Posts filed under 'How To's'

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

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

Ad Testing Month

Increased sales start with better ads

Okay, so maybe “Ad Testing Month” doesn’t sound quite as poignant or cool as, say, Alternate History Month (celebrating speculative sci fi), Baby Boomer Recognition Day (no kidding), Cartoon Art Appreciation Week, or I Forgot Day, when you can make up for all the birthdays and anniversaries you forgot during the year. But we’re kind of excited about it.

September is a great time for Ad Testing Month because it comes after the summer break but before the holidays, when you’re getting your business ready for the rush and finding ways to maximize your ROI.

Ad testing, for those of you new to Yahoo! Search Marketing or who have been sipping mai tais in Tahiti all summer, lets you test multiple ads to determine which messages work best. Ad testing happens automatically when you create more than one ad within an ad group. Here’s a handy tutorial on the topic.

Also, check out this past post, which details more about how ad testing works.

Test and Optimize
You can also set the system to display the most successful ads, based on click-through rate, more often. Make sure ad optimization is on (the default setting), log in to your account, choose a campaign and then an ad group. Click “Ad Group Settings” and then click “edit” in the General Information box. Switch “Optimize Ad Display to “On.”

Be sure to take advantage of the helpful new ad writing features that we announced last week and take September to really make your ads as clickable as they can be. It won’t take much extra effort and could help increase your ROI.

—Michael Mattis

The More the Merrier

Using More Features Can Help Make Your Campaigns More Successful

We’re always studying how advertisers are using Yahoo! Search Marketing tools and features, getting feedback and adjusting to current demands. Our ongoing roll-out of new features is a big part of this effort.

In our research we noticed a few interesting trends:

• A significant percentage of advertisers may have been reluctant to use some existing features and to try new ones
• Some advertisers may not have been aware if they were using certain features or not
• Most importantly: Advertiser who took advantage of certain features were generally better satisfied with their performance than advertisers did not use those features

Take for example, ad testing, sometimes called A/B testing. Ad testing allows you to test different versions of your ad to see which one receives the highest click-through rate and can help you improve your quality index score. However, we found that some advertisers may not have known whether they were using ad testing or not. That’s probably because ad testing occurs automatically but only if you have more than one ad in each ad group.

If you don’t have more than one ad in an ad group, there’s nothing to test against. To take advantage of ad testing, you have to have at least two ads in each ad group, and preferably more (up to 20).

You can see which ads are performing best by clicking on the Campaigns tab and going into a specific ad group. There you can compare the ads in that ad group and see which ones are performing best.

But you can save yourself the trouble of manually checking on your ads all the time by making sure ad optimization is turned on. With Ad optimization those ads in ad group that have a higher click-through rate (CTR) may be displayed more often than those with a lower CTR. To find out how to turn on ad optimization, consult the Help Center.

Here are some helpful hints on ad testing. There’s also some useful info in the help section, and a “How Ad Testing Works” tutorial.

Then there’s geo-targeting. While this is a very in-demand feature, we found that fewer of you were using it than should be. Geo-targeting lets you restrict your ads to users who are either located in, or who are interested in, a specific geographic area. You select that geographic region for each campaign. Once selected, that targeting is applied to all of the ad groups and the ads within that campaign. For more on geo-targeting check out our previous posts, here and here, as well as our “how geo-targeting works” tutorial.

Lastly (but certainly not least-ly) there’s your quality index score. You’ve probably seen the little “five bars” graphic in your secure account interface. This isn’t a feature that you can turn off and turn on, like geo-targeting, but one that’s always on and indicating your ad quality relative to competing ads in the network. Basically, your quality index score (to quote our FAQs):

…reflects your ad’s ability to meet the needs of users by looking at how relevant your ad is to each keyword and also its click-through rate relative to its position and other ads displayed at the same time.   

And:

Your ad’s quality index also impacts how much you need to bid and the position in which your ad appears—in some instances, ads with a higher quality index may require a lower bid and/or receive better placement on the results page

In short, maintaining a high quality index score can help you achieve better placement and cost savings. Some advertisers, however, may still be in a bit of a quandary over what constitutes a quality ad. But help is on the way. Here are number of resources:

For basics, there’s our Bidding and Ranking tutorial

For tips on improving ad quality:

Improving Ad Quality, Part I: The Equalizer

Improving Ad Quality, Part II: Finding the right message for your customers with Ad Testing

Improving Ad Quality, Part III: Using the Insert Keyword feature

Improving Ad Quality, Part IV: Structure Matters

Think Short

—Michael Mattis

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Note also the permanent link in the right-hand column. And you can still get posts in an RSS feed.

