Search Marketing Sucks
By Will Braunstein

Search marketing sucks.  No really, it does.  Say what you want about search having the highest ROI of ANY advertising medium.  About it being the most targeted, giving advertisers the most qualified visitors- and being a branding tool to boot!  But there’s a darker side to search that the Chief Marketing Officers of an organization don’t talk about- and that only those in the trenches of search are aware of…  MANAGING search.

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Managing a search program sounds simple enough.  Understand your objective.  Choose a keyword.  Bid the price per click (ppc) on the keyword to maximize your objective.  Repeat until you’re the superhero of the organization.  But you’ll quickly find that a search program can and will escalate out of control, if the proper steps are not taken.   Turns out it’s not just about maximizing your cost per click (cpc)- you also need to test the creative of the search ad, run AB tests on various landing pages, and constantly manage your ppc.

So how does a marketer dig through all this?  The answer is a sane marketer does not.  A sane marketer convinces management that the ONLY way to profitably dig out of the search hole is to use some sort of management system.  From my experience the following three options can help you develop a successful search program.

First, there are the full service bureaus.   These guys can do everything from developing keywords, creatives, and landing pages; managing the actual accounts and manage bids to reach your organization’s goals.  This is a good option if your organization is committed to making a search program work, and does not want to develop the resources internally.

Next option- Find a tool to manage your bids.  These tools can be either web or software based.  You’ll still need to manage the keywords to use, creative, etc- but will have help with one of the most time consuming aspects of paid search, bid management.    This option is a good fit in an organization that has the resources to develop keyword campaigns, test different creatives and landing pages, but does not want to build the resources to manage bids. 

Finally- Keep search internal.  Search is a channel worth testing, and if the test is positive, an organization may decide to develop search management systems internally.  This includes developing a program that can talk to the major search engines to manage ppc bids and hiring resources internally to expand and manage campaigns. 

As search continues to grow more popular, the cost per click will continue to rise, more contextual ads will be shown, and the resulting ROI will flatten out.  Then where does one turn? The second and third tier engines? Contextual desktop advertising? That’s another discussion for another week.

 

 

Will Braunstein
wbraunstein@wrpmedia.com