The team at Google Singapore office

Exciting big changes came to online marketing in 2013. Google rolled out enhanced campaigns in February – dubbed the “Biggest Change To Adwords” by some (or is it?), Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer continued reinvigorating the internet giant and Facebook upped their game with Custom audience targeting with lookalike audiences.

As partners with Google, Facebook and Yahoo, we got a first-hand view of these new frontiers of the digital world. Our partners graciously took time out of busy schedules for these insightful discussion sessions. Insights, tips, feedback and banter flowed freely as we explore these cutting edge concepts and directions.

Google

1. Google zoomed in on Enhanced Campaign’s powerful new features. It boasts the ability to help businesses reaches in a way that is relevant to their context.
2. Google shared on how Google Display network can be used as a “Super Charger” for Search and how it can be used to further boost conversions numbers.
3. We also covered on how GDN’s improved gender and age targeting allows better targeting of the right audiences for maximizing ROI.

Facebook

1. Facebook shared on how Facebook Offers can be leveraged to be an effective conversion tool.
2. Custom audience’s feature of targeting not only users in a email list specified but also the ability to extend reach through.
3. Performance Marketing/Conversion usage of Facebook products with insights into what works and what doesn’t.

Yahoo!

1. Shared the characteristics of users across the range of their products – from homepage, to news, Finance, Travel and more for better targeting.
2. Highlighted Search products and insights into recent search trends.
3. Case studies of from Yahoo on usage of their products for Conversion related campaigns.

We have implemented some of these cutting edge insights and techniques into our campaigns with great results. We are looking forward to exciting new updates from our partners soon!

If you are looking at understanding some of these new targeting features in detail, ring our consultants up at 6571-7100 or email us!

Because no traffic = no sales.

The million dollar question then, is which traffic generation method to use first? Search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimisation (SEO)?

I would strongly advocate SEM because it provides immediate feedback, and this produces many benefits as explained below.

Quick Definitions:

Just to ensure that we are all on the same page, here are the definitions used for SEM and SEO in this article.

SEM: paying for an ad listing on search engines such as Google or Bing.

SEO: ranking highly on the search engines and generating “organic” traffic. This is achieved via on site and off site optimisation.

On site optimisation requires content generation and keeping your site user friendly and search engine friendly, while off site optimisation refers to link building.

Comparison:

This comparison seems to imply that

• If you have a tight budget, you should do SEO first
• If you have a long term plan, you can afford to do SEO first/only

That’s just simply not true. Why? 

2 reasons here.

Firstly, sometimes it is just not viable for companies to engage in SEO.

Why?

To succeed at SEO, consistent effort in generating quality content is required.

And the problem with most company sites is that they lack sufficient pages of content to be able to rank highly in search engines.

Should you decide to take the time and effort in creating a content rich site then, the question you have to ask is this:

"What is the value of your time and effort? Will it produce a positive ROI? Or would it be better spent on the primary money generating activities of your business?"

Secondly, all the factors shown above are not equal, i.e. they don’t carry equal weight

The most important factor here is IMMEDIACY.

SEM Immediacy Benefit #1

Using SEM to generate traffic to your site instantly and in large amounts will provide you with data on which keywords convert and which don’t.

This is assuming you set up a proper analytics and tracking system, of course.

In business, productivity is key.

And so it is essential not to waste months and effort doing SEO for keywords that don’t convert.

For those with tight budgets, I would say money can be earned, but you cannot buy time.

Money spent testing can be earned back in greater amounts if you learn from the testing, but time and effort spend doing something that doesn’t work cannot be earned back.

SEM Immediacy Benefit #2

Benefit #2 is about generating enough traffic to your site via SEM so that you can analyse user behaviour on your site.

Which pages are they leaving from? Is your information relevant? Can users find what they want? 

With data provided by this analysis, you will be able to better optimise your site.

In other words, you will know how to

• Set up a more effective funnel to get users to perform your desired actions
• Know what users want and give them what them want more efficiently and effectively

The result, is increased conversion rates.

Again, this is assuming you set up proper systems to track user behaviour such as real time recordings, heat maps, feedback systems, etc.

Key Takeaway

It is essential to get traffic to your site, but it is more crucial to get (a) targeted (b) customers to your site.

Note: There are 2 ideas here.

The benefits of immediacy of SEM allows you to do just that.

Knowing which keywords convert gets you targeted customers, and optimising your site via analysing user behaviour allows you to better convert users into customers.

This is also reflected by a study by Engine Ready, an Internet marketing company, which suggests that visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who click on organic results.

They also spend more – the average order of a paid linker was $11 higher, at $117.06.

The final figures, were:

Tracking Your SEM Campaigns

As mentioned earlier, SEM results must be measured, and not done blindly.

Without tracking, doing SEM is like trying to find your way out of the woods, in the dark.

Walk straight, and you see nothing about foliage enshrouded in darkness.

Turn left or right, and you can count yourself lucky not to bang into a tree.

And you dare not look back, as the howls of unknown animals and the chirping of crickets send chills down your spine.

You are stuck in the same spot, and bound for failure.

But the thing is it is so easy to call for help, as tools such as Google Analytics are free and easily within reach.

They can help you track where traffic is coming from, which pages to refine, which keywords are converting and many more.

