Writing Effective Ads

Find the message that clicks with customers

This is an abridged excerpt from the Smart Start guide, which is packed with helpful content to assist you in making your campaigns as effective as possible. Whether you’re an expert search marketer or just starting out, these tips from Yahoo!’s Sharon Goodsense offer practical search marketing insights. Download Smart Start.

When creating ads, there are several things you can do to help get more clicks.

Write the best ad text you can

• Be precise in describing what you offer. Ads that are not well written or are unclear do not perform well.
• Make your ads concise and factual. Ads that are too salesy might repel, not attract.
• Don’t use ampersands (&) and numbers in place of words. These symbols can make your ad look unprofessional.
• Provide a strong call-to-action. If your business provides something unique, make sure to include that in your ad.

Use the insert keyword feature

You probably wouldn’t click an ad that didn’t mention what you were searching for—and neither will your customers. Research shows that people are more likely to click if the keyword appears in the ad’s title or description. To use the feature, click the insert keyword link at the place in your ad’s title or description where you would like your keyword to appear. When a prospective customer searches for one of your keywords, the system will insert the appropriate keyword into your title or description in bold type—reassuring searchers that your ad matches their search.

Make sure your landing page is consistent with your ad

If you send searchers to a web page that doesn’t include what they searched for, this makes for a bad customer experience, which can have a negative impact on your conversion rate. For best results, focus on the customer, not your company.

Use ad testing

Testing ad messages is the mark of a smart advertiser—so we make it easy for you to do just that! If you can write an ad, you can use ad testing. All you need to do is create more than one ad in an ad group. Each of the ads that you created will be rotated in search results when searchers type in keywords from that ad group.

If you choose to use ad testing, the ad receiving the highest click-through rate will be shown more often in search results over time. This is because ad optimization is turned on in your account. (You can also set up ad optimization to show ads more frequently for other metrics, such as conversions or revenue.) If you prefer, you can also turn ad optimization off. But if you leave ad optimization on, you could see even more clicks to your web site, because your better ads will be shown more often. Eventually, this could improve your ad quality, which can improve your ad’s rank in search results. All steps in the right direction!

— The Smart Start guide

Green Clicks

How to “Green” Your Search Marketing

There’s no question that the environment is one of today’s “hot topics,” pun intended. Many consumers are now searching for ways to lower their carbon footprint, and creating a demand for eco-friendly products and services. It’s a new marketplace that is ripe for the picking for savvy marketers.

Do you offer a collection of green products but don’t know how to capture this new growing audience? Or are you an established green brand in fear of how to cope with an influx of competition? I spoke with a few of our customer solutions and content development representatives to get advice on structuring a campaign that shows your environmentally-friendly side.

Newcomers to the Green Market

1. Think Like a User

Environmentally-concerned consumers often look at every claim, ingredient listing and line of ad copy created by a product manufacturer or service provider to determine, “How might using this product or service hurt the environment?” So make sure you highlight your “greenularity” in your ad copy. For example, if you are a dry cleaner who uses non-toxic cleansers, include that fact in your ad, as it will set you apart from competitors.

2. Plant Seasonal Seeds

Green awareness isn’t just for Earth Day. Many folks purchase eco-friendly products at every gift-buying occasion, so go after them! You can create a green campaign for Mother’s Day, Graduation season, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc., just as you would for general seasonal campaigns.

3. Think Locally

We’ve all heard of the concept of “Think globally, act locally,” so consider adding campaigns specifically targeted at your local consumers. Try offering discounts to those in your nearby community to support the reduction of carbons emitted through shipping and transportation. Our geo-targeting feature makes it easy to show that you are aligned with green thinking in this way.

4. Land on Your Feet

If you’re running a green ad, make sure your landing page is green, as well. After all, you don’t want an environmentalist to click on your ad, go to your site, then see that you’re pushing a product that goes against their beliefs. But be careful: Green shoppers tend to be suspect of companies who try to “green-wash” their brand with shallow marketing ploys. If possible, add content on your site that shows what your company is doing to help the globe. You can even post news items on environmental concerns that relate to your products.

