Posts filed under 'Search'

Back-to-School Ad Tips

Adjust your ads and keywords for maximum results this shopping season

It might seem like summer just started, but, as always, consumer minds soon turn to what comes next. Before you know it, summer fun ends, and kids and adults alike have to prepare to go back to school.

Back-to-school is big
According to the National Retail Foundation’s 2010 Back-to-School survey, conducted by BIGresearch, the average American family is planning to increase its back-to-school spending to $606.40 this year, up from $548.72 in 2009. And, according to the survey, 30.8% of families plan to do their back-to-school shopping online this year.

The Yahoo! Buzz Index shows that searches for “back to school” and related keywords rise dramatically in July and peak in August. This is when people are most on the lookout for school supplies like textbooks, laptop computers, backpacks, uniforms, calculators, dorm accessories, fashionable teen clothing and more.

Give shoppers their own back-to-school assignment
Want to know a surprising fact? Online back-to-school shoppers love deadlines—in a way. Just think: Remember all those nights you spent cramming for the big test or writing that term paper the night before it was due? Consumers can feel the same way about making “un-fun” purchases.

So how can retailers get past consumer reluctance to purchase the unexciting things that they clearly need? Give them a due date, just as teachers give them to their students.

Offer sales and promotions to stir action
Web searchers tend to respond well to ads that offer sales and promotions with specific ending dates, because they know they will have to purchase soon to get the special price. These deadlines serve as a call-to-action for targeted customers who really need to make those purchases, and want to get a bargain at the same time. So if you can offer a great back-to-school-themed deal, you might encourage user action with promotional copy that has a clear end date.

But make sure that your date-specific copy is not still running when the deadline has passed—users definitely won’t click when you are telling them that it is already too late to buy.

Other things to keep in mind for back-to-school campaigns:

• Accessories and Keyword Scope: If your product or service is very specific and niche-interest, your ads may not perform well when paired with broad-concept keywords. For example, if you offer laptop carrying cases, your ad may not perform well when paired with a broad keyword like “laptop,” since most searchers on that word want to purchase the computer itself. If you make sure that your keywords are as specific as your products, and that your copy is specifically tailored to those keywords, you are more likely to get targeted clicks and conversions.
• Readin’ & Writin’: Be sure to double-check all of your ads for proper spelling, case, punctuation and grammar. Back-to-school searchers are clearly educated, so keep their confidence with clear copy that impresses.

Remember, sometimes just a little advance homework can give you a back-to-school shopping season that passes the test for retailers and consumers alike!

— Mark Melville, Yahoo! Best Practices Analyst

Building a Foundation with Strong Keywords

Go wide—with a range of specific and general words and phrases

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted February 3, 2009

[Below is an excerpt from Yahoo!’s 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, the tips from Yahoo!’s “Sharon Goodsense” offer practical search marketing insights. Download Smart Start.]

Want to increase your conversion numbers? You may need to consider bidding on more specific keywords that contain things like the brands you sell and even specific model numbers. This will appeal to searchers who are closer—or ready—to purchase.

Start by looking online—and thinking like a customer
One of the best and easiest places to begin scouting out keywords is right on your web site. Look through all your pages and pick out the words that are most relevant and interesting to your customers.

• Put yourself in searchers’ shoes to come up with all of the possible ways they might be looking for what you offer.
• Consider bidding on keywords for your most profitable products and services first to spend most effectively within your budget.
• Think about what you want your customers to do (like become better informed or make a purchase).
• Review your competitors’ web sites to see what kinds of words they use to talk to customers
• Use the Find Keywords panel, on the left side of the Choose Keywords page in your account, to get possible keywords that relate to the products and services you want to promote.
• For a more advanced way to find keywords, check your web server logs. These logs can tell you what your site visitors are searching for and how they navigate through your web pages.

