I believe that categorizing keywords into the finest groupings that make semantic sense is the right way to do it; often I’ll have a category with 2, 10, or perhaps 30 keywords at the most. Later, when some of the categories are turned into actual campaigns, this tight organization and relevance will tend to pay off with higher quality scores.

Since Google Adwords takes into account the relevance of keywords to the creative, obviously grouping very diverse keywords will result in low relevance, so this is why relatively fine categorization is important.

Often, however, I find myself with too many keywords to handle; even as little as 5,000 keywords broken down into 300 categories, for instance, is still not a very manageable set.

In these cases, I like to take the keyword categories and bundle the categories themselves into a *secondary* category that represents the “funnel” stage that the keyword category belongs to.

Marketers are told to think of a customer as being in one of various “funnel” stages at any given time, and even if you’re not systematic about it, you probably already think of brand terms as being “lower funnel” and research-type terms as being “upper funnel”.

Most readers are doubtless familiar with models such as “Attention-Interest-Desire-Action”, and other 4, 5, and 6 stage funnels which are pretty standard fare for marketers.

After performing my initial keyword categorization (sort of into micro-categories), I like to categorize the categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages I’ve developed, which are organized around a “problem/solution” mental model.

In Figure 1, I’ve shown individual keywords belonging to each funnel stage for a variety of B-to-C funnels. Later, Figure 2 presents some B-to-B  examples.

These keywords presented could be actual keywords, but I think they are more appropriately thought of as representing *categories* of keywords:

Figure 1 - Business to Consumer Search Funnel Stages

Ten stages may seem like a lot of detail, but organizing keyword categories into these stages:

1. Forces you to really try to understand searcher’s intent.
2. Gives you a sense of where the holes in your keyword research are from a funnel perspective.
3. Resonates with clients or management and is a great way to discuss and understand a business.

For example, after going through this exercise with one client, to my great surprise, they told me that stage 2 (“Suspicion There May Be a Problem“) was almost the sole focus of their existing marketing.

Their strategy is to pull in searchers looking for help identifying their problem, establishing them early as a trusted brand in the eyes of the searcher.  This client has found that organic and offline conversions then naturally follow. Although very much a one-trick pony approach which I would not recommend for most businesses, it works great in their market.

Below is another version of the funnel with examples that are more B-to-B oriented, for those interested in that perspective;  we’ll now run through the funnel stages, explain the thinking behind each of them, and discuss which stages you should consider addressing in your marketing mix.

Figure 2 - Business to Business Search Funnel Stages

Activity Funnel Relates To

This is a very general field of activity, and will often not be a focus of marketing efforts since the customer may not actually be experiencing a problem yet.

However, display advertising that targets field-focused websites or is demographically targeted may be a useful vehicle from a branding perspective in this stage.

Suspicion That There May Be A Problem

This funnel is focused around the mental model of problem-solving; other mental models may make for useful funnels as well, but I’ve found “problems” to be universally applicable.

In this stage, there may be symptoms described but the customer does not understand the nature of the problem, or perhaps they don’t even understand that the symptoms are a problem at all.

It’s a critical stage where you can have great influence on the direction a potential customer will take; we’ll touch on this more later.

Problem Identified

This is an interesting bucket because you may have some latent versus blatant needs that you can separate out; different types of problems may actually fork off into different funnels.

Looking For Solution Alternatives

In this stage, the prospect is trying to understand the variety of approaches available to them. There are many ways to lose weight for instance; diet, exercise, portions, surgery, and so on.

This is fairly early in the research phase and can be ripe fruit for thought leadership content (great for the SEO channel as well). If you’re really lucky and you’re the only solution to a problem (perhaps you’re in a new market) then this stage may barely even exist and prospects may jump directly from stage 3 to stage 5.

Solution Space Has Been Chosen

In this stage, the prospect has decided on a particular approach for solving the problem (for instance, “dieting” to solve a weight problem).

Complicating Issues

This stage perhaps belongs alongside the funnel, but I usually place it in the middle of the research phase. Many people with problems have complicating issues; diabetes (if they are interested in weight loss), a wheelchair-bound spouse (if they are interested in travel), and so on.

Addressing these complicating issues can be a great way of differentiating your product or service and reducing friction for a final sale.

Researching A Specific Solution

Now the prospect is getting *very* specific about a particular member of the solution space (“Low-Carb Diets” in the case of a Weight Loss/Dieting funnel for instance).

Researching A Specific Brand

At this stage, the prospect is getting very serious and is educating themselves about specific providers.

Remember, brand terms are well known in the industry to convert at a higher rate as generic terms (twice the rate on average in my experience), so addressing this funnel stage should be a critical component of any online marketing effort.

Conversion Imminent

Terms that include phrases like “coupon code”, “pricing”, “cheap”, are akin to flashing red lights with a siren screaming “transaction about to occur!!!”

Spending a lot of time building out variations in this funnel section is usually well rewarded. Google Suggest is a great place to find ways that potential customers are raising their hands in these ways.

Post Conversion

Often, a neglected funnel stage, this is where you will find customers searching for things like “repairs”, “replacement parts”, “add-ons”, “upgrades”, “warranties”, and “support”.

You may or may not have offerings that address concerns in this funnel stage, but it’s important to think about them.

If you’re a travel company, trip insurance may not be something your customers will actively seek out often, and paid search campaigns targeting that concept may not be worthwhile.

If, however, your paid search keyword research turns up the concept, and you then prompt your company to put together some sort of revenue-sharing deal with a trip insurance provider to integrate their product into your cart, I would say the time spent researching funnel stage #10 was well worth it.

Which Stages Should You Target?

As most articles you’ve read on this topic probably state, you should target all of them. This is not very helpful advice though – often in marketing we have to prioritize our efforts.

If I absolutely had to prioritize the top ones to focus on initially, I would say #9, #8, #5, and #2 in that order.

Funnel Stages #8 and #9, “RESEARCHING A SPECIFIC BRAND” and “CONVERSION IMMINENT” are self-evidently critical; how are you going to leverage this great funnel if you don’t catch potential customer at the end of it?

I am, however, a big believer in avoiding cannibalization from organic search conversions, so my preference is to consider targeting competitor brand terms  before I would work on cannibalizing my own.

Funnel Stage #5, “SOLUTION SPACE HAS BEEN CHOSEN” is square in the middle of the research phase, and catches customers who are partially educated on the problem and are still early enough in the funnel to nudge in your direction.

Funnel Stage #2, “SUSPICION THERE MAY BE A PROBLEM” is important because it’s an opportunity for you to disturb the prospect’s equilibrium, a critical step in any sales process.

Much like Don Draper stated in his famous “Carousel” pitch about the term “new”, with problem defining keywords, you “create an itch, and simply put your product in there as a sort of ‘calamine lotion’”. Funnel step #2 is essentially the “itch” stage.

This stage, where the potential customer suspects but does not yet fully understand that they may have a problem, is a powerful leverage point for influencing searchers in your direction. Think of searchers as meteors, heading for earth – a slight nudge much earlier in their trajectory can have as much influence as a strong shove later in the funnel.

