Clicksharp Marketing

There are certain people you call to do the jobs you won’t touch. What about those that could bankrupt you?

The last time you called your plumber, was it after hours of tinkering with the pipes under your sink? Maybe a small percentage of you would answer in the affirmative, but in most cases, we are well aware that fixing plumbing is best left to the experts. We simply don’t have the time to learn those skills.

Running an ad campaign in search engines is no different. The search engine marketing (SEM) industry will eclipse $15 billion in North America alone this year — in large part because a vast market need has been paired with a growing base of talented professionals specialized in these particular technologies. Failure to appreciate this kind of market efficiency comes at a risk — except here time is not the only thing you’ll waste… whatever money is tied up in advertising budget might go down the tubes with it.

Imagine if that money you put into paid search advertising didn’t turn into a single sale. If you’re not careful, it could happen.

Let’s use digital cameras as an example: these products sell very well online. Seems like an obvious choice for a keyword to target would be “digital camera” — and in fact, the raw quantity of search queries for this term is far greater than, say, “10 megapixel digital camera”. (The following charts are based on real data but not intended to be official representations of search engine query or click volumes.)

So the conventional wisdom would indicate that with a bigger base of click volumes to draw from, a new advertiser would have the best overall chance of taking even a small slice of those clicks, right?

Not exactly. Only a handful of search engine results — whether organic (left side) or sponsored (right side) — are immediately visible to the search engine user. To see the rest requires scrolling down the page. Also consider that our eyes naturally gravitate first to the top of the search results, giving the uppermost ads the best chance at being clicked.

But getting to the top requires a combination of variables including a strong bid, well-written ad, and targeted content on the landing page. So, realistically speaking, what are your chances of garnering actual clicks from that vast base of search queries for “digital camera”?

That’s right — just a sliver. But notice that for “10 megapixel digital camera” you’re getting a similar amount of clicks? This is because, after some lengthy keyword research, we found that the latter has a significantly higher ratio of search query volume to advertiser competition. The result? A better chance to reach the top and get those clicks.

In fact, in absolute, you may even be looking at more traffic — period:

All else equal, with more clicks you have more potential sales — and this means more profits to reinvest in your marketing innovations.

Clicksharp is not making any specific recommendations about specific keyword investments. Rather, we are illustrating a common scenario in which:

• It pays to be aware of your competition.
• The best keyword investments are not always the most obvious ones.
• Keyword research is just one kind of value-added service that a search engine marketing company can provide to boost your ROI.

Deeper competitive analysis, server-side SEO, conversion rate optimization? All in good time.

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Paul Burani
Clicksharp Marketing
New York, NY

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 @ 6:24 pm on the category Pay-per-click advertising, SEM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.


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