**by David Roth**
If you've been around me you've probably heard me say this, but
it bears repeating: As soon as you, the marketer, pay for a search
click, someone will want to know what you got for it.
This means that you will need effective ways to both optimize and
report out results on your campaign. This is yet another example of
how search marketers can excel in otherwise uncharted territory (e.g.
brand campaigns), and ultimately how you can end up looking like a
hero to your upper management.
Optimization
I mentioned last month that to optimize to engagement we decided to
place tracking pixels on a number of "expressions of interest"
that were relevant to the brand campaign. The challenge with this
approach is in the design. Since the events in question do not drive
direct revenue we had to use an approach that would value expressions
of interest in an accurate way, relatively speaking.
As I mentioned we opted for a points system and grouped conversion
events into strata so that we could create a more traditional
"funnel" for reporting and optimization purposes. By seeing how
users were engaging with the brand we were not only able to optimize
to deeper engagement at a keyword level, but we also learned how to
refine our "funnel" to better reflect the engagement process.
Furthermore, because as search marketers we are accustomed to
optimizing on fresh data, we used daily conversion data to quickly
optimize the campaigns and make landing page and user path
recommendations. This put us way ahead of other channels, which do not
lend themselves as readily to rapid optimization.
Once the design is in place and the data is flowing, sit back and
pretend you're running a direct response campaign. Optimize to
conversion volume or cost per conversion, whichever will support the
goals of the brand campaign. Identify strong performing ads and place
new ads in rotation as often as possible. Believe me, this is the easy
part. Now it's time to show everyone what a brilliant marketer you
are.
Reporting
Be ready to report out on your results in a concise and telling way.
Remember, you have different components to your campaign and likely a
number of countries or markets in which you're advertising, so
you'll need a neat way to wrap up all that activity into a one-page
report. This is where the direct marketer in you can truly shine.
If you have the luxury of reporting on revenue, congratulations. If
not, then use a system like we've chosen where you can show value
expressed in points or some equivalent measure, and then just use the
same types of metrics you normally would for SEM reporting.
Impressions, clicks, CPC, value (points), cost per point, etc.
Organize your reporting in such a way that higher-ups can quickly get
high-level data and then drill down into markets or campaigns to
assess the drivers of success or failure. Here's an example of what
it might look like:
In addition to metrics-heavy reporting like this, you'll also want
to include some graphs that speak to trends over time. This way
you'll be able to tell a story of how you launched and then
optimized your campaigns. That report will look something like this:
Once your reporting is ironed out and being delivered on a regular
basis to your internal stakeholders, now it"s time once to show how
search marketing performance can run circles around other marketing
channels. You may already know this as well as some of your
counterparts in other marketing channels, but chances are your head of
brand marketing needs a reminder. If your SEM results can be rolled up
into larger buckets of "digital media" or total media, the
comparisons will be inevitable. Show your SEM results along side those
same metrics for display ads and other channels.
Then, when it comes time to plan the next quarter or the next
campaign, you can point to your outstanding results and ask for a
healthy budget increase. I just did.
That's all for SEM and branding, for now. There is, of course,
abundant detail I haven't the space to include here, so if you want
more, feel free to contact me. I love talking about this stuff.
Note: The first two installments in this series are Supporting A
Global Brand Campaign With SEM
<http://searchengineland.com/supporting-a-global-brand-campaign-with-sem-28008>
and Supporting A Global Brand Campaign With SEM, Part 2
<http://searchengineland.com/supporting-a-global-brand-campaign-with-sem-part-2-29763>
.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and
not necessarily Search Engine Land.
David Roth <http://searchengineland.com/author/david-roth/>
is Director of Search Engine Marketing for Yahoo!, Inc.
<http://www.yahoo.com>
. The Industrial Strength
<http://searchengineland.com/lands/industrial-strength.php>
column appears Mondays at Search Engine Land
<http://searchengineland.com>
.
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