Conclusion

Very fine categorization of keywords can be helpful in ascertaining customer intent, organizing your efforts, and suggesting actual paid search campaigns you might run.

I have found these ten funnel stages in particular are a convenient and useful way for me to organize very large numbers of refined categories of keywords, derive insights from them, and create campaigns targeting various phases of the sales funnel.

If anyone has any other useful mental models for constructing a funnel besides the “problem/solution” approach I’ve presented here, or any thoughts on which funnel stages to prioritize and how – by all means, comment below.

Don’t bother to go look that up in Google, as I think I’m the only one in the world who calls it that. But it helps me to think of keywords as “seeds” of information that will eventually grow into a “garden of possibilities”, if you will allow me the artistic license. I’ve been reading a lot of classic literature lately.

I received many emails from readers (Thank you!) who didn’t exactly follow my logic, so I wanted to wrap up the process as clearly and briefly as possible… and brevity is not my strong suit, nor is good keyword research ever brief.

Understanding The Questions To Ask

To begin with, you need to make sure you understand the industry you’re working with. If it’s your own site you are researching, what you need to focus on is getting past the jargon and trying to determine how your site appears to someone outside the industry.

If you’re working for a client, chances are that you can provide a lot of insight into the layman’s terms, but may not know the jargon. You need both in your research, so working with someone in this stage can be very helpful. See 5 Questions to Streamline your Keyword Research.

Identifying The Top Level Topics

Once you start doing research, you’ll probably discover that the “keyword universe” is broader and more diverse than you ever realized. Your job at this point is to identify the primary topics or “seeds” of research. See The Keyword Research Rabbit Hole for an example of how to do this.

Expanding & Growing Keyword Seeds

For each topic you identify, you’ll need to conduct the entire research process defined in Tips for Growing Keywords with Excel Formulas. An important point of clarification here is that this article goes through an example of just one keyword seed (deck) and how to expand it.

You will need to repeat the process for each of the topics you defined in the previous step. Some topics will expand to a list of hundreds of keywords, and some will expand to only a few dozen keywords. The “deck” example is one that can expand astronomically (I ended up with over 1000 keywords for that one), but not all of your topics will expand that much.

Planning & Mapping Keywords

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, once you’ve expanded the keywords to the point where you think your head might explode from all the pressure, you have to contract them again.

The goal is to understand the entire universe of keywords around a topic so that you can identify which keywords are most valuable to you. The most important part of this step is the mapping; you’ll quickly be able to see where you have content that matches and where your content is lacking. See How to Develop a Keyword Plan for more on this.

By the time you finish this last step, you should have a “tree” (there I go with the seed metaphor again) of information that conceptually looks something like the below.

In reality, it will probably be an excel spreadsheet full of categories and keywords. I personally put each category on a separate tab, but whatever works for you is fine.

Time, Averages & Other Arbitrary Numbers

One question I got asked a lot in the reader feedback was how long it takes to do keyword research like what I’ve outlined. The real answer is that it’s up to you, but I spend about 10 hours on average for an average size site.

That number can change of course, if you have a site with thousands of products, or if you have several different target markets you need to appeal to. If you have an overwhelming number of products, it may help you to work on a few categories at a time, rather than trying to cover the whole spectrum at once.

What Tools Do I Use?

I personally use the Google Keyword Tool more than anything else available, but there are dozens of good keyword tools (paid and free) as well as different strategies that you can use to decide what keywords to target.

After Google’s recent announcement of match type changes, I’ve decided to demo several tools I am not as familiar with, so that I can do a review of those along with the ones I already like using. Stay tuned, and let me know in the comments if there are any you want me to consider demo’ing.

1.  Keywords! Keywords!

Sherlock Holmes exclaimed, “Data! Data! …I can’t make bricks without clay.” And likewise, keywords are the backbone, heart and soul of all search engine marketing, paid or organic. There’s a whole mess of keywords work and reports done for organic search optimization that paid search marketers can and should utilize.

On the most basic level, marketers can leverage organic search reports to mine for keyword ideas for paid search. Bear in mind not all organic keywords are a good fit, some may be too general and expensive to meet ROI goals, but they are fantastic suggestions to look at.

Natural search reports are also a great suggestion tool for looking at higher funnel general keywords or lower funnel very specific keywords, which are often harder to uncover easily in online keyword suggestion tools.

A more sophisticated tactic is using natural search landing page data to provide ideas for landing page testing and optimization on similar paid keywords. What pages are converting best?

Measuring the holistic view of paid and natural results combined can indicate keyword areas where there is great synergy and fantastic combined performance or areas where perhaps organic is so strong and paid search so expensive and/or weak in performance that paid search keywords are simply not adding value and should be optimized out.

2.  The Importance Of Landing Page Content

High quality, unique website content has long been considered the keystone of good SEO. And no surprise that what is good for a consumer looking at natural search is likewise a good tactic to leverage for paid keyword landing pages.

Deep linking to specific website pages about a product or category of products is often higher-converting than a more general page that might explain more about the website or company, but less actionable on the specific search keywords of the visitor.

Conversely, paid keyword links to a product search results page on a website, or another page of dry or less nicely presented, but very relevant content, may not convert as well as a page with similar relevant content and richer explanatory text or nicer presentation layers surrounding the meat of the page content.

See below for a contrasting example of possible landing page types.

A not too shabby search results page...

But this is a much nicer paid search landing page!

If good pages don’t currently exist, building specific content pages that make sense for paid search linking will also benefit SEO by increasing the unique, high quality page content of a website, so it’s a win for everyone in search!

3.  Quality & Relevance

The third, and arguably most important, lesson from SEO is the overwhelming need to focus on quality and relevance. In keyword selection, ad text copy, landing page URLs, pretty much everything touched in paid search, quality and relevance should be at the forefront of any paid search manager’s thoughts. Just because you can buy a keyword doesn’t mean you should.

A relentless focus on monitoring quality scores is essential, and a willingness to let go of keywords that you may want to own as head terms but are too general to sustain a reasonable quality level.

Likewise, from an overall brand and marketing strategy you may love certain marketing messages, but they may not resonate well in a targeted paid search context and a more direct action or search query based ad text will present a higher quality and relevance choice. Pursuing quality and relevance over style or branding strategy is sometimes necessary, and often a hard sacrifice to make for better paid search results.

When bidding on competitor brand terms, you don’t have to worry about cannibalization of your own organic results; these are terms for which you probably weren’t going to rank anyway. If you were, that means you’re using competitor brand terms on your own pages – a risky proposition from a legal standpoint.

Yes, the FTC does have some regulatory language about mentioning competitors for the purposes of a factual comparison, but the risk of doing this poorly and opening yourself up to a lawsuit or a false advertising complaint probably outweighs pursuing strategies involving comparisons.

The Practice Is Fairly Common

As far as paid search goes, in the U.S. at least, my understanding is that it has been generally accepted in the online marketing industry for several years now that it’s OK to *bid* on competitor brand terms as longs as the competitor’s terms don’t show up *in your creatives* (i.e. the ad text itself).

