PART 6 - Campaign Strategy

Introduction

This is Part 6 of a 9 part series dealing with the planning and steps required to build a successful Sponsored Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign. In Parts 1 through 5 we explored and identified:

• Your products/services,

• Your main target customer group and what they want from your site/products/services,

• Your main online competition,

• Your main sponsored SEM campaign goal, and

• Your initial keyword list

In Part 5 you identified a list of ‘best’ keywords for your initial campaign and have saved them in a spreadsheet with corresponding Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) search counts.

In Part 6, we will be building your sponsored search engine marketing campaign strategy for a Google AdWord and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) PPC (search engine only) campaign. Since Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing display ads on over 95% of all search engine searches done in North America, your campaign will have excellent search coverage.

Campaign Budgets

Estimating the budgets that are required for a Sponsored Search Engine Marketing or PPC campaign can be a challenge if you have no historical campaign information to build on. However, you can prepare a rough but fairly reasonable budget for your Yahoo! SM (Overture) campaign by doing some analysis and extractions based on your keyword list from Part 5.

Using the spreadsheet where you have recorded your keywords and corresponding Yahoo! SM (Overture) counts, add the current bidding prices for bids 1 through 10 next to each applicable keywords. Yahoo! SM (Overture) bids can be found here: http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

As discussed in Part 5, you can only reasonably expect 3% to 5% of the searches on your keywords to result in clicks on your ad (when you are bidding in the #1 to #3 positions). The ratio of clicks to searches is called the Click-Through-Rate (CTR). If you elect to bid below the #3 position, you can expect to receive fewer clicks at each subsequent bid location. To do a rough estimate on the number of clicks and costs you can expect, multiply the counts by the appropriate CTRs and bid costs to see your estimated costs. It is very important to note that if you are dealing with seasonal search terms you will need to make adjustments based on seasonal variances.

One of the things that you may have noticed as you were pricing your keywords is that some of your keywords are very expensive. It is important to note – you are buying visitors to your site, not guaranteed sales. So you will need to make a reasonable estimate of how many visitors to your site will actually convert into buyers. The internet average visitor to sales ratio is estimated at between 1% and 2%. Unless you have strong evidence to the contrary – you should be assuming that it will take 50 to 100 visitors to make a sale on your site. This means that if you are paying $0.50 per click then it might cost you approx $25.00 to $50.00 in PPC costs to make a sale. Your site may prove to have much better conversion to sales rates, or it may have lower rates.

Unfortunately, Google AdWords does not provide cost or bid estimates – a fast-and-dirty method of calculating your Google AdWords costs and clicks is to simply to use the numbers you have estimated for Overture. Remember – you will have to add in plural/singular terms for your Google AdWords keyword list. Once your ads have been running for 30 to 60 days you will need to revisit these assumptions and update your budget accordingly.

At this point you will now have an rough-estimate PPC budget. As you can imagine there are any number of factors that can happen that will impact on the accuracy of your budget – including your main campaign goal as established in Part 4. If your goal has set specific PPC visitor levels or other factors that require you to have a specific level of traffic – you will need to review your keyword list with that requirement in mind. There is very little point in saying that you want to make 100 PPC related sales if you do not have a budget that will pay for the number of clicks required to make that many sales.

It is here in your campaign strategy building, that you might elect to remove some of the keywords from your list that appear to be too expensive, or you may elect to bid much lower for the terms (this will result in fewer clicks on your ad). You may also be in a situation where you will have to increase your keyword list to meet your campaign goal – in that case we recommend you go back to Part 5 and increase your keyword list accordingly.

After you have run your campaign for the first 30 to 60 days you will want to revisit your budget and make the necessary adjustments to reflect your actual performance.

Campaign Strategy

Now that you have a rough, working budget and a more finalized list of keywords, you are ready to start building your PPC Campaign Strategy which will initially consist of 3 elements; keyword metrics tracking, budget alignment and bidding adjustments strategy.

Keyword Metrics Tracking Strategy –

Set up spreadsheets to track the keyword metrics you will be following and keep careful records. Use these spreadsheets to make informed keyword decisions.

Keeping in mind your campaign goal and the success metrics you identified in Part 4 it is time to dig a bit deeper into some of the “other sponsored search visitor actions that are important to your main goal and that can be monitored”. Both Yahoo! SM (Overture) and Google AdWords provide excellent metrics to their users.

Some of the PPC measurements you will want to be tracking (in addition to the Success Metrics you identified for your PPC campaign goal) include:

• Impressions (how many times your ad was shown

• Clicks (how many times your ads were clicked on)

• CTR (click through rate -- clicks divided by impressions)

• Cost (cost of keyword)

• Average Cost per Click (cost divided by clicks)

If you do not have a third party tracking tool for visitor conversions, both Yahoo! SM and Google AdWords provide conversion tracking metrics that you can use.

Combining the above PPC metrics with the success metrics you identified in Part 4 will allow you gauge the success of individual keywords - and to act accordingly. Some of the methods that you will be using to improve keyword performance will be dealt with in Parts 7 and 8 of this series (Successful Landing Pages and PPC Ad Creation).

Budget Alignment Strategy –

If during the period of your campaign goal there is an anticipated monthly variance, you will need to adjust your budgets accordingly. For example, if you know that peak sales for your products/services occur in December and that you require a 3 to 5 week lead order time, then you should plan on spending more on your PPC during September and early November than you will in December and January.

Remember to adjust your budget after you have 30 to 60 days of actual campaign results – this will improve accuracy.

Bidding Adjustment Strategy –

For new PPC bidders it is easy to get caught up in the auction-like environment they find themselves in at Yahoo! SM and Google AdWords. Many bidders develop a need to be #1 at any cost – throwing aside their budget and campaign goal in the process. While is it true that the #1 bid does tend to get more clicks, it does not always attract the target client you are looking for. This is where your research into your target customer will prove to be useful. Is your target likely to click on the first link presented? Or are they more likely to look over the first few listings before making a click decision? If your ads are what your target customer wants to find, you will be more likely to attract them.

It is not a competition to be #1 – it is a competition to make the most profit. If bidding in the lower-priced #2 or #3 spot means that you can get sales on your site that result in a better total profit than being #1 – then who is really winning?

“It is not a competition to be #1 – it is a competition to make the most profit.”

You can adjust your PPC bids several ways:

• Reducing/increasing your daily budgets at Yahoo! SM and Google AdWords,

• Increasing/decreasing the number of keywords you are bidding on,

• Turning off your campaigns at Yahoo! SM and or Google AdWords (this will mean that none of your ads will be running), and

• Increasing/decreasing the amount of your bids.

In order to determine the best bidding adjustment methods for your use, you will need to evaluate your keyword and budget metrics as well as your campaign goal metrics. Keep in mind that adjusting the bidding might not always be the best solution – it may be possible to improve the keyword performance by improving the ad or the landing page (see Parts 7 and 8).

Summary

You have now identified your Sponsored Search Engine Marketing / PPC Campaign keyword list, budget and strategy.

In Part 7, you will be identifying and developing successful landing pages for your ads to link to.

**PART 1 - Campaign Goal Building, Focus and Product Identification
**PART 2 - Target Audience – Identification and Understanding
**PART 3 - Online Competition & Your Unique Selling Feature
**PART 4 - Setting Campaign Goals & Success Metrics
**PART 5 - ‘Best’ Keywords for Your Campaign
**PART 6 - Campaign Strategy
**PART 7 - Successful Landing Pages
**PART 8 - Successful Sponsored/PPC Ad Creation
**PART 9 - Campaign Management - Monitoring Your Success