Tag Archives: SEM

10 Tips for Selling Search to the C-Suite

On Wednesday, December 8, we presented our latest webinar, 10 Tips for Selling Search to the C-Suite. Our panel included Mike Moran, Chief Strategist at Converseon and author of Do It Wrong Quickly, and Jennifer Lemming, the Director of Marketing for DS Waters. In case you missed it, you can watch it on-demand or go through the slide deck at your own pace. Selling Search to the C-Suite View more presentations from Mediative. Mike’s tips from the webinar include: Tip 1: CIOs and CMOs don’t always get it Tip 2: Stick to the value, not the tactics Tip 3: Be [...]

Mining for AdWords Gold: Search Queries

As part of Google’s phasing out of the AdWords Report Center, the traditional ‘Search Query Performance’ report is no longer available. But there are new and better ways to mine this critical data for gold nuggets! Using Google AdWords reports to track performance of the keywords you are bidding on is fundamental to search marketing success, and the ease with which this can be done is a source of delight for search marketers, especially when compared to measuring traditional forms of advertising. For any given keyword you are bidding on, take ‘industrial supplies’ for example, it is easy to get [...]

What would happen if you turned off all PPC advertising for a month?

We’re very pleased to be presenting a case study webinar in just over a week’s time with one of our clients, YouSendIt, titled The Opportunity Cost of PPC. I had a chance to sit down with YouSendIt’s Director of Product Marketing, Angela Sanfilippo, at their office in California just before our latest B2B Expert Series: Face-to-Face event. We talked through the advances her team has made over the past few months with their paid search campaigns. This success has led to increased investment in SEM moving forward. This webinar will be of interest to other marketers that have struggled to [...]

SAR-R: Search and Rescuing ROI

Over the past several months, in part due to increased economic pressures, we have seen an increase of importance placed on improving return on investment (ROI) from search-based activity, particularly from PPC campaigns. ROI attribution and measurement becomes especially important when justifying the cost of the online sponsored advertising and improving the return on advertising spend (ROAS). Here are some tips on improving your search performance and getting the best ROI possible. 1.      Know Your Analytics This statement may seem fairly redundant, but all too often search marketers find themselves flying blind without proper analytics. Much of this article will [...]

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 4 of 4)

This is the final installment of the 4-part series on key PPC best practices (PPC Best Practices Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). Speak Their Language There has been constant debate as to what to use for keyword analysis with regards to long-tail versus head phrases and which yields the better results. Head phrases are the very generic and broad search queries where there is enormous search volume, but costs associated with the keywords are quite high. Torso keywords are the more-specific keywords; the 2- to 4-word search queries that still have lower search volume compared to the head [...]

PPC Best Practices (Part 3 of 4)

This is the third installment of the 4-part series on key PPC best practices (PPC Best Practices Part 1, Part 2). So far we’ve introduced the basics in the planning and measurement involved with the setup of a PPC campaign in addition to conversion path analysis. This week we’ll get into testing, demographic targeting, and vertical engines. Don’t Guess… Test With a PPC campaign, testing is the campaign manager’s best friend. Testing is a constant, iterative process that must be followed to refine the effectiveness of your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns. Multivariate testing can be as complex as developing [...]

Key PPC Best Practices (Part 2 of 4)

Last week, I started wrote a post on some of the key PPC best practices (Go to Part 1). This is the second installment of the 4 part series.   Plan to Measure; then Measure the Plan As you move forward with your PPC campaign, ensure you are able to effectively measure your KPIs through your analytics tracking. With several of our clients, we are using keyword-level ROI to ensure we can accurately spend the budget where we are making the highest returns. This measurement includes being able to merge data from several sources in order to accurately measure the [...]

How to Develop a Stronger Search Marketing Training Program

Recently I have been involved in creating a search marketing training program which some very clear objectives: help new search marketing strategists get up to speed quicker, allow them to work on billable client work sooner/more efficiently and get them prepared to participate in high-level brainstorming strategies. As much as I can teach the new strategists, I have learned it’s as important to learn from them to continually tweak and improve the program. Below I have outlined 3 steps to creating a stronger search marketing training program.   Constantly Reading, Sucks: Providing course material to your trainees is important but [...]