Archive for September, 2007

Yahoo.com and Beyond

Yahoo! Search Marketing includes a Whole Network of Sites

As you probably already know, Yahoo! Search Marketing’s advertising reach goes beyond just Yahoo! Search and other Yahoo! sites.

Yahoo! Search Marketing is, to a large extent, an ad distribution network. That means that when you become a Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser, your ads can appear on Yahoo.com—the world’s most visited website—and they may also appear on other sites in our ad network, like MTV.com, iVillage.com and eBay.com, as well as on other popular content and information sites.  For a longer list and more details, please visit this page in our Products and Services section.

Being part of an ad distribution network, and not just advertising on a single site, can help you reach a wider audience, create better brand awareness, get more customers and increase your sales.

—The Team

Holiday Search Marketing Strategies

Getting Your Customers to Shop ‘Til They Drop (a Lot of Money on Your Site)

The holidays can be the make or break season for retailers, whether online, offline or a little of both. For obvious and quite unsentimental reasons, we prefer our advertisers to be on the “make” end of the scale.

And, naturally, we do a lot of research around here based on the huge volumes of data our search business generates. In the interest of helping you “put the make” on the holiday season, we’re offering up some of our findings, as well as a few pointers to help enhance your holiday marketing plans.

Holiday Highlights
If you were to ask the Magic Eight Ball if 2007 is likely to be a good year for online retail, the answer might well be: “All signs point to yes.” According to comScore, online consumer spending grew 26 percent in 2006 to $24.4 billion. More than 80 percent of consumers did at least some shopping online (BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006), and 50 percent of shoppers bought more stuff online in 2006 than 2005 (NielsenNetRatings research). It’s a pretty telling trend. (For what it’s worth, last year I did all of my holiday shopping online for the first time.)

The Yahoo! Search Marketing team has prepared some tips for advertisers based on the holiday data we gathered:

Engage the bargain hunters—According to the BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006, nearly half of the consumers polled named “free shipping” as a primary motivator to purchase. Other shoppers named “online only sales” and “repeat buyer discounts.”

Keywords count—According to our internal data, “Christmas” was, not surprisingly, the most holiday-related search term in 2006 with more than three million average monthly searches. Other popular terms included “Christmas decoration,” “Hanukkah,” “holiday gift” and “gift for dad.” Make sure that your keyword selection includes holiday-related keywords and seasonal products and promotions.

Titillate with titles—Titles and descriptions can drive relevance and clicks, so it’s a best practice when creating specific holiday ad groups to place the holiday term prominently in both the title and the description, and include any special seasonal promotions in the copy.

Clear for landing—Make sure that your landing pages are relevant to your keywords, ad copy and any promotions. Nothing’s more frustrating for a consumer to click on an ad that says, “Get 10% off” something and then land on a page where that information is either absent or buried. Prices and promotions should be consistent with ad copy.

Combine search with display and offline advertising—Regular readers of our blog know that search is just one important part of your marketing mix. Make sure you include your keywords and consistent copy in your display and offline marketing material. If you haven’t already read them, check out two recent posts, one on combining search and display advertising and the other on integrating your online and offline campaigns.

We’ll go into some of these in more detail in future posts.

—Michael Mattis, Holiday Shopper

Photo courtesy Steve L., via Flickr.

Turn up Your Offline

Maximizing Offline Channels to Drive Search Success

Week before last, Didit VP Gerry Bavaro offered tips on how to pique people’s curiosity and direct it for more influential marketing. This week Robert Murray, President of the search marketing firm iProspect, picks up where Gerry left off and talks about the importance of off-line marketing to your search marketing efforts, and how to get the most out of your integrated campaigns.

Have you ever driven behind a truck whose rear door sported signage about a service that you needed? Or come across a sparsely written teaser ad about a product that intrigued you while flipping through the pages of a magazine? Or half-listened to a TV or radio ad about an upcoming local event that only grabbed your attention for a few brief seconds?

At some point during the last six months, chances are exposure to an offline ad has led you to go online and launch a search. That’s according to the findings of new research conducted by JupiterResearch and sponsored by my company, iProspect. 

The iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Search Behavior Study found that over the previous six months prior to June, 2006, 67 percent of Internet search users have been influenced to perform a search for a company, product, service, slogan or other related keywords as a result of exposure to some offline channel. The channels the study examined were television ads, radio ads, word-of-mouth, print ads, billboards/venue ads, and ads on trucks, taxis, buses and trains. Despite the obvious connection between offline advertising and search marketing effectiveness, many offline marketers don’t exactly make it easy for consumers to find them online. As a result, companies are leaving untold revenue on the table.

