Effectively Managing Online Marketing Programs The webcast will review several different models for managing your online marketing, as well as discuss the technology, skill sets, and processes needed to have a successful paid search program. Presented by: Eric Waldinger, Practice Leader, Aquent Craig Macdonald, Senior VP & CMO, Covario
Search marketing continues to grow in importance as an advertising channel for businesses of all kinds. Even during the past 12 months, as the Great Recession has taken its toll on other advertising channels – from display to TV, and most decidedly to print – search advertising has continued to grow. As the paid search advertising market has grown and matured, the cost of entry for new players has increased, and for those who have been doing search for some time, the cost of being successful and driving optimal results from paid search continues to go up. The sophistication of the market requires constant investment.
Advertisers have several choices as to how they choose to deal with building and maintaining their programs, each with different pros and cons:
• Hire a search agency – according to Forrester Research, approximately 52% of companies elect to leverage agencies to do their paid search work, with that percentage increasing as more money is spent
• Manage in-house – this is most common in retail and travel, as well as with small and mid-sized firms
• Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) – a hybrid model by which advertisers begin with an agency, with the intention of managing risk until the program can be brought in-house in order to manage costs more effectively
The webcast will go through each model, as well as discuss the technology, skill sets, and processes needed to have a successful paid search program.
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Transcript
Effectively Managing Online Marketing Programs
The webcast will review several different models for managing your online marketing, as well as discuss the technology, skill sets, and processes needed to have a successful paid search program.
• Pro’s• Direct control over program• IP around program remains inhouse• Aligned incentives
• Con’s • Headcount and technology procurement risk• Slower time to market (long time to build program maturity)• Difficult to scale
• Pricing• Headcount – 3%• Technology 2-4%
• Application• Direct commerce (retail, ecommerce, FS, travel)
3. Build-Operate-Transfer
• Pro’s• Time to market is controlled• Risk for headcount and technology is mitgated• IP around program remains in-house
• Con’s • Ongoing execution risk• Transfer may never happen• Initial pricing for agency is high
• Pricing• Year 1 – 15%• Year >2 – 2-5%
B-O-T Examples
• Media company – Technology setup, recruiting, and training• Job site – 6 month project to do media buying, documentation of process• Travel site – 6 month project to setup technology, do media buying, hire and train
• QA landing pages with the Campaign Approval Worksheet before going live.
• Read industry articles, take classes, attend conferences to stay on top of trends and changes.
• Cross-train and discuss day to day successes and struggles.
• Ban frames, pop-up windows, "meta refresh" tags from landing pages.
• Do not allow pages to exceed 100K.
• All web pages must completely load within 10 seconds.
• Create and maintain centralized keyword management database
• Create and maintain a database of all paid search requests to check for keyword conflict between business units
• If you run a geo-targeted campaign, then you should run a separate national campaign to ensure full visibility in all markets.
• If you run a search and content campaigns for the same group of keywords, then they should be separate campaigns in order to accurately monitor progress.
• If you see a consistently high CTR but a low conversion rate = possible landing page issue
• If you see a high number of clicks and a low CTR = possible ad copy issue
• Maintain 3 versions of ad copy per ad group and rotate highest performing versions through a monthly ad copy audit.