Most importantly, with proper tracking, you are then able to optimise your ads and web pages to convert more visitors into customers/leads.

Here's a brief video by Justin Cutroni explaining how to evaluate your AdWords campaigns, ad groups, and keywords with post-click data from Google Analytics.

If you would like to leverage on the power SEM and Google Analytics tracking to get targeted customers to your site fast, why not contact our friendly consultants to see how we can help turn your website into a sales generating machine?

Some small businesses may complain of limited budgets, but it is precisely these small businesses who can profit the most from paid search.

For those still sitting on the fence, do check out our article on SEM vs SEO, which 1 first?

To get straight to the point, here's a very valuable resource for those who intend to engage in search engine marketing (SEM).

It is a step by step guide to using Google AdWords, with links to articles and guides from around the web.

You could also check out our 3 part series on "How to Launch a Kick Ass SEM campaign".

Part 1: Research
Part 2: Outrank your Competitors' AdWords' Quality Score
Part 3: AdWords Testing and Optimisation

Click on the infographic (from simply business) to access the interactive version where you can access the links.

In this series of articles, I will do a basic walkthrough of the entire SEM campaign on the Google AdWords platform. Part 1 is about Research, part 2 will go through the process of Setting up an AdWords ad, and part 3 will discuss Testing and Optimization.

This article will focus on split testing of ads and landing page so that optimisation can be achieved.

Warning: This is a long read! (meaning it's chock full of content too!)

The goal of optimisation is to increase the conversion of traffic into customers/leads and maximise the ROI of your advertising budget.

This step is what separates the big boys from the beginners, as businesses which test will gain knowledge of which combination of online elements will produce the optimum results, whereas beginners live or die with their untested assumptions.

So do you want to make a few sales/get a few leads per month or do you want to turn your website into a sales/leads generating machine?

Even Google itself does a ton of split testing on its AdWords platform – colour, font size, font type etc – and this turned it into the world’s largest online advertising space.

If you want to grow your business, then do this step well.

1. Split Testing

1.1 What is Split Testing?

Also known as A/B testing, split testing allows you to run two or more different versions of the ad/landing page which you want to test.

They will be rotated at a rate you can set. For instance, you could set ad A to appear 50% of the time and ad B to appear the rest of the time.

This is the best part about online marketing, as it gives you the ability to track and test the effectiveness of your ad and other marketing materials in real time.

As compared to traditional advertising, online advertising offers much more flexibility and allows you the ability to test and improve your ads as many times as you can, whenever you want.

With this ability, you can easily increase your clickthrough rates from 0.8% to 2.7%, like how Howie Jacobsen did.

You can find a full collection of his test ads here - he tested a total of 15 ads before hitting gold with his last ad!

You can hop over to http://www.abtests.com/ as well for more case studies of split testing.

There are some very interesting examples there where a simple change of a few words or a colour change has led to a significant increase in clickthrough rate.

Again, it proves that assumptions we make are normally wrong, and testing is essential if we want to make every advertising dollar count.

1.2 Profits per Impression

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s not forget that what we want ultimately is to grow our business.

And to grow our business, we need more customers, not just more traffic.

As such, we must not stop at improving clickthrough rates of ads alone.

Rather, testing and optimising of ads should subsequently lead to an increase in profits. This is otherwise known as profits per impression.

So even if a newer ad has a higher clickthrough rate, scrap it if it leads to a decrease in profits.

At the end of the day, realise that split testing is not the mere testing of different variations of a page.

What you need to do, is to measure results, and the differences between the results generated by each variation.

1.3 Statistical Significance

Split tests are only useful if they are statistically significant.

In statistics, a result is statistically significant if it is unlikely to have happened by chance. Click this link to learn more about the mathematics of statistical significance.

Put another way, a test that is statistical significant provides enough data for you to confidently say that if the test continued indefinitely, the results will be similar.

For a split test to be statistically significant, you want it to be at least 90%, and ideally 95% or more to be sure.

For your convenience, you could use this A/B split test significance calculator for reference. Do not skip this step as it is not always obvious that landing page A is better than landing page B.

For instance, you would think a page which received 961 visits with 7 conversions works better than a page which received 974 visits with 5 conversions right?

Wrong.

There is a 54.73% chance that the difference was based on chance, and hence this test is not statistically significant.

2. Split Testing of Ads on Google AdWords

On Google AdWords, click on the settings tab and click advanced settings.

The options are as follows:

Optimize for clicks: Ads expected to provide more clicks are delivered more often

Optimize for conversions: Ads expected to provide more conversions are delivered more often. If there isn’t sufficient conversion data, the system will optimize for more clicks

Rotate: Each of your ads will enter the ad auction an approximately equal number of times. This allows ads with lower clickthrough rates and conversion rates to show more often, so this option could result in a lower average position or fewer clicks and conversions.

2.1 What Can Be Tested?

• Headline: try different benefits or pain points
• Body: how you communicate, what words do you use?
• Call to action: test how explicit your call to action should be

But amidst all the testing, remember that your ultimate goal is to attract buyers, not just to attract clicks.

One suggestion could be to include the price, so as to deter people who are not likely to buy from clicking and so save on your advertising costs.