Run some brand-name searches yourself and you’ll see plenty of examples where this appears to be happening.

Google AdWords has copious information on this topic, the easiest place to find them is here:

• Google’s Trademark Advertising Policies

I strongly encourage you to to read all of them.

By my reading of Google’s policies, it seems that in the U.S. at least, if you bid on competitor brand terms, Google’s policy is not to investigate complaints, as long as you don’t include any trademarked terms in your creatives.

It’s important to note that Google’s policies (and local law) vary by country. Of course, Google’s policies are one thing; they don’t prevent a competitor from suing you however, so proceed at your own risk.

Disclaimer: I’m no lawyer, so you should get your own legal advice and research these issues to your own satisfaction before proceeding with any of the ideas in this article. Also, if you’re going to use competitor brand terms on other platforms such as Bing/Yahoo or elsewhere, you should fully investigate their policies first as well.

Caution: This Is Still Somewhat Up In The Air

Notably, a case involving Rosetta Stone was recently revived on appeal, so the overall question of the legality of bidding on competitor trademarks is still somewhat fuzzy.

If the courts lead to a reversal on this, then it could create a huge, painful mess for the industry and spawn numerous lawsuits, given the prevalence of the practice in the last few years. SearchEngineLand’s Pamela Parker has been doing a great job covering this:

• Question of Whether It’s Legal To Use Trademarks As Keywords Revived On Appeal

What is a Trademark?

Per the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO for short) , a trademark is:

” a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others….you can establish rights in a mark based on use of the mark in commerce, without a registration….Common law rights arise from actual use of a mark…”

• See: USPTO Trademark FAQs

Just because a competitor has not registered a phrase as a trademark with the U.S. Government doesn’t mean the phrase isn’t their trademark; it still might be considered an unregistered trademark.

Something to look for is whether they use the “TM” mark in association with something rather than the “Registered Trademark” symbol (the circle with an R).

If they are not putting “TM” (or “SM” for a “Service Mark”), then they aren’t doing a very good job of protecting their rights in that mark, an important fact to note if there is ever any court case around it (most marketing organizations are adamant about using “R”, “TM”, and “SM” the first time a trademark is used on any piece of collateral for this reason).

The bottom line is that if you register a trademark, it’s much easier to prove that you have rights in it. Google, for instance, has  a process you can follow if someone is using your trademark in their creatives, and if you can send evidence that your trademark is a registered one, that will go a long way to resolving a dispute in your favor. (Twitter famously uses trademark registrations as a factor in resolving situations of Twitter-squatting as well.)

If you’d like to see what a registration certificate looks like, you can do a trademark search yourself (per my instructions in the next section), then go to an individual record and click on the “TDR” button at the top, then see if you can find the “Registration Certificate”.

It should look something like the one below (full disclosure: I added the color version of the Google logo since the USPTO’s scanned black and white version was choppy and frankly, ugly.) Marks are generally submitted in black and white – this particular certificate looks like a re-registration that was issued about a week ago for the term [google].  I would not be surprised if there is another record in there somewhere in the system for the full color logo version however:

Figure 1: Google's Trademark Registration Certificate

How To Do Your Own Trademark Searches

If you’d like to see whether a competitor has registered a trademark, you can do some searching yourself. It’s important to note that the USPTO allows trademarks to be obtained for different classes of goods and services.

For instance, Hershey Ice Cream can have a trademark on the use of the word “Hershey” in association with ice cream, while Hershey (the large one you’re probably more familiar with) can have a trademark on use of the word in association with chocolate:

1. Go to http://www.uspto.gov/
2. Select “Trademarks->Trademark Search”
3. Select “Basic Word Search” (a “Word Mark” is just a phrase; a “Design Mark” is a stylized phrase or picture-based logo. If someone trademarks a word in a particular logo style but doesn’t register it as a Word Mark, then they possibly open themselves up to would-be infringers that just use a different logo style).
4. Search on the term.
5. “Live” means a trademark, or its application, is “Live”; “Dead” means either the application has expired or the trademark has expired.

Try it yourself for “iphone”; I just did and the search resulted in 37 records, some live and some dead.  The second-oldest is the Cisco-owned trademark that Steve Jobs famously convinced Cisco to license to Apple (see figure 2):

Figure 2: iPhone Trademark Record at the USPTO

4 Different Types Of Competitor Terms To Consider

Now that you have some sense of what terms your competitor has bothered to trademark and which they haven’t, there are a wide variety of terms worth exploring from a keyword research standpoint:

1.  The competitor’s company name

This is pretty much a no-brainer, many end-users typing company names are either deep into the research phase of the buying funnel; when they start investigating individual vendors, they are pretty close to converting.

2.  The competitor’s product names

Also a no-brainer, you probably already thought of this one.

3.  The competitor’s website name and variations thereof

Don’t forget that many people use browser toolbars to perform searches, and rather than typing Web addresses into the address bar, the often type them into the search bar (many people confuse the two). So you’ll find that your competitor’s website actually shows up as a keyword.

Variations worth considering include:

• foo.com
• www.foo.com
• http://www.foo.com
• http;//www.foo.com/

4.  The competitor’s model numbers, SKU numbers, or replacement part numbers

This is a very neat trick; if a potential customer is typing a SKU or Model number, it’s likely that they are even further along in the purchasing funnel than if they typed the generic brand name of the competitor. They have likely already done all their research, know exactly what they want, and they are about to convert.

An easy way to find lists of competitor SKUs (let’s say your competitor is “foo”) is to perform the following searches; if it’s a BtoB industry, distributors and resellers often put pricing lists up on their websites, and often large Government deals require publication of pricing from vendors:

• [foo price list]
• [foo pricing]
• [foo prices filetype:xls]

Don’t forget discontinued products. If you can find any old pricing lists and diff them against newer ones, any discontinued product names or numbers can be a treasure trove (and may even deserve their own creatives). B-to-B customers especially will search for old product numbers to identify a replacement product when it wears out.

ISBN numbers, UPC codes, or industry-specific product codes might be worth some research as well, if applicable.

Do Model Numbers, SKUs & Part Numbers Constitute A Trademark?

The answer is: perhaps, but in many situations, probably not. I couldn’t find much on the USPTO’s website on this, but I found a few interesting articles detailing some court cases and aspects of this question by one law firm and one legal services firm, it seems that it largely depends on how the number is used:

• Selling Letters and Numbers: A Court Stops a Company from Claiming Rights in Part Numbers And Why Businesses Should Care
• Trademark Examples: Slogans/Model Numbers/Taglines

One particular aspect I have a problem with on this is, it’s hard for me to see how someone can put “TM” in reference to a SKU in every document in which it’s used, since the whole idea is that a SKU number is a number that resellers, distributors, etc. can look up in a database and display.

So  it seems to me that it would be impracticable to show that you tried to protect your rights in a SKU or Part number when it’s all over the Web everywhere without “TM” on it.

However, if a number is used as a sort of a brand name that consumers would recognize, it appears that you actually *can* trademark it.

