Page 10 - index

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Flexibility is key

to succeed in

search engine

marketing

Whether it's about increasing traffic, boosting con- SEA managers must also be able to attribute conver-
version or maximizing revenue, bid optimization is sions and sales to the keyword that triggered the con-
one of the cornerstones of search engine advertis- version. The accuracy of this attribution at keyword
ing (SEA). Depending on the industry, publisher, level depends on whether the advertiser has the ability
device or region, the bidding strategies differ con- to capture differences in consumer behavior.
siderably as well.
Consumers usually perform frequent queries prior to a
Search engine marketing experts are therefore using a purchase, more or less depending on the product cate-
variety of methods, algorithms and technologies for the gory and industry, where they come in touch with multi-
bidding, in addition allowing to choose between proprie- ple ads. As you can imagine, an effective bidding solu-
tary, publisher and third-party solutions. The success of tion must therefore be able to allocate the revenue to
these tools depends not only on how good they are, but all participating keywords. Equally important is that it
also on their capacity to calculate optimal bids in highly provides flexible options that assess keywords in the
dynamic and highly competitive auctions. click path differently: Sometimes it makes sense to
attribute the turnover only to the first and the last
Hence, I present here the most important features that clicked ad. In other cases, the stronger weighting of
distinguish successful bidding solutions and explain the clicks at the end of the conversion path delivers the
role they play in the SEA-bidding strategy. best results

1. Flexible compilation of revenue 3. Relevant Data

In order to reach a cost-per-acquisition (CPA), return-on Whether it comes to choosing display contents with the
-investment (ROI) or maximized revenue on a limited best performance or to calculate optimal keyword bids,
budget, SEA managers have to match publisher clicks it is crucial for the optimization of the SEA performance
and costs with sales data from backend systems. In or- to make decisions based on a significant amount of
der to combine these data sets usefully, a solution is data. With a limited data base, there is the risk that the
needed that supports existing back-end systems and bidding solution is calculating bids too high or too low -
builds a bridge between the online marketing channels both results in a suboptimal keyword performance. So-
and the achieved online or offline conversions. lutions that combine low-volume keywords with similar
performance, and can deliver a statistically significant
bid estimation with the aggregated data base, are an
For example, online applications for life insurance and advantage.
mortgages often require from customers an offline au-
thentication or authorization by the appropriate local
branches. In order to capture revenues generated 4. Defined KPIs
through various channels and touch-points, a flexible
interplay of analysis, ad serving, call tracking and CRM In order to measure the success of a bid strategy, SEA
systems is required. This gives advertisers not only a managers need to identify the important Key Perfor-
single point of truth, but allows them to calculate bids on mance Indicators (KPI) to optimize the campaigns.
the basis of full performance data. Consequently, it is Even if this seems trivial, the selection of a suitable
important to select a proper bidding solution, consider- KPIs can be quite complex.
ing that it makes the integration of a variety of data
sources possible. For example, it is common for online retailers to max-
imize revenues while maintaining a target ROI, which
2. Precise attribution means two KPIs are involved. Companies whose goal
is the lead generation and to achieve their sales long
Bids on keywords are only as effective as the data with after the first click, must choose between a more or
which they were calculated. Hence, the detection of the less reactive cost-per-lead (CPL) or a more accurate

turnover is only the first step in a reasonable bidding ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) target.
strategy. To create the best bid possible,
10 Asian eMarketing September 2014 - Search Engine Marketing