3. Split Testing of Landing Pages

Looking deeper, an ad is only as effective as its landing page – if its landing page does not convert traffic into customers, a high performing ad is useless and a waste of advertising dollars.

As such businesses should aggressively perform split tests of their landing pages.

You could use the Google Website Optimizer, a free tool which offers all the basic functions.

You will have to fill in the different URLs of the page you want to test, the URL of your conversion page, and then install and validate Javascript tags.

Click this link for a guide on the Google Website Optimizer.

If you have the money to spare, you won't go wrong with paid tools such as Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer.

3.1 What Can Be Tested?

• Headline: Does it pique and sustain your user’s attention?
• Page format: Is the design professional (colours, font, etc)? Is it long or short? What elements (video, etc) are used to communicate the message?
• Content: Test different pain points and benefits; words; writing style
• Others: Positioning of certain items such as your menu bar or opt in form; existence of certain items such as a FaceBook widget for social proof or trust seals, etc
• Price
• Images

4. Some Other Tips

1. Showing a best performing ad all the time will not produce optimum profits

Counterintuitive but true. Why?

Because most businesses offer a variety of products/services which represent different types of benefits to customers.

If an ad is shown all the time, you will only be able to target a very specific market segment, and will not be able to reach out to the other segments you are targeting.

2. You can conduct split tests past the ad and landing page level

What I mean by this is that you can conduct split tests from a settings perspective. Some examples include:

• Time of the day: would users be likelier to buy your products at night as compared to in the day?
• Geographical location: is it more profitable to sell in Singapore than in Malaysia?
• Ad position: try submitting lower bids and end up lower on the paid listings, you may be pleasantly surprised
• Latent topics: Could exposing your ad to search queries that are indirectly related raise your sales? E.g. bidding for the keyword “online flower delivery” when you sell “chocolate gifts”

3. Test one thing at a time

Obvious but not so obvious, as many beginners tend to test too many variations at a time and screw up their findings.

Actually, it is possible and it is called multivariate testing. However, it requires a much more complex set up and requires huge amounts of traffic to work well.

4. Track your experiments

In the rush to test, many forget to track and as a result lose the valuable lessons from previous experiments.

5. How clickTRUE Perform SEM Optimisation

Offering a sneak peek into our enhanced SEM system, we set "rules" (or algorithms) to manage all our PPC accounts on a consolidated platform. E.g. this system allows us to consolidate the data from all the search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

We operate by basing our strategies on the predefined rules as follows:

The system will automatically adjust settings such as bidding to ensure that our target goals/"rules" are met.

The image above shows some of the advanced settings we can set for our rules, such as impressions and clickthrough rate, to ensure that our goals are met.

With these settings, we get much greater flexibility in managing and monitoring our accounts in making the appropriate adjustments.

This allows us to optimise the various ad groups effectively to achieve our goals, such as lower cost per click or higher clickthrough rate.

To sum up the entire process of search engine marketing, you could check out this infographic – a clear step by step guide to how to go about the entire process. 

If you want to grow your business and crush your competiton today, why not contact our helpful consultants? We can assist you in achieving a higher ROI for your advertising budget that is double or even triple that of your competitiors.

In this series of articles, I will do a basic walkthrough of the entire SEM campaign on the Google AdWords platform. Part 1 is about Research, part 2 will go through the process of Setting up an AdWords ad and landing page, and part 3 will discuss Testing and Optimization.

Now that we understand the importance of research (part 1), it is time to embark on our first AdWords campaign! But before we go into the process of creating an ad, we have to understand how an AdWords account should be organized first.

1. Structure of an AdWords Account

Using the example of an online gift shop in part 1 of this series, we should be looking at a structure like this.

2. AdWords Campaign

We shall use the example of an online gift shop for illustration.

Moving on, we recommend you uncheck the “search partners (requires Google search)” and display network options (see image below).

Note: turned on by default

The search network refers to partner search engines that display Google's results, such as AOL. The display network refers to any website that displays ads by Google, which can potentially be a ton of traffic. So why uncheck those options?

This is because even though you may get more traffic/reach from these 2 sources, they are not as likely to be converted into leads or buyers, as these users are less likely to be in the buying frame of mind. To get their attention, your ad would have to distract or catch them unexpectedly.

On the other hand, someone who uses the search engine looking for a specific solution is more likely to be in the buying frame of mind – they are much likelier to click on your ad and buy from you.

This is not to say that traffic from these two sources is useless – it all depends on the situation. For instance, you may want to raise awareness, or it could be that you are heavily mainstream consumer-interest focused.

2.1 Bidding and Budgeting

There are a few things of note here:

First, it is better to cut your bid prices than cut your budget, as cutting your budget will cause Google to show your ad fewer times a day.

Second, Google gives lower priority to new advertisers who are completely risk averse, so don’t be too conservative.

Finally, it is better to be seen in a lower position but shown throughout the day rather than in a high position which is only shown a few times a day.

2.2 Creating a Text Ad

For the headline, it is crucial to insert your main keyword.

For description line 1, insert the main benefit a customer gets from buying your product. It is different from features, which is supposed to be what description line 2 is about.

The display URL is the URL you will be showing on your ad and the destination URL is your landing page.

2.3 Keywords

As shown above, there are different match types you can use for better control (e.g. “”, []). To refresh your memory again, here is the table.