5. Up-Selling and Cross-Selling

If you offer several eco-friendly products, cross-sell them when a customer is purchasing one, and display them all on one special page. Green or not, users love one-stop shopping: If you’re selling someone an aluminum reusable water bottle and you’re not promoting your biodegradable disposable eating utensils, you might be missing out on a sale! A lot of people take baby steps in greening their lives—if you show them the way and tip them off to new options, you’ll make more sales and earn their loyalty, as well.

“But I Was Here First!”

While you may have been branding your company as eco-friendly long before being green became trendy, staying on top of the flood of new products entering this marketplace can be a challenge. We offer two suggestions:

1. Stress Your Credibility

If you really have been eco-friendly for years, tell your customers. Longevity in Earth-saving earns points with greenies who may be skeptical to fly-by-night newcomers, or those who are just jumping on the green bandwagon. Write it in your ad copy, and tell your story on your landing page.

2. …and Your Credentials 

If you are a certified green company, make sure that your ad contains this info. Green consumers love to patronize a company officially labeled organic, or one that passes all the tests for greenness. Their trust in that status will earn you their loyalty.

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Customer Solutions

Photo courtesy of Thiru Murugan, via Flickr

Anti-Phishing Reminders

Defend yourself from scammers looking to steal your account

Though we have previously published articles on “phishing,” we think it never hurts to remind you of ways to protect yourself from these scammers.

You may receive an e-mail that looks like it came from Yahoo!, taking you to something that looks like a Yahoo! Search Marketing log-in page. But in reality it can be a phishing scam from somebody who is trying to duplicate our login page to get your user name and password to hijack your account.

Well, don’t fret. To help combat these phishing scams, we have installed what’s called a “sign-in seal” on our log-in page. Already in use by many financial institutions, a sign-in seal is a cookie-based secret message or image that is displayed on your computer only. (That is, the machine you use to log in to your account.) If you use more than one computer, you’ll need to set up your seal for each. You can create your own custom text message to use as a seal, or upload your own image.

If you do not see your custom seal—and you haven’t cleared your cookies on your browser—when signing into your account, the site you’re on may be a “spoof” site designed to hoodwink you into giving up your valuable personal information. We encourage you to create a customized sign-in seal for your Yahoo! Search Marketing account today, then look for it every time you log in. You can set up your seal from your Yahoo! Search Marketing log-in page (the real one).

How to Recognize a Scam Email
Phishing emails usually try to hook you with some official-sounding message about your account. A common subject line is “Please Verify Your…”. Once you open the email, you’ll often see familiar corporate colors, branding, logos and language. Sometimes they will tell you that your account has been disabled for a bogus reason. At other times, they’ll offer a “free upgrade” to a new (and often non-existent) service.

Don’t Give Out Account or Personal Info to Anyone
The biggest clue in the fake email is that it asks for your username and password. We will never send you an email asking for your password.

Another way to help tell the faux from the friendly is by looking at the sender’s email address. Most of the official communications we send you will come from an address that looks like this: solutions(at)ysm.yahoo-email.com. If you get an email from a yahoo.com address asking you for info, it’s a good bet that it’s a fake.

If you think you’ve been “phished” for info, please let us know by emailing phishing(at)cc.yahoo-inc.com, or forward the email in question to that address.

To learn more about how you can keep from getting reeled in by “phishermen,” and how to guard against other Internet-based scams, visit these resources:

• Common Abuse Issues
• Yahoo! Security Center

—The Team

Pomp and Circumstance

6 Tips for Prom and Grad Season

My prom was a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten…all the big hair. But proms and graduations still mean a lot to young folks—and the online retailers that sell evening gowns, tuxedos and limo services for the big evening, or diploma frames, coffee mugs or other gifts for grads.

According to a 2007 survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Foundation, a third of people polled planned to purchase at least one graduation gift in 2007, with a total projected spend of $4.5 billion. Although cash was the number-one gift for graduation and prom season, other items such as gift cards, electronics and apparel were also on gift-givers’ lists last year. On average, consumers expected to spend roughly $58.50 on gifts, with parents and grandparents over the age of 45 projected to spend roughly $110.

Ready to take advantage of this springtime shopping season? Here are six helpful tips that may help you attract gift-givers and prom-goers to your ads:

1. Separate Campaigns

Advertisers who sell gift cards, as well as those who specialize in formalwear sales and rental, may want to consider creating campaigns targeted toward consumers who intend to purchase these items for their loved ones. Likewise, advertisers who sell party supplies and greeting cards should also consider separate campaigns targeted at those who are planning graduation or prom bashes.

