Posts filed under 'Tips'

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

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

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

Make Your (Mother’s) Day

Mom will love the flowers, but she’ll really be impressed if you use these 8 tips to grow your profits

When you were a kid, your mom was probably always after you to keep your room tidy. Now that you’re an adult, it’s up to us to nag you about keeping your search ads clean and organized.

With Mom’s favorite holiday rapidly approaching, now’s the perfect time to tidy up your Mother’s Day ads, so that you can help your customers find you, and find just the right thing for their own mum. Take a moment to consider these eight tips, which we think should help make your Mother’s Day ads good enough to pass even the toughest mother’s inspection:

1. Scope of Offering

Ads for broad keywords generally do not perform well when the results are too narrow. People searching on keywords like “mothers day gifts” usually want a variety of offerings, rather than one specific item.

2. Promotional Language

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

3. Keyword/Creative Conflict

Make sure your titles and descriptions don’t clash with their associated keywords. For example, avoid associating Valentine’s Day ads with “Mother’s day” 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. Same Day Delivery

If you offer same-day delivery on gift baskets or flowers, be sure to call that out in your ads.

5. Keyword Insertion and Alt Text

Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Keyword Insertion tool helps make sure that the keyword always appears in the ad, and Alt Text helps the ad appear the way you want it.

6. Buying vs. Printing

Be careful if you run a site that offers printers or printing services—these aren’t good matches for “greeting card” keywords.

7. Sales vs. Service

Sites that buy or repair jewelry as well as sell it should be sure to put the emphasis on sales, since that’s most likely what Mother’s Day shoppers are looking for.

8. Personalization Helps

Jewelry or other types of sites that offer personalized or customized items tend to perform well with Mother’s Day shoppers.

Following these simple rules should give you strong Mother’s Day ads that will appeal to customers and make your mom proud.

For more Mother’s Day tips, visit our help center.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Image from Sharon Mollerus via Flickr

The Good, the Bad, the Creative

Seven tips to make sure your ad’s aim is true

When it comes to your ad copy, there’s good, there’s bad, and—I know this all too well—there’s sometimes ugly. Like the desperadoes in the old westerns, the latter need to be rounded up and sent away.

To help us clean up this town we call Sponsored Search, we’ve put together our own magnificent seven—tips, that is:

1. Keyword Inclusion – Whenever possible, make sure to use the keyword in your titles and descriptions. It can help make them more relevant and attractive to the people searching on them.
2. Keyword Insertion and Alt Text – Keyword Insertion helps ensure that the keyword always appears in the ad, and Alt Text helps the ad to read correctly and appear the way you want it to.
3. Quality and Clarity – Clear, effective titles and descriptions give searchers a distinct idea of who you are and what you have to offer. Avoid spelling and grammar mistakes, as well as poorly worded titles and descriptions.
4. Relevance – Make sure that your ads are relevant to the keywords in your ad group. Avoid “catch-all” ad copy that simply doesn’t fit with certain keywords.
5. Keyword/Creative Conflict – Avoid ad copy that appears to clash with your offerings, such as a description that stresses low prices on shoes when in fact you primarily sell shirts. Even when the keyword appears in the creative, searchers may skip the ad if you stress something else.
6. Competitive Advantage – If you got it, flaunt it! If you offer something that may give you an edge such as free shipping or a low price guarantee, be sure to mention it in your copy.
7. Ad Testing – By creating multiple ads, you can use ad testing to test the viability of your ads and see which message resonates more with searchers. Routinely checking on the status and performance of your ads will help you stay on top of consumer response.

Now that you’re armed with ideas, you can have your bad ads heading out of town by high noon, if not sooner.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Photo courtesy of freeparking via Flickr

Crunch Time

Tear yourself away from The Madness for a few minutes to take a closer look at your keywords in light of the upcoming minimum bid change

It’s March, and all across this land of ours, people are hard at work on their computers, trying to figure out…who could win the NCAA basketball tournament. Is Davidson for real, is UCLA the team to beat—or is it Tennessee, North Carolina, or some fabled “Cinderella” team?

Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers may want to put down their brackets for a few minutes and spend an equal amount of time taking a deep dive into their pool of keywords, because with the upcoming change to the way minimum bids are set, it’s a whole new game.

Staying Off the Bubble

In the next few weeks, the switch will be flipped on this new feature, and with it come both opportunities and potential pitfalls. If you have keywords with minimum bids that go down, you may be able to reallocate your money to other keywords or by expanding your keyword roster. Conversely, if you have minimum bids that are headed north, it would be good to know whether you should raise your bids or let the associated keywords go inactive.

You can get ready for the tip-off of the new minimum bid feature by taking a closer look at your keywords, both now and after the new bid requirements are in play. Here are some suggestions on where to focus your efforts:

1. Learn which keywords work best for your business.

• Identify your most important keywords by comparing their click-through rates, click volume and performance metrics.
• Add these all-star keywords to your “watched keywords” list for easy reference going forward.
• Continue to monitor performance metrics regularly to identify changes, both positive and negative.