After saving your keywords, you can move on and start inserting your negative keywords (search queries where you do not want your ad to appear in).

At clickTRUE, we use our own proprietary keyword tool to easily manage our keyword lists and ad groups. 

Multi-platform editor allowing us to port successful ad copies and keywords across platforms and accounts – Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Bing etc

3. Quality Score

Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. The higher it is, the more relevant Google thinks your ad, keyword and landing page are.

3.1 How Google Calculates Quality Score

Google uses these factors for its Quality Score computation, click here for a detailed explanation

3.2 How Quality Score Affects You

• Ad auction eligibility: Higher Quality Scores make it easier and cheaper for a keyword to enter the ad auction.
• Your keyword's actual cost-per-click (CPC): Higher Quality Scores lead to lower CPCs
• Your keyword's first page bid estimate: Higher Quality Scores lead to lower first page bid estimates. That means it's easier for your ad to show on the first page of search results
• Your keyword's top of page bid estimate: Higher Quality Scores lead to lower top of page bid estimates. That means it's easier for your ad to show towards the top of the page when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.
• Ad position: Higher Quality Scores lead to higher ad positions

4. Landing Page

A landing page is any page on a website where trafic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result.

4.1 Significance of The Landing Page in SEM

Poor Landing Page

Anything that you do to your landing page must be aligned with prompting the action you want the web user to take.

In other words, ensure relevance between your ad and your landing page.

Why?

The first reason, is relevance will increase the conversion rates of your landing page, and a lack of it will only increase your website's bounce rate. Imagine clicking on an ad offering tea products and landing on a website that sells toys! What would you do?

The second reason, is that higher relevance between your ad and your landing page will lead to a higher quality score, which puts you in a better position as compared to your competitors (e.g. a lower cost per click).

On the other hand, low relevance leads to a significant drop in quality score.

Finally, your ads are only as effective as your landing page. If your landing page doesn't convert the traffic generated by your ads into a customer/lead, then your advertising budget has just been wasted.

4.2 Guidelines of Creating a Good Landing Page

Good landing page

It is never easy to design an effective landing page that converts consistently, because a lot of testing of your page's design and copywriting (part 3) has to be done.

However, not to worry, follow these basic principles and you will have a solid start.

• Make it crystal clear who you are, what you do, and what you have promised in the ad
• Have a headline that piques interest and reveals benefits
• Provide links to your privacy policy and disclaimer
• Minimize distractions so as to prompt the user to take a certain action
• Focus on one thing
• "Speak to the person", use an appropriate "story" or the right words to trigger certain emotions within them to prompt them to take certain actions
• Call to action phrase/button – should be prominent and enticing, and not simply "join now"

Now that you've seen how this works, you might want to check out how a case study evaluating the effectiveness of the landing page below.

4.3 Tweetable Quotes to Share

1) To get a high quality score, relevance is key – your keywords, ad groups and landing page must build on each other [tweet]

2) Put call to action above the fold on your landing page to increase conversions [tweet]

This marks the end of part 2 of this series, and we will look at testing and optimization in part 3!

If you would like to stand out from your competitors with a professional managed AdWords account and a landing page that converts, feel free to contact our friendly consultants today!

In this series of articles, I will do a basic walkthrough of the entire SEM campaign on the Google AdWords platform. Part 1 is about Research, part 2 will go through the process of Setting up an AdWords ad, and part 3 will discuss Testing and Optimization.

For this first article, I will focus on Research – Customer research and Keyword research – the bedrocks of a kick ass SEM campaign.

As mentioned in my previous article, SEM is the fastest and most effective traffic acquisition method till date, if used right. Afterall, anyone with a credit card can buy traffic online, but at what cost per click (CPC) and what quality of traffic?

Before we proceed, we need to be clear of the following:

The objectives (guiding principles) of a SEM campaign are to

• Get targeted traffic
• Convert traffic into leads

Via continuous improvement:

• Getting more clicks from more places
• Getting better clicks
• At a lower CPC

1. Why Research?

Research is the first step in working out the underlying strategy behind your SEM campaign. It helps you refine your communications with potential users, and provides a direction for your SEM campaign to move towards.

For instance, it allows you to align your product intent and customer intent and better target potential users. The end result is better targeting ability which saves you money with fewer wasted clicks, and increased profits from targeted ad exposure to users who are interested in your products.

Research also often reveals broader and deeper insights that can be used across the board and across all your campaigns which you may not have known of.

Most importantly, it can be likened to be the foundation of a pyramid. Start off with a weak base and your pyramid is bound to topple.

1.1 Example of Poor Research

Using the search query "computer repairs", let's examine the ad in the red box. 

Clicking on the ad "Computer & IT Maintenance", we reach the landing page below:

From the landing page, we can clearly tell that CARE is a company providing IT support for businesses, in other words, it is B2B rather than B2C.

This is where poor customer and keyword research is reflected.

Typically, one would think that buying the keyword "computer repairs" would be relevant to a company that is providing that service for companies. However, on careful thought, the search query "computer repairs" is more likely to be typed out by a normal consumer, who is not the target market for CARE.

Rather, CARE's target market are businesses which are more likely to type search terms such as "IT support", "IT maintainence", or "IT outsourcing".

