This model, for sake of reference, will be known as the Overture model. The second type of paid for placement engine is one that focuses on bidding price, but also on daily budget to give the optimum performance, and for sake of reference this will be known as the Google AdWordsrM model.

Overture model
The Overture model is the simpler of the two bidding models. With the exception of Google, nearly all PFP engines utilize this model (with a few variations) in which a higher bid wins a higher placement in the search listing and therefore the higher rank.

The more advertisers there are bidding the more fraught and frenetic bidding becomes.

To succeed with PFP the skill is to relate the objective to be achieved with the service cost (or CPC) of the engine.

If a goal is to achieve a certain traffic number then a target CPC must be found; similarly if the goal is to achieve a conversion (such as a sale or lead generated), the amalgamated cost of all keyword clicks must be at the investment number for a desired return.

In other words if $1.00 was spent on clicks, $5 must be made back from the clicks in order to achieve the goal.

This is a simple principle but, in the PFP one that is extremely hard to achieve, the reason being that the market controls the price and not the search engine and as such a conversion parameter can change from one hour to the next.

Success from PFP comes from the management of keywords both in their singular existence and within a group or portfolio.

By managing the expectations of keywords against their desired goal, a goal that is ultimately set by the search marketing strategy, a greater handle on the performance can be determined.

It is important to follow these guidelines for PFP:

• Classify keywords by portfolio designation – depending upon your strategy (see later chapters) keywords will fall into different areas within a portfolio.

For instance, some keywords will be responsible for branding, others for driving qualified sales. It is in accurate classification that accurate measurement can be determined.

• Measure against conversion – measure PFP against a conversion point and optimize against it.

Bidding, whether it be manual or via a bid management tool can only be successful if the outcome is measured.

• Avoid ‘fixed’ bidding – unless the pros totally outweigh the cons (and this is most uncommon) avoid using the fixed bidding facilities on the engines with the Overture bidding model.

If fixed bidding is used and the bids are not monitored accurately then excessive budget may be spent needlessly for the same click.

As the auction mechanism allows bidders to up their bids but also to reduce them if a bid is placed when many bidders are vying for the same spot, the PC might be higher than an hour, day on week later when half the bidders are now competing lot that term.

This means that a $0.50 cent bid for position I on Tuesday at 1 pm might be $0.25 by Wednesday at 11 am but as the bid has been fixed at $0.50 double the amount is being paid for the term.

• Use ‘auto’ bidding – as the other mechanism to fixed bidding this option recognizes the changes in the bidding environment and ensures that bidders only pay 1 cent (or equivalent minimum currency) above the next placed company. This bidding is done up to a bid cap or maximum.

• Constantly monitor bids – The Overture model search engines require constant monitoring and adjustment.

 If left unattended the paid for placement engines can go one of two ways.
 
 (1) The bidding within the space is so frenetic that terms that were placed in the top positions (and it’s important to remember here that the top terms are syndicated out to the advertising network) have been demoted to the lower less advantageous positions.

 (2) The bidding within the space slows or fewer bidders exist and a listing gets promoted to a higher position where the amount of traffic drives up the cost and the cost vs. benefit ratio becomes undesirable.

Throughout the following chapters some of the more specific techniques associated with an objective(s) will be identified but following the cited rules a great deal of success can be found.

Google AdWordsTM Model
The Google AdWordsTM model is one of many variables. The ‘Overture’ model uses only a few basic variables, price being the determinant for position and is the case until the money runs out.

Despite releasing new models for controlling budget, the model is relatively simple. The AdWordsTM model is much more complicated.

Position is determined by bid price, click through rate (CTR) and budgetary elements such as daily cap amounts on campaigns and accounts.

Only when an understanding of all of these elements is found is it that true success from this medium can be found.

Daily budget cap
While testing new keywords, trying new creative and changing landing pages are all worthwhile efforts in maximizing returns or reducing Costs Per Acquisition, there is one specific feature in the Google AdWordsTM tool, that, if more carefully considered, can make significant improvements to your performance in only a few minutes; the low hanging fruit, if you will.

Often times, the daily budget caps of campaigns are arbitrarily assigned with little consideration, or are simply never adjusted to ensure that your advertising dollars are working at their peak performance.

Over time, you might find that the daily budget cap is more than an administrative decision to be made on the Campaign Settings tab, but rather the focal point of your AdWords strategy.

The strategy is simple. Maximize exposure on keywords that deliver the most value, and minimize the exposure of keywords that do not.

This may seem obvious, but as most advertisers must work within budgetary constraints, the challenge lays within sucking the most return out of your limited dollars as possible.

