Hi, my name is Nicole, and I just opened a pet supply store in northern New Jersey – and I’m trying to gain awareness and traffic to my new store.   (Well, this not all true, but for all purposes of this post… it holds true).

As a small business owner, it can be hard to find the appropriate outlets for gaining awareness and foot traffic to a new store – especially when your business is in a suburban town of New Jersey (no pun intended).   One usually has to rely on word-of-mouth in order to gain exposure.  But in this age, where computers, cell phones, tablets and social media dominate – you cannot solely rely on friends of friends to get your name or brand out there.

Small businesses, like my pet supply store, are in need of exposure – exposure in the online space, that is.   That’s where search marketing comes in, specifically paid search marketing.

Paid Search marketing can be an extremely useful tool for small business owners, since you, the owner, can manage your own campaigns on your own.  Essentially, you can market yourself!  And yes, small businesses can compete with large businesses.   My pet supply store can play in the same advertising space as PetSmart, Petco, or even Amazon – as long as it’s done right.

Put Your “Thinking Cap” On

If you’re a small business trying to run a paid search campaign, try thinking of the following:

• First things first, Devise a Plan – What is the goal of your website?  What is the call-to-action?   It could be promoting a sale, new inventory in stock, an email sign up, or simply to drive potential new customers inside the store location

• How much money to invest?  Remember, this is a pay-per-click model, meaning each person who clicks your ad, will charge your business – or better yet…you!

• Is my website ready?   Do I have flash on my website? Is my site user-friendly?  Is there enough useful information on my site which I can build an effective campaign/ keywords?

• Be Relevant! –What are the most relevant pages to direct the user to visit? – and from here, how can I build out keyword lists/ ad groups/ ads campaigns that ties in with the page.

Those are just some of things to think about before and during creating a paid search campaign for your small business.   Of course, there are several other components that make up a paid search campaign, but these are just some ideas to think of.

Benefits of Paid Search for Small Businesses

The benefits.  Paid search is a useful tool that can be beneficial to not only small businesses, but any business that wants to establish a name for itself.   Here are some (definitely not all) of the benefits small businesses can gain from paid search marketing.

• Budgeting – As mentioned earlier, since paid search uses a CPC model (more often than CPM), you only accrue cost when someone clicks on your ad.  Therefore, the key to a successful paid search ad/ campaign is to be (once again) relevant.   Through paid search, the advertiser is also able to set daily caps, so that the engine would not go over a daily allotted budget.  The advertiser is also given the flexibility of changing caps whenever it’s necessary.

• Day-Parting – Day-parting is a nice strategic move for small businesses with limited budget, or for those who wish to only display ads during certain hours of the day.  The advertiser is able set up the time of day and/or day of week which they want their ads to be appear on SERPs. (i.e. I can set my ads to run only during 7am – 11pm Tuesday – Saturday and pause at all other times.)

• Location Targeting – Another strategic and also cost savings tactic.  Advertisers are able to have control on what areas of the world their ads are shown.   Since I have a small business in northern New Jersey, chances are, I only want to reach people in surrounding towns of my shop.  I don’t care to advertise to people in California or Tennessee, since they are least likely to visit my store.

• Customizing & Sitelinks/ Rich Ads – Probably the best part of paid search marketing is the abilty to customize ad copy and tailor it to your business.   The advertiser is able to create ad copy they want (as long as it abides by the Engine’s policies).   And now, Google and Bing/ Yahoo offer advertisers the ability to add sublinks to their ads.   Google Sitelinks or Yahoo! RAIS can help small businesses (or any business for the matter) display several links within an ad, driving users to more relevant pages based on the sublink.  For instance, I can have 4 sublinks driving to different pages (1) Sale (2) Email Sign Up (3) New Arrivals (4) Contest Sweepstake.   (*An important takeaway of sitelinks is that sitelinks (at least on Google) have been proven to show a lift in CTR for many industry verticals.   And of course, an increase in CTR can bring lower CPCs and higher average position.  Meaning, my small business has a great chance of showing in top positions alongside large name brands or possibly in the top position spot).

Of course, there are many more reasons as to why paid search is a viable tool for small businesses, but this is just a taste of the greatness that paid search can do for small businesses.

Paid Search for Large Businesses

Enough about the small – let’s talk about the big picture…

Like small businesses, paid search is probably even more crucial for large businesses.  Why?  Because everyone’s doing it!  It’s like a scenario of peer pressure in high school – everyone’s doing it, so you should, too!

Because of the complexity of large businesses, many either hire an internal team to manage their paid search initiatives or hire outside agencies (ah-hem, Razorfish).

Time to Use Your Noggin & Think BIG!

Much like small businesses, you should think of the following when creating Paid Search campaigns for large businesses:

• The Goal – What is it that the brand offers? What does the company want to sell to the user?  Maybe the large business is a department store that sells shoes, clothing and furniture.   Do you want to focus on all departments the store offers?  Or just a single segment?

• Budget – What is the brand budget?  How much is the company willing to spend on agency fees (if hiring external help)?