Trust Your Search Marketing Team—And Your Data
Your search marketing team often has the data and the ability to quickly test your advertising. This ability provides them with key insights into how consumers identify with your brand, messaging, and offers through keywords.

For example, imagine a marketer of gardening products contemplating a quarterly print or direct mail campaign. Search marketers could inform their offline counterparts what the most frequently searched for products are online each quarter, as well as the specific creative used in their paid search ads that generated the most clicks and the most conversions for each product. This information would not only help determine what products to promote via these other channels, but would also influence the words used to describe these products so they matched the language consumers associated with them most frequently.

Make it Easy to Find Your Brand
With that in mind, offline channels need to start making it easier for consumers to perform a search and find their brands in search results. This means working with search marketers to ensure that their websites are optimized around the terms that appear in their offline channels. It means including phrases like “Search ‘Mayfair Appliances’ on Yahoo!” or “find us on the Internet by searching ‘Boston Maid Services’.” In addition, offline marketers should start including the company URL just as frequently and prominently in their advertising as their 800 number or the physical address of the business.

Be Consistent with Look, Feel, Offers and Messaging
Offline channel marketers would be wise to take their cues from their search marketing team. For example, would it prove valuable to assess what keywords are driving the most traffic and conversions to the website? Are you bidding on your slogan or tagline?

This information can serve as a guide. Pick the most effective and already proven phrase that can be included in your offline advertising. This can help prospects to perform a search that can result in your website being returned prominently in the search results. If you’re not sure what the key phrase is, test.

Consistency of look and feel is also important. If a prospect reads your slogan or product name on the side of an orange and blue truck in bold black type, they should be greeted by a website that contains the same colors, and includes your slogan or product name in bold black type. This reassures them they have reached the right place.

It’s also critical that offers and messaging be consistent. For example, if your offline offer includes a free download or demo, or a 30 percent off discount, then make sure that searchers see this offer when they arrive on your website or landing page.

The language used in your advertising should be the same that prospects read when they get to the website. If you refer to something as a “service” offline, don’t call it a “product” or a “solution” on the website. If you call something “big-screen” online, don’t call it “wide-screen” offline, and so forth.

As the data from the study demonstrates, offline channels are definitely driving people to search, and ultimately, to purchase. Smart marketers will capitalize upon that trend and work to maximize the effectiveness of all of their channels to turn prospects into customers. The key to doing so is communication between offline and search marketers, making it easy for offline prospects to find your website via search engines, and having consistency in terms of look, feel and messaging.

—Robert Murray, President, iProspect

Fall Back on Travel

An Intro to Travel Submit

Autumn is just about upon us, and it’s the perfect time to jet off to some distant destination to see one of the most vivid joys of the season—colorful fall foliage. If you’re thinking about taking a tiptoe through the leaves, then you may want to traipse on over to Yahoo! Travel for more information on the best locales.

Better yet, if you’re a travel agent and need to advertise a trip deal for any time of year, you’re a great candidate for Yahoo! Travel Submit, a useful solution for anyone with travel-related offers to publicize. So even if you don’t represent a huge airline or hotel, you may still get value from Travel Submit if you have offers related to any of the following categories:

• Air travel
• Car Rental
• Cruises
• Destinations – Attractions/Activities
• Destinations – Events
• Lodging
• Rail, Ground Transport and Ferry
• Vacation Packages
• Vacation Rentals

As with Sponsored Search, you’re only charged when your ad is clicked. Your offers can be displayed in the Yahoo! Travel Deals section, as well as within the Yahoo! Travel Guide sections on Yahoo! Travel. There are a few requirements. Amongst them, you must:

• Have a valid travel offer to publicize, which must also comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
• Sign up for a Yahoo! ID, which you will use to manage your Travel Submit account. There is no charge for a Yahoo! ID, and you can create one when you sign up for your account.
• Agree to the Travel Submit Terms of Service.

As for you “leaf peepers,” some of the prime leaf-changing destinations are only available for a few weeks during the season, so you may want to make your plans right away!

—Stephanie Bilberry, Yahoo! Search Marketing Writer

Six Tips for Building Curiosity and Influence Into Your Search Campaigns

Editor’s Note: My dad used to say, “Curiosity killed the cat… but satisfaction brought him back.” What he meant was that while exploration is fraught with danger, the rewards are well worth the risk. People are naturally curious, which is why the Internet search business has been so successful.

