Posts tagged as:

Search Engine Marketing

The Right to Buy Branded Keywords

January 11, 2008

in SEM

This week, 1-800-Contacts sued LensWorld for allegedly purchasing branded terms in order to show LensWorld PPC ads when users are searching 1-800-Contacts. (MediaPost reports.) The key here is one company buying the branded terms of another company.

This is not the first lawsuit of its type. The question is around if it is infringement of any sort. Currently, engines allow advertisers to buy competitive brand terms if the competitors name is not used in the actual ad copy. Complaints to engines over this are handled on a case-by-case basis.

The main problem I see with a competitor buying the branded terms of another competitor is that it drives up the cost for that brand name. Simply, you could end up paying a high pay-per-click rate for your own name if your competitor purchased your brand name as well. (Many people I know in the industry follow an unwritten rule not to buy competitor brand names, often for fear of retribution on their own
brand name.)

This is a problem that is very hard to solve, and sadly, will probably have to be sorted out in the court room. Is it Google or Yahoo’s job to protect intellectual property? I say no, but engines constantly find themselves in the middle of this issue.

Honestly, it’s not much different than two advertisers appearing on the same page of a magazine. It is up the professionals that create the ad to distinguish it among the competitors.

Besides, every company should rank highly in organic listings for their own branded terms. If a company can not stand out on a search results page for their own branded terms, they have much larger issues than a competitors bid price.

Tagged as: bid, brand, lawsuit, Pay-Per-Click, price, Search, Search Engine Marketing, SEM, SEO, terms

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Target’s PPC Ad Fails Expectations

May 7, 2007

in SEM

This time of year is very exciting for my family. We have a small pond in our backyard and when spring arrives, it comes alive with activity. The fish come out of hibernation, birds gather to bathe and drink, and my kids look for new tadpoles. My six year old started asking a lot of questions about tadpoles, so we hit the web to search for information and pictures of the frog life cycle.

When looking for what types of food tadpoles eat, I noticed the PPC ads.

Tadpole food at Target?

Wow, Target sells everything! They even have tadpole food. Or, they don’t, which is what I found when I clicked the link to their landing page.

No Tadpole Food at Target

Target could have become part of my son’s exciting adventure into tadpole care. With their ad they built an expectation, then failed to deliver. Leaving me, the consumer, and a 6-year old boy, frustrated with their
brand.

Why would Target place such this PPC ad? Probably sloppy set up from their search vendor. When you get into SEM—or any advertising for that matter—you have to deliver upon the expectation you build. Not meeting those expectations will cost you customers.

Tagged as: ppc, Search, Search Engine Marketing, SEM, target

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Spring Hill Nursery’s Earth Day Sale Forgets Search

April 19, 2007

in SEM

I love Spring Hill Nursery. I’ve been getting their catalog for years and frequently order from them. Yesterday they emailed me to let them know about their Earth Day sale.

Spring Hill email

They obviously took time to plan the sale and get the email together to send out. Yet Spring Hill did not reflect their sale messaging in the PPC banner they have for their own name. That would be a perfect place to also announce the Earth Day sale, and connect it right to their site.

Spring Hill PPC Ad

I’m am not knocking email in any way, but I do get tons of it each day – and that’s just the email that I want. In other words, I could have missed the Spring Hill email. As a brand, you have to be ready to consistently message to your customers in multiple marketing channels. You may never know in which channel a consumer will see and react to first.

Tagged as: Search, Search Engine Marketing, SEM

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Search and Open Brands

January 26, 2007

in SEM,SEO

During iCitizen, Resource President Kelly Mooney provided a glimpse into Open Branding –
an innovative concept about how brands can embrace and benefit from the user-generated content model the Web has become.

Beginning to open a brand does not always mean investing in a tactic that feels fringe. It can be a challenge to convince a brand to invest in a viral video where ROI can be hard to determine. Many brands are also still trying to figure out if and how YouTube and Flickr should be part of their marketing strategies. But search is now a proven marketing initiative with easily trackable ROI and it’s a very effective first step to opening a brand.

Search has grown into the first step of every Web experience, becoming the filter by which people manage their Web experiences. According to comScore, Almost 60% of Web users use a search engine every day. Consumers have become accustomed to finding and making brand introductions in search engines.

A recent Nielsen BuzzMetrics study demonstrated that more than 25 percent of search results on Google for the world’s 20 largest brands are links to consumer generated content. Search marketing and open branding go hand-in-hand.

At the end of September 2006, I launched an SEM campaign for MI Homes on the Google and Yahoo networks. The main purpose of this was to increase exposure to their brand in 13 different markets. With an industry average SEM click-through-rate of 1%, the MI Homes campaign experienced double that under the guidance of my search team.

Creating this accessibility benefited their brand, not just from increased conversions, but for the ever important mind share. A 2004 Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Nielsen/NetRatings study found that there is an effective brand lift from SEM campaigns. Consumers responded, as was evident by the high click through rate.

Tagged as: Search, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Statistics, SEM, SEO

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Search and Tax Accounting

January 16, 2007

in SEM

I don’t do my own taxes anymore; I pay a CPA to handle them for me. It wasn’t that difficult when it was fairly straight-forward – when I was living on my own making a few pennies a week. But as my life grew – wife, kids, and investments – doing taxes became more involved and complicated and it seemed obvious that letting an expert handle it was best. This analogy makes sense in the Search
realm also, on a few levels.

First, if you are working on a small SEM campaign you may not need to hire anyone to help you with it. There are lots of small business owners that run tight, effective campaigns with a dozen or so keywords. They get the specific traffic they are looking for.

But as the project gets bigger, it gets harder to manage the account. It requires the ability (and
patience) to attend to a lot of data and to constantly monitor position changes and bidding changes. With a smaller set of keywords, this is not to difficult. When the keyword list gets into the hundreds it requires multiple layers of analysis, such as gauging overall campaign success, ad group performance, specific keyword performance, copy changes, conversion rate analysis, etc. In other words, as in my tax analogy above, as it gets bigger, it also gets complicated fast. Having an expert, where all those layers of complexity feel natural, work on the account makes sure you get the best overall performance and your
monies worth.

Tagged as: Search, Search Engine Marketing, SEM

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Yahoo and Vodaphone Launch Mobile Advertising

November 14, 2006

in SEM

One day after Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt suggested an ad supported phone could allow for free cell service, Yahoo and Vodaphone announce they are heading that direction.

Vodafone and Yahoo! to launch advertising on mobile devices

Under the plans, customers who agree to accept carefully targeted display advertisements can expect to enjoy savings on certain Vodafone services.

Tagged as: Search Engine Marketing, SEM, Yahoo

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