Search Engine Marketing News (SEM, Pay Per Click, PPC, Paid Search)

Search Completes and Enhances Other Channels

By Eduardo Llach

No matter which medium is used to touch customers, the likely medium of deeper engagement will be a search engine. Consumer actions have changed dramatically and advertisers need to change their game plans.

Look at the progression of various calls to action and how consumers reacted. A Mercedes-Benz ad from the 1960s grew sales by asking the magazine reader to “Write to Mr. Peter…” and “Visit your dealer….” In 2005, a Mercedes-Benz ad uses “Call 800…” and “Visit MBUSA.com.” Progressive brands such as Kellogg’s are now using search as the call to action in their television ads, pointing watchers to search on Yahoo for more about the beneﬁts of their product.

The Kellogg’s example shows search as an ad medium that works outside of the direct response domain. It is trying to drive sales at the grocery store, but is taking advantage of a major shift in consumer behavior toward search being the starting point for deeper engagement, product research and informa- tion gathering.

Have all major advertisers started using search? Yes and no. Search is thought about late in the marketing plan development process. It’s often something the “interactive department” worries about, rather than an integral part of a brand manager’s marketing plan. This thinking must change, and that is where the principle of search as a bridge comes in. Let’s say you have your award-winning television commercial completed. Your print advertisements are ready for insertion, your online banners are ready to impress and you’re ready to go. Spending money to buy your product’s keywords seems like common sense.

Marketers can take advantage of many creative opportunities. Diet Coke’s Heart Truth campaign is designed to raise awareness of heart disease risks and included a promotion with Heidi Klum around the Academy Awards and her red dress. The campaign included a call to action delivered through television, as well as various other methods for consumers to register to win Klum’s red dress on the My Coke Rewards Web site. To capture consumer interest, Coke purchased a variety of keywords including “The Oscars,” “Heidi Klum,” “red dress” and “heart health.” In the course of the campaign, it discovered that a large portion of trafﬁc came through the heart health-related keywords with trafﬁc spiking around Oscar-related keywords.

If there is no search in the marketing mix to complement and enhance the branding and promotion opportunities, then all other forms of advertising will be less effective.

Demo of the week: SearchRev

By Josh Dreller

I can hear some of you groaning: another SEM Bid Management tool, right? Wrong. I did a demo last week with SearchRev's Jim Vetter and was bowled over by some of the unique approaches I saw with this tool. One of the more interesting methodologies is the way the tool offers features not available on the engines by creating seamless workarounds on the backend. For example, SearchRev lets you set different bids and rules for keywords based on individual geographic areas, departs, and even match types. Basically, you choose your options and SearchRev builds whatever new campaigns/ad groups are needed for all of those combinations.

The rep showed me a screenshot of the tool in action. So, you could choose different bids for the same keyword in Houston, Florida, and Boston, and the tool would create a new campaigns/ad groups for that keyword that is geotargetd to those three areas. For AdWords, you can even split bids between Google Search, Google Search Network, and Google Content and manage them side by side. This workaround obviously creates many, many campaign combinations in the engines. With an engine max limit on campaigns, SearchRev manages multiple accounts on the same engine to create the seamless frontend single account. Jim said some of his clients require 15 or more Google AdWords account to hold all of these campaigns. I did the quick math, 50 campaign max on AdWords so that's more than 750 campaigns for a single account! Ha!

I was shown some case study results of conversion rates going up and CPCs going down, and I didn't question any of the numbers. If there's one thing I've learned in search is that the more granular control you have, the more opportunities to optimize you have, which leads to better results. Just imagine... by setting a bid on a keyword at the national level, you may be in first position in St. Louis, 5th in New York, and 3rd in Orlando. That's not efficient. As well, which creative works better for those markets...or different day parts...or on Google Search vs. the entire Google Search Network? SearchRev manages all of that for you.

You can check out their website for more info or request a webinar to see the tool for yourself.

We're extremely happy to announce that SearchRev was chosen as the winner of this years PROMO's Interactive Marketing Award for best Search Engine Marketing Campaign. This was given in recognition for our work with Coca-Cola and their My Coke Rewards loyalty promotion.

The PROMO's Interactive Marketing Awards honor the best and brightest in effective interactive marketing-and recognizes the valuable role that interactive tactics play in motivating consumer response and creating strong, exciting brands.