This involves assigning proportionally higher daily budget caps to campaigns which contain your best performing keywords and lower daily budget caps to campaigns which contain your less performing keywords.

The tactics and implementation of this strategy are demonstrated in the example below, which is reflective of numerous actual cases.

Scenario:
Our business is running 1000 keywords in one AdWordsTM campaign and we have appropriated $15K a month to spend in Google.

Our current daily budget cap is $500 a day ($15 000/30 days). We need to achieve an overall return of 5 x in the next month to reach our quarterly goals, and in this past month, we only achieved a 4x.

Challenge:
With all of our keywords in one campaign set at a $500 daily budget cap, our ads are not being served all of the time.

Our ads are not being shown on every search because the AdWords tool is using historical data to estimate how many times our ad needs to be served, in order that we only spend $500.

It then serves ads intermittently throughout the day. More importantly, and perhaps more frustratingly, the keywords which we know are the most valuable to us, are not showing ads as much as we would like.

If we could have our keywords, which routinely deliver over a 5 x show ads more often than our keywords that deliver below a 5 x, we might be able to get our historic overall performance of 4 x to become a 5 x in this next month.

Optimization Tactic:
While we do not have the financial means to have ads served on all of our keywords all of the time, we do have the power of choosing specifically which keywords should have ads served more frequently than others.

How do we do this? We will convert our one large campaign into multiple campaigns and assign them varying daily budget caps.

Before we can do this, we’ll need to do some research and see the ROI by keyword. We will then sort out 1000 keywords by ROI.

Perhaps only the top 50 keywords actually perform at or above a 5x. The next 100 keywords delver between a 1 x and 4x and the remaining 850 keywords are either costing more than they deliver in revenue or only drive traffic.

Implementation:
In this case, we will create three new campaigns. In campaign 1, we’ll place the 50 best performing keywords that drove over a 5 x.

Then we’ll check the Recommended Daily Budget tool on the Campaign Settings tab. It may recommend that we need to spend $300 a day to serve ads on these keywords all of the time in position 1.

We want to assign campaign 1 the full $300 daily budget to ensure maximum exposure on all of our best performing keywords.

We’ll then place the next 100 `medium performers’ driving between a 1 x and 4 x in campaign 2.

Again, we’ll check the recommended daily budget for the keywords in campaign 2. It may recommend that campaign 2 needs $400 a day to serve ads on these keywords all of the time.

However, we only have $200 a day left to work with ($500 – $300 = $200). Since these keywords are not delivering as much value as our best performing keywords, it is not as necessary for the ads to be served all of the time.

Determining how to break out the budget among campaigns 2 and 3 can be done in a number of ways, but to ensure higher returns, assign the majority of it to campaign 2, which contains the better performing keywords.

In this example, we’ll assign $150 to the `medium performers’ and the remaining $50 to the `poor performers’.

By investing more dollars in our better performing keywords, we should begin to see higher returns from this point forward.

While this is a fully simplest example, it does demonstrate how breaking down campaigns into smaller campaigns and appropriately assigning daily budget caps gives us more control over how our dollars are being spent.

This control allows us to give more weight to our better performing keywords, and therefore, increases our returns.

As this technique has demonstrated in the past, giving an extra measure of attention to the daily budget cap and applying a bit more thought to campaign organization can greatly improve the performance of your AdWordsTM account.

Keywords: bidding, bidding price, CPC, conversion, through rate, CTR, bid price,

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The best technique for expansion is to tie it in with other variables that might influence performance. This can fall into a number of different areas:

• Existing Keyword Performance – the best source of understanding where keyword expansions might be found is an existing base of keywords.

 Dependent upon the correct tracking of success, new keywords can be developed from those that are performing well, via a process know as keyword stemming.

• Push Messaging (Promotional) – should a new product, service or topic of information become key to the particular business or website being optimized, new keywords will become available.

 For example, a large retailer pushes messaging via offline or online graphical advertising to the general public for a new product or service.

 From that point onward it makes sense to create synergies between these messaging efforts and the keyword selection process.

• Competitive Space – knowing what competitors of a company or website are doing provides a good grounding for selecting new keywords.

 Whether it is keywords that are being bought that is appropriate or whether it’s messaging being used, anything that makes the searcher aware of new data will be good for keyword expansion.

One of the areas where companies ran tall over with keyword expansion is when it is done without first determining why.

Bad keyword selection and large numbers of new terms can add increased traffic and extra resource loads on bidding processes so, as a word of caution, it’s unwise to engage in expansion unless done in a controlled and measurable manner.

