am to ��:00 pm Monday through Saturday. Makes sense right?

The problem is, most companies don’t have the money needed to support the “perfect” SEM program. Hard decisions will need to be made between what you want and what you can afford. While most of these decisions will revolve around keyword and dayparting selections, here are some strategies to get the most out of your SEM budget:

Develop a Bid Formula How much are you willing to pay for a keyword? When it comes to managing your SEM budgets, no other factor is more important than determining the maximum bid level for your keywords. Developing your own bid formula will take the guess work out off keyword bidding. Here is one example. If you sell a product for $��0, at a profit margin of �0%, and your conversion rate is a conservative �% (for every hundred clicks, you get one sale), you will have $�00 of profit per sale to use as ad spend over �00 visitors. In other words, you can afford to spend a maximum of $� per click.

Developing a bid formula will help instill discipline in your bidding strategies and can help you defend your keyword selections. Remember that the maximum

Bid Levels/Budgets


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

Dayparting

Bid Level/Budget

�0Berry Network White Paper SEM Progam: Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program

cost-per-click will fluctuate over time and you will need to make adjustments according to your actual conversion rates as well as the cost-per click’s of your competitors.

You Don’t Have To Be #1 For popular search terms, the top positions come with a hefty price tag. What good is paying for the first position if you exhaust your daily budget by �0:00 am each day. You may find that there’s a significant difference between the costs of positions �, � and �, but there may be little impact on how frequently your ad is clicked. In popular searches users may click on several ads, so appearing in a less expensive position can still give you good results.

You will also want to look for bid gaps. For instance, if the top � bids for a search term are $�.�0, $�.�9 and $0.��, the difference between the �nd and �rd bids is called a bid gap. In such cases, it makes more sense for the advertiser to bid for the �rd position, paying $0.�6 as opposed to the top positions which would cost $�.�0 or $�.��.

Remain Unbiased To All Keywords Keyword bidding can sometimes seem illogical meaning the least likely keyword will perform well. And while it is tempting to develop an attachment to certain keywords, when it comes to keyword bidding, remember to listen to the numbers and not your heart.

When is comes to keyword

bidding, remember to listen to the

numbers and not your heart.


Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

Dayparting

Bid Level/Budget

��Berry Network White Paper SEM Progam: Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program

Unlike traditional media, the results of search engine marketing are extremely easy to measure. Trackable metrics include clicks, calls, conversions, and ROI.

It goes without saying that a high performing SEM program is one that is monitored and adjusted on an ongoing basis. Every facet of the program; keyword selection, geography, dayparting, landing pages, and budgets, must be reviewed on a regular basis by a knowledgeable, experienced SEM program manager.

Search engine marketing is no longer a function relegated to the IT “geeks” - it is part of mainstream marketing. As SEM budgets continue to expand, market-ers at all levels of the organization need to understand the complexities of SEM program management if they are to meet executive expectations.

Whether your SEM program is managed internally or externally, spend some time with your SEM team. Use the framework presented in this white paper to ask questions relative to how your SEM program is being managed to deliver the highest number of conversions at the lowest possible costs.

Search engine marketing budgets continue to rise yet executives continue to lack confidence in these programs. This does not have to be the case. Use the framework presented in this white paper when reviewing the performance of an SEM program, and challenge your staff to build and manage an SEM program that meets your organization’s objectives.


Summary

For the Marketing Manager

For the C-Level Executive

Keywords

Geography

Bid Level/Budget

LandingPages

Dayparting


��Berry Network White Paper SEM Progam: Six Essential Components of a High Performing SEM Program

Berry Network, Inc. is an advertising and marketing agency, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of AT&T. Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, Berry Network supports over �00 regional and national clients with marketing programs designed to drive leads at the local level. Berry Network’s award winning portfolio continues to expand, and currently includes solutions such as; print Yellow Pages advertising, Internet Yellow Pages advertising, search engine marketing, mobile marketing, direct mail, and social media.

Contact To learn more about how Berry Network drives local leads, visit our website at www.berrynetwork.com or call one of our offices listed below. You can also follow us on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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Tel: 800-�66-��6�[email protected]

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6 Essential Steps For Effective SEM

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