Customer mindset changes throughout the buying cycle
1) In the research phase…
Customers are usually just gathering information about product categories, product options and different retailers. They use broad or generic search terms during this phase. Keyword examples: television, camera, video game.

2) In the shopping phase…
Customers are comparing and narrowing their purchase options. They use more specific terms when searching during this phase. Keyword examples: plasma television, digital camera, zombie video game.

3) In the purchase phase…
Customers are ready to buy. They often know exactly what they want, and are going to use very specific search terms to find it. Keyword examples: 42” Brand X plasma TV, 8 megapixel digital camera, Zombieslayer II.

Specific keywords are often more effective than general ones

Broad keywords are great for driving traffic to your web site, but can cause you to go through your budget faster. And unfortunately, because they’re used during the research phase, they don’t lead to purchases or sign-ups as often.

To increase your chances of clicks leading to sales, it’s better to bid on more specific or niche keywords. This can slow your spending and potentially improve your results. As you’ll read later, you will need to continually monitor the performance of your keywords to make sure they’re working for your business.

If your keywords all appear to fall into one phase, now’s the time to make some changes. Look through your list of keywords and determine which phase of the buying cycle they apply to, then round out or amend your list so you’re not just focusing all of your effort and spending on one type of customer.

— The Smart Start Team

Free Ship = Good Tip

It’s the wonder offer that works wonders for your sales

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted February 13, 2009

When I was a kid, my grandfather always used to say, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” He’s still right, but today the word “free” doesn’t raise as much of red flag as it did in Gramps’ day. In fact, more and more consumers are recognizing the value of free, especially when it comes to their online purchases and how they’re shipped. Because when it comes to shipping, “free” can be the key that unlocks the door between advertisers and customers.

Determining factor
According to a new study of 9,000 shoppers conducted by ForeSee Results, free shipping had a huge effect on holiday sales in 2008. The study showed that free shipping offers play a major role in whether consumers buy in a store or online, and, when purchasing online, where they shop. Avoiding shipping costs was the third most common response for why shoppers choose to buy in a store rather than on a retail website, behind the ability to receive the product immediately and being able to see or feel an item before purchase.

Additionally, consumers gave retailers offering free shipping higher scores than those not offering it—in every satisfaction category. These categories included likelihood to purchase online, brand commitment, likelihood to return, likelihood to recommend, and overall retailer satisfaction.

How to promote free shipping
All of this adds up to one inescapable conclusion: Free shipping can work wonders. So if you offer this option, be sure to scream it out in all of your ads, because your customers will want to know about and take advantage of it.

This is also true for all of the other special deals you offer, from coupons to discounts to free gift wrapping. If you offer it, let your customers know about it! Free shipping and other special deals are the best first impression you could possibly make on potential customers, as well as a great way of ensuring loyalty in the ones you already have.

One note though: If you offer free shipping but with restrictions—such as minimum order amounts or only on certain items—be sure to make that clear, too. The ForeSee study showed that consumers don’t like surprises when it comes to free shipping, but they’re far more lenient if the rules are explained up front.

In this time of tightening belts and careful finance monitoring, consumers are more careful than ever about where their dollars are going. Free shipping is a great way to ease consumer concerns and grow customer loyalty at the same time.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

5 Burning Questions About Your Ads

In which we answer the most frequent queries from our webinars

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted February 26, 2009

If you want to know whether to accept a wedding invitation if it doesn’t say whether there’ll be an open bar, we recommend Yahoo! Answers. If you want to know more about how your Sponsored Search account works, though, our free online webinars are the way to go. We hold these regularly and post the archives online, but for a quick taste of the give-and-take, you can peruse the following Q&As about ads that advertisers often toss our way:

How do I change the display URL on my ads?
The display URL is the web address that is displayed with your ad instead of your destination URL, which is typically lengthy. A display URL can provide your ad with a more concise, visually appealing URL. The display URL appears below the ad’s description and must correspond to a page on your site.

