NZ marketers are finally realising the value of search marketing.

Latest figures from the IAB show online advertising spend continues to grow & that paid search is now the biggest online marketing channel in NZ.

Hallelujah!

At last we’re starting to catch up with other markets where 50% or more of online spend is invested in paid search.

There are plenty of good reasons for this level of investment. Here are 3:

1. Traffic from search engines – by definition, people actively interested in finding out more about your company & products – is highly valued by marketers. These visitors are more engaged than other site visitors, viewing more than twice the number of pages per session & spending twice as much time onsite.
2. Search engines are now seen by users as an arbiter as to the sites – and brands – of value. In one study by Yahoo! & Compete, 61% of users responded that they expect brand leaders to consistently appear in the top search engine results.
3. In their annual polling of marketers as to the most effective forms of offline & online advertising, both eMarketer and MarketingSherpa have consistently concluded that, along with email marketing, SEO & Paid Search Marketing are the strongest tactics producing the best Return on Investment (ROI).

In summary, the reason marketers are increasingly investing in search is simple – it works! And very cost effectively compared to other channels.

If you’re not doing it yet, maybe it’s time you gave it serious consideration. Your competitors probably are…

With the flood of businesses choosing to advertise via Paid Search, it has become increasingly more difficult to gain the desired campaign ROI which was once so easy to achieve. The fact is, many organisations are making a number of mistakes and are not maximising there profits from Paid Search. Listed below are five ways to get the most out of your Paid Search campaigns.

1. Position one in Google isn’t always the best position to be in.

As marketers, this goes totally against our competitive nature. We all want our ads on the coveted position inside the cover of a magazine, or our TVC shown during primetime television. But the truth of the matter is that search engine advertising is different. Occupying the first ad position in Google is only important for a selection of keywords.

Generally, there are five steps to the consumer purchasing process;

1. Identify a need/want which needs to be satisfied

2. Search for a solution

3. Evaluation of alternatives

4. Purchase

5. Buyers dissonance

For search engine advertising, we focus on in the middle three steps, starting with ‘searching for a solution’. Typically consumers weigh up a number of alternatives before making a purchase. Consumers will click on two-three (sometimes more) ads before evaluating alternatives.  Therefore, advertisers can avoid paying the premium of occupying position one as lower ranked ads are going to be clicked. For example, if you owned a company selling dieting books, you wouldn’t want to rank number one for the search phrases ‘how to lose weight’ or ‘diets that work’ as these are ‘searching for a solution’ based phrases.

The same applies when consumers are evaluating their alternative solutions and would apply for broad product related searches such as ‘compare diet books’ or ‘top five gyms’.  Also, when consumers are doing comparison shopping they’ll click on a number of ads to check the offerings of different advertisers – in the same way people typically don’t buy from the first shop they walk in to. For such search queries the perfect ad position is the last one people click on – not the first!

Where you do want to rank high in the search results is for purchasing keywords. For example, you would want to occupy the top positions for keywords such as ‘buy diet books’ or ‘apply gym online’.

2. Failing to apply the correct match types to keywords will hurt your ROI.

Identify the right match type for your keywords is critical to the success of your campaign. With Google there are three match types, ‘Broad’, ‘Phrase’ and ‘Exact’. Yahoo! has two types; ‘Standard’ and ‘Advanced’. Google’s ‘Broad’ and Yahoo’s ‘Standard’ match types are the default when setting up your campaigns and as the names state, they provides the ability to drive a wide range of visitors through to you website, including those you want to target and those who are less valuable. By only using broad/standard match in your campaigns, you are channeling a high number of unqualified visitors to your website which reduces your ROAS and is essentially a waste of money.

Furthermore, if you were to target using only Google’s ‘Exact’ or yahoo’s ‘Advanced’ match there is the potential that you are neglecting qualified traffic which will be snatched up by your competitors.

By analysing your keywords and using the suitable match type, you are ensuring that you are driving quality traffic to your website which will convert.