The awards were presented at the Interactive Promotion Summit, in Las Vegas, on Friday May 2nd. Our congratulations to everyone involved, especially our friends at Coca-Cola without whom this award would not have been possible.

Here's what the judges had to say about our outstanding performance.

5 Reasons to Buy Branded Keywords

Meanwhile, Palo Alto, Calif.-based SearchRev has beefed up its paid search management product with LifeCycle, a feature that tracks the entire search and conversion process-giving marketers insight "beyond the last click."

Technology has evolved so campaigns can be optimized in almost real time through automated algorithmic approaches like that of SearchRev (for PPC marketing) and Dart Adapt (for display advertising). We're almost at the point of "fire and forget," where once the initial deployment has been made and the system calibrated, little manual intervention is required.

[excerpt]..."Later in 2007, AKQA started to spend some of that capital, buying Silicon Valley search specialist Search Rev, likely the first step in many Mr. Bedecarre and Co. will take toward building a next-generation digital-marketing platform".

[excerpt] "…For AKQA, 2007 marked the year it truly arrived. The agency's early bet that it could build an independent, global, creatively driven digital agency serving some of the world's biggest brands had finally paid off. Revenue last year spiked 45 percent to $99 million, with the agency adding Motorola and boosting its work for longtime clients including Coca-Cola, Nike and Visa. The shop also expanded its global footprint with outposts in Amsterdam and Shanghai.

AKQA's staggering growth, consistently outstanding creative, innovation in emerging digital channels and determination to follow an independent course combine to make it AdweekMedia's Digital Agency of the Year."

January 21, 2008
Agency A-List: AKQA
One of the biggest stories of 2007 was digital giants aQuantive and Digitas getting snapped up by bigger ad players. If you're wondering who will be the next to make a big move, take a long look at AKQA, an agency that's very quietly turning itself into a full-service marketing partner that just happens to have digital roots.

After private-equity company General Atlantic took a majority stake early last year, AKQA picked up SearchRev, likely the first of several deals to build out its offerings. Any aggressiveness on the acquisition front from AKQA should be scary for its competitors. The San Francisco-based shop, helmed by CEO Tom Bedecarre, has long been among the best when it comes to designing websites and interactive ad programs; now it's branching out to shape customer experience in a bigger way.

September 10, 2007
Clients' ROI needs drive agency deals
Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA, said the acquisition of SearchRev, a search engine technology company, will help the agency provide more advanced search services to meet client needs.

"Increasingly, clients want to see that their money is being spent in a way that can demonstrate ROI," Bedecarre said. "Search is the largest part of online advertising, and we wanted to be a bigger player in that space."

SearchRev will operate as a stand-alone agency, providing search engine technology to AKQA as well as to other agencies and clients. "This is next-generation technology for search engine marketing that will offer a significant improvement in ROI for search marketing," Bedecarre said.

August 22, 2007
SearchRev joins AKQA digital marketing network
"We are trying to leverage AKQA's global footprint and brand," says David Kandasamy, chief operating officer of Searchrev, referring to AKQA's offices around the world, including in Amsterdam and Shanghai.

August 22, 2007
AKQA Adds SearchRev in Effort to Become a Full-Service Shop
"We're trying to build a next-generation digital-marketing platform," he said. "Search is kind of an obvious place to start. We thought SearchRev had the best technology and biggest upside."

August 22, 2007
AKQA Acquires Search Agency
"What this acquisition is saying is brand advertising needs search advertising. For all your advertising, you need to figure out and get the search working well. If you do that, everything else you do will be working better. If you don't then you're wasting money on anything else you're doing," said Llach. "You have to nail down and get the search advertising optimized for your branded terms."

April 13, 2007
Businesses search online for customers
After six years selling off-road motorcycle parts and motocross gear to direct mail catalog customers, MotoSport founder Bill Butcher set out to expand the company's market share beyond its stronghold of loyal enthusiasts.

May 09, 2006
Business Journal: Palo Alto search company names new CEO
SearchRev Inc. on Tuesday named Kenneth J. Kalb chief executive officer. The Palo Alto-based company, which provides paid search advertising campaigns, said the 51-year-old Kalb succeeds Eduardo Llach, 47, who will continue serving as chief operating officer.

August 2005
Web Marketing Today: New Search Marketing Tools and Services
SearchRev is mentioned as a tool for use in managing and optimizing PPC campaigns on a single platform.

SearchRev in the News