2. Promotional language

Including deals, such as low price points, coupon codes, free shipping or free gift wrapping, generally improves an ad’s performance.

3. Keyword/creative conflict

Make sure that your titles and descriptions don’t clash with their associated keywords. Even when the keyword appears in the creative, searchers may skip the ad if the main focus appears to be on something else.

4. Keyword insertion and Alt Text

Our Keyword Insertion tool helps make sure that the user’s search term always appears in your ads, and Alt Text helps the ad appear the way you want it.

5. Customization helps

Greeting card sites that offer customizable cards should be sure to mention that in their ads, as it likely will resonate with searchers.

6. Scope of offerings

Searches using general terms shouldn’t lead to an ad for a very specific item. For example, people searching with terms like “prom dress” usually want to be able to browse a variety of styles and colors, and may not click on an ad that promotes a “red floor-length strapless prom dress.”

You may not still remember everything about your prom night or graduation, but if you remember these few important tips, you can make your ads the “class” of ‘08.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

So Happy Together

5 ways to integrate pay-per-click search ads with online display ads

What kind of online advertising should you use: search or display? Well, if you want to drive targeted traffic to your site, build brand awareness and increase sales, you should be using both.

When you tie search ads, display ads and your landing pages together with a consistent message, the mixture can help your advertising resonate with users and drive site traffic and sales to a whole new level.

Here are five tips that you can use to integrate your Sponsored Search ads with display ads:

1. Know your target audience.
This one comes first, because knowing your target audience is the key to any form of Internet marketing. Before a penny is spent on advertising, you must ask yourself: Who do I want to target? What are their needs? Which words should I use in my ad copy to get them to click on my ad?

2. Determine the goals of Sponsored Search and banner ads.
The goals of both types of ads should ultimately be the same: attracting qualified traffic to your site. But the way each accomplishes this may differ. Generally speaking, pay-per-click ads are primarily used for generating leads and sales, and secondarily for increasing brand recognition. The majority of the time, banner ads lean toward branding and to support other search marketing strategies.

3. Write the search ads first and then expand.
When launching Sponsored Search ads and display ads at the same time, it’s generally easier to write the ad copy for the search ads first, and then use that theme to expand the banner campaign. Why? Because you’re working with a finite amount of space in the search ads. Once the search ad copy has been written, your graphic designer will have a better idea how to craft your banner ads.

4. Target your ads for the same places.
It can be very effective to get search ads and display ads displayed in the same general area of a site. For instance, if you operate a travel company in San Francisco and want to target tourists, you might launch a Sponsored Search campaign with Yahoo! Search Marketing, submit your website to Yahoo! Travel Submit, and purchase a banner ad in the Yahoo! Travel San Francisco-related section. This way, visitors can find your ads via search, read reviews in Yahoo! Travel, and see your banner ad on the same page, such as on this page.

5. Test, then test again.
With all online advertising campaigns, you should plot out your campaign at the beginning and test different ads and ad copy, offers or landing pages to achieve the highest return on your advertising investment. Be creative and don’t be afraid to try different things. Some ads that you think will be very effective might tank, while other ads you think will be worthless might take off!

– Nick Stamoulis, President of Brick Marketing and Blogger at Search Engine Optimization Journal and Pay Per Click Journal

Bullseye! photo courtesy of mfshadow via Flickr

Min Bid Changes in Your Account Interface

Find out more about the new tools that can help you manage your bids

“WIIFM,” as most people know, is not your local Lite Rock radio station, but an acronym for the question “What’s In It For Me?”. And WIIFM is what most advertisers want to know anytime we announce a new product, feature or change related to Sponsored Search.

This certainly holds true when it comes to our recent change to the way minimum bids are determined. It really boils down to How will I know if my minimum bids are changing? and Knowing that information, what should I do?.

How You’ll Know if Your Minimum Bids are Changing
A change to minimum bids is important information that you need to find easily. As a result, we’ve literally plastered it all over the account interface—you’d have to work pretty hard not to see it if you’re logged into your account.

The first place you may spot a change is on your Dashboard page. If you have one or more keywords with bids that are below a new minimum amount, you will receive a message in the Dashboard Alerts section, as well as an email. You’ll have a grace period of up to several days to adjust your bids, so that your keywords can stay active. Conversely, we’ll also send alerts when the minimum bid has dropped and your previously inactive keywords are now active.