Here are two interesting examples:

Dale Earnhardt, Inc.,  has trademarked the number “1″ for a pretty wide variety of products including license plate holders, which seems pretty ridiculous if you think about it (aren’t something like 30-50 million drivers in the U.S. infringing this trademark every day?):

• Dale Earnhardt, Inc.”s Trademark for the Number 1

Levi-Strauss has a registered trademark for “501″ (which actually makes a lot of sense, since it really does function as a very recognizable trademark/brand name for their line of blue jeans):

• Levi Strauss’s Trademark for the Number 501

Check Keywords For Alternate Meanings Before Using

I would recommend using phrase match; that way, if a part number is 2139283423, you’ll also pick up some great lower-funnel variations like [2139283423 cheap], [2139283423 price] and so on.

However, if you’re trying to attract traffic focused on a competitor’s SKU (say, a steak knife set), and one of the variations it attracts traffic on is [2139283423 battery], that might be an indication that the term means something in another industry.

For this reason, it’s  important to test all keywords out in both Google Suggest and Google Search. If all the Google suggest searches seem to be related to the product or service you want to bid on, and the search results all seem to be related to it, then you have  a good candidate.

In a real-world example, a search of “ruby tuesday” clearly brings up the restaurant, which is great if that’s who you’re targeting, but a significant number of search results, and presumably searchers, are searching for the lyrics for the Rolling Stones song title “Ruby Tuesday”. That term may not be a great one to go after (or you could perhaps manage the situation by using negatives like [lyrics] and so on).

Often if you look in Google suggest, you can see whether the Model or SKU number means something in another industry right off the bat. Try typing the number, a space, and then try every letter of the alphabet to see what comes up.

Let’s say we’re a manufacturer of smartphones and we want to bid on Samsung’s “Stratosphere” Android smartphone. One of its SKU numbers is [i405]. Figure 2 shows the result of checking that term out in both Google Suggest and Google Search:

Google's Trademark Registration Certificate (source: USPTO)

Samsung does show up as a variation, but it’s easy to tell that many people searching on that term are interested in traffic conditions on the 405 highway in Los Angeles (I don’t know whey they bother searching, current traveling time is almost always “4..Oh..5..hours” ;-)

Checking against Google suggest can be a lot of work, but Ubersuggest is one way to speed the process. Don’t neglect doing the actual searches though, often a search will show query diversity not reflected in Google Suggest.

Typically, if you have a 6 to 9 character SKU number, it’s usually long enough to be unique, but sometimes you’ll run into another manufacturer in an unrelated field that uses a similar SKU numbering system.

As always, running Search Query Reports and put appropriate negatives in place is an important best practice regardless of the type of keywords you’re targeting.

Be Careful With Your Creatives

You might think this goes without saying as it should always apply to your paid search efforts, but I think it bears pointing out.  While it’s important to exclude competitor terms from your creatives, you should also make sure that any creatives you use are neither *misleading* nor *confusing*.

You shouldn’t trick searchers into coming to your website, even inadvertently. You certainly don’t want to attract any false advertising complaints, or create any fodder that could be used against you later in any legal proceeding.

For example, I would not personally be comfortable bidding on a competitors part number, and then using the vague creative “Replacement Parts: Best Prices Here”. I think a reasonable person would expect that if they clicked on that ad, they would be likely to be able to purchase the competitors part at my website.

A creative focused instead on the customer problem that my product or service solves, or perhaps describing my own offering in some specific way, would probably be much clearer.

Besides, telling the truth and being clear are just plain good business practices anyway! So write your creatives in such a way that they accurately represent the landing page, taking into account the keyword being searched on and the searcher’s likely intent.

What Results To Expect

Brand terms, and SKU/Models, on average, should have a very high click-through rate, perhaps twice the normal average.  They should also convert at a higher rate than the typical keyword.

In the ideal world, if you were targeting 800 competitor SKU numbers, you’d have 800 campaigns, each with one keyword and one ad group, and would include the SKU or Model in the creative, for maximum relevance, highest click-through rate, highest quality score, and lowest CPC after the AdWords auction adjusts for quality score.

In reality, you should probably not use the SKU or Model in the creative, even if a competitor has not trademarked those terms. Doing so is still more risky, in my opinion, from a legal standpoint, than just using the keywords as bidding targets. You’re likely to want to organize keywords together for convenience anyway, perhaps resulting in a few campaigns, a few ad groups, and a few creatives.

However, the low quality score you may experience as a result should be more than balanced by the fact that many of these terms are very long-tail in nature.

In my experience, the AdWords Keyword Traffic Estimator won’t return estimates for many of these types of term because the numbers are so low;  as a result, they’re relatively uncompetitive and inexpensive. If you have numerous competitors and competitor SKU numbers, the volumes should add up to a substantial number.

If you have high impression volume and high positions just about everywhere on your existing keywords, that may  indicate that increasing the budget or bids on existing keywords is not going to help much – what you need are more keywords.

If you run an analysis on keywords based on the categories above, you will often find that there is additional opportunity, on the order of 10-30% of your spend, available in those keywords. So, if you compete in a fragmented industry with many players, this strategy may be a useful way to expand an account to cover some relatively high-converting long-tail terms.

What About Your Own Terms?

Surprisingly, when you do this, you’ll often notice that your competitor isn’t even bidding on their own Website Address, Model Numbers, Part Numbers, or SKU numbers.

Are you doing so with your own? Doing so may be worthwhile, but there is also an argument for cannibalizing your competitors’ organic search traffic prior to cannibalizing your own organic traffic.

Be Careful Out There!

Again, none of this constitutes legal advice, you’re on your own with what you do. If you do decide to pursue this approach, then if a competitor complains about a particular keyword or set of keywords you are advertising against, the best policy, in my opinion, would probably be to simply stop using those keywords immediately.

If a competitor is bidding on your terms, why not at least complain, even if you’re on unclear legal grounds?

The ROI of writing up a threatening letter, putting a stamp on it, and sending it,  is probably pretty high if you can get your competitor to knock some high-converting keywords out of their campaign (unless of course, you’re awakening a sleeping giant by doing so – in which case – maybe you should just live with it).

Keep Up On The Issues As They Evolve

Shameless (but appropriate) plug for SearchEngineLand: Pamela Parker has been doing a great job covering this evolving area. If you’re thinking of pursuing a strategy like this, you’d be wise to read any SearchEngineLand coverage, going forward, particularly regarding the ongoing RosettaStone appeal.

Editor Postscript: This post was updated on 5/1/2012 to include the “Be Careful With Your Creatives” section.

What Is Search Terms View?

The AdWords Search Terms View shows us the performance metrics on the Search Terms that matched against our Keywords (more detail on the difference between Search Terms and Keywords is coming up later in this post). Advertisers can use this data to optimize the Keywords and Negatives in their account.

Optimization in this context usually includes adding Keywords (both new Keywords on an any Match Type and existing Keywords but on a new Match Type), and adding Negatives (again, both new Negatives and existing Negatives on a new Match Type).