As such, this may result in wasted advertising expenditure as consumers who are looking for computer repairs providers will click on the ad and exit the site once they realise that the company is not what they are looking for.

2. Customer Research

This is the most critical step in your SEM campaign as it affects your entire sales funnel (getting traffic to your site and converting them into leads). 

2.1 Who Is Your Customer?

Firstly, customer avatars, or personas should be created. A video by Ian Lurie of Portent Interactive and SEOmoz founder Rand Fishkin demonstrates how to do this well.

The objective of this step is to uncover the “conversation” going on in your customer’s head and the “hot” words that will trigger off certain emotional responses within them, rendering them more receptive to your offer.

With this knowledge, you will know which keywords to research and what words to use for your ad copy and landing page, so as to better convert traffic into leads.

2.2 Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Many ways of calculating CLV, this is just an example

Next, it is essential to calculate your CLV, which will not only form the baseline for several important decisions, but which will also act as a dashboard needle for you to gauge your progress.

For instance, if you know your CLV, you will know what limit to set your CPC bid prices at. Knowing the CLVs of different segments of customers will also show you how much resources to allocate for each segment.

You can also use your data from market/customer research to determine how to increase your backend offers and increase your CLV. With an increased CLV, naturally, you can increase your CPC bid prices and get more traffic as a result.

2.3 Tweetable Quotes To Share

1) Always begin your Search Engine Marketing campaigns by creating a customer avatar [tweet]

2) Knowing your customer lifetime value is essential in creating a profitable search engine marketing campaign [tweet]

3. Keyword Research

From your research in 1.1, you can come up with a few main categories of your products/services first. For instance, let's say you operate an online gift shop with 3 categories – online flower delivery, online gift cards and online chocolate store.

You can then enter the category keyword into the Google keyword tool and find other relevant keywords. The choice to select general or specific keywords depend on your goal.

Do you want to reach out to more people or reach out to a smaller but more specific group? The latter is preferable but if your goal is to raise awareness, then the former is the way to go.

Your goal at this stage is to create a sub list of 6-12 tightly matched groups of keywords for each category. However, if there is a need to break down the main category into sub categories, then create a sub list of keywords for each sub category.

For instance, online gift cards can be broken down into online birthday gift cards and online wedding gift cards, and each sub category would require different keywords.

3.1 Criteria

So how do we go about choosing keywords? First and foremost, ensure relevance and consistency between the keywords you choose and the product your ad promotes. Then, you could use some of the other guidelines provided below.

1. Would more than 1 out of 3 people searching on this term be our ideal customer?

Based on your research in 1.1, choose the ones that fit, and ignore those that don’t.

2. How many people are searching for this keyword?

3. How much money are people making from this keyword?

The maximum cost per click people are paying is pretty much always the upper limit of the amount of money available in that market.

The keywords where people spend the most are usually the keywords where advertisers make the most.

To find out this value, use the Google Traffic Estimator to find out.

In the end, what we are looking for is:

1. Best possible match
2. A high search volume
3. High average bids because advertisers make a lot on them

3.2 Other Considerations

Strength of Competition

To gauge competition, you could count the number of ads via Google’s search results. Take note of repeat ads. Another way is to find out your competitors’ real cost per click via tools such as www.spyfu.com, www.KeyCompete.com and www.iSpionage.com.

Some things to take note of when deciding whether a keyword is worth pursuing:

• To be on page one, you need to be one of the eight to eleven sharpest advertisers
• You have to work hard to make your advertising message stand out if there are many competitors
• Stiff competition will also mean more time and money spent in testing
• But most importantly, more competition means more money for the top advertisers

Some of you may have noticed that there are tons of other keyword tools out there. For beginners, the Google Keyword Tool is a good place to start.

For clickTRUE, we employ our own Enhanced SEM Platform to conduct a more comprehensive keyword research.

clickTRUE's Customised Enhanced SEM Platform

Keyword Matching Options

Different options will cause your ads to appear on different search queries.

There are four options available: broad match (and broad match modifier), phrase match, exact match and negative match.

3.3 Other Methods

There are also other methods of keyword research, with different guidelines and different benchmarks. One such method is to align product intent and consumer intent via your feed inventory and your site’s search log.

Implementing several methods is crucial as it makes you stand out from competitiors who do not bother to do so.

Not only do you get a more robust set of keywords which can increase your targeting ability and reach, but you also achieve a lower CPC if you manage to unearth relevant keywords with less competition.

3.4 Tweetable Quotes To Share

1) Keyword research is about ensuring relevance and consistency of keywords and product promoted [tweet]

This marks the end of part 1, which is a basic process on how to conduct your keyword research.

If you would like to gain an unfair advantage over your competitors with better targeting ability and lower CPC brought about by comprehensive keyword research, feel free to contact our friendly consultants today!

According to Adchemy, an online advertising firm, a surprise finding is that some retailers do not use their product catalogs to generate keywords for paid search campaigns. For those who do, they only use model numbers and brand names, and not product features and attributes (e.g. colour, size). The end result is a high bid price and fewer clicks as too many retailers compete for the same keywords.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to expand and organize your pool of keywords for paid search campaigns based on the resources already available to you. What we want to achieve, is to align both product intent and consumer intent to generate better keywords and increase coverage.