In this guest post, Gerry Bavaro, VP of client services at the search marketing firm Didit, offers tips on how to pique people’s curiosity and channel it for more influential marketing.

Great marketing campaigns create influence by leveraging curiosity. For example, “The Blair Witch Project” of the late ’90s and YouTube celebrity “LonelyGirl15” were both successful in creating buzz by appealing to our innate curiosity. Users didn’t care about being marketed to: If they believed in the Blair Witch, they were freaked out and curious, but even if they didn’t, they were still freaked out and curious.

How can curiosity and influence—elements that are critical in any marketing campaign—be built or supported by search? Here are six tips to help you build a path that drives users toward a desired action, instead of one controlled by your competitors.

1. Understand the Nature of Search
When we search for something, we are driven by curiosity. When we look further, we are influenced by new information that changes our thoughts in a way that either gets us closer to our objective or on a different path leading to a different result. The key is to keep searchers on the path that you want them to take from query to destination, instead of your competition’s.

2. Know Your “Elevator Pitch”
Don’t be the marketer with the fuzzy value proposition, paragraphs of information on your landing pages, and disparate, confusing messages across various channels. In a 10- to 20-second statement, what do you provide, and why is it valuable? Make sure your landing pages clearly express these powerful, simple points.

3. Create Buzz, Don’t Wait For It
Search volume is driven by awareness and curiosity created in the real world. If there’s no buzz happening, get some going. Communicate with like-minded communities of interest, whether they exist in the form of relevant blogs, social network subgroups, electronic lists or bulletin boards. Give people a reason to “spread the word” about what you’re doing. These strategies can also support increased links to your website, which can help organic search results.

4. Truly Know Your Target Audience
You have a target audience, so don’t dilute your marketing messages by trying to appeal to everyone. You need to understand your target audience not just in terms of demographics, but also in terms of psychographics (what are their lifestyles like, what websites do they visit most, how do they communicate, are they socially conscious and active, do price or quality drive them?).

5. Be Creative About Everything, Not Just Your Creative
Creativity isn’t just about the design of banners, marketing materials, websites, landing pages or copywriting. Get creative about how you manage your business around search. Include discount coupons for customers coming from paid search to influence repeat purchases and avoid paying again for these customers. Look into co-branded promotions and events with related companies, or those that have affinity and can drive awareness, which in turn can increase branded or generic search volume. If you promote a topic, concept, or type of product/service, consider “out-of-the-box” marketing ideas such as viral videos posted on YouTube, a company MySpace page,or events that can add user touchpoints that will increase curiosity.

6. Test, Test and Test Some More
In pay-per-click search, those who test most, win. Establish titles/descriptions and landing pages across campaigns that achieve a baseline of results, then consistently test against this baseline to improve click-through and conversion rates. Remember, any increase in conversion rates will allow you to afford more aggressive bidding/positions, which in turn will increase click volume and overall curiosity.

These measures can increase your search campaign’s ability to encourage people’s curiosity and influence their decisions. Carried out consistently across your campaigns, they can also help ensure that your efforts are aligned for maximum impact.

—Gerry Bavaro, vice president, client services, Didit

Too Much Information?

New Dashboard Button for Deleting Alerts

From time to time we send alerts to your Dashboard, usually having to do with some issue or other regarding your account. Your most recent alerts appear in reverse chronological order (i.e., newest alert first) in the box on the upper left of your dashboard homepage.

Previously, you could only delete alerts from the View All alerts screen. But now, you can delete an alert right from your dashboard home page, simply by clicking on the little trash can icon to the right of it.

It’s modest little improvement, but one our advertisers have asked for.

—The Team

Retail Therapy

An Intro to Product Submit

If you have products to sell and they are not listed when buyers search online to do their shopping you may be missing out on the ever-growing number of consumers who are more likely to open a browser window than go window shopping.

To assist you in your online retail efforts, there is Yahoo! Product Submit. With Product Submit, your product listings appear in search results whenever someone searches for keywords related to your product. A product submission in Yahoo! Product Search is a simple way to give searchers a better lease on online shopping with a heaping dose of your stuff.