The data can also be used to help remove Keywords and Negatives, optimize bids and ad copy, and to inform the organization of AdGroups and Campaigns. In this article, we will focus on the two primary optimization tasks: adding Keywords, and adding Negatives.

Why Optimize Keywords? How Often?

Most of our clients are doing this on a weekly basis at least. I consider this activity to be like gardening for PPC; we want to pull out the weeds and make sure we fertilize the pretty flowers, all the while considering the overall organization and appearance of the garden… and the process never ends.

This core and ongoing practice is essential because it helps us continually refine the traffic we are paying for and improve Quality Score, and also because it helps us find new ideas for AdGroups, Ads, and Landing Pages.

Generating The Search Term View

To navigate to the Search Term View, start by logging in to AdWords, then click the Keywords tab, then click on the “See Search Terms…” button and choose either “All.” This will generate a view of the Search Terms triggered by all of the Keywords in our account.

We can optionally narrow the list using the usual navigation with AdWords, and by selecting individual Keywords and choosing “Selected” instead of “All” from the drop-down.

Recommended Keyword Selection

I recommend choosing our AdGroup with the most clicks in the last 30 days (All Campaigns, then AdGroup tab, then sort descending by Clicks), then the Keyword with the most Impressions (Click on the AdGroup with the most clicks, this takes we to the Keywords tab, now sort descending by Impressions).

We will consider other approaches for narrowing down the list later in this post, but this will do for now. Check the box next to the Keyword with the most Impressions, then click the “See Search Terms…” button. When we click the button, it will drop a menu, choose “Selected.” This will take us to Search Terms View.

Getting Back

When in Search Terms view, there is now a link to get us “Back to Keywords.” This is how we return to the Keyword list we were just at. We can also navigate away from Search Term view by any of the other traditional means, such as the tabs or the quick menu on the left.

Columns In Search Terms View

In Search Terms view, the first column will show us the Search Term, and the next column will be the (Search Term) Match Type. The next two columns will be optionally included by AdWords. If your original Keyword tab was at the “All” level or represented more than one Campaign, then the Search Term view will show a Campaign column next. Likewise, if your Keyword tab represented more than one AdGroup, then it will show an AdGroup column.

One thing to note about the Search Term view is that a given Search Term and Match Type may have matched against multiple Keywords. In this report, that Keyword detail will not be shown; Each Search Term and Match Type combination is reported in one row, regardless of how many different Keywords it matched.

For example, if we have the Keyword “bike” in our account on Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match, and many different users searched on “bike”, the report will have one row for the “bike” Search Term, and it will be Exact Match. Behind the scenes, our Keywords may have each gotten credit for some of the traffic on their various Match Types, but this report will not show that.

Search Terms vs. Keywords

Search Terms are what the user typed into Google Search. Keywords are added to our account by us, and Google matches them to Search Terms based on their Match Type. For example, if we have a Keyword “bike” in our account on Broad Match, some Search Terms that might match include: “beach bikes,” “road bikes,” “bicycle,” etc.

Match Type in Search Term View

Match Type in Search Term View is the Match Type that Google used to match the Search Term to a Keyword in our account. This is not necessarily the same as the Match Type of the Keyword in our account. For example, if we have a Broad Match Keyword “bike” in our account, and the Search Term report is showing traffic for “bike”, the Match Type in this report would be Exact Match because the Search Term is an Exact Match with the Keyword.

Customizing Columns

The remaining columns can be customized in the usual way (Click the “Columns” drop-down-button, then choose “Customize Columns.”) See references at the end of this entry for a link to get help customizing columns.

Recommended Columns

My recommendation is to start with the following columns:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Conv. (many-per-click)
• CTR
• Conv. rate (many-per-click)
• Cost
• Total Conv. Value
• Avg. CPC
• Avg. Pos.

In my experience, these columns provide the information I need, in an order that makes sense to me for the task at hand.

Added & Excluded Terms

The Search Term view will also show us which Search Terms already exist as Keywords “Added” or negatives “Excluded” in our account.

Using Added and Excluded Terms in practice

While this feature is helpful, there are some practical limitations to be aware of. It does not tell us if the Keyword is “Added” to the correct AdGroup according to your account’s design structure – we need to check that ourselves.

Another limitation to be aware of is that this feature looks for literal matches. It does not consider coverage provided by the Match Type functionality in AdWords. Meaning, if we have a Phrase Match “bikes” Keyword, while it would cover the Search Term “fast bikes,” it will not be marked as “Added.” We have to check that ourselves.

As a rule of thumb, we want to be pushing mature accounts towards Search Term Reports that show every Search Term is “Added” or “Excluded.” (Note to AdWords: this would be a nice feature improvement.)

Adding Keywords

We can add Keywords directly from the Search Term View. To do so, check the box next to the Search Term(s) we wish to add, and click the “Add as Keyword” button. We will be given an opportunity to set a specific bid and destination URL. The Campaign and Adgroup are indicated as well.

The Keyword field accepts power posting syntax for Broad Match (no punctuation), “Phrase Match”, and [Exact Match] Keywords. For example, to add “fast bikes” on Exact Match, edit the Keyword field to be [fast bikes]. Click “Save” and the Keywords are added to our account immediately.

Adding Keywords in Practice

My recommendation is that we should almost always be adding Keywords on Phrase or Exact Match. This is based on my best-practice recommendation of using Broad Match to help us find additional terms, and assumes this AdGroup already has a Broad Match Keyword (or maybe a select few), that is doing that research for us. If so, then we want to run as much of our traffic as we can through Phrase and Exact Match Keywords.

Adding Negatives

We can add negative Keywords in a similar way. Check the box next to the Search Term(s) we wish to add, then click “Add as negative Keyword.” When adding Negatives, we have the option to add them as Campaign or AdGroup Negatives. Click “Save” and the Keywords are added to our account immediately.

Adding Negatives in Practice

My rule of thumb for Negatives is to always add them on Exact Match, maybe add them on Phrase Match, and to only add them on Broad Match in exceptional cases. With the tools we have available today for Keyword targeting and Search Term reporting, we have the ability to be very targeted with our Negatives. We can add Keywords on Broad Match, then use Negatives on Exact Match or Phrase Match to filter unwanted traffic.

In my experience, using Broad Match Negatives runs too high of a risk of blocking words unintentionally. For example, if we have a Keyword for “beach bike” on Broad Match, and are matching the Search Term “bike beach” (which, in this example, we do not want), then we can block that by adding “bike beach” as a Negative on Phrase Match. We would not want to add “bike beach” as a Negative on Broad Match because we would most likely end up unintentionally blocking the good searches for “beach bike.”

Pro Tip: If you have a dedicated rep, he can produce a “Negative Blocked Report” – a report showing you the Search Terms that were blocked by your negatives, and the potential traffic you are missing. It is a good idea to review this occasionally to check if you are inadvertently blocking good traffic.

For example, I recently had a situation where we copied an AdGroup and did a find/replace on the keywords, but neglected to review the negatives. The new AdGroup was blocking itself based on the negatives from the original AdGroup.

Download The Search Term View

We can also download the Search Term view; Just click the “Download” button.

