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10 Questions to AskYour Search Marketing Firm
January 2009
 
10 Questions to Ask Your Search Marketing Firm
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Search marketing has become one o the astest growing segments o marketing or both business-to-consumer as well as business-to-business advertisers. According to a recent study by ForresterResearch
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, U.S. spending on search engine marketing is growing at a rate o 26% per year and will bea $25 billion industry by 2012. In tough economic times, many advertisers are drawn to the precisemeasurability o paid search compared to other orms o traditional advertising. The question becomeshow best to allocate their costs, maximize their ROI, and deploy their internal resources.Advanced search marketing management requires more sophisticated bid management technology,mature processes, and experienced people. As advertisers advance to large-scale paid search campaignmanagement, most have recognized the benets o outsourcing some component o their program to anagency. And as the demand or these outsourced management services has increased, the number orms purporting to oer a suitable solution has increased as well. Some o the leading search marketingmanagement rms have been in business or less than 5 years. Google just celebrated its 10th birthday.Both search marketing and search marketing management have grown quickly, but both remain relativelyimmature categories.As more and more advertisers work with a third-party partner to manage their paid search campaigns,agency churn becomes a natural byproduct. Marketers are under increasing pressure to justiy theirbudgets, particularly or outsourced management services and technology. In these challenging economictimes, is a positive ROI enough to justiy the agency’s contribution? How does an advertiser know itheir agency is moving beyond positive results to delivering measurable value on their key perormanceindicators? Ultimately, how can an advertiser distinguish the return on their investment in paid search romthe investment in paid search
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?We have compiled a set o questions intended to provoke an honest dialogue between the members oyour marketing team and between you and your search marketing agency. This type o critical reviewshould help determine i your search marketing campaigns are doing “well enough” or i there isunrealized value that your partner should be able to deliver.
Background
Is the frm delivering the results you expected?
This is the most straightorward and important question to ask. Think o your search marketing rm asan employee on your team and conduct an honest, objective review o their perormance. At a minimum,you should see your campaign perormance improving over time and eel condent that your agency isdelivering better results than you would have been able to achieve on your own. Digging deeper, analyzeyour historical results and try to identiy wild swings in CPA, clicks, or ROI. Think about the last time youragency reviewed your account’s perormance and determine how much time was spent reviewing yourkey perormance indicators. With a wide range o metrics to choose rom, agencies can easily cherry pickthe best campaign results and highlight those initiatives that have yielded positive ROI. Scrutinize thesereports careully and ensure that the metrics are tied to your strategic objectives.
Key considerations
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10 Questions to Ask Your Search Marketing Firm
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How does the frm demonstrate continuous innovation?
Search engine marketing is a fuid and dynamic industry. The major search engines are regularlyannouncing changes to their campaign management platorms – new bidding methodologies, updatesto the API interace, changes to quality scores, etc. The most innovative search marketing rms workdirectly with the search engines to stay ahead o these changes and determine how best to incorporatethem into their bid management platorm. For most agencies, however, bid management is one part otheir technology oering. In order to be a leader in the eld, rms must also demonstrate continuousinnovation in their client reporting, client data integration, creative optimization, and competitive trackingcapabilities. A top search marketing rm should be investing and re-investing in new technology acrossthese unctions. On an ongoing basis, your agency should update you on new eatures and enhancementsto the ront-end and back-end technology and demonstrate how these investments are positively aectingyour campaign’s perormance.
What is the level o transparency in their approach, technology, and results?
Outsourcing your SEM management to a third party should not mean ceding control and waiting or theresults. Your search marketing partner should have the reporting technology to provide open access toyour keywords, creatives, conversion data, budgets, current bids, bid changes, and alerts. You shouldexpect complete visibility into the tactics the account team is taking on your behal and be given theopportunity to weigh in beore dramatic changes are implemented to your campaigns.
What is the level o service and engagement rom your account team?
Advanced paid search management requires a high level o engagement and interaction between theclient and the account team. Every industry and business is unique, and paid search campaigns reactvery dierently based on changes in customer dynamics, competitive responses, and even currentevents. The best search marketing rms deploy account teams that have experience in your industry andtake the time to understand your business model, your customers, and your competitors. Your accountteam should be responsive and actively engaged in meetings, e-mail updates, and conerence calls.They should be proactively recommending changes to the campaigns and alerting you when newopportunities or new risks present themselves. In an ideal scenario, the account team becomes a trustedextension o your marketing team, with an intimate understanding o your business and the savvy toidentiy shits in the marketplace and provide actionable recommendations that go beyond paid search.
How do they demonstrate their commitment to testing and continual refnement?
Do you eel like your paid search campaign is on auto-pilot? No matter how long your account has beenunder management, there is always the opportunity to test every element o the campaign to driveincremental improvements in overall perormance. Your search marketing rm should be looking orways to test the ad copy, creative, keyword expansions, and landing pages. In addition, the team shouldincorporate seasonality eects and time-sensitive promotions to build new campaign managementstrategies. I your search marketing rm has stopped running tests on your existing ad groups, or hasstopped building and measuring new ad groups, your campaign may have unrealized opportunities toincrease conversions or re-allocate costs to high-perorming keywords or creatives.
What is the level o integration between your internal conversion/revenue data and the resultso your paid search campaigns?
Search marketing rms vary widely in their ability to accept custom data eeds rom their clients.Incorporating conversion and revenue data rom the client’s web logs or accounting system is a criticalrequirement to optimizing paid search campaigns. Some rms cannot accept client-side data at all andoptimize the campaign results solely based on cost per clicks. Some are able to accept basic conversion
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