Product Intent

For retailers, keyword research should start with the inventory feed – the database of all the products for sale. Each product contains specific features (size, brand, quality, etc) which consumers look out for. Product intent is the combination of the product and its corresponding features.

Utilising such combinations will produce a robust keyword portfolio with long tail/specific keywords, which offers better targeting ability. This is so as generally it is the customers who are late in the customer buying cycle and ready to buy will who type in specific, long tail search queries. Let’s use the example of paper products to get a clearer picture.

The image above is taken from an online retail space, which we will use as a mini inventory feed. From this alone, we can find tons of information about paper products. For instance, there is a variety of brand names (e,g, Belux, Paseo, Nice), size specifications (small packs, boxes, rolls), quantity specifications (e.g. 30×160, 10X200, , 10×10), number of plys (2-ply, 3-ply, 4-ply) and types (tissue, paper towels, printed).

By pointing the cursor at the image, we can find even more information such as the material of the product (e.g 100% natural fiber)

It is essential for retailers to consider every possible searchable combination of the aforementioned features that relate to products in your inventory, so as to build a more robust exact match keyword portfolio to increase your reach in the paid search space.

The extent to which retailers should combine these features will depend on how well you understand your customers. For instance, are your customers educated enough about the products to be able to search for some of the more technical details (e.g. material the paper was made from)?

For paper products, a guess would be that most consumers are unable to differentiate between the different material paper products are made from. Rather, they would be more concerned with a product’s brand and the feel/touch of the product which is a part of consumer intent.  Hence, good customer and market research will guide your keyword research.

Consumer Intent

Besides using your inventory feed, retailers can evaluate its site search logs for consumer intent as well. This is to get a sense of consumer behavior by identifying the common features relevant to the products being searched for.

Using the example of paper products again, possible consumer behavior could include searching for “soft tissue”, “tissue with soft touch”, “tissue which good absorbability/absorption”, “paper towels with wet strength properties”, etc.

Such features may or may not be gleaned from the inventory feed. The images below show how it can be found in the inventory feed.

Hence, by analyzing the site search logs, retailers can develop a list of combinations and exact match templates which will increase its reach significantly within the paid advertising space. Retailers can turn to AdWords and adCenter search query reports for potential keywords as well. They could also turn to market surveys and brainstorming sessions to generate untapped keywords with lower cost per click.

Other than developing new keywords, retailers should weed out low performing or inappropriate consumer intents by categorizing them as negative keywords in your paid search campaigns. Not only will this save costs and increase your clickthrough rates, but it allows you to allocate more resources to your most profitable keywords and so generate more profits. 

Organizing and Structuring your Keywords

Expanding your keyword list is not the end all, be all though! Structuring your keywords properly is as important as it can adversely impact your AdWords account’s quality score and performance.

Most importantly, do not add new keywords from new product lines into existing ad groups for a different product line.  This can impact the relevancy of the ad that is served to the consumer.

The ideal is to create ad groups with a smaller number of keywords, but which are more targeted, based upon the alignment of product and consumer intent. In other words, do not try to satisfy everyone, but know what exactly you have, and give consumers what they want.

If you would like to increase your pool of keywords for your paid search campaigns or need help in structuring your keywords to improve your Adwords account's quality score, feel free to contact our friendly consultants today!

More shockingly, 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute, and more video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major US networks created in 60 years!

In December 2010, Google rolled out a new advertising model for its YouTube videos – TrueView.  The key philosophy behind this change is to increase engagement, and decrease wastage.

Under this model, advertisers pay only when viewers choose to watch your ads, and not when an impression is served. The end result, is that everyone wins: viewers only watch ads they find interesting or relevant, and this engenders a source of highly targeted traffic to your video ads.

Hence, this not only increases engagement, but also decreases advertising expenditure as advertisers only pay for views by engaged viewers.

According to Bruce Daisley, sales director at Youtube and Google, viewers who have chosen to watch video ads on Youtube are 75% more engaged as compared to those who watch standard ads. This translates into better recall of your brand which consequently, will produce more sales.

TrueView Ad Formats

Under TrueView, there are 4 ad formats to choose from, and to get the most exposure for your advertising dollar, Google recommends purchasing advertising in all 4 formats.

1. TrueView in-Stream
2. TrueView in-Slate
3. TrueView in-Search
4. TrueView in-Display

1. TrueView in-Stream

These ads can appear before, during, or after a YouTube video. It will run for 5 seconds, and at the end of which users will have an option to close the ad or continue watching.

Advertisers pay if viewers watch the video ad for 30 seconds or for its full length, whichever is shorter.

One benefit for advertisers is that even if viewers choose to close the ad, you would have exposed your brand to them without any cost.

2. TrueView in-Slate

These ads show before YouTube videos which are 10 minutes or longer. Viewers have the choice to watch one of three ads or watch regular commercial breaks during their video instead.

Advertisers pay when viewers choose to watch your video ad.

3. TrueView in-Search

Previously known as promoted videos, these ads will appear at the top or on the right sidebar of both Youtube and Google search results.

Similarly, advertisers pay when viewers choose to watch your video ad.

4. TrueView in-Display

These ads appear alongside other YouTube videos, or on websites on the Google Display Network that match your target audience.

Again, advertisers pay when viewers choose to watch your video ad.

