Social Media / Search Marketing
Q&A from Paid Search and the Complex Buying Cycle: They're Not Oil and Water, originally presented February 11, 2010. View the on-demand Webinar.
In a live Webinar sponsored by Bulldog Solutions and 360Partners, paid search expert Jim McKinley answered questions about how best to organize a BtoB paid search campaign, how to validate a search budget with a high cost-per-click, when you should trust Google and more.
Read the Q&A with additional questions not answered during the live event.
Question:
 Amy Bills, Director of Field Marketing, Bulldog Solutions (Moderator): What would you recommend in terms of the best way to organize a BtoB campaign? Core terms with ads, a separate campaign for generic terms, small set of keywords, create a lot of ads, etc.?
Answer:
 Jim McKinley, Principal, 360Partners: That is one of the most important questions you can ask when setting up a search campaign. I'm going to answer that with two philosophical concepts. First—going back to the concept of identifying your searcher types—an example we gave with Nortel is that we identified Customers, Prospective Customers, Channel Partners, Industry People and Others. What we did in that case is create specific campaigns or ad groups around each one of those different searcher types, because the messages that you're going to give, say, to a prospective customer is very different than the message you're going to give to a channel partner.
So the first philosophical answer is to break up your campaigns and ad groups into very specific buckets in terms of how you want to talk to people.
Secondly, from a micro standpoint, is that we are a big fan of having lots of ad groups with a very small number of keywords in them. This really allows you to customize your campaign and your creative for that specific audience. An example: For someone who refers to your product in one way, you want to use the language that they use and answer the specific question that they are asking versus someone who types in a term a slightly different way.
Question:
Amy Bills: I'm going to select this next question specifically because so many people chose "optimization" as one of their key barriers in the poll. "When Google sends a message saying that your investment isn't optimized and if you spend x more dollars, you can optimize them, is that accurate? Can we trust them? If I understand how they came up with that recommendation, I can make a more intelligent decision." What would you tell someone who had that question?
Answer:
Jim McKinley: That's something we face on almost a daily basis when we manage search campaigns for our customers and clients. Google makes all sorts of recommendations on how to optimize your campaigns, new keywords you can add, 'you can increase your budget here and get 50 more clicks,' etc. So yes, Google definitely inundates you with ideas and suggestions.
I will say that some of these suggestions can be very helpful; however, it's in Google's interest to have you spend more money with them. They are not measuring their success on your business becoming more profitable. We've found that sometimes those suggestions can be very good, and sometimes they make absolutely no sense—a lot of these suggestions are being made by technology and not people.
My suggestion back is that I would definitely look at the suggestions Google offers, but make sure you do a sniff check and ask yourself if it makes sense for you in your specific situation.
Three Bonus Questions Not Answered During the Live Event
Question:
We are usually in various stages of sales for prospective customers. So how we could manage the right message for right customer in right time without confusion for the rest of customers?
Answer:
Jim McKinley: Great question, as this is one of the most challenging aspects of running a BtoB search campaign. 360Partners recommends segmenting the keywords in your paid search account so you can deliver specific messages to specific customer types based on tier search query. Unfortunately, it's impossible to be 100% accurate with this approach. There will be some terms that obviously apply to a specific customer segment, but there will also be more generic terms that are difficult to segment.
An example might help. Let's say we own a company that sells large back-up generators. We can infer that someone searching for "building back-up power" might be at the awareness stage of the funnel while someone searching for "Caterpillar 250kw diesel standby generator" is at the research or purchase phase. In the first example we might want to introduce the searcher to a white paper on why diesel standby generators are the solution to their problem. In the second case, we might want to show our pricing on the specific Caterpillar generator.
This works well in many cases—but what do we do for more generic terms like "standby generator"? A user in this scenario could be at several different levels of the buying funnel. In this case, 360Partners has three different solutions depending on the specific customer situation:
- Match to a "best fit" user profile. This involves making a judgment call based on your knowledge of your users and matching the generic search query to the segment that seems to be the best fit. In the example above, we might identify searchers of "standby generators" as awareness customers. Ad copy and landing pages would be geared accordingly. 360Partners has found that experienced sales teams are very good at matching generic searchers to user segments.
