‘Tis the season to get busy with search marketing
Guest post from Cedric Chambaz, Marketing Manager - Search & SMB, Microsoft Advertising
Devoting extra attention to your search marketing campaigns today can pay off during the year-end period - one of the busiest times of year.
There is little doubt about how critical Christmas and Boxing Day are to any business’ bottom line. But as we get closer to that key milestone, things are getting so hectic that marketing basics are sometimes overlooked. So get ready now to maximise your business opportunity.
Quality matters
You must remember from my previous articles on search marketing that your historical performance plays a key part of your search marketing results.
Search marketing is indeed also referred to as Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, as you will only pay when a searcher clicks on your ad. How much will you pay? It is an auction where you set your own bid, in light of your business model, profit margin, conversion rate… Search marketing beginners may assume that the higher you bid on a given keyword, the more likely you are to top the search listings. That is only partially true.
Search engine algorithms take into consideration a complementary stack of variables, often referred to collectively as “quality score”. It is a complex combination of variables that aim at evaluating the quality (or relevancy) of an ad. The exact details of that scoring system are a well-kept secret, but some variables are simply common sense: the relevancy between the keyword, the ad copy and the landing page for instance, or the historical performance of the ad. As a matter of fact, if an ad ranked third by its financial bid has historically outperformed those in higher positions, the algorithm will interpret that as a sign of greater consumer appeal. It might upgrade the ad to better meet the consumer needs, at no extra cost for the advertiser.
Making history today and tomorrow
But this historical performance requires time to build… So the bottom line is that if you want to hit the ground running at a given date, you need to anticipate it and build your history the weeks and months before. So where do you begin? Whether you want to optimise a successful campaign or improve an underperformer, our pay-per-click optimisation tips can help you achieve your goals. Microsoft Advertising has compiled a series expert advice to help improve ad position, Click-Through-Rates, conversation rates, and overall Return On Investment.
By making changes and monitoring campaign performance, you can easily maximise success in the coming weeks. Discover more tips relevant to your industry in the following articles:
You may want to consider these tips an early Christmas present!
Kind regards, Cedric