You can find info on any below-minimum bids on our account-level keyword page, which is itself a nifty new page that lets you look at all keywords in your account, regardless of the campaign or ad group in which they reside. Bids that are either inactive or about to become inactive are highlighted in red in the “Status” column:

Similar status columns have been added to other keyword and ad group pages throughout your account. You can also search for affected keywords with an Advanced Search from a keyword or ad group page, which now lets you filter your keywords by keyword status.

OK, Now What Do I Do With this Information?
During a grace period, your ads will continue to be eligible to be displayed, and the keyword will be displayed with the status “Pending Inactive, Bid Too Low” in the account interface.

After the grace period ends, if you have not raised your bid to at least the new minimum, the keyword will be displayed with the status “Inactive, Bid Too Low” in the account interface. (You can see both of these statuses—or should that be “statii”—in the screen shot above.)

The important thing to remember here is that the only way you can make a “Pending Inactive” or “Inactive” keyword immediately active again is to raise the bid to your required minimum. Increasing the quality of the ads associated with the keyword in question can generally help lower your minimum bid, but not until we recalibrate that minimum bid. So if you don’t want your keyword to go offline at all, you should raise your bid before the grace period ends.

If you decide to increase your bid on a “Pending Inactive” keyword, the new bid takes effect immediately, and your ads become active as soon as your bid meets or exceeds your minimum bid required for that keyword.

To take the “sledge-hammer approach” to increasing your bids above the minimum, use the bulk bidding tool. You start by checking the box next to the keywords you want to adjust, and click “Set Keyword Bids”. This will take you to the page pictured below, where you can raise the selected keyword bids to a level that will meet all of the minimum bid requirements for those keywords.

But remember, with this tool you’re only raising each bid to the minimum needed to stay active, not necessarily to the price that will make you competitive for that keyword.

If you discover that your minimum bids have decreased, you can always lower your bids on those keywords, understanding that by doing so you may end up dropping position in search results and reduce your traffic from that keyword.

Higher or lower, active or inactive, you’re now able to easily see what’s going on with minimum bids in your account, and take action.

— Jeff Hecox

Throw the Bad Clicks Out

New report lets you know how many clicks we’re discarding for you

Our Click Protection System works around the clock to identify clicks we believe you shouldn’t have to pay for—but until now, you had to take our word for it.  Now you can use our new Click Filter Report to find out how many clicks we’re throwing out.   

Who needs a click filter report?

We created the report for a few reasons:

• We want to give you as much transparency as we can
• We want to add to the tools at your disposal for monitoring your own traffic. 
• We believe our Click Protection System is one of the best in the industry, and we want you to see what it does for your account.

This report will help you understand how many clicks we are recording and how many of the ones we do record are deemed invalid.  You can compare that information to the clicks you’re seeing through your weblogs or third party products and, if something doesn’t seem quite right, you can submit a click investigation request to our team.

Why your discarded clicks might be different 

We typically discard between 12 and 15 percent of all clicks, but your account may or may not be “typical.” There can be a number of reasons for this.  Click fraud perpetrators can target one industry more than another, or attack more frequently in one month than another, or focus on one product more than another. 

While click fraud can be unpredictable, we can and do detect patterns .  If you notice a spike in the Click Filter Report—for example, your discard rate goes from 7 percent to 21 percent— that means your invalid clicks increased, but our Click Protection System caught them.  

How to use it

You can find the Click Filter Report in the same location as all other account reports, by clicking the “Reports” tab, then selecting “Click Filter” under the “Traffic Quality Reports” section in the Reports Navigator on the left side of the screen.

The Click Filter Report provides information for any timeframe you want. You can customize the report to include data such as impressions, invalid clicks, invalid click rate, and average cost-per-click. Additionally, if you are using our analytics tools, you can track data such as click conversion rate and revenue.

You can choose to view this data across your entire account or by campaign, by distribution tactic, or by specifying certain campaigns by name via the search function. If you have multiple accounts, the report can display data from all of your accounts simultaneously.

This report follows other recent traffic quality measures we’re undertaking. And now you’ll have a little more visibility into exactly what we’re doing for you.