- Test, test, test. Some clients in higher trafficked search terms have tested different messages and user experiences and measured the results. The "winning" message becomes the default.
- Multiple Web sites. We have one client that has created several microsites around specific topics to leverage traffic from generic terms. For example, they would create a site such as "GeneratorsForDummies.com" in addition to their corporate Web site. Then they would run search campaigns for both Web sites with different messages and user experiences. The idea is that searchers in the awareness stage would go to "GeneratorsForDummies.com" while searchers at the purchase stage would be attracted to the corporate Web site.
Most 360Partners customers choose option #1 above, because options 2 and 3 require a high level of search volume and significant time and resources to build and test.
Question:
How important is it to show up on the first page of a search engine (say Google)? Is there any data to show rates of success by being on page one? Page two?
Answer:
Jim McKinley: I am going to break this into two separate topics:
- How often do users click on listings on the first page of search engines?
A few years ago, AOL released data showing the click-through rate of different positions on their search results pages. The data was extremely interesting. It showed that 42% of all clicks were on the first position on the page with nearly 90% of clicks occurring on the first page of the results.
Takeaway: Unless you are on the first page of the search engines you will get very little to no traffic for a particular search query.
- Should I always try to be number one on every search query inside of Google?
The answer to this question is generally no, you should not try to be number one for every search. While being number one will guarantee you the most clicks, it is also the most expensive spot on the page. It can be very easy to burn through your entire marketing budget in a short time pursuing this strategy (and possibly end up with a $25,000 Google pen).
The challenge is to try to match the value of the traffic to what you are willing to spend on a click. There could be some extremely relevant keywords that would warrant paying to be in the first position. However, for most keywords it will make the most economic sense to be at a lower position.
Question:
How do you get sponsored ads in the Google content network, such as the CRM blog example that you gave?
Answer:
Jim McKinley: Google offers a product called the "Content Network" that allows you to have your ads shown on content sites outside of Google. Inside of the content network there are two primary options:
- Automatic Placements. Under this option, Google matches your keywords and ads to sites that seem relevant to the content on the external Web site.
- Managed Placements. Using this option, the user chooses the exact sites and pages where they want their ads shown.
There are pros and cons to both placement options. The automatic placement option can locate many hard-to-find sites that you might have never known existed; however, choosing automatic placement can also result in your ad showing on sites that are not relevant to your product or service. Managed placements allow you to get more exposure on sites that are relevant to your subject area.
360Partners recommends that users do a blend of both options. Internally we use the baseball analogy of a major league and a minor league. We use the automatic placement option as the minor leagues. We allow Google to place our ads in places it deems relevant and then we measure the results of the traffic delivered. Highly relevant sites are "promoted" to the major leagues (a.k.a. managed placements) while unrelated sites are blocked. Over time it allows the traffic to become more and more relevant and effective.
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Question:
Amy Bills: Another great question that speaks to validating a search budget: How can you justify a high cost-per-click without first being able to demonstrate the conversion rate? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation.
Answer:
Jim McKinley: We actually address this in our sales presentations. When you first launch your search campaign, you're going to get fewer leads and they're going to cost more money than what your target is. That's because it takes a while to tweak everything, to figure out which search terms work well, or which landing page is the best for this type of search, etc.
So we're very upfront with any new client about the fact that they shouldn't expect to hit their metrics initially; but over time, the whole key to becoming a successful searcher is doubling down on the things that work, and turning off the things that don’t work.
So, to answer the question: To anyone who's starting up a new search campaign, you just have to factor in some budget and realize that you're going to be inefficient when you first start your campaign and that it will take some time for you to get to the point where you're firing on all cylinders and, hopefully, justifying your high cost-per-click with the value that you're getting on the back end.
Amy Bills: Are there benchmarks you provide for new clients that can stand in for validation until they have enough of their own data?
Jim McKinley: Absolutely, and of course it varies from site to site and from context to context. For example, in the context of a client asking someone to fill out a form to get more information, you'll typically see a 5% conversion rate. This can vary widely by industry, but that's usually a good benchmark.
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Original Q&A has been edited for clarity and consolidation.
Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, an online marketing agency that changes the way BtoB companies define demand-generation strategy, engage prospects and convert leads to customers. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, director of Field Marketing.
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