Working Online vs. Downloading and Working in Bulk

Once we start working with this report, we may be tempted to start working it in bulk, by downloading it. Once downloaded we could manipulate the report, generate Keywords and Negatives and upload them in bulk via AdWords Editor, for example.

While I am a big fan of doing things in bulk in Excel then uploading them via AdWords Editor, this is one workflow that I prefer to do directly on the website. I find that I am constantly changing my view from one AdGroup to the next, changing the dates, etc., and that the instant gratification of adding Keywords and Negatives in place, instantly, works for me. our mileage may vary, of course.

Choosing Which Keywords To Work With

When choosing which Keywords to work with, there are many different approaches. While getting started, my recommendation would be to start with 30 days, the AdGroup with the most Clicks, then the Keyword with the most Impressions, as recommended above. This is a great bellweather.

If the Search Terms are all over the place here, then we have a lot of opportunity for optimization. Whereas if our biggest term is generating almost all Exact Match and Phrase Match Search Terms, then we are doing a great job keeping our Keyword Targeting tight. I like to work Keyword by Keyword in this way for my most-trafficked Keywords.

We can also work AdGroup by AdGroup, which will pool more data into the report for us to work with, while still keeping the theme tight. I do not usually find it useful to work with this report at the All or Campaign level, because the Keywords tend to be all over the place. One notable exception; It can definitely be useful to work at the All or Campaign level when adding Negatives. You may want to discipline yourself to cycle through all of your AdGroups over time.

Choosing where to go next will really depend on how much data we have in our Account, and how much time we wish to invest. As a rule of thumb, optimize 5-10% of our traffic weekly, and be sure to work through those less-trafficked AdGroups and Keywords over time as well.

Benefits of Optimizing Keywords &Negatives

The benefits of optimizing in this way should include increased traffic (and/or more targeted traffic), improved Quality Score (through improved Keyword and Ad CTR), improved bidding efficiency (we will be able to refine our bids for a tighter subset of traffic), and often improved Conversion Rate (by filtering out unwanted traffic).

We will also find this is a great way to find Keywords we may not already have coverage for, and for getting insight into how our customers search for our products, which can lead us to create new Ads and Landing Pages. Good luck out there.

Resources

• Google AdWords Help on this topic
• Daydreaming About Paid Search: How About Airtight Ad Groups?
• How do I customize the data in my tables and reports?

The tool helps us generate the core concepts of a PPC Account in an easy-to-understand visual layout, without having to burden business users with all of the details. We call it the PPC Planning Matrix.

I’m going to gloss over the absolute basics of Campaign creation, and aim for a quick “How to Get Started Using the PPC Planning Matrix Today” entry.

If you are an expert with Paid Search, this tool may help you work with your customers to generate great PPC Campaigns. You might notice that while this tool covers all the required basics, it leaves room for your own additions and fine tuning. The real value in this tool is that it helps visually organize and collect what is needed to create PPC Campaigns.

Even if you are not a Paid Search expert, this article is still for you. This tool will help you organize your Account into meaningful Campaigns and AdGroups, and produce a bulk sheet that can be pasted into Google AdWords Editor or into adCenter Desktop.

AdGroups & Campaigns

Campaigns are like an organizational folder for holding AdGroups. In addition to the Campaign Name, the one obligatory setting is the Campaign Daily Budget. The tool provides a default of $500, which you are free to override.

Campaigns also provide the ability to change some advanced settings like geography targeting, or device targeting (i.e.: computers or mobile devices), which you are free to adjust after the tool generates a Bulk Sheet for you.

AdGroups contain Keywords and Text Ads. The one compulsory setting is the default Maximum CPC. This will apply to all of your keywords. If you apply a Max CPC for any keyword, then it trumps the AdGroup Default. The tool provides a default AdGroup CPC of $1.00, which you are free to override.

If you want to set keyword level CPC’s you can edit the bulk sheet when the tool is done.

Ads

Ads are what your customers see on their Search Results Page. You provide the Headline, the two lines of Description (combined into one for adCenter), a Display URL that your customers will see, and a Destination URL that your customers’ browser navigates to when they click on your ad. The tool provides some examples.

AdWords restricts the length of the various fields in an ad. The tool will highlight them red if they are too long. You can add up to 3 ads per AdGroup in this tool (AdWords allows more and you can add them later).

Keywords

Keywords are what AdWords and adCenter use to match your ads to actual user searches. Add keywords that are related to the AdGroup you are creating, and the Ads you already provided. The tool supports “Power Posting” keywords (I’m dating myself, for those of you who remember when Power Posting first came out).

You can add Broad, “Phrase”, [Exact], or –negative match keywords directly in the tool, and it will parse them into the bulk sheet as expected.

Errors?

The tool tries to help you fill it out by highlighting errors like a missing Campaign Name, missing Ads or Keywords, etc. The tool is also “protected” to prevent inadvertently breaking things. The adventurous at heart can use the password “StoneTemple” to unlock the worksheet.

Generate Bulk Sheet

Click the button. If nothing happens, be sure you have enabled macros. Change Macro Settings in Microsoft Excel

Import into AdWords Editor

Choose: File | Import CSV | Paste Text… Review and Accept the Proposed Changes. Don’t forget to Post your new Campaigns!

Import Into adCenter Desktop

Desktop doesn’t yet support importing from the Clipboard. You can save the bulk sheet to a new CSV file, or as of Desktop Editor Version 8.1.11291.0, you can import directly from AdWords (Beta).

Choose: Import | From Google Select Import From a File, and browse to the file on your Computer. Verify the columns line up and click “Import.” Don’t forget to Post your new Campaigns!

Take It For A Spin

If you would like to get started with the PPC Planning Matrix, please feel free to send me an email. You will get an automated response with a download link and you can get started right away. You could also adapt these ideas to your own tools. Have fun out there.

When the principle was first explained to me, I was running an agency display media team at a search agency that was focused on direct response clients; I was therefore interested in tactics that involved precise data points as a way to focus on user intent.

Search retargeting seemed to fit the mold perfectly: target just those individuals with display ads who have actually searched for the terms that were relevant to the client, eliminating nearly all wastage from the plan.

We were building what we called the agency’s “foundation layer” of display: site retargeting to fix on-site conversion, search retargeting to prospect and plug the leak from SEM, and social retargeting to add further scale to the audience. So we picked five clients who had a pre-agreed testing budget and rolled out search retargeting with an early vendor, only to see four out of five of the campaigns bomb!

The primary reason was that in Search Retargeting 1.0, there was no scale in the data and little effort invested in the media placement. The campaigns were great when spending $100, but as soon as the vendor tried to scale to fill the budget, they would have to broad match and lose the relevancy, and of course the ROI.

Growing The Data – Search Retargeting 2.0

But sticking with it, campaigns began to perform better over time, and in almost direct correlation with the quantity of data that was available. Now we could focus more on the relevant terms and ignore some of the broad head terms. And as any search marketer can tell you, volume comes from the broad terms, but ROI comes from the specific. With data volume no longer such a problem, search retargeting 2.0 was on the horizon.