Benefits of Yahoo! Product Submit
Some benefits of using Yahoo! Product Submit include:

• Having your products display in Yahoo! Shopping’s Product Search Results
• Paying for product display only when your product listing is clicked, with the price-per-click determined by your product’s category
• The possibility of your product appearing in Yahoo! Shopping’s buyer’s guide pages to assist shoppers in making purchase decisions

Requirements for Yahoo! Product Submit
There are some requirements to participate in Yahoo! Product Submit. Amongst them, you must:

• Sell fixed-price products online and be authorized to sell and ship fixed-price products in the US
• Agree to the Product Submit Terms of Service
• Provide product descriptions in English and pricing in U.S. dollars

For more info, visit the Yahoo! Product Submit information page.

–Stephanie Bilberry, Yahoo! Search Marketing Writer

Lessons in Yahoo! Search Marketing

New, Free Webinar Series Helps You Get a Handle on Your Campaigns

Starting Tuesday, September 11, we will offer a new, free webinar series for Yahoo! Search Marketers. This hands-on, three-part series will cover the ins and outs of Yahoo! Search Marketing, from beginning to advanced:

Key Terms, Account Interface Overview and Structure

•  How Sponsored Search works
• Account structure and elements at each level
• A high-level review of each main section of the account interface
• Webinar dates/times: 9/18/07 at 1:00 p.m. and 10/9/07 at 11:00 a.m. (all times Pacific)

Creating a New Campaign

• Adding keywords using the keyword selector tool
• Creating two ads to test performance
• Geo-targeting and match types
• Webinar dates/times: 9/11/07 at 11:00 a.m., 9/25/07 at 1:00 p.m. and 10/16/07 at 11:00 a.m. (all times Pacific)

Keyword Tips and Best Practices

• How adding keywords can lead to an increase in traffic and an overall improvement in your account’s effectiveness
• Ensuring keywords are related to your content, theme and purpose of your web site
• Using match types and excluded words
• Webinar dates/times: 9/13/07 at 11:00 a.m., 10/2/07 at 1:00 p.m. and 10/23/07 at 11:00 a.m. (all times Pacific)

Quality Index Score

• Finding your quality index score
• Understanding the factors that influence it
• Best practices for improving it
• Webinar dates/times: 9/17/2007 at 11:00 a.m., 10/11/2007 at 1:00 p.m. (all times Pacific)

Bidding and Forecasting

• Determining your estimated rank in search results
• How to bid at the single and multiple keyword levels
• Understanding forecasting tools such as monthly estimates, etc.
• Webinar dates/times: 9/27/2007 at 11:00 a.m., 10/18/2007 at1:00 p.m. (all times Pacific)

Ad Testing

• Understand the benefits and get tips for using ad testing,
• How to activate ad testing
• Best practices for creating ads to test

Attendance at these webinars is limited, so you’ll want to register ASAP. To register for a specific webinar, click here.

First-time registrants will need to create a password of between 4 and 32 characters. Please write down your password—you will need it to access the webinar.

—The Team

New Payment Option and a Special Offer

Secure, flexible online payments with PayPal

In addition to the myriad enhancements announced last week, your account now includes PayPal as a secure, flexible online payment option. You can now pay your Yahoo! Search Marketing bill via PayPal.

If you’re an online retailer, you probably already use PayPal to offer as a method of payment for your customers. In that case, you now have the ability to move funds directly from your existing PayPal account to pay for your search marketing budget, saving you time.

You can opt in to PayPal from the Admistration tab of your secure administration interface.

In addition, Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers who are also online retailers may be eligible to take advantage of zero PayPal Express Checkout fees through May, 2008 and (drum-roll, please) a $100 credit toward their Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts. Click here to learn more.

—The Team

A Direct Response to Feeling “Blue”

Yahoo! to Acquire BlueLithium

Fine. We admit it. Yahoo! is out to be the largest and most effective online ad network in the world. 

To further us along in our quest, we recently finalized our acquisition of Right Media, one of the fastest growing display ad networks and clearing houses for publisher ad inventory.

That’s great, but there’s still work to do. Alongside display advertising, “performance marketing” is one of the fastest growing fields online. Performance marketing, sometimes called “direct response,” drives specific transactions, such as getting a certain lead or the sale of an individual product or service.

BlueLithium will bring Yahoo! a ton of expertise in performance marketing and targeting, as well as valuable new audiences. We’ll be able to drive performance-based campaigns both on the Yahoo! network and off.

Eventually, this will mean Yahoo! will become a one stop shop for all advertiser marketing needs. For more on BlueLithium, see Todd Teresi’s post on Yodel Anecdotal.    

—The Team

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