2. Put your trust in your proven winners.

• Invest more of your budget in keywords that are doing well, and get rid of poorly performing ones.
• Review their bids and make sure you are bidding to the true value of the keyword.
• Diversify: If minimum bids are raised on some of your keywords, find some that remain at lower levels and make them more prominent in your lineup.
• Set bids at the keyword level, when appropriate, for greater control.

3. Group relevant keywords together.

• Keywords in a single ad group should relate to each other and to the ads in your ad group. This can have a big impact on your quality score, and, potentially, your minimum bids.
• Move more general keywords into their own ad group(s) so they don’t affect the quality of your targeted ad groups.

4. Budget wisely.

• Have an understanding of what you can spend, so if you do face a situation where minimum bids are higher, you can decide whether to raise bids or increase budgets.
• As you set bids, make sure that they meet your ad budget and acquisition targets.

— Jeff Hecox, Bracketologist “Keywordologist”

Photo courtesy dearth85 via Flickr.

Slice up Your Advertising Pie

One advertiser’s experience can help you set up your budgets right

One of the reps on our Customer Solutions team recently took a call from a new advertiser, who had run into a roadblock that left him perplexed.

Apparently he awoke one morning at 3:00 a.m., his brain churning with an idea for a campaign for a product he sells on his site. He jumped on the computer to set up the new campaign, picking keywords, writing ads and setting bids. Feeling confident that this new campaign was going to get a ton of clicks, he set a daily spending limit of $50 and went back to bed.

But a few days later, when he checked its results, he discovered that the campaign was getting capped at about $20 in clicks each day. Care to guess what the problem was? (I’ll wait…)

And the answer is: He forgot to check if he had enough room in his account budget for the new campaign.

Too Many Hands in the Pie
This tale makes an important point: One tweak to an account can affect everything else. Think of your account budget as your “money pie”; you have to slice it up just right. Each of your campaigns will take a piece.

So if you add a new campaign, its spend will eat up a portion of the pie, leaving less spend for your existing campaigns. The account budget trumps other spending limits; you can’t spend more than your account limit. This seems like an obvious fact, but as our unwitting advertiser discovered, it can be lost in the excitement of launching a new campaign. To make room for the new campaign, you might have to consider reducing the spend from other campaigns, so that all of your “slices” add up to the total account budget.

If you’re off balance—no matter how high you set the daily spend of your biggest campaign—your other campaigns could be shut off as our system works to keep you from going over your budget. In this case, you’d need to either bake a bigger account pie, or cut your campaigns into smaller slices. Who’s hungry?

Cooking up the Perfect Search Marketing Plan
Before creating a new campaign, think about how much money you have to work with across your entire account. Then set up your campaign budgets to spend their portions of the account budget accordingly. As you tinker around with budgets, if you’re not sure how your changes will play out, make sure you take advantage of the forecasting tools in your account. As you enter different bid amounts, it analyzes statistics to help predict what your average position could potentially be in the search results, and thus, what your potential is for impressions and clicks.

Don’t “Set and Forget”
You should always be monitoring all parts of your account on a regular basis. This is your business and your money, so get in the habit of scanning all of the information on the dashboard.

If you simply “set and forget,” you’re giving up one of the biggest advantages that search marketing has over any other advertising vehicles—the ability to change, re-adjust, tinker and refocus your strategies at any time to reach your target audience. And take a lesson from one of your colleagues: If you decide to make any changes, consider how they will affect the daily spends set for your individual campaigns, and your account as a whole. You’ll sleep much better at night for it!

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Customer Solutions

Blueberry pie picture from hfb on Flickr

Many Happy Returns

How to match your campaigns to tax season consumer behavior

Like it or not, tax season is here again, and all over the country people are filing their returns and keeping their fingers crossed. It’s not surprising that many folks are expecting a refund from Uncle Sam, but what they plan to do with that refund may get your attention.

Big spenders

While the majority of refund recipients plan to spend their new-found fortunes on paying down debt and shoring up savings, research* shows that about one in ten taxpayers will dedicate a portion of their refund to major purchases or a vacation.

That means that advertisers who offer “big-ticket” items (cars, plasma televisions, etc.) or vacations may want to consider creating campaigns targeted toward consumers who intend to use a portion of their refunds for luxury items.

Women typically account for more than 60 percent of the visitors to tax sites as the season begins in January and February. However, in the last six weeks leading up to the April 15 deadline, it’s men who make up almost 60 percent of tax site visitors. So, do you pitch your romantic getaway cruises or your extreme adventure packages? Depends on the calendar. (We’re not saying which of these would be better for which group. We’ve learned our lessons.)

…and penny pinchers

Not everyone wants to spend. Advertisers who offer debt management or consolidation services might consider creating campaigns that appeal to the large majority of people who plan to apply their tax refunds toward reducing debt.