Implications for Advertisers

The key consideration for advertisers in the face of this new model has to be on making good, attractive ads.

According to a study done by Google, ‘curiosity’ is the top reason why consumers choose to view an ad, and so piquing interest in the first 5 seconds is key to driving viewership. In other words, creativity wins.

Not to forget, other factors such as an ad’s relevance and how engaging and enticing it is, are also crucial.

The Importance of Video Marketing

Today, the importance of video marketing is unparalleled. The graphic below from yume.com and adweek.com depicts why.

Click here for an expanded view

Looking beyond these stats and figures, what businesses today must grasp is that viewing videos online has become a lifestyle, and YouTube has become a part of the social media landscape that is active, reactive and interactive. Users comment on the videos, subscribe to channels, and share interesting videos on social networks. Importantly, YouTube can be tapped as a channel to drive more visitors to your website!

Some stats:

• Over 5 million people have found and subscribed to a friend’s channel using YouTube’s friend-finding tools
• Every auto-shared tweet results in six new YouTube.com browsing sessions
• More than half the videos on YouTube have been rated or commented on by users
• Over 4 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network

Companies which harness the power of YouTube against this social media backdrop will reap the benefits manyfolds in reduced advertising costs, increased sales and increased brand exposure.

To find out how businesses such as Ford Motors utilized video marketing successfully, you could check out this media studies project (Social Media Marketing: Successful Case Studies of Businesses Using Facebook and YouTube with an In-Depth Look into the Business use of Twitter) from Stanford University.

For those who would like to get a better understanding of the TrueView ad formats, you could check out this video below. And if you are ready to try out this channel to get more visitors to your website, speak to our friendly consultants today!

Most businesses see the need to maintain an online presence today, but many are not doing it right. Let us take a look at 2 completely contrasting styles for a better understanding. By the way, both are reputable companies and you can find their sites here and here.

As a customer, would you want to buy something from this website,

Or would you rather buy from this site?

Used right, a website is more than just an online brochure for your company. It can act as a 24/7 salesman that works for you at all times of the year. No sick leave, no holidays, no overtime fees, how good is that?

However, a 24/7 salesman will not be able to make any sale without customers and demand. On the net, we refer to customers and demand as traffic, and it is essential for us to drive not only large amounts, but also targeted traffic to our sites (targeted traffic refers to the customers we want).

Traffic

There are 2 types of traffic we can go for – organic and paid. Which should we choose?

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic refers to unpaid traffic, or traffic you get from ranking for keywords in the search engines. Its key advantage being that it is free, as you do not have to pay to get a steady flow of traffic each month to your site.

However, there is a catch. To get good rankings in the search engines, you will need to engage in search engine optimization (SEO). SEO requires proper structuring of your site and also the active generation of quality content, which will require many man hours and effort.

Typically, it takes at least 3 months to a year to achieve good search engine rankings with the help of SEO consultants, and even then, results are not guaranteed.

Most crucially, would you leave the fate of your business to Google? I.e. Depending on them alone to determine how many visitors they want to send to your site. Google updates its search algorithms frequently and the rankings you have worked hard for for a year could easily drop or even disappear the next day.

For that reason alone, paid traffic is a must for competitive businesses, and so we will focus on this crucial marketing tool in this article.

Paid Traffic

There is a host of paid traffic options open to us, and we will look through a few of the most important ones today. More importantly, we would like to focus on the distinction between pull advertising (search engine marketing) and push advertising (social media marketing, display advertising, email marketing).

In a nutshell, pull advertising is about advertising to visitors who are actively searching for products or services your company provides. Push advertising on the other hand, is about advertising to people who are potentially interested in the products or services your company provides.

1. Paid Traffic – Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM refers to paying for a listing on the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu) and you only pay when someone clicks on the link. This is based on the pay per click (PPC) model, and it is one of the most important paid traffic methods till date.

Why is SEM so powerful?

As Perry Marshall, the #1 author on Google advertising said, SEM is direct marketing on steroids. Now, you can test ideas and in minutes and hours – not days, weeks or years. This is in stark contrast to SEO, which only gives results in the long term, which in itself, is not guaranteed.

With SEM, you get results fast. By sending predictable traffic to your site, you can gather immediate customer feedback on your site and any existing offers or sales copy. Adjustments can then be made to improve your conversion figures. More importantly, you get to raise immediate awareness amongst the customers you are looking for, who will then promote your brand via word of mouth.

The Other Advantages of SEM

1. It allows you to target effectively, by only bidding for certain keywords which you would want to rank for.
2. You only pay when searchers click on your link
3. Pricing is based on true market values

This is a form of pull advertising and it works, because when users enter search terms in search engines, they are looking for solutions. By paying for a listing at the top of the search rankings, you get to place your offer right in front of them.

2. Paid Traffic – Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is also based on the PPC model. It has similar advantages to that of SEM, in that it gets targeted traffic to your website fast.

In fact, it offers more targeting options than SEM, in that you can go as far as only showing your ads to very specific people. E.g. choosing to show a barbell ad to male college grads from ages 18-35, who are interested in bodybuilding, and speak English.  

However, its main drawback is that social media users tend to use social media to keep in touch with friends, rather than to search for solutions or to click on ads. As such, although SEM offers fewer targeting options, ads on search engines are exposed to a “hungrier” crowd – people who are actively searching for solutions for their problems.

