Planning for Search Marketing Campaigns

Any discussion on SEM has to begin with a reference to the two key search engine programs which are most prominent and popular—Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter (representing Bing and Yahoo search engines). With Google being the market leader in SEM programs, a lot of the terminologies and concepts used in SEM industry have been derived or adapted from Google AdWords program. Microsoft’s Bing which was lagging behind in SEM earlier has been able to position itself as a stable player in this market and shown good growth in recent years.

Planning for SEM campaign involves the following aspects:

1. Establishing the need and objectives for SEM: Marketers typically choose SEM as one of their first options for digital marketing since SEM is one of the most credible techniques to drive regular targeted traffic to a site; is quick to learn and implement, and can be used to measure the impact cost effectively. However, each business needs to assess its product and key objectives if it plans to invest a substantial amount on this activity. Despite its advantages in some scenarios, it might not be that effective to use SEM every time. For example, if the target market is for a commodity product which people do not search online, or the product itself does not lend to higher online search by users or where the product is being targeted to a niche audience where broad SEM keywords might not be needed, it might not be wise to invest in SEM.Also, marketers should have a fair idea of their long-term and short-term goals which could vary from brand building to lead generation for an offline product, increasing website visits for an e-commerce website, and getting visitors to convert for a specific campaign. A lot of times, SEM investment is driven as a pre-empt or counter strategy to competition, and a certain budget is allocated to it as a long-term investment.
2. Understanding competitor presence: It is important for the brand to do a thorough research of the kind of competition they have for their product, category, geography, etc., to get a good idea of the investment which would be needed to compete for best placements at effective bid values. Firms can also understand the qualitative aspects of their competitor’s ads, including type of language, call-to actions, and nature of landing pages, which they are using to develop differentiating elements.
3. Defining target audience and performing keyword research: The next important part is to decide the type of audience marketers want to target and their typical research patterns. At this stage, brands can perform extensive keyword research using various tools provided by search channels, to know which keywords are keyed in the most by their target visitors to reach to similar products and brands, the kind of click-through rates for ads related to chosen keywords, typical conversion rates, etc. Keyword research tools also provide extensive ideas on the type of keywords matching best with the marketers’ requirements and their overall cost effectiveness.
4. Deciding on budget and bids: Marketers also should have developed pre-campaign strategies on the kind of budget that they would like to invest (in terms of a campaign calendar) during the various campaigns that they would execute through SEM. Also, it is advisable for firms to research on typical bids they might have to place for keywords most important to them, the kind of Ad Rank they would aim for, and the ways they would adopt to improve their Quality Score (concepts we would cover in detail in this section). Choosing a budget depends a lot on the overall brand objectives, average traffic estimates, historical CPC numbers, etc. Marketers should try to model most of this data for an effective outcome.
5. Defining campaign goals: Finally, after all the research has been performed, marketers should define clear campaign execution goals like click-through rate, web traffic, conversion targets, etc., so that whichever team executes the campaign (internal or external) has clear knowhow and target on what they need to achieve for the campaign to be termed successful.

Also, if the campaigns are being run by external teams, it is crucial that qualitative insights on target audience, ad group creation, ad content development, landing page design, keyword optimization rules are shared (with as much detail as possible) for campaign teams to understand the exact nature of the campaign so that they are able to meet not only quantitative goals but also intangible objectives like brand awareness, increased product image, improved website interaction, etc.

Apart from the planning stages, it is important that marketers develop a clear governance model so that hand-offs of activities and feedback happens at regular intervals and campaigns can be best optimized for performance and investment. In the next section, we would understand key concepts of an SEM campaign set-up and execution in detail and aspects which impact its successful implementation.