3. Failing to include negative keywords will also hurt your ROI.

Negative keywords play a vital part in controlling the quality of the traffic being driven via your campaigns. Negative keywords can be either associated with the keywords that you are targeting within your campaign, but are not resulting in conversions, or keywords which when combined with your keywords have a different meaning e.g. you are a educational institution and targeting keywords such as ‘degree’, ‘courses’, ‘study’ etc… you would have the negative keywords ‘free’, ‘fake’, ‘buy’ as negatives . By using negative keywords, you are weeding out irrelevant searches and saving your budget for qualified traffic.

4. Having too broader ad groups makes it hard to target customers.

Simply put, your ads must match the keywords your customers are searching for. If your ads do not contain your keywords or there relevant synonyms then your ads will not appear relevant to your customers and will not stand out against the competition. This is magnified by the fact that when an ad contains the keywords a customer use within a search the matching keyword is highlighted in bold.

5. Test, test, then test again.

Testing variations of your ads is critical to your campaigns success. Starting with totally different ad copy and working through to the finer details can drastically improve your ROI. By testing your ads ‘call to action’, titles, the two lines of copy, and display URL you can fast discover what catches your customers eye and what doesn’t.

The bottom line is that by keeping a close eye on your Paid Search campaign and constantly tweaking all of its aspects both large and small you will provide the best possible chance of driving the right kind of traffic to your website.  However, in order to maximise your ROI from Paid Search requires investing a lot of time & effort into proactive & continuous campaign management. If you don’t have the time available or specialist skills necessary then it should be outsourced to specialists. So if you are taking a set and forget approach to Paid Search, perhaps it’s time to reassess your strategy. Otherwise you are wasting your time and money.

By Craig Whitaker

Welcome to part 2 of this article which examines the relative benefits of both SEO and paid search. In Part 1 we looked at the pros & cons of paid search and saw there are some very compelling reasons for using it.

Time now to switch gears and look at Search Engine Optimisation (commonly abbreviated to SEO).

SEO is relatively ‘geeky’ and so many marketers struggle getting their heads around it compared to paid search (commonly abbreviated to PPC). However to ignore SEO is a mistake because it’s a great way of driving additional customers to your website. Having said that we’ll start with looking at the cons.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Cons:

The first thing to understand is that, contrary to popular misconceptions SEO is NOT ‘Free’. Whereas PPC is a ‘pay as you go’ model, SEO has front loaded costs and is, arguably, more expensive then PPC in the shorter term. The analogy to renting versus owning a house has been made.

SEO, especially in competitive areas, involves a lot more time & hard work than most people anticipate. Invariably changes to the website are required. This involves not only changes to site architecture & structure, but also changes to the content. Then the hard work really starts with link building…

Other negatives of SEO compared to paid search are:

• Limited keywords – as previously noted a page can usually only be optimised properly for 1 or 2 related search terms (keywords) which limits the number of keywords you can target compared to paid search.
• Lack of control over position – SEO is all about trying to influence search engines so they recognise your page as being highly relevant for a certain keyword phrase and thus rank it in the first page or two of organic search results. In SEO there are no guarantees in terms of ranking positions, despite what some con artists may state. The reality is you can’t guarantee what you don’t control & SEO is about influence, not control. So unlike paid search you can’t readily change where your listing is positioned in the search results. In contrast with PPC you can actively modify bids & preferred ad rank positions to test if, say, position 3 works better than position 1.
• Lack of control over landing pages - for the same reasons you do not have the same level of control with SEO determining which pages Google selects to include in its organic results compared to the high level of control paid search offers.
• Results take time – for people used to the relatively instantaneous results seen from paid search this is one of SEO’s biggest drawbacks. The plain simple fact is that SEO takes time before it shows results – and the more competitive the keywords you want to rank for the longer the wait. Generally it takes 3 – 6 + months before a site starts to rank for the primary keywords being targeted. If you need results yesterday, SEO is not the answer!