The first week of February usually sees the biggest spikes in visits to accounting web sites, showing that that people have received their W-2s and are beginning to file online. A second spike usually appears in the second week of April, representing last-minute filers trying to beat the deadline. The bottom line here is that advertisers who specialize in tax services and merchandise will want to have their ads in place and prepared to meet the demand, and make sure those campaigns are fully funded and monitored throughout tax season.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst/Tax Man

*All research from: 2007 Tax Returns Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch for National Retail Federation

Convert Your Clicks

Ten landing page tips to turn visitors into customers

There’s something about a ten-item list that makes us want to get all Hestonian on you and break out the archaic pronouns, especially when it comes to something like getting people who visit your site to actually buy from you. After all, you work hard to get clicks. What could be more important than turning those clicks into customers?

But we’re kind of a live-and-let-live bunch here, and we’re not so big on telling people what they have to do. So consider these a set of suggestions about how to help optimize your landing pages. That way, when people get to your site, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.

1. Tell them why they should buy from you
According to Marketing Experiments Journal, “Clarity of your value proposition is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not.” To evaluate your value proposition, ask yourself the question: “Why should I buy from this site?”

2. Keep ‘em with you
There’s no way you’re going to get a potential customer to the intended destination—the “sale completion” page—if the path to get there is overgrown with weeds or rife with dead ends. This is what Marketing Experiments Journal calls “site flow disruption”; the way to combat it is to express your value proposition throughout the shopping process in a consistent and compelling way.

3. Don’t try to say too much
Don’t clutter your landing page with unnecessary details. Instead:
• Clearly state your key message using as few words as possible
• Use summary descriptions, sub-headings, bulleted lists and short paragraphs
• Adopt a standard one-column format for easy reading.

4. Make it simple
Improve the user experience with a site that is easy to navigate. A simple page layout that employs a clean visual and straightforward design is best. Here’s how:
• Design your site with a clear hierarchy with color and contrast for easily legible text
• Use meaningful and high-quality graphics (don’t clutter with too many)
• Use breadcrumbs to let visitors know where they are on your site
• Employ a clickable logo that takes the visitor to your homepage
• Use color to distinguish between visited and unvisited links.

Just as important, make sure you don’t:
• Employ horizontal scrolling
• Direct links to new browser windows
• Have flash-based content unless required.

5. Call them to action
Focus on one primary action per screen (don’t stuff too many products onto one screen). Make the call-to-action button clearly visible without having to scroll; don’t bury it under pages of information. Consider using tabs or a pop-up box to consolidate information.

6. Get specific
Provide product details and a large product image while displaying incentives—such as free shipping and warranty information—high on the page and close to the product. Don’t discourage visitors by requiring registration to your site.

7. Flaunt what you’ve got
What differentiates you from your competitors? Free shipping (both ways?), discounts, a 365-day warranty, price protection, privacy, customer service, etc.? If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

8. Search yourself
Make your site easy to navigate by helping potential customers find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. A search feature box should be simple and visible with a type-in field, not a link. To help increase conversions, make sure your search results link to product pages.

9. Rally the believers
Credibility is a true testament: people don’t buy from websites, people buy from people. Thus, testimonials from devout customers—or even a letter from the CEO/Editor—persuades the unbelieving.

10. Let them make the choice
“Why should I buy this specific product?” Almost every e-tailer forgets about this, but it’s the question that’s key to Mr. or Ms. Customer’s mind. Prove to him or her why they should buy this over the competitive product by offering reviews, ratings and comparisons.

– Amy Borowicz

Three Questions to Ask About Your Clicks

What to do when you get an unexpected traffic surge

There you are, reviewing your account from last week, when you notice a jump in your clicks. Before you call us to find out what’s going on with your account, keep in mind that unexpected traffic is not necessarily a cause for alarm. Consider the following three questions:

First: Have you changed anything in your account recently? 

A broad question, to be sure, but try to recall: Have you added keywords or changed your bids? Either of these actions can affect your traffic.

Second: Are you noticing abnormal click activity, or just traffic that’s not converting? 

Examine your account and your web logs. Are your ads appearing on sites that are not meeting your business needs? If so, we offer tools to help you control your traffic. Find out more about Blocked Domains, Geo-targeting and Continent Blocking in your Search Marketing Help Section, and get to know your traffic by visiting the Traffic Quality Center.

Third: Have you set a daily spending limit?

Your traffic may fluctuate from day to day. But by setting a Daily Spending Limit, you help control the amount you spend. For example, if you average $250 in clicks per day and set your Daily Spending Limit at $350, you can capitalize on the extra clicks that result from a spike, without breaking the bank.

Submitting a Click Review Request

If you feel you have explored everything above and still have questions, or would like us to investigate your traffic further, our Traffic Quality Center provides simple instructions for submitting a Click Review Request.

After you submit the request, we will perform a series of diagnostic tests and analyses to attempt to identify potential issues that may have affected your traffic. We take all inquiries seriously, and though the length of investigations may vary, we work to achieve a resolution within 10 business days of your request.

Remember, keep an eye on your account, monitor your traffic regularly, and if you do spot something suspicious, let us know—we’re happy to help.

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Customer Solutions

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