Wake Forest University – Spring ‘09Alex Cohen, Marketing ManagerClickEquations | www.clickequations.com

The MBA Guide to Search Marketing

Agenda

Alex Who?

Why Does Search Matter?

The Need For Search Literacy

Allocating Budgets and Measuring ROI

Free Tools

Alex Who?

Marketing Manager at ClickEquations acohen@clickequations.com | 484-362-1321

Site - www.clickequations.com

Blog - www.clickequations.com/blog

Twitter – @clickequations

Blogger at Digital Alex Blog - www.alexlcohen.com

LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexcohen

Twitter - @digitalalex

Why Does Search Matter?

2 Kinds of Search Marketing

Organic

Paid Paid

Everyone Loves Search

“Half of all internet users perform a search every day.

Search is growing at a faster rate than other activities on the Web…

"Search is now taking center stage...whereas e-mail is still primary for communications, search is now primary for information activity," - Susannah Fox, Assoc. Director at Pew Internet.

“12 billion searches were conducted in July 2008” - comScore

Paid Search is Precise

Product or

Service

Target Audience

Constraints Qualifiers Landing

Page

Paid Search is Fully Optimizable and Cheap

Clicks cost - $0.05 - $0.75+

Targeted, relevant ads aimed at active searchers convert efficiently

Everything can be measured, analyzed and improved

Keyword

Creative

Engine

Match Type

Landing Page

Bid

¹ Pew Internet Research Project (2008)

² Nielson Media (2007)

Why Does SEO Matter?

• Organic search attracts 5-8 times as many clicks as paid search¹

• 7.8 billion searches are performed each month²

• The most valuable terms are the most competitive, but can potentially translate into thousands of incremental orders

Organic Search Is Cheap

High Fixed Costs, Negligible Incremental Expenses

Sustained Competitive Advantage

Cost Savings Revenue GrowthCost $75,000 Cost $75,000 Mos. To Break Even 6 Mos. To Break Even 10

Visits/Mo. Orders/Mo.Avg. PPC CPC 5,000 10,000 25,000 50,000 AOV 25 50 75 100

$0.25 $1,250 $2,500 $6,250 $12,500 $50.00 $1,250 $2,500 $3,750 $5,000 $0.50 $2,500 $5,000 $12,500 $25,000 $100.00 $2,500 $5,000 $7,500 $10,000 $0.75 $3,750 $7,500 $18,750 $37,500 $150.00 $3,750 $7,500 $11,250 $15,000 $1.00 $5,000 $10,000 $25,000 $50,000 $200.00 $5,000 $10,000 $15,000 $20,000

The Need for Search Literacy

The Problem: Scarce Attention, High Competition

Sources: 1: Cornell University eyetracking study, http://bit.ly/20hHNY; 2: Eyetools eyetracking study, http://bit.ly/LYX5l

Attention Decreases Down The Page

Source: An eye-tracking study of information usage in Web search: Variations in target position and contextual snippet length - Edward Cutrell, Zhiwei Guan, http://bit.ly/OGzsx

The Rising Demand for Search Literacy

Organic Search Deconstructed

• Google is a matchmaker pairing search queries with pages

• Relevance rules the matchmaking, based on:

o On-page elements

o Off-page elements

• Your ability to rank depends on the competition and your SEO efforts

• Our Goal: Determine which queries we want to rank for then optimize accordingly

Picking The Right Queries

• Consumers dictate the language used to describe your products when searching

• We choose queries at the intersection of:o High(er) search volumeo Search query intento Low(er) competition

Good sites perform well in 1-2 areas and achieve industry-average returns

Great sites perform well in all areas and outperform their peers

Ranking For Your Targeted Queries

SEO Methodology

Paid Search Deconstructed

1 2

4

3

Paid Search is Precise

Product or

Service

Target Audience

Constraints Qualifiers Landing

Page

• What you sell• Competitors• Related Products

• Keywords• Search Engines• Websites

• Bids• Match Type

• Text Ad• Negative

Keywords

• Homepage• Category page• Product page• Search results

Paid Search Results Depend on a Bit More…

TARGETREFINE SATISFY

ANALYZE

PPC Methodology

Foundation Test

Optimize

Ramp Optimize

Expand

Build learning into the process

Start with the most relevant queries and expand

Optimize before you expand to avoid waste

Allocating Budgets and Measuring ROI

Paid Search ROI Curve

Time

Cost

ROI

Learning & Optimization

Organic Search ROI Curve

TimeCost

ROI

Authority & Time

The Evolution of Your Search Marketing Mix

4 Basic Elements of Web Analytics

Slice the Data, Find the Insights

Priority Threats and Opportunity

What’s Changed/Fastest Moving

Results By Segments

Overall Business Results

Awareness

Impression

Visit

2n

d

Click

Browse

Cart

Checkout

Order

Measure Through the Funnel

Segment Incessantly,

Follow the Trends

The Hierarchy of Smart Search Questions

• Can you join us for our site redesign?

• We’re starting a new project, what are your requirements to integrate SEM into the process?

Search Partner

• What’s the benefit of more resources for SEO?

• What is your order of priority tactics, costs & value?

• What tests should we be running?

The Literate Director

• How much incremental profit is SEO driving?

• How do we fix what’s broken and expand what works?

The Savvy Manager

• Shouldn’t we be using meta keywords?

• What’s the ROAS on that?

The Dangerous Interloper

• Why don’t we rank for this word?

• How many hits did we get?

The New Guy

Questions?

ClickEquations is an advanced paid search platform for large advertisers and agencies acohen@clickequations.com | 484-362-1321

Site - www.clickequations.com

Blog - www.alexlcohen.com

Free Tools Advanced Paid Search Advice

www.clickequations.com/blog

www.clickequations.com/learn

www.google.com/analytics

www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

www.wordpress.org

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/webanalytics (user group)

http://4q.perceptions.com

www.quantcast.com

www.compete.com

www.google.com/insights/search

www.google.com/trends

www.crazyegg.com

www.clicktale.com

Wake Forest University – Spring ‘09Alex Cohen, Marketing ManagerClickEquations | www.clickequations.com

The MBA Guide to Search Marketing