3. Paid Traffic – Display Advertising

Display advertising refers to buying banner ads or advertising space on websites. This can be done via contacting the site owner, or signing up for content networks such as Google’s Adwords.

They can work via a PPC model as discussed earlier, via a pay-per-action (PPA) model, or a cost per impression (CPM) model.  A PPA model is where advertisers pay for each specified action linked to the advertisement. A CPM model is where you pay a certain amount for a certain number of views, e.g. $1 for 1000 views of the ad.

Display advertising has been the pioneer of online advertising, but do they still work today?

According to data released by Conde Nast and Mcpheters & Co, nearly two-thirds — 63% — of banner ads were not seen by Web users. Respondents’ eyes “passed over” 37% of the Internet ads and “stopped” on slightly less than a third.

However, this does not mean display advertising is ineffective, it is still effective, but is contingent upon the context (website and traffic) it is on.

4. Paid Traffic – Electronic Direct Marketing/Email Marketing (EDM)

If you do not own your own email list of clients, there are 2 ways you could still do EDM. The first, is to pay for advertising space on others’ emails/newsletters to their lists, or you could choose to rent lists of email addresses from other companies, and send emails to them.

EDM used to work well in the past, however, it is not as effective today as people are used to receiving unsolicited commercial mail and usually send them to the thrash without a second look. Furthermore, there are only so many email lists of clients you could rent or send soliciting emails to.

Today, email marketing works best when you engage your own list of customers via a series of emails so as to build a long term relationship with them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, paid traffic is crucial, but not all paid traffic is good, or value for money. What works best for your company may not work as well for another, as it all depends on your target audience. Where do they search for solutions to their problems?

In fact, we encourage you to explore even further, as there are tons of other paid traffic methods out there which your competition does not know of.

From our experience, the fastest and most effective way to bring new visitors to your website is still Search Engine Marketing. Have a look through some of our case studies and see if you could arrive at the same conclusion! 

In anticipation of our soon-to-be-launched email marketing service, today's post is dedicated to Email Marketing, and how it differs from Search Marketing. 

Briefly, Search Marketing ensures that your website appears on search engine results every time customers search for a product or service you offer on, for example, Google or Yahoo!, while Email Marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses email as a medium of communication.

1) Push vs. Pull Strategy

In search marketing, there is consumer demand for a product, and thus consumers are actively looking up on – or even looking for the product on search engines. Email marketing differs in that promotional messages are pushed to the consumer, who is a passive receiver of this content.

2) Leveraging on Different Advantages

Having a personal point of contact is extremely valuable to a marketer, and in the case of email marketing, this is inherently present in the form of your prospects' email. People usually will pay close attention to the emails they receive because direct communication is present.

In contrast, search marketing leverages on an already present demand for your firm's product or service. Consumers are interested in purchasing it – or are at least, thinking about purchasing it when they go to a search engine and log a relevant search. By engaging in search marketing to bring your website to a top ranking, you are essentially encouraging a significant group of already interested consumers to visit your website.

3) Different Kinds of Investments

For search marketing to work, you will need to brainstorm and research for keywords, and strategically place them on your website in order to boost your rankings in search engine results. Quality content also has to be available such that people will choose to link to your site on their own accord. Your link popularity will in turn influence your ranking.

Meanwhile email marketing relies on the careful maintenance and cleaning of a relevant, quality database to work, whether you build this up yourself from scratch, or rent it from a third party source. A good database will help you acquire new customers and build brand loyalty. On the flip side, if no effort is put into maintaining your database, you will simply end up spamming uninterested consumers.

4) Both Are Easily Measurable

Search marketing is easily measurable with analytics and conversion tracking. Similarly the success of email marketing can be assessed through click-through ratess, recipient engagement, e-mail forwards, et cetera. This allows you to track your ROI accurately and ensure that your marketing dollars have been well spent.

Which one should I choose?

To make a decision about this, you'll need to ask yourself these questions.

• Has your company been around for long?
• Are the products and services you offer well-known to the public?
• Is the nature of your product such that people make the effort to research on it before purchasing?

If you answered ‘No’ the above questions, email marketing may be a more preferable option for you, as you can literally push your offerings to your customer – or in this case, into their inbox, filling them in on information about your product that they would otherwise not know about.

However, if your business has already invested heavily in advertising to promote your brand, consumer demand for your product may already be high enough for your firm to reap a fruitful reward from a search marketing strategy.

At clickTRUE, however, we encourage our clients to look at search marketing and email marketing not as separate strategies, but as techniques that can be incorporated into a single holistic campaign. For example:

• Search marketing can be used to drive up visitor rates to a particular email opt-in page.
• Email newsletters can be optimised for sharing through social networks to take advantage of search engines' propensity to turn up social media content in their results.
• Search and email marketing can be integrated with web analytics to help you identify the search keywords driving traffic to your landing pages. You can then edit your email content accordingly to optimise it for conversion.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The possibilities of search and email marketing are endless. Have you heard of any companies who have successfully integrated these two services to successfully promote their business? Do tell us about it by leaving us a comment! 

And, to find out more about our Search Engine Marketing and Email Marketing Services, do feel free to get in touch with us for more details.