The theory states that search retargeting should outperform most other display placements because of its accuracy, and even come close to the performance of your search marketing efforts — as an industry it simply was not there yet.

But with the intersection of search and display looking like the future of digital, I left the agency to go help make this work.

The Data High

Too many marketers went through a phase of being high on data, believing that a single reference point was all that was needed to generate great DR results. They lost sight, in their excitement, of the continuing importance of creative messaging and the context of the media placement. Knowing who to talk to is important, but doing that in the right environment and with the right story really matters.

As popularity in search retargeting grew, so did the funding, which allowed the successful players to build their own DSP (Demand Side Platform) technology to manage the quantity of data and build in these essential elements. Marrying thousands of keywords with thousands of potential ad placements is not easy though, particularly when you have to do it in real time and at the keyword level.

Advanced Optimization — Search Retargeting 3.0

In a recent Chango search retargeting campaign from a large retailer, the need for keyword level optimization is clear:

Search retargeting example 1:

• ‘clothes shop’ — CTR of 0.87%
• ‘clothes shopping’ — CTR of 0.25%

Search retargeting example 2:

• ‘shoes mens’ — 0.16%
• ‘mens shoes’ — CTR of 0.21%

The search marketer is used to a world where this type of analysis is commonplace, but what is different is the choice of media sources.

In SEM, you choose from two major engines and then can add the extended network, usually by just ticking a box and forgetting it. But with real-time display, including search retargeting, we can buy in excess of 100,000 QPS (Queries Per Second — a simple measurement of media capacity).

Therefore managing search retargeting campaigns today is complex. Typically a campaign will need to be optimized manually once a day, but then “machine learning” must be used to balance the multitude of options available.

In our examples above, the term “clothes shop” clearly had a better type of intent that “clothes shopping” for our client, but that could only be determined by analyzing the placement on tens of thousands of sites. The balance of people and technology provide the scalable solution (but interestingly also blur the line between agency and vendor).

In addition, search retargeting 3.0 leverages dynamic creative, but unlike a typical dynamic setup, there is actual search data to work with, producing richer and more relevant experiences for the end consumer. Search retargeting sprang out from a sea of providers buying on the exchanges, but now seems to be leading in terms of what can really be achieved.

A Blessing & A Curse

Search retargeting would probably not be the name our micro-industry chooses if it got to choose again. When media planners hear it they immediately get excited, as they know a good media plan should always include some type of retargeting. But their first assumption is that it targets their existing site visitors. Many conversations begin by saying this isn’t the retargeting you thought it was!

But once marketers understand, they see its value for the long term. Like site retargeting and the SEM program itself, it typically becomes an evergreen program, running continuously as a reliable source of revenue.

In Summary …

Search retargeting arrived on the media scene less than two years ago, and less than one year ago for most media planners. It leverages the power of search and executes it with the scalability of display. It is enormously complex because of the volume of both keywords and media placements, so early campaigns were often not successful (v1.0). But as the industry grew, so did the data, and with it came a certain amount of reach (v2.0).

Today, major brands invest hundreds of thousands per month on evergreen and seasonal campaigns in search retargeting thanks to the results that in-house DSP bidding technology allows for true keyword level granularity. Machine learning, dynamic creative and lots of experience means that version 3.0 is upon us … and growing.

Often, advertisers focused on growing their paid search programs pay too much attention  to keyword expansion activities. It’s not surprising that this bias persists — given the multitude of keyword tools out there such as Wordstream, Trellian, or Adgooroo, each promoting their unique flavor of keyword data.

Once you’ve built out your core search program, however, adding long tail terms often requires a massive expansion to have even a small impact on traffic volumes.

Before you embark on a long-tail keyword expansion effort, ask yourself: have you done everything you can to maximize the volume from your existing keywords?

Here are a few tricks outside of keyword expansion that I have seen have a great impact for search marketers.

Don’t Let Budgets Constrain Top Performing Keywords

You never know when something Oprah mentions is going to increase traffic on a particular keyword four-fold overnight. Budget settings are important because they prevent situations like Oprah, from causing advertisers to blow through a month’s budget on poorly converting traffic.

However, on a regular basis, budgets shouldn’t be limiting volume for top performing campaigns. In general, if keywords are delivering positive margins, you should want to take advantage of all of the profitable traffic that is available.

In order to maximize volume, regularly review top performing campaigns to ensure that impressions aren’t being limited by budgets.

To identify campaigns that meet these criteria, pull a report that includes the previous month’s daily cost, budget, and margin.

If campaign spend tends to be at or above the budget for strongly performing campaigns, increasing the campaign budget will most likely drive additional high performance traffic.

For example, in the spreadsheet below, the advertiser had four campaigns that were performing better than their target margin of 25%, but they weren’t taking advantage of all of the volume that these campaigns could have delivered.  

Try Out “Accelerated Delivery” for More Volume

Many advertisers don’t realize that the Google delivery method setting can affect the rate of traffic campaigns receive, even if their budgets are significantly higher than expected traffic.

With Google AdWords, we’ve observed that selecting the “standard delivery” option instead of the “accelerated delivery” option with the same budget, results in fewer impressions.

After ensuring that top performing campaigns aren’t budget limited (step one), turning your campaign settings to “accelerated delivery” could provide incremental impressions and revenue.

Expand Your Reach With Keywordless Ads

Rather than trying to mine the long tail by adding keywords by hand, consider taking advantage of Google’s Keywordless Ads. While this feature is still in “beta,” we’ve worked with a number of retail advertisers who have opted into Keywordless Ads (now known as “Dynamic Search Ads”) and seen a lift in conversions and revenue.

The feature basically turns Google loose on your website, allowing them to target your ads to keywords they think match the content on your pages.

Be careful when setting it up to apply negative placements to the non-commerce pages of your site such as support pages, careers and management pages, or about us pages. Excluding these pages will help Google match your ads to the right queries, and save you some unwanted clicks.

To sum it up: while continually adding keywords is important, don’t forget the other settings and tweaks that can impact volume on your SEM campaigns. Taking some of the steps above could get you one step closer to unlocking the full potential of your program.

Do you have some easy to implement tips that have made a big change in your paid search volumes? If so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Using the real-time environment of the media exchanges, ‘search retargeting’ is one of several techniques that has created a safe bridge for SEM marketers to move into display and see almost instant results, and it is the SEM budget holders that are trying it quicker than the media planners (and who often sit in the same agencies!)

Source: Chango.com

This week, we are going to explore the use of search retargeting in more detail and why the optimization work you have already done in your SEM program can be used to drive significant results from a display campaign, save you budget and find new prospects.

As an example, we have a client today who is in the final stages of constructing their back-to-school campaign. They are new to this particular market and so have no real SEO presence, a budget that doesn’t allow for a heavy presence on SEM head terms and they don’t yet understand the dynamics of their new customer.

Building The Campaign Structure

Like any good SEM program, structure for search retargeting is critical to getting the best results. The goal is to create manageable sets of keywords that mirror to your business, facilitating budget decisions, optimization strategies and measurement. Where some keywords might be on an evergreen strategy, others might be seasonal or receive only occasional funding.