• Landing Page – What pages will the users go to?  Because of the complexity of larger businesses – there will usually be several campaigns and sometimes accounts in order to segment the different categories of items the department sells/ or business caters to.

As mentioned earlier, the main idea of managing paid search campaigns for small and large businesses does not differ by much.  However, if you are managing for a larger business – you are managing at a grander scale – with larger budgets, etc. which requires more attention (usually by several people).   Since many large businesses are using paid search as a tactic, this makes it even more of a reason for why other large businesses need to use paid search as well.

Benefits of Paid Search for Large Businesses

• “Preventing other advertisers from eating your lunch” – As Razorfish Lead Account Manager, Amos Ductan, puts it.   Basically, if your competition is there, you should be there, too.  No one wants there lunch stolen, right?

• Paid search & organic work together – Many studies have shown that paid and organic listings working together help to increase traffic to the site, increase visibility and overall, increases brand awareness – businesses, in general, should not solely rely on organic listings as a way of promotion.

• Customizing – Paid Search allows businesses to customize ad copy – optimizing copy with add-ins like sitelinks, location extensions, product extensions, call extensions, etc.

• Targeting – Large businesses can choose to target users by demographics, psychographics, IP address, in order to write and tailor ad copy to niche audiences.

• And the list goes on and on and on…

In the end, Small & Large Businesses live happily ever after.

Whether tall or short, narrow or wide, small or large – paid search marketing can be useful tool for just about any business size.   There are many external caveats that can make search a complex tactic to manage.  But, with handy tools and creative minds – small and large businesses may both see success in using paid search as a medium.

Search marketers are constantly fighting against competition. We bid optimize each keyword, test different ad copy messaging, and improve our brand’s visibility on the SERP in order to stand out against the competition and improve campaign returns. However, AdWords is missing a key metric to optimize against: competitive insights.

You can request an ad depth report from your Google reps, but few search marketers are aware of this advantage. Ad depth is the number of advertisers within a given auction. But, this deliverable is often given at a high level, which limits our actionable insights. Imagine if this was given at the keyword level. We would know the level of competition for each keyword entering the auction. Even if this was given as an average at a campaign level, it would still deliver valuable insights that search marketers could use to make better optimization decisions.

Sure, we can assume lower CPC’s are the result of reduced competition, but that is not transparent into the auction dynamics and can only be used directionally in this case. Recall a previous post about fighting for consumer attention and having your brand’s message heard. As CEO of Google, we would make this data available to all advertisers and fundamentally change optimization practices.

Let’s imagineer an example to demonstrate the value of this feature.

Keyword A has great opportunity for our brand; however, the consumer is bombarded by 9 additional advertiser messages. As reported in Google eye tracking studies, the consumer will most likely ignore the majority of the paid search ads, except those with premium positioning. This requires search marketers to make the hard decision to play in the space or not play at all. To the contrary, Keyword B also has great opportunity and volume, with only 2 additional messages. Savvy search marketers will strongly consider shifting budget to Keyword B in order to take advantage of a less aggressive marketplace and an increased opportunity to have their brand’s message heard. Furthermore, search marketers can use this information to inform which keyword themes deserve to be built out more, adding incremental opportunity and value to clients’ campaigns. The balance of relevant volume opportunity and visibility could be a key insight to leverage for the development of long term strategy. Also, if we assume less competition equates to higher CTR, this also has great implications for account quality score, offering advertisers who leverage this metric a great opportunity to deliver improved efficiency.

So, CEO of Google, we know we demand a lot of you, but go ahead and add this to our wish list. After all, Christmas is just around the corner and your competitors won’t be adding this any time soon. Adding competitor insights is a competitive advantage for you.

The industry continuously talks about how Paid and Organic Search work better when in market together.  It’s no secret, when you have 2 listings you own more real estate or “shelf space”, but what is the degree of this impact and is it significant enough to require investment in one, when you have a reasonable presence in the other?

Google published its own recent research and presented interesting results across a variety of large brands and industries, including the finding that when both are present on a results page:  conversions increase and revenue per visitor is higher.

Additionally, Paid Search is the guaranteed way for a brand to emerge (with a reasonably competitive rank) for generic searches when Organic Search typically cannot, due to lack of meaningful content.  Google’s research (found in Google AgencyLand) shows the importance of non-brand throughout the search process as a large part (~50%) of the research phase happens on non-brand terms throughout the search cycle.

Google’s claim that “more searches + more ads = more traffic”, sums it up.  

Mantra for the marketer: Own as much real estate to capture consumer interest across the funnel.  This is precisely what Razorfish saw in our own research.

Razorfish Paid and Organic Synergies Research

Razorfish wanted to prove the relationship of paid and organic search visits and their impact on client revenue as well as to explore additional attributes that contributed to this revenue.  To do this we built statistical models on a year’s worth of client data of a large retailer.

The goal:  to identify key factors that impacted Organic/Paid Search revenue and quantify the synergistic or cannibalistic (if any) impacts of Paid and Organic Search channels.  The results were clear: the chemistry between the two channels worked great together!  Here’s how:

Before a consumer clicks a Paid Search ad, the probability that the consumer already visited the site’s homepage through Organic Search is very high.  Our research showed at least half (53%) of conversions and revenue happening through Paid Search are preceded by Organic Search visits within the previous 7-days.

