Roller-coaster economies force marketers to seek strategies that reap the highest levels of ROI. Even in times like these, they feel confident that search advertising will continue to be a valuable investment in the marketing mix. But with increasing competition and a shifting marketplace, marketers must understand the best practices for optimizing search to achieve the desired levels of return from their advertising spend.
Scale, scale, scale For effective search advertising, you must scale. Implementing the right technology platform helps ensure that the number of keywords you purchase and report on is in line with your firm’s needs. Using fewer keywords makes you more reliant on using broad match keywords to gain volume — but they face more competition and are more expensive. Create the right keyword footprint, and you’ll be rewarded.
Track your ROI To improve search advertising results, look at how your campaigns actually perform. Marketers are moving toward a granular level of tracking, but plenty still assess campaign success at the ad or campaign level — which doesn’t lend insight into overall achievement. Tracking success at the keyword level can provide information on trouble areas of campaigns and allow for quick correction for those that are not performing.
Watch your Quality Score Keeping a high Quality Score with the search engines will help lower your cost per click, increase your ROI and extend the effectiveness of your search campaigns. Search engines reward the relevance of keywords, so test your ad copy and keyword groupings to ensure they’re relevant to your business. Using tools, such as match types and negatives, will improve the quality of your traffic and boost your campaigns.
Integrate data across channels Your customers use many channels. So, incorporating information across many of them offers you a cohesive overall marketing strategy. If your display ads are doing well on a particular site, use that information to tailor keywords and ad copy for your search campaigns. Cross-channel optimization also allows you to adjust budgets depending on which channels show success.
Search advertising remains an effective tool for acquiring and retaining profitable customer relationships. As marketing budgets shrink, ensure that you’re taking advantage of the resources and strategies available to lower costs and improve results.
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