In one of my previous posts here on Unintentional Entrepreneur, I covered the basics of search engine optimization. Contrary to what you might think, this post is not going to be a repeat of that post, but focus on a different aspect of online marketing: the advertising side.
When comparing between the two types of online marketing, here’s a helpful rule/analogy for determining which to include in your marketing…when looking for a place to live, you can either rent or buy. In this case, you want to buy a house to own, then you choose search engine optimization, but if you plan on renting, then choose search engine advertising.
Search engine advertising consists of several different types of programs, including paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. The main emphasis on each of these types is that you are paying for placement. It’s not organic or natural. You’re “forcing” your way onto a website or search engine to get people’s attention towards your product. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it can be highly competitive and possibly even effective.
What’s pretty great about search engine advertising (SEA) is that you can be more targeted towards who you want to reach. While you’re not able to target specific individuals to cater to their needs, you will be able to look out across demographics and reach them. For SEA networks and even search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, you’re able to select by geographic location too. So imagine if you’re posting an ad on a search engine for a new tech startup, you might look up relevant keywords, but then address the different demographics AND also focus your ad placements on people who searched from IP addresses located in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Chicago, etc – where most tech influencers may reside. You could also implement this strategy to intercept people who might be looking at your competitors. If company B is seeing people look up search terms for company A, then company B might want to buy some ad placements for those keywords and get their name out there as an alternative.
So how can you measure SEA efforts?
CPM: Cost per thousand viewers was the original method used for pricing online advertisements. CPM remains the most common method for pricing banner ads.
CTR: Click-through rates measure the number of times an ad is clicked as a percentage of views of the Web page on which the ad appears. Banner ads have CTRs that are generally 0.5 percent or less. In comparison, individual search engine ads can have CTRs of 10 percent, even though they appear alongside organic search results and competing paid search advertisements.
CPA: Cost per action quantifies costs for completing specified activities such as attracting a new customer or making a sale. Affiliate networks [Affiliate networks] operate on a CPA basis. CPA systems function most effectively when sales cycles are short and easily tracked. Longer sales cycles rely on exposure to multiple types of ads to create brand awareness and purchasing interest before a sale is made. Longer sales cycles and sales requiring multiple customer contacts can be difficult to track, leading to a reluctance by publishers to participate in CPA programs beyond initial lead generation.
CPC: Cost per contact tracks the cost of interacting with a client or potential client. In traditional marketing, CPC is viewed as a one-way process of reaching target audiences through means such as direct mail, radio ads and television ads. Search advertising provides opportunities for two-way contacts through web-based chat, Internet-based calls, call-back requests or mailing list signups.
TM: Total minutes is a metric being used by Nielsen/NetRatings to measure total time spent on a Web page rather than the number of Web page views. On July 10, 2007, Nielsen announced that they would be relying on TM as their primary metric for measuring Web page popularity, due to changes in the way Web pages provide content through audio and video streaming and by refreshing the same page without totally reloading it. Page refreshes are one aspect of Rich Internet Applications [Rich Internet Applications] (RIA). RIA technologies include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Microsoft Silverlight.
In a report published by ad network DoubleClick in May 2006 (PDF), they listed out some great tips on setting up your own online advertising program:
- Set clear objectives. Make sure that you know what goals need to be met when you set out on creating online advertising programs. What’s the end result that you want to achieve?
- Segment audiences. Don’t just spray and pray with your marketing budget. Look at which of your audience/community do you want to reach out to. Who will be most likely to respond positively to your message. Be sure to note the time and day and other logistics to ascertain when is the best time to reach them.
- Optimize media and creative. Plan on making changes often to your campaign. Don’t think that you can just post your ad and then leave it alone. You will have to measure the results and make constructive and productive changes throughout the campaign. Budgets can easily be used up if you have competitive keywords – make sure you’re reviewing it often.
- Review, assess and improve. At the end of your campaign, look at it to assess whether you have really met your objectives. Did you reach the right people? What lessons can you take away from this to help improve/enhance your next campaign?
You should be aware that while it is simple enough to buy placement and make an ad, there are some things that can make it quite complicated. One of them is looking for what keywords you want to use. If you’re trying to reach people who search for “US Government”, you might be surprised that there are probably a ton of ads that appear. The more popular the term, the more expensive it will be. Before you open up your marketing wallet, be sure to do your research to see how expensive a term is currently – and I say currently because these costs change quite frequently.
If your product is often misspelled also, you might want to consider investing your money in purchasing the incorrect spellings as well. So for companies like Flickr, they may choose to buy search terms like “Flicker” or “Flickre”, etc.
When doing research for your keywords, there are a couple of tools that you might want to try. Some are only available after you sign a deal with a search engine or if you buy the software outright. For many search marketers that I know, one of the tools is WordTracker which you need to pay for. Another one that is popular is through Google and is their keyword tracking tool.
Another thing you should be aware of is that if you buy an ad on a search engine like Google or Bing, one of the things you should note is that your ad will not only be on the search engine, but it could also appear throughout their network. The major search engines have a giant network of ad publishers that could show your chosen ad. This is something to be mindful when you look at your analytics and you see referrals from an unknown source – it could very well be from your keyword ad.
While these are tips to get you started on your online advertising program, there is much more to talk about. In the next post, I’ll talk more about banner marketing in the scheme of online advertising. However, if you’re interested in learning more or getting your online marketing campaign started, Network Solutions has a great service for that.
Sources: Wikipedia, DoubleClick, and iab.com
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