Keywords: keywords, Keyword expansion, keyword stemming,

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It is also important to ensure that all terms related to anything associated with the company, the products, or the services are covered with keyword selection, as this is the critical stage of any association between searcher and company.

Branded terms are most important keywords to use for this strategy. Every time a searcher looks for a company a listing should show up.

A debate rumbles on as to whether the purchase of a brand term is a solid investment, but for now the focus here will be on buying the phrase as a viable keyword to aid in the building of brand via search.

Generic terms are of equal importance. The reason is simply branding and awareness in relation to a product or service that might not have been directly associated with the company advertising.

In other words if a leading electronics retailer stocks a particular brand of television, it is important for a listing to show up when a user searches for that particular brand or product.

These terms will also have the largest amount of click volume and as such yield a greater share of voice (SOV) within the search landscape.

Product terms are optional in this exercise. The search volume of these terms is relatively low, as a result isn’t necessarily the best option for an awareness strategy.

These terms do, however, possess the same values as a search term and if the cost vs benefit analysis proves favorable for these terms then the same awareness for the products they advertise will exist.

Match types
When selecting keywords it is important to ensure that the greatest coverage is gained from these terms.

For this reason it is recommended that match types such as Broad Match on Google AdWordsTM and Advanced Match on Overture be used to ensure that these terms get the maximum exposure. It is advised, however, to check for negative keywords to maintain relevancy.

Creative development
For a branding and awareness strategy the development of the creative element of a search listing is one of the most important.

Within the small amount of text presented by the advertising company must be illustrated elements such as an offering, a unique selling proposition, a competitive advantage and a call to action.

Branding creatives are those that continue a theme of maintain continuity with other branding or marketing activities.

In many instances the use of a limited amount of text in a search listing for a tag line is often nor recommended, typically as it is felt to be a squandered opportunity to mention an offer or call to action, but in a branding strategy it is most acceptable.

General creatives are those that represent the core benefits, offerings or values of a company but are designed to reinforce the fact that the searcher has come to the right place or found the right company.

In many instances search results are dominated with listings that might not be the actual site being looked for.

Affiliates, resellers, and competitors might all be buying or optimizing against a particular term and in most instances if the keywords being used are generic the likelihood of the maximum number of other bidders is high.

For this reason if someone is searching for digital cameras’ and a listing from Canon appears with digital camera’ written within the title and description the searcher is reassured that a trusted brand such as Canon is also presenting a link to digital camera:

Specific creatives are those that utilize the titles and descriptions to represent a specific offer or message related to the keyword or searcher’s interest.

In a branding and awareness strategy these types of creatives are an optional element. In many respects a specific offer creative is often used when a seasonal variable or event gives a company a short-term competitive advantage.

Taking the ‘digital camera’ example above, if a company had surplus stock of one particular item and wrote a creative indicating a specific offer that was price or delivery based, purchasing the term specific to the product would make sense.

As an additional variable to consider the specific creative can be attached to a generic or even a branded keyword if large exposure is required on a specific message.

Keywords: Keyword, creative, branding, awareness, branding creatives,

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While paid for placement (Overture, Google AdWordsTM, FindWhat, etc) offer simple procedures for getting a site listed, part of the ever-increasing strength of the PFP market, the processes that are necessary for optimizing PFI are different.

With no guarantee of a high placement and reliance on relevant submitted content, i.e. does Overture Site Match xChangeTM (Formerly Inkromi and from this point onwards referred to as OSMX) feel this is 100 per cent relevant to a search or 1 per cent, the challenge to the market is much greater.

In order to demonstrate that the challenge is not as unfathomable as it may seem to be, the following techniques are listed for optimizing PFI.

• Understand where paid inclusion data appear within the search network – the usual place for paid for inclusion data is within the `web pages’ results.

These are pages that appear when the search term has either:

(1) Limited coverage within paid for placement or directory listings or
(2) Exhausted all of the paid for placement or directory listings and appears thereafter!

Here is a simple example to further explain this – if a search is performed for `credit cards online’ on Yahoo! the searcher will be presented with Overture’s top listings `Sponsored Sites’, then listings from the Yahoo! Directory Listings and lastly, once these forms of results are exhausted, `web pages’ which are OSMX.

• Understand what is being submitted – following on from Point 1, as the listings that appear in paid for inclusion are so low in the pecking order the marketer must be careful of which words, phrases, listings to submit.

 In the example above, creating a PFI listing for ‘credit cards online’ would not be a good thing to do.

 However, ‘online credit card service’ would appear on page 1 in 15th spot as all other sources had been exhausted.