You can actually change the display URL on two levels: the account level, which will become the default URL for your whole account; and the ad level, which will individually override the account-level display URL. You can change the account display URL on the Administration tab in your account by clicking the “edit” button in Account General Information section.

You can change the ad display URL by navigating to the ad group containing the ad, clicking “Edit” next to the ad, and clicking on the black arrow next to the Display URL field.

What happens if my ad title plus an inserted keyword creates a title of more than 40 characters?
When you use the insert keyword feature, you are required to enter “default text.” If using the inserted keyword in your ad would cause the title to exceed 40 characters, then the default text will be used instead.

How often is the quality index re-calculated for my ads?
Quality index scores are constantly re-calculated (every time your ad is displayed or considered for display) based on relevancy factors, along with the ad’s click-through rate relative to its position and to other ads displayed at the same time.

When receiving traffic via the Advanced match type option, is there a way to find out the exact search term that searchers used?
If you enable tracking URLs (located in the “Administrative” tab under Tracking URLs), you will be able to see what terms were searched on and the ads they matched to in your account. Read more about tracking URLs.

What are long descriptions used for?
While your long description may be shown on some Yahoo! distribution partner sites, only your short description will be shown in search results on Yahoo.com. Thus, creating a long description is optional for each ad you create. A long description can be added to provide more detailed information about your products, services and offers, but it may be seen by fewer users.

— The Team

4 Tools You Should Be Using

Essential tools to make your account better, stronger, faster

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted March 3, 2009

Just as you should have your basic wrenches and screwdrivers in your toolbelt when fixing up a house, there are a few tools that are indispensible when working on your Sponsored Search account. We put the feelers out to our Customer Solutions representatives to find out which tools they most frequently recommend, and here are the top four:

1. Analytics – to put your money where your money is 
We offer two types of analytics tools, both of which help you learn more about your clicks and conversions:

Conversion-only analytics, which will show you how many conversions occur from clicks coming in from your campaign ads. You can also see the total revenue brought in by these conversions. Learn how to activate conversion-only analytics.

Full analytics, which tracks conversions and website activity, follows your visitors after they click on your ad, go to your landing page, what they browse from there, if they put something in the shopping cart with the intent to purchase, and when they checkout. Full analytics is like a secret agent on a mission to let you know how visitors are viewing and using your site, so you know which pages and products catch the most attention and lead to revenue. Learn how to activate full analytics.

2. Reports – to see if your account gets an “A”
Using reports, you can compare ad performance, landing page performance and keyword performance, then identify trends that you would like to repeat (or not). You can save report views and even have them emailed to you automatically. How’s that for service? Learn more about the various reports we offer.

3. Forecasting tool for keywords – to see into the future
This handy graph with a scroll bar provides a little clairvoyance on your keyword performance by predicting the outcome of your bids. So you can use it as a guide to determine how much you should raise or lower your bid to achieve your desired position in search results. Plus, it’s just plain fun to scroll back and forth and visualize a profitable future.

The data in our forecasting tool is based on historical traffic for the keyword, which is calculated using a combination of your bid on this keyword and the keyword’s track record, including previous bids of other advertisers and monthly click volume. Many factors, including the bidding behavior of other advertisers, your campaign settings and the quality of your ad and its relevance to searches, could significantly influence your actual results. Learn more about forecasting tools.

4. Campaign tune-up – because a good mechanic is hard to find
You may be able to craft a strong account on your own, but sometimes it helps to get an expert evaluation to find the spots in need of repair.

The campaign tune-up analyzes your campaigns to generate a proposal of suggested keyword bids, match types and spending limits that may help you improve campaign performance. To use this tool, your  account must be at least 90 days old (in order to have enough information in its history to provide data for analysis).

Once requested, the campaign tune-up goes to work reviewing performance history, estimated future performance, monthly budget and other factors. After finishing the analysis, you’ll receive notification in the alerts panel of your account Dashboard that your tune-up proposal is ready. Learn more about campaign tune-up.

