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Hit Search Online Marketing: Paid Search Predictions for 2010by Andrew Redfern @ 8th February 2010 12:07 pm
It is widely expected that the amount of money invested by businesses into the paid search market will grow significantly over the next 12 months. This means that the need for campaigns to deliver an ever-increasing return on investment (ROI) is greater than ever. Digital marketing community Econsultancy has posted its predictions for the paid search market in the next 12 months. • High keyword prices will force marketers to try new strategies According to research carried out in the US, two-thirds of marketers see their biggest challenge in the paid search market as high prices for keywords. Despite the growth of paid searches beginning to slow down, advertisers are continually pumping more money into the industry, and as a result, keyword prices are becoming more expensive. Because of this, marketers will need to focus on careful keyword management, testing, and targeting, in order to increase the ROI on their campaigns. Quality Score optimising will become a priority; this will bring costs down whilst simultaneously driving conversions up. Geographic and demographic targeting will also be more widely used this year, with these strategies reaching out to national advertisers and retailers. • Paid search will be more integrated Although search marketing accounts for more than half of digital marketing budgets (representing tens of millions of pounds for the larger companies), most search marketing programmes are still managed separately from traditional marketing departments. This year, organisations will look to integrate their paid search operations more tightly into the business, rather than running them as a standalone unit. Integrating systems will make search marketers change the way they report and organise their KPI’s, leading to a big shift in how this information is communicated upwards in the business. Search marketers will therefore need to adjust to new processes, using dashboards and proposals for investment. In return, they will be looking to see more executive support and therefore larger budgets. • Paid search will go multichannel Google recently found that over half of online shoppers research their purchases on the internet before eventually buying the products in-store. On this basis, search marketers are currently missing out on credit for half of the revenues their campaigns are driving. However, the tools for measuring across channels are now much more accessible to businesses, whether it’s linking phone numbers to keywords, or taking in-store surveys to see how the customer learnt about the products they’ve purchased. These tools will make it much easier for firms to make properly informed decisions on the allocation of their search budgets, and also make sure that they are driving both online and offline conversions. Learning how offline buyers are researching their needs will allow multichannel traders to find new, low cost keywords to drive profitable expansion of their paid-search programs. • Facebook and Twitter Will Give Google a Run for Its Money Social networking sites like Facebook, which currently has over a billion queries on its site every month, will extend their own search technology to allow users the ability to query the content in their news feeds. This will make it much easier for users to get recommendations from their friends on anything from restaurants and mobile phones, to films and TV programmes. Advertising money for keyword placements is sure to follow suit, therefore search marketers will need to alter their campaigns to account for a more social set of keywords. This will enable them to catch consumers earlier in the consideration process than they could on traditional search engines like Google or Yahoo! And since these users will still in the research phase of purchasing a product (ie, placing a lot of value in word-of-mouth recommendations) these clicks could be very valuable. While it will be difficult to incorporate all of these changes into campaigns, those marketers who can capitalise on some of these trends will most likely be a step ahead of the competition. Ref: HSLP0101AA206 Sales Jobs - New Business Executiveby Andrew Redfern @ 29th January 2010 2:48 pm
Hit Search is one of the fastest growing Search Engine Marketing agencies in the North, with a highly impressive growth rate and an enviable client base. As part of our planned expansion programme Hit Search are now looking to add to their already highly successful new business acquisition team. Your role will encompass all elements of the sales process from initial market research to cold calling to face to face presentations. Knowledge of the online marketing sector is a prerequisite; experience of selling SEO or PPC solutions is a significant advantage. You must have a demonstrable track record of success combined with the ability to sell to a diverse range of clients often at board level. If you feel you can make a major contribution to this exciting and dynamic business then call:- Jeff Millington on 0845 643 9289 (ext:106) 5 Killer Questions To Frighten Your SEO Companyby Andrew Redfern @ 12th January 2010 11:52 am
Its been reported today that Online marketing agency Latitude Group (Now Latitude Digital) has gone in goes into administration. Strangely its Chief Executive, Alex Hoye reported to How-Do that there were no redundancies, as management “took the total assets out of administration.” This confusion does noting for customer looking for Search Engine Marketing services. When you have that all important face to face meeting with your potential new supplier of SEO services, here are 5 questions you need to ask before you put pen to paper and sign the deal. (1) How have you established your monthly cost? (2) What is your account management structure? There is nothing worse than having a faceless contact at the end of a phone. You should establish a good working relationship as the account manager can have a dramatic effect on your online sales. (3) How many accounts does each account manager deal with? If you are one of 30 or 40 accounts allocated to your account manager as with some organisations, then you can quickly establish that with an average of a 40 hrs working week you may only receive around 1 hrs work per week…. a recipe for failure. (4) What is the reporting structure? Many companies offer an “online dashboard” approach to reports or send out endless reams of data with little or no explanation. You need to be 100% clear that you are receiving relevant information on a regular basis, delivered to you in a clear and concise manner. (5) Do they guarantee keyword placement on the search engines? There is not a professional SEO provide anywhere who will make this offer, why? Because it can’t be done. We can all point to past performance and indicate possible future success, but to guarantee a keyword placement on page 1 ……Be warned. Location based searches example on Googleby Andrew Redfern @ 8th January 2010 10:24 am
John Eric Hoffman and Jussi Myllymaki of the Google Mobile Engineering today posted on the Google Mobile blog how location based searches are creeping to the mobile search listings.