 —Michael Mattis, Head Telegraphy & Semaphore Specialist

And You Can Take That to the Bank

How to Add Credit Cards to Your Account

The first charge card was created as a convenience to travelers, allowing them to pay for dining, entertainment and airline expenses without having to carry cash. But recent surveys have suggested that purchasers spend more than twice as much on the average credit card transaction as compared to using cash. Who knew a wallet-sized rectangular piece of plastic with a mere .76mm thickness could be so devious?

Such knowledge may well have you seeking a card with a better rate and better rewards. And when the mailman comes a-knockin’ with your new synthetic gold, you can use the following steps to add it as a payment option for your Yahoo! Search Marketing account:

Add a New Credit Card to Your Account

• From the Administration tab, click the “Accounts” subtab. 
• Click the blue “Edit” link in the Payment Method field (next to the payment method currently used to fund your search marketing account) in the Billing and Payment Information section.
• Click the blue ”+Add a Credit Card” link found in the heading box of the bottom section to the right of the title View All Fields.
• Enter your credit card information on the Enter a Payment Method page.
  Click “Save Changes.”

If you would like to delete an existing credit card from your account, please call us at (866) YAHOO-SM (866-924-6676), and a Customer Solutions advocate can assist you in removing the credit card account information.

—Stephanie Bilberry, Yahoo! Search Marketing Writer

Improve Your Conversion Rates

9 Tips to Help Optimize Your Landing Pages

For obvious reasons we tend to focus a lot on keywords and ad copy. They’re vital to getting search users to click on your ads. But once they have clicked, then what? Hopefully, they’re A) in a buyin’ mood and B) they’ve actually come to the right place.

You can help promote both of these results by optimizing your landing pages. Here are nine tips to help get your leads to stick around and buy from you:

1. Connect the search experience to the landing page experience.
Wherever possible, use the same language on your landing pages as you do in your ads. It’s a real disconnect when you click on an ad that reads, “Online Conversion Rate Counter” only to land on a page selling a “Conversion Calculating Service.”

2. Integrate your landing page into your site.
Some advertisers make the mistake of building stand-alone landing pages for certain keywords that are more-or-less “divorced” from the rest of their sites. This can make your business seem sketchy to potential customers, who you want to be able to trust you with their credit card info. A consistent experience across all of your pages and product offerings can help create a more convincing experience. (More on this below.)

3. Gain their trust.
Use trusted, third-party security providers and make sure their badges and icons are clearly visible.

4. Offer tips and suggestions.
How can potential customers best use the product? If you’re selling steaks, offer a steak au poivre recipe. There’s a potential for up- and cross-sell here, as well. Perhaps monsieur would enjoy a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon with his tender, juicy filet mignon, oui? Just don’t go crazy with it, mon ami. (See 5 and 6, below.)

5. Stay on target.
If your ad specifies John Deere tractors, make sure all of your tractors for sale on that page are John Deere tractors. In other words, if I had been looking for Caterpillar bulldozers I’d have clicked on an ad for them instead.

6. Cut the clutter.
Your landing page should not be too generic and cluttered. This ties in with the tip above. If your ad is for discount wholesale 7Up, don’t clutter the page up with other un-colas. This helps keep the lead focused.

7. Ban the bling.
Your landing page should be cleanly and attractively designed, but avoid distractions like music or other audio, animations and revolving logos. These can distract prospective customers from their purpose, which is to buy the product or service that they need, hopefully from you. Again, keep ‘em focused on the task.

8. Give them something to do.
A little interactivity can help keep people engaged. For some products, especially big-ticket items, things like video testimonials and 360-degree tours may be good sales aids. Just let customers decide whether or not they want to view them by giving them control. And remember Tip 7: Keep the bling to a minimum.

9. Write right.
Language counts. Think of your landing page as a salesperson in a showroom. What would a salesperson say to a prospect to help “get to yes?” Here are a few classic pointers:

• Make sure that your headers and subheads are clear and direct.
• Deliver your value proposition right away.
• Offer a persuasive message near the call-to-action—You know: “Don’t be left out of this amazing offer,” etc.
• Be nice with your call-to-action copy—”Submit” and “Buy Now” can sound like orders and put some people off. “Try it Now” sounds nicer.

For more tips on landing page optimization, visit this page in our Help Center.

—Michael Mattis, Conversion Tipster

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