I haven’t had time to post here for ages, but in the interests of preserving relevance of the Google and other search engine results, I find myself inclined to link to Dave Pasternack, at Did-it and Dave Pasternack at ESCA. One is the top link for the current Dave query, the other is a highly relevant bio page.
A search curve is a graphical representation of the number of times a given query is searched within a given period. A curve’s tail is amazingly long and flat. To understand this concept and to see the curve’s shape, check out the Yahoo! (Overture) Keyword Selector Tool. Though the tool returns only 25 queries for one head term, many millions of nearly unique searches are performed every month in nearly every industry vertical.
These unique searches can be difficult to predict with certainty, but online tools provide a reasonable basis for researching how the search curve looks for your business during each season.
Yahoo!’s tool shows in April, for example, there were 2,107,085 searches for “MP3,” a generic term that doesn’t reveal whether the searcher wants MP3s or an MP3 player. Farther down the curve, 66 people searched “free online mp3 music download,” a much more specific query. Clearly, the tail is quite long, meaning some very diverse, unique searches occur every day.
The key to strategically capturing the search curve tail lies in the following best practices:
Search engine marketing (SEM) has always been, at least to some extent, about position: organic position, XML feed listing position (for relevant traffic), or paid placement position in the keyword auction marketplaces.
In organic search, when log files show lots of entries (traffic) from a specific word or phase (indicating the phrase had good position for a particular engine), it’s great fun to look in the SERPs (define) to see your listing high. You turn to your SEO (define) Web team (or anyone who will listen) and engage in high fives, celebrating the luck and skill that combined to create good fortune.
In the early days of paid placement, there was also a certain satisfaction in setting a specific keyword in GoTo (now Yahoo! Search, although many of you know the company as Overture) to the second position, and checking Yahoo! a few minutes later to see that listing right where you placed it.
Then Google came along with its hybrid auction. It used an AdRank algorithm that took a CPC (define) bid and a normalized CTR (adjusted for current position) to create a scenario where position was far less controllable. Yet we still considered Google as paid placement, pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising. Google was revolutionary in the PPC search world, because it took the searcher’s opinion into account to assure more relevant ads.
Brand marketers must look at search and other online media in new ways, based on how consumers have changed media consumption behavior. Traditional media metrics don’t always fit a brand marketing strategy for search. Given some recent data from Nielsen//NetRatings, traditional media metrics may be losing their applicability across all media. Brand marketers are used to metrics that reflect not only campaign objectives but also the way media are sold. Both evolved hand in hand.
The Internet and search engine new-user tide has virtually dried up in the U.S., according to a Nielsen report, which states the unique visitor growth rate is nearing zero. Yet the number of pages viewed per person is growing rapidly in certain verticals, indicating a shift in online media consumption. Clearly, as the percentage of time spent online grows and the percentage of time spent with other media drops, traditional marketers will follow direct marketers online (including to search marketing).
Which metric is right for search, once a marketer extends a campaign beyond obvious keywords that relate to the brand?
What makes advertising through search engines different from advertising anywhere else? The answer is the speed.
The keyword-bidding marketplace may be the fastest-paced advertising arena on earth. While the fight over print-ad space might take place on a daily horizon, and the fight for TV commercials on a much quicker fifteen-minute horizon, search-ad prices can fluctuate literally by the second. That’s because, every time a searcher clicks on a sponsored link, that click changes the value of the keyword that marketers are bidding on. If someone clicks on an ad generated by that keyword yet again, it also changes the market a second time. It’s the same supply-and-demand principle that applies to any market, but it can take place at a changeover rate of hundreds—or even thousands—of times per minute.
We can all learn from direct marketers. They’ve dealt with ROI-based marketing for years.
Old-school catalogers may not yet grasp all the nuances of search engine marketing (SEM), but they do deal daily with maximizing ROI and profit from scarce resources (external mailing lists or internal customer lists). Catalog marketers deal with the scarcity of valuable customer lists or rental lists through testing. They always test new lists, new creative, new prices and new offers. Several catalog marketers shared with me recently that, depending on the season, they might allocate anywhere from 10 to 45 percent of their media and creative budgets to tests.
It may seem like a risk to allocate over 15 percent of a budget to testing, but catalog marketers know the biggest risk might be not testing at all. One catalog marketer emphasizes this point by sharing his “test or die” credo. He means if he wasn’t constantly testing new things, his business would die a slow, steady death. This truth puts a new face on the importance of testing, and it inspired this column.
The Pontiac Solstice roadster was featured on the Apprentice. It’s the best product placement money can buy. Actually, its amazing that Pontiac decided to use the brochure that Kendra basically put together by herself. The car is a winner, but the apprentices are mostly losers. Pontiac has a winner with a hot little roadster convertible sports car.
IAC/InterActiveCorp, Barry Diller, close to deal to acquire Ask Jeeves according to The NY Times, the Wall Street Jornal, Search Engine Watch and serveral other sources. The number bandied about is about $1.9 - 2 billion. Interestigly, Diller was at the MSN Strategic Account Summit in Redmond, Washington on March 16, 2005. On stage separately from Diller who talked “big picture” were the big three PPC search engines, Ted Meisel from Yahoo Search Solutions, Eric Schmidt from Google and Christopher Payne, MSN’s VP of Search. Perhaps Barry felt left out up on the search panel. IAC even with Jeeves has a long way to go to before becomeing a major search publisher.
Spring, the season of renewal, starts this week. It just happens that it’s also the week for the return of some golden oldies.
For starters it’s the beginning of March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament, when 35 of the nation’s best college teams pay for the championship trophy. Setting aside the convoluted formula that determines which teams get invitations to the Big Dance, what irks most is the exploitation of the athletes.
Here we have hundreds of young men playing their hearts out, over a grueling 30 game season, for the chance their college makes it to the play offs. In return they get a “free” education, but no pocket money or living expenses. Should even a nickel cross their palms the wrath of heaven descends in biblical proportions. If these student-athletes protest at the amount of effort involved in studying, practicing, traveling and playing they risk losing their scholarship. They are indentured workers.
First there was one, then two and now there are three. Surely, more will come.
That’s the way the market works - invent a mouse trap then some guy comes along with a better one. You can even re-invent the wheel, and someone will still make a better one. Faced with increased competition maketing gurus fall back on the whiz bang idea of extended usage - which is selling a product for what it originally was not meant.
That’s exactly what the we’re seeing in the $1 billion erectile dysfunction business, commonly known as the Mr. Softee market.