For our back to school client, they have a layer of critical terms that are ‘always on’, but will soon be activating a new set of campaigns to hit this seasonal window – Backpacks, School Supplies, School Clothing and Small Electronics for College Students.

There is no need to duplicate your previous efforts though. In this case, all the campaigns and ad groups can be imported directly, overcoming 80% of the work.

Next, the program must take into account the areas where search retargeting behaves differently to your search program. In a recent infographic by WordStream, the top 20 most expensive terms on Google AdWords were listed and ranged from $27.80 CPC (for ‘cord blood’) to $54.91 (for ‘insurance’). But, these are all terms available for between $0.50 and $3.00 CPC in the less competitive world of search retargeting.

With testing, there will be head terms such as these that no longer make sense to include in an SEM program, consuming large percentages of the budget. Instead, they can be moved to this new type of targeting, creating a presence in the mind of the searchers on contextually relevant sites.

For the back to school client with small budgets, terms like ‘school’, ‘term’, ‘clothes’ and ‘laptop’ have been moved over completely.

Compete With The Big Boys & Build Brand Cost Effectively

We know that customers are already shopping on the big name sites for common school items like backpacks and clothing without giving our client a second thought. By adding in competitor brand terms, they can build a presence during the research phase cost effectively and steal some of those dollars.

However, that alone will not be enough for them. When I was on the agency side, we would regularly have requests to ‘build a national brand campaign for a new audience’ using a budget that was painfully too small!

Whilst a true ‘branding’ campaign costs real dollars and a sustained period of time, search retargeting can be used to create a short awareness program for a fraction of the cost of other techniques. Display planners have long used the ‘takeover’, the idea that a single website can be owned for a day, giving the campaign a big hit in one go. These are costly though, and contain a significant amount of wastage.

By selecting a core set of terms, you can build an ‘Intent Takeover’, creating a heavy presence in front of all those people who are actively in market for back to school products. You can have the benefit of the page or site takeover, but for a fraction of the cost.

Learning From Search Retargeting

For a new client like ours, there is much to be understood about who their customer actually is, and so learnings are very valuable.

With keyword level reporting for search retargeting, a client like this can test many approaches at low cost by building out large keyword lists and seeing how the audience responds. This data can then be fed back into the SEO and SEM strategy.

In a recent retailer example, the term ‘vintage clothing’ was a surprise winner, and with the back to school client, early tests are showing video game terms are getting them in front of the right people.

Use What You Have

As a search marketer, you are armed with all the right tools and skills to jump into display, and techniques like search retargeting will be most familiar, and will capitalize most on the hard work you have already done.

Start by setting up your campaign using your SEM ad groups and insist on optimization at the keyword level – just as with SEM, each keyword carries a different message of intent and naturally has to be treated uniquely.

Next, look at creating new groups of keywords that lack a proper presence in your search program, such as competitor brand names or broad head terms.

Once the campaign is live, data will start to flow back showing the sites and keywords that are driving the best results – go back to your SEM program and use this information to your benefit.

The early opening of the shopping season confirms that retailers are looking to find creative ways to spark buying activity after continued lagging sales as the US economic recovery stalls. The good news is that even in this economy, or because of it, holiday online activity will likely be higher than ever. In 2009 online retailers saw a whopping 51% increase in sales, and bets are on that this trend will continue this holiday season. In fact, four in ten consumers (41.3%) plan to spend more online this holiday season due to a positive shopping experience last year, according to eDigital Research.

Even if some consumers don’t actually buy online, many check the web for comparison shopping, product availability, reviews, prices, special deals and promotions. Driving targeted consumers to retailers’ sites with effective, timely ads can increase the possibility of monetizing this behavior.

Paid search advertising can be a highly successful and cost-effective tool for maximizing marketing dollars, especially if e-tailers have the data they need for precision targeting and the technology to quickly update ads to reflect real-time inventories and promotions and respond to competitive pressures.

With these five recommendations, savvy retailers can leverage the rising online buying trends to bring stellar sales revenues home this holiday season.

Streamline Campaign Management

Automating many of the daily time-consuming campaign management processes reduces labor and saves valuable time, freeing advertisers to focus on more strategic issues. Managing multiple brands over several search engines and social media channels using the same system streamlines campaign management for additional efficiency.

Through automation and mass management one retailer increased the number of accounts that they were able to manage by a scale of 6 and the number of campaigns from 34 to over 140. Another retailer reported a 300% increase in workflow efficiency.

Keep Ads Relevant With Real-Time Inventory Updates

For e-retailers managing hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of SKUs, the ability to keep online ads in sync with specific daily or hourly sales objectives and actual inventory availability is challenging. What good is it to drive someone to buy an item if it is sold out? And why waste advertising spend on items that are mispriced against the competition?

Continuously updating on-line ads with feeds from back office systems enables retailers to advertise the most recent prices and promotions while ensuring that all available stock is advertised. The added bonus is the low cost per click and higher conversion rates that result from more relevant landing pages.

Use Automation To Make Quick And Easy Campaign And Promotion Changes

Year-end holidays follow one another quickly. The ability to update or pause ads on multiple campaigns and distribute those changes across various channels at one time can have a significant impact on performance. With automation solutions, advertisers can push or pause an ad across all engines at once, or can select the channels or networks of their choice and reduce the amount of heavy lifting traditionally needed to adjust to seasonal changes.

Using bulk editing across search engines and campaigns, one retailer managed the updates and changes required from Thanksgiving to Christmas through New Years in a matter of hours vs. weeks, while reaping the benefits of fully synchronized promotions.

Experiment With Conversion Attribution Models

Understanding the path to conversion is key to ensuring proper ROI measurement. Capturing that knowledge across multiple advertising channels will help in minimizing skewed data and avoiding the mistake of under estimating the value of contributing keywords. Potential customers can reach you across a variety of touch points. Why should the last click always be given total credit? Attribution models can include equal distribution to all keywords in the path or assigning equal weight to the first and last. Having the ability to test and report on these and other attribution models will allow a retailer to create campaigns that reap the most conversions and to understand which keywords are contributing to each sale.

With a more sophisticated attribution model, one retailer was able to create campaigns and keyword lists that resulted in a 100% increase in click through rates.

Optimize Generic Keywords To Attract And Convert The Most Targeted Prospects

For some retailers, generic terms can be the most effective if managed properly. By analyzing not only the last click but also each stop across online sessions and search engines, retailers can have a clear picture of each keyword that brought in new customers, including generic terms that were part of the initial search.

For example, last Christmas season one retailer added “holiday gifts” to their keywords, which contributed to a significant boost in end of the year sales.

The Bottom Line

Paid search marketing program strategies which incorporate a combination of automation, experimentation and real-time inventory intelligence can enable marketers to achieve remarkable results this holiday season. Taking into consideration that some retailers can bring in up to 80% of their yearly revenues over just these few key months, the impact of on annual sales can be significant.

If online shopping continues to grow as predicted, adding a level of sophistication to campaign management can pay off more than ever, making this a bright holiday season for savvy retailers.