Getting the hang of SEM
Spent the day yesterday at a keyword advertising how-to seminar, run by Mary O'Brien, a former Yahoo/Overture/GoTo marketing maven. Out of all the set-up costs offered by Yahoo, I'd say this one is the most worthwhile.
The audience was pretty diverse. People from all different size companies and agencies in attendance. First part of the class was pretty basic, but covered some important stuff. Also taught the basics of ROI and CPA, which while amusing, is probably not something that enough marketers use to evaluate their programs.
I also got a pretty good understanding of why Yahoo's guidelines are more restrictive: history. It was what GoTo put in place to respond to all of the criticism that emerged when they first introduced the PPC model so many years ago. They believe it increases quality. Maybe.
Here are some learnings and generalizations from the seminar:
Btw, a new update in my keywords on / keywords off saga with YSM. They've turned them all back on! Huzzah! Three cheers for Stacey, my Inside Sales dude at YSM. He rules. Still waiting for the Google JumpStart people to call me...I mailed my Goog buddies and asked what gives?
(postscript: those of you who saw the VW bit. no, that was not me, but still amusing nevertheless!)
The audience was pretty diverse. People from all different size companies and agencies in attendance. First part of the class was pretty basic, but covered some important stuff. Also taught the basics of ROI and CPA, which while amusing, is probably not something that enough marketers use to evaluate their programs.
I also got a pretty good understanding of why Yahoo's guidelines are more restrictive: history. It was what GoTo put in place to respond to all of the criticism that emerged when they first introduced the PPC model so many years ago. They believe it increases quality. Maybe.
Here are some learnings and generalizations from the seminar:
- Most audience members said they got a better CTR and conversion rate from YSM, but simply saw more volume in conversions and results from Google AdWords.
- Lots of audience members interested in taking advantage of local search marketing (not Yahoo Local per se, but how to use keyword marketing for local searches.
- Copy and tactics on YSM are often very different than on Google. Subtle, editorial review-esque copy works better on Yahoo. Sensationalist marketing works better on Google. The two don't mix well (I copied my effective YSM campaign onto Google. Still waiting for that first conversion...)
- Landing pages are supremely important, and there are many tactics that can be deployed here. (Take the class for pete's sake. I'm not marketing sherpa)
- The first two keyword positions are important. However, the position at the bottom of the list is pretty darn good, too. Don't get stuck in the middle. No man's land.
- Save some money, and buy a bunch of 4-word and 5-word keystrings. 1- and 2-word keystrings are often a waste of money. Traffic will be lower, but it's not unusual to see conversions rates near 7% for longer strings.
- Bidjamming is really cool. Are you the Sun Tzu of online marketing? Check out bidjamming. On YSM, you only pay $0.01 more than the next guy. So you can find your competitors, who may be bidding a max of $100 to ensure they get top position, leaving a huge gap for the 2nd place position, which may be a bid of only $0.25. By bidding $99.99, you ensure that the top position costs $100/click, while you only pay $0.26, until someone bids you up.
(An interesting side note, after the class, I went to go apply my learnings to my keywords. I was surprised to see that someone had bid really high amounts in some of my keyword areas. $3 to $4 gaps between its max bid, and the second place position. So I thought I'd try bidjamming. I bid $2.99 and $3.99. That competitor? Yahoo Search Marketing! Those punks buying my own keywords!) - The reason why Yahoo may not be as aggressive about indexing your site? Money. I can help ensure Yahoo indexes me, if I pay per click and per page indexed via Site Submit Pro. I'm not sure this is exactly the reason why, but I'm kinda annoyed that this seems like the only option for me to get our 14MM+ page site indexed on Yahoo (don't even ask how many millions of pages Google has indexed. Not even close).
- If you're spending $3 million each year on SEM, get a frickin account manager already. Some dude tried to impress the audience by announcing his budget and that he was doing it himself. He asked which tools he should buy to manage this. Dude, get an account manager already. No sense playing games when you're talking about $3 million.
Btw, a new update in my keywords on / keywords off saga with YSM. They've turned them all back on! Huzzah! Three cheers for Stacey, my Inside Sales dude at YSM. He rules. Still waiting for the Google JumpStart people to call me...I mailed my Goog buddies and asked what gives?
(postscript: those of you who saw the VW bit. no, that was not me, but still amusing nevertheless!)
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