It gets even more interesting!  For Branded Keywords, Organic Search visits impacted the Paid Search visits by 81% indicating the cyclical switching between Paid and Organic listings. The Razorfish models show strong synergy between paid/organic links, especially for Branded keywords. Our hypothesis  ( that was supported by the data), indicated that visitors use Organic Search links to navigate easily to a site’s homepage for research, before converting through Paid Search ads.

In spite of this ‘friends with benefits’ relationship between paid and organic: why does the paid link get the edge? As consumers research across both non-brand and brand keywords, Promotional messaging on Paid Search ads trigger conversions by reducing research time-span. The paid link triggers the conversion and is just the better deal since it offers you more ‘benefits’.

Playing defense against your competition is important.

What else did we learn?  Organic Search links and Premium Paid Search ranking (top ranked ads above Organic listings – not right rail) drives greater coverage on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and prevents diversion of traffic to competitor sites.  So when someone asks “is it important to buy keywords if you already show up in Organic Search, even Position 1?”  The answer for the most part is YES!  Otherwise you set yourself up to lose that traffic and potential revenue to your competitors.  Our research quantified this impact: for every unit increase in Competitor coverage (a unit was defined as premium listing, vs. top 3 right rail, etc.) revenue declines by ~12%.  But more interestingly for every increase in Paid Search ranking (that resulted in a click), revenue increased 10%.  This tells us your revenue declines at a faster rate when your ranking slips.

This data tells us to protect our ranking, but it should be our standard practice to prevent competitors, negative ads or misleading messages from exploiting the SERP space for our brands.  It’s a crowded marketplace so advertisers must blend Art and Science when managing a Paid Search campaign to ensure our campaigns are successful in hitting our client’s goals (profit/sales/leads) with a mix of Awareness and strategic placements that keep the purchase funnel full and push competitors down.

In Summary:  Organic Search plays an important navigational role in the consumer behavioral patterns while Paid Search is known to close the deal to a conversion as promotional messaging trigger the close.  Again, just mere investment in Paid Search is not enough, but aggressive ranking in both channels is key to positive impact on client revenue.

Why Paid and Organic Work Well Together

• Consumers convert  after multiple types of searches and clicks, in their ‘research’ phase
• Organic Search ranks well for Brand terms(read:  mostly navigational), but Paid Search can fill the gap on Non-Brand coverage (read:  awareness, deal-breaker offers)
• Paid Search messaging can be managed, tested and optimized.  And promotional language helps to close the consumer to the desired action.
• You can ensure an optimal experience by driving consumers deep into a designated landing page that relates to the intent of the search query through Paid Search ads.
• The more coverage you have, the less room available for competitors to steal traffic and revenue
• 1+1 = >2 (Friends with benefits can end up having a family!)

“Tell the story.” This line is as common in the agency world as “promote synergy” is (or should be) in the client world. Colleagues of mine have often joked that we were going to buy t-shirts that read: I told the story and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.

However, as annoying as it can be to hear that time and time again, it’s also correct time and time again. Digital marketers of all kinds, not just the Searchies, should have an intimate understanding of data analysis. This will enable you to tell the story, receive client buy-in for your desired next steps, and train newcomers to think in such a manner.

Usually, why something happened and what you plan to do about it is more important than the mere fact that it happened. So, how do you arm yourself with the right tools necessary to tell the story?

Answer: Download this Analysis Matrix and Analysis Matrix Cheat Sheet.

Data Analysis Matrix Directions

Read from left to right, then down to left… and up again.  Don’t worry, this is explained and diagrammed below.

For example, if you notice your CTR has decreased 20%, move along the top to the ‘CTR’ column. Then, move down to each numbered square, move left to the corresponding row, i.e. ‘Clicks’, and examine the relationship. If you determine there was a change in ‘Clicks’ as well, seek to understand if there’s a reason ‘Clicks’ changed to truly understand the root of your analysis. Now examine each numbered square in the ‘Clicks’ column. You know that the ‘CTR’ square is related, so you can skip that. You’ve determined that your impressions held steady, so skip this too. That leaves the ‘Avg. CPC’ and ‘Avg. Position’ squares. Did your Avg. Position change? Did that change your Avg. CPC?

If yes, you can start forming the story that new entrants came into the auction or current participants raised their bids, pushing your ads down on the page, leading to a lower CTR and a loss of Clicks. Most likely, your Avg. CPC may have declined due to lower positioning, so your recommendation to restore and improve your CTR and Clicks could be to boost bids, raising your Avg. CPC and consequently raising your Avg. Position.

The key to telling the entire story is to analyze the data until you hit a wall, or the independent variable. The variable with the highest percentage change should equal the sum of all percentage changes of each dependent variable beneath it. If it doesn’t add up, you’re not finished. When you hit this, retrace your steps to understand each and every relationship, and then tell the best darn story you can!