Keep in mind that your account is always a little bit of fixer-upper. By being willing to constantly track and fine-tune, your investment is more likely to pay off.

—Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager

Traditional Agencies + Search Marketing: Are We There Yet?

The great SEO and marketing divide

Fifteen years ago, advertising and marketing agencies were doing market research for their clients, crafting targeted messages, and pumping out TV commercials, radio spots, direct mail pieces, magazine ads, billboards, bus ads and the occasional animated Punch the Monkey banner ad. The primary goal of these agencies was (and still is) to gain visibility and make money for a client through various channels.

At the same time, an underground movement of swashbuckling web-savvy trailblazers was realizing the potential for making money online through quick and easy tweaks to the code of a web page, which allowed them to rank at the top of search results for high-demand terms. These people became known as Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs). The primary goal of those in the SEO industry has been (and still is) to gain visibility and make money through just one channel: search.

Even now, almost two decades since SEOs started popping on the scene, marketing and advertising agencies are often finding it difficult to understand and incorporate search engine optimization, and SEOs largely fail to fundamentally comprehend how search marketing fits into an integrated campaign.

The Case for Agencies to Take on SEO
According to a Jupiter Research study, 37% of people have been driven to search engines after seeing a TV ad; while 30% have been prompted by something they saw in a magazine, 17% from a radio ad, 9% from a billboard, and 10% from ads on vehicles.

Many advertising and marketing efforts still do not effectively leverage search as a channel to reach their target markets. And for those that do, most will take the paid search route, paying a few cents per click (which can be tens of thousands of dollars a month) for a paid ad in search results, rather than trying to figure out the black magic of organic search engine optimization (SEO). Given that 85% of searchers click on organic results, it’s probably not wise to rely soley on paid search to drive traffic.

Vanessa Fox points out a specific cross-channel failure in her book Marketing in the Age of Google, where she points out that Hyundai spent $13.5 million to sponsor the 2009 pregame Super Bowl show and run commercials for the Hyundai Genesis Coupe throughout the game. The commercial provided the viewers with the URL “edityourown.com” at the end of the ad.

What Hyundai failed to realize is that while some people will type the URL directly into the browser address bar, out of habit many people do a search for what they’ve seen in an ad, even when the URL is provided directly. Immediately after the commercial aired, search trends showed “hyundai genesis coupe” and “edit your own” in the list of the hottest top search trends.

Although Hyundai did buy a paid search ad for searches on the phrase “edit your own,” there were no relevant organic search results to be found. 

To make matters worse, the paid ad that appeared in search results for searches on “edit your own” also displayed the URL “hyundaigenesis.com” rather than ”edityourown.com,” which surely resulted in many searchers overlooking the ad. And as Vanessa Fox puts it, “since we’re an instant gratification culture…many people likely gave up and simply went back to watching the game after their failed attempt to find the site.”

Come together, right now, over marketing
The argument as to where SEO belongs in an organization has often been a duel between engineering and marketing, since SEOs are so close to the development of the site but are also involved in its visibility in the search channel. As of this 2008 In-House SEO study by SEMPO, 77% of in-house SEOs reported into marketing. This is a good sign.

But overall, when it comes to traditional agencies’ ability to incorporate SEO, we’re not quite there yet. One way or another, big brands are still failing to gain visibility in search for high-visibility campaigns and keywords that are core to their business. Either the agencies they contract are not focused on this channel for the brand, or the in-house marketing teams are “siloed” or simply lack the resources or know-how to go after the space.

In future posts, we’ll give you some real examples of agencies who have embraced search marketing and are successfully integrating cross-channel marketing campaigns.

— Laura Lippay

Visit Laura at Lip Service, and see some of her previous posts, “Examining Your Backlinks with Yahoo! Site Explorer” and “Defining Your Target Audience for SEO.”