Would you like to know more about these subjects? Contact Hit Search on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world, make sure you become visible. Google AdWords PPC - Optimising The Content Networkby Andrew Redfern @ 7th January 2010 6:54 pm
A blog post on the official Google Inside AdWords blog today was some helpful insight into some new initiatives to optimise the content network. The blog post by the Inside Adwords crew comments “We’re often asked, “How can I maximize the ROI from Content Network campaigns?” As part of our new Optimisation University initiative, we’ve developed a Getting Started Guide and a series of 6 videos to help answer this question for you. The guide and videos provide a conceptual walk-through and demo of the major steps involved in executing a Content Network campaign. These include: Campaign setup best practices Along with simple tips and tricks to improve ROI, we also go over several tools, such as the Wonder Wheel, the Keyword Tool and Conversion Tracking, that can help you be more efficient. These recommendations are based on our analysis of thousands of campaigns to understand what works and what doesn’t. We hope you can start applying them to your campaigns today. If you’re starting a new Content Network campaign, watch the first video below; you may find it to be particularly valuable. The content network has for a long time been a massive opportunity for Google if it can get the quality right; this initiative from Google will only go to help improve the quality. Nexus One - Google Maps Sat Nav Killer?by Andrew Redfern @ 6th January 2010 5:04 pm
Elaine Filadelfo posted on the Official Google blog outlining how Google Maps has been integrated into the new Nexus One.
Watch the YouTube video previewing the Google Maps Navigation on the Nexus. In our view this the Nexus One will be a great addition to the mobile search marketplace and healthy competition to the iPhone. The only challenger that the Nexus One will have will be its lack of applications compared to the iPhone. Interesting times in the Mobile search marketing coming…. Would you like to know more about these subjects? Contact Hit Search on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world, make sure you become visible. Hit Search PPC - 5 Strategic PPC Habitsby Andrew Redfern @ 6th January 2010 1:02 pm
This is a guest post by Jerry McGovern, a content strategist for Acquisio, a company that develops enterprise level SEM software and PPC bid management solutions. Running a PPC campaign is very dynamic experience. Not only are you trying to interact with users who might be interested in your offer, but you’re also bidding against countless competitors. No matter what software or tools you’re using to help manage your campaigns, it needs a human touch to navigate all those relationships. So you just have to get in their and get your hands dirty. Grow Your Keyword ListAs your campaigns run, there’ll be plenty of data on medium- to long-tail keywords to help you find sources of traffic. In addition to creating new combos of existing, top-performing terms, there are two other ways to expand your list. You can (1) use third party tools such as Keyword Discovery or Google Keyword Tool, and (2) sift through your web logs and identify what users are using to navigate your site. Always Be Testing…By testing new ads against your control ads, you can eliminate the poor performers. So always run more than one ad text at once within each ad group. Before you eliminate any keywords, though, double check the statistical significance of your data using a split ad testing tool. You should also test new landing pages. One great tool for doing split A/B and multivariate testing on your landing pages is Google Website Optimizer. You can also use Google Analytcics to get data on bounce rates and page view times for each landing page. Keep a Campaign DiaryTrying to understand why clicks suddenly spiked? Or perhaps you recently introduced some new ad text but forgot when that was, or in what ad group. By keeping some kind of log, you’ll notice seasonal traffic trends, and avoid repeating past mistakes. Watch Your AnalyticsGoogle Analytics can clue you into things like why a conversion rate took a dive, whether the new landing page you’re testing is really any better than the old one. By examining bounce rates and average page view times and comparing them against paid traffic performance, you can get a glimpse into anything from the effectiveness of your landing pages to your shopping cart process. GA can also provide other helpful data such as geo-localization, funnel tracking, and site overlay. Watch the CompetitionIf your competition suddenly starts outranking you on certain key terms, closely monitor your data over the next few days and take the necessary steps to adjust your ad ranking. First, in addition to increasing your bids, you might want to revise your ad text or add different new match types or variations to your ad groups. It’s also possible that a competitor is featuring in a price-cut in the ad text - and it’s good to stay on top of these things. There are even a few paid monitoring services available to monitor the competition’s paid and natural rankings of competitors for you. Clicks & ConversionsWinning the PPC auction without breaking the bank involves (1) bringing down your CPC down, and (2) increasing your ranking. If you’re managing multiple campaigns on multiple networks under multiple accounts, then you might need a bid management platform to tracking your CPC across all campaigns. But no automated tool can substitute from intelligent campaign management. PPC software is great for doing the heavy lifting (like crunching a lot of numbers), but it takes an informed human being to get insight from all those numbers. By taking on the right habit, you can make sure that you cover all your bases, and (2) gain a better understanding of your market’s PPC landscape. And the better you know the terrain, the more easily you’ll be able navigate it. Would you like to know more about these subjects? Contact Hit Search on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world, make sure you become visible. Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest:
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