 The reason for this is volume; the number of searches for ‘online credit card service’ is 5 per cent of the number of searches for ‘credit card online’.

 The advantage is relevancy; those 5 per cent of searches are going to traditionally have more relevant searchers as the searchers have pre-qualified themselves with a longer, more considered search term.

• Don’t submit too little – the issue here is once again volume. The best content to submit to a PFI engine is large bulk amounts taken from sites with lots of data on their site.

This lends itself extremely well to catalogue retailers (such as WH Smith or Amazon) or publishers (such as Dalton’s Weekly or McGraw-Hill).

In many instances the effort needed for one listing in PFI is the same effort as 10 000 listings.

The more listings submitted, the less of an issue the smaller search volume becomes, as a larger percentage of more specific searches will match the PFI content submitted.

• Understand ‘how’ to submit there are many way to submit to PFI engines, many of them will provide assistance with the whole procedure, others will recommend third parties to assist with submission.

 The most important variable to take into account is relevancy. PFI listings are not guaranteed number 1 spot, even on the ‘web pages’ or equivalent section of the site.

 It is important to ensure that a submission of a listings for ‘Sony 28 Widescreen TV Model’ has title, description, supporting text and URL, and that all of these elements contain the same information.

 If this is not done the engine will bump the listing down for being too vague. Understanding the variables of PFI are of high importance.

 For example, OSMX won’t allow anything but a listing to unique URL ratio of 1:1. In other words the listings can’t all point to a single page; this is considered to be spam.

• Don’t submit too much – PFI has a variable rate card per industry (vertical), and upon application this information can be gathered from the engine or a reseller.

 As with PFP the price is often dependent upon demand for the content: for instance, finance and legal services are more expensive than reference or computing.

 For this reason it is important to do research before submitting a feed. Ensure that considerations are taken into account when putting your entire catalogue of products online and that each and every product if sold justifies the cost per click.

 In many instances the best course of action is to optimize a feed to PFI up to the point where the AOV of the catalogue products or CPA of the online lead justifies the costs. Note: it is essential to have a tracking tool to perform this type of optimization.

In the example above the target return on investment from this paid inclusion feed is 3 x (or 300 per cent) so taking the site’s conversion rate (or even with historic data the actual feed conversion rate) and then applying it to the traffic expected from a listing, by removing terms that even if they converted would reach the ROI goal, will inevitably increase the return from the feed.

The drawback to this is that the amount of revenue received from the feed will decrease; however, the revenue made will be profitable or at least in accordance with the ROI goal of the campaign/feed.

 Weak PFI listing Strong PFI listing
Recorded Clicks 1000 1000
CPC (Fixed) $0.25 $0.25
Costs $250 $250
Site Conversion Rate 1% 1%
Sales 10 10
Average Order Value $25.00 $75.00
Revenue $250.00 $750.00
Return On Investment 100% ROI 300% ROI

• Creative management – a PFI listing, as with any other, appears within the search network with countless others.

 Make sure such listings aren’t neglected by relying on the title and description from the feed (i.e. catalogue or website listing).

 In many instances normal procedure is to substitute the title that appears in the engine with the title that appears on the site.

 Include calls to action; add unique selling proposition and should the website have a strong brand name be sure to include it.

Keywords: Paid for inclusion, PFI, search term, search, ROI,

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In many instances terms might be displayed that have practically no relevance to the request but are displayed based upon the contextual content of the term.

A classic example of this scenario is cruise liners being confused with the movie star Tom Cruise.

If a user searches for `Tom Cruise’ in an effort to find the latest information about the movie star, travel companies advertising using the word `cruise’ might have their PFP listing show up.

To overcome this problem the travel company would identify `Tom’ as a negative keyword to prevent this situation from happening.

It is important to apply negative keywords to match types to ensure that terms that are searched for are relevant to the matching PFP listing and vice versa.

Keywords: Negative keywords,

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Each company has a definition for these services, definitions that often change, but the basic principles are as follows.

Identical matching (Exact Match in Google AdWordsTM and Standard Match on Overture) – this is where the search term matches exactly as the searcher typed it in:

Relevant matching (Broad or Phrase Match in Google AdWordsTM and Advanced Match on Overture) – this is where the searcher is presented with matches that are relevant in content to the term.

Depending upon the relevancy of the keyword to the term the more likely it is that it will be displayed.

In later chapters the virtues of match types will be identified and applied to each of the objective(s) and strategies surrounding them.

Keywords: keyword, matching, Identical matching, Exact Match, Standard Match, Relevant matching, Broad match, Phrase Match, Advanced Match,

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