The time before results get seen combined with the limited level of control means that for most marketers SEO requires a ‘leap of faith’. For this reason we find most are far more comfortable starting off their search marketing efforts on a limited scale with paid search, then based on its success scaling that up and then later adding in SEO.

SEO Pros:

Having read about the cons you may well be wondering why you’d bother with SEO. Hang in there, the reasons are very, very compelling. Essentially it comes down to performance & cost.

1. More traffic – 70 – 75% of all search traffic is organic, rather than from paid search advertisements. The reason for this relates to the buying cycle. When people are in the early stages of information gathering & research they are far more inclined to focus on organic search results rather than paid ads. So if your SEO efforts get you ranking well in the organic results your chances of prospective buyers going to your website are enhanced.
2. Higher conversion rates – conversion rates from organic results are often higher than paid search traffic.
3. Lower cost over time – whilst SEO is definitely not free and takes more time, money & effort upfront than paid search the cost over the longer term is much lower because you’re not paying per click. For this reason getting good SEO work done on your website is a smart long lasting investment.

So which is better, SEO or PPC?

Really it depends on your objectives & situation. However we usually recommend running an integrated search marketing campaign with both to exploit complementary strengths of SEO & PPC. A typical SEO/PPC mix for a new website is often:

1. Start with PPC campaign
2. Implement SEO campaign
3. Progressively reduce PPC when SEO kicks in
4. Continue SEO with tactical PPC if needed

Do you need both SEO & PPC?

This debate frequently comes up when a client who has been using paid search for a particular keyword starts to rank well organically for it. “Great, we’re ranking organically so now we can ditch paying for this traffic using PPC”. That’s a reasonable conclusion to draw, especially for your brand name, however there are several reasons to stick with PPC even when you’re ranking well organically.

• Increased chances of being clicked on. With organic listings Google & other search engines normally will only show a maximum of 2 listings for any one website. So even if you are in the enviable position of having 2 results on page 1 of Google, by also having a PPC paid ad you increase your presence on the page by 50% & thus chance of being clicked on. Whilst you’d prefer they click your organic listing, as long as you’re bidding a sensible amount for paid search you still win.
• Paid & Natural Search Performance Synergy. There is evidence that having high organic & paid search results for a keyword leads to an uplift in performance for both – effectively a 1+1=3 effect.
• A study in March 2007 by iCrossing (Search Synergy: Natural and Paid Search Symbiosis) concluded that “Running natural and paid search campaigns in an integrated manner leads to superior online performance versus running either of them alone.”

  

• As the chart shows online performance for a range of key metrics improved significantly when natural & paid search were integrated. Why this happens is not clear – some speculate that having top results in both organic and PPC listings can help build the credibility of the site (Customer: “Hey, these guys are all over this page! They must be the industry leader” or something along those lines.)
• Other reasons for running both SEO & paid search include:
  • You have control over your brand message
  • Prevent competitor brand squatting in PPC search space (Prevent “Broad Matching” algorithms, and unscrupulous practices from putting your competitor’s ads above your natural search link for brand searches)
  • It’s insurance. If you slip from the organic rankings for a day or two, your paid ranking will maintain your presence.

Conclusion

1. SEO & Paid Search are each very effective ways of driving additional traffic to your website.
2. For maximum search marketing performance use both together & leverage their complementary strengths.

Mark Sceats

What’s Best – SEO or Paid Search? This is a very common question we get to hear from marketers and is a subject I spoke on recently when the New Zealand Marketing Association ran one of their bi-monthly ‘Brainy Breakfast’ seminars. The seminar was about Search Marketing and a sell out. Despite an antisocial 7am start more than 230 marketing professionals from a wide range of NZ organisations attended, demonstrating the intense interest in search marketing. Is search marketing taking off in New Zealand? Absolutely!

I was one of the six presenters on the panel which also included Google New Zealand, Yahoo! Australia, plus several other search marketing specialists. (That’s me, 3rd from the left).