– Reggie Davis, VP of Network Quality

Minimum Bids No Longer Fixed at $.10

How to manage your new Sponsored Search minimum bids

Starting today, minimum bids for some Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. Throughout the next week, you may start noticing new minimum bids on some of your keywords. Your new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10. We’ll notify you in the account interface when the status of any of your keywords is affected.

How Your Bids Work

The new minimum bids are a little bit like auction house reserve prices, and can be based on multiple factors, such as your keyword quality and the keyword’s value—or how much we think that keyword is worth. Here’s a look at the two main factors:

Quality—High quality generally means that your ads are being clicked more often, relative to your competitors. We try to reward quality with higher rankings and lower costs, and now, potentially, with lower minimum bids.

Value—We look at a number of things to determine what a keyword is worth: for example, how many advertisers are bidding on your keyword, and what they’re willing to pay for it.

A keyword term becomes “active”— or eligible for display—when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. Keywords become inactive when your bid falls below your minimum. You will be notified in an alert on your Account Dashboard if the minimum bid for a keyword increases above your current bid, and you’ll have a grace period of up to several days to raise your bid to keep your keyword active.

Managing the Change

There are three steps you can take to manage this change, which we wrote about in recent blog posts:

1. Get to know your keywords and their value.

2. Improve your ad quality.

3. Use the new updates to the account interface.

Sign up for our webinar for more information.

—The Team

From the Ground Up

Building Your Yahoo! Search Marketing Account

It’s a mystery why the Great Pyramid of Giza is the only structure of the original Seven Wonders of the World that still stands today. Scholars assume that it’s due to its sturdy architecture, but no one knows for sure the actual construction methods that were used to build it.

You may not know much about building your search marketing account, either. But unlike the pyramids, the methods for structuring your search marketing account don’t have to remain a mystery.

Your account is made up of up to 20 campaigns, your campaigns are made up of ad groups, and your ad groups are made up of ads and keywords. What you do at each level matters. Let’s start at the base of your paid search pyramid and work our way up.

Keywords
You can put up to 1,000 keywords in a single ad group  – but you wouldn’t want to. The more keywords in an ad group, the less likely they are to be relevant to each other. It also makes writing ads a lot harder. For easier account management, we recommend:

• Using around 20 keywords in each ad group
• Using click-through rate to determine poor-performing keywords that can be moved into other ad groups.

Don’t put the same keywords in multiple ad groups within your campaigns.  This will cause those keywords to compete with each other, and only one can be displayed in a single set of search results. There are two exceptions:

• When creating a geo-targeted campaign and a non-geo-targeted campaign.
• Within seasonal campaigns targeted for specific holidays, such as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Ad Groups
A well-organized ad group links similar keywords to relevant ads.  When structuring your ad groups, the following tips can help you get better results as you learn what’s working and what’s not:

• Organizing related keywords in your ad groups makes it easier to create more ads that will perform well for each keyword.
• When you’ve identified keywords that aren’t performing well, move these poor performers into their own ad group (making sure they stay as relevant to each other as possible) and price them accordingly. This helps to maintain the ad quality associated with your better-performing keywords.
• Write ads that fit the keywords in your ad group, and test them to see which ads work the best.

Campaigns
So, when do you need to set up a new campaign, as opposed to simply making another ad group? You should create separate campaigns for ads that:

• Target specific geographic areas
• Have goals with specific budgets
• Need to be scheduled with specific beginning and ending dates
• Use the Content Match tactic for ad distribution.

The pyramids weren’t built overnight, and your account structure won’t be either. But stone by stone, with constant attention, you can construct a solid ad organization that will stand the test of time.

–Stephanie Bilberry, Yahoo! Search Marketing Writer

Photo credit By Nina Aldin Thune 

Get AMP!’d

Yahoo! plans to change the way you advertise

Every so often, entire industries are transformed by innovation—and we at Yahoo! think we’re on the verge of transforming the advertising industry. It’s an industry ripe for transformation. Especially with display ads, everything from finding the right audience to booking inventory to testing ads is decidedly old school, and not in the good way. With AMP! from Yahoo!, our forthcoming advertising management platform, we plan to change forever the way you interact with everyone in your advertising world—and make it even easier to get the right ads in front of the right users. Read about it, and see a video of it in action, in this post by Yahoo! President Sue Decker.

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