We all spoke about different aspects of search marketing & the specific topic I covered was “What’s Best – SEO or Paid Search?” Because of the interest I’ve decided I to cover off the presentation here.

The short answer to the question is…it depends on your objectives & situation. Both SEO & Paid Search are
incredibly effective methods for driving more customers to your website. Like all things they each have their pros & cons and understanding these will help you decide which to use.

It’s easiest to start off looking at Paid Search. That’s because fundamentally it’s media buying, so most marketers find it easier to grasp than search engine optimisation.

Paid Search (PPC) Pros:

1. Performance based – a key aspect about paid search marketing which makes it so appealing to marketers is that, unlike almost all other advertising, it’s performance based. With PPC if people don’t click on your ads you don’t pay. And not only that, when people do click on your ad they’re actively seeking you out. What a contrast to traditional interruption based media! No wonder so much advertising spend is being switched to paid search.
2. Speed of implementation – compared to SEO it’s much quicker to implement a paid search campaign and few, if any, site changes are needed (at least initially). This makes it much easier for marketers to commit to because they can comfortably put a toe in the water & retain control without it becoming a major project involving IT etc.
3. High Control – this is another appealing aspect of paid search.

• On demand. Campaigns can be turned on & off as desired (ideal for tactical purposes)
• Landing pages – you control which specific page your ad links to.
• Specific audiences can be targeted using geo-targeting so your ads are not viewed & clicked on by audiences you can’t serve
• Compared to organic search results the advertiser controls the message presented in the search results i.e. the ad copy messaging (within editorial bounds)
• The keywords triggering your ads (if you’re selling widgets & don’t want a particular keyword to trigger your ads, such as ‘free widgets’ then you simply don’t include that in the keywords being bid on &/or make it a negative keyword)

This control is illustrated here (Ferrit is NZ’s biggest online shopping site with over 80 retailers):

In addition, less obvious benefits that paid search offers is testing.

With paid search you can & should test all of the following:

1. Keywords – with SEO a page can only be effectively optimised for 1 or 2 closely related keywords. However with paid search you can literally target thousands of different keywords in a campaign. So one of the things we always recommend is using paid search as a keyword validation tool to quickly identify the most effective keywords (i.e. the ‘money’ keywords that bring traffic that converts). Those are the keywords that the site should then be optimised for.
2. Ad copy – with paid search it’s easy to split test ads to find out which generate the greatest response from both a click through rate & more importantly, conversion rate. If you’re a company renting out motorhomes should your ad headline be “New Zealand Motorhomes” or “New Zealand Campervans’? With split testing you’ll know with certainty which appeals to your prospective audience, rather than guessing. (By the way, depending on the market being targeted one of those terms way out performs the other).
3. Landing page testing – again as with ad copy split testing you can test different landing pages to see which has the greatest impact on conversions. Simply A/B split testing can be done, as well as sophisticated multi-variate testing where a range of different factors get tested (eg 3 different headlines + 2 guarantees + 2 different prices + 3 different ‘buy now’ buttons). With most websites having dismal conversion rates in the 2% region using conversion optimisation to improve conversion rates can have a massively positive impact on your bottom line.

As you can see there are many compelling reason for using paid search. But it’s not all upside, there are a few cons.

Paid Search Cons:

The biggest negative is that paid search only works whilst you’re able to keep putting money in the PPC machine. Stop, and of course your ads stop running.

Fundamentally PPC is an auction and with increasing competition as more advertisers enter the market bid costs are increasing. NZ still an immature market with low competition but ‘keyword inflation’ is begining to happen which is a reason to get in early now. In the US paid search growth is starting to slow as many smaller to medium sized advertisers are having to cut back on PPC because bid prices are getting too expensive. This means it’s critically important to understand what you can afford to spend and having smart bid management strategies becomes increasingly important as CPC increases.

OK, to avoid this being too long an article we’ll take a break here. Tomorrow we’ll switch gears and look at the pros & cons of Search Engine Optimisation.

See you then.

Mark Sceats