Recession Proof your Search Campaigns

SEMPO recently held a webinar about ‘recession proofing’ your PPC accounts. The majority of it was about how to save your clients’ money, as opposed to how search trends and behaviors change. There was nothing particularly new or shocking in the webinar but some interesting points. Tug have put together a short summary below based on what we thought were the main points, there’s also a link to the webinar below.

Budgets are increasingly migrating from traditional advertising and into search as the economic crisis worsens. This will be largely due to the accountability of search over press, TV etc.  Proving the ROI has become crucial as marketers are under increasing pressure to account for all advertising spend. Evidence of this is that Google Q3 profits were up 26% to $1.35B. The downside of this is that keyword prices are driven up hence there is a need to reduce all unnecessary spend and make sure you are only paying for relevant clicks, below are some tips on how to do this.

How to ‘recession proof’ your campaigns

·         Cut waste –

o   Remove all long-tail keywords that you do not consider essential. These will cost you money but rarely convert

o   Use location targeting based on where your sales are coming from, not your clicks

o   Introduce day parting based on sales data, not click data

o   Turn off the content network if it is not converting for you. People browsing the net are now much less likely to convert into a sale

·         Improve your copy & keywords –

o   Remove all branding copy and replace with detail about the value that your brand / product offers over competitors

o   Do you have any offers / price points that should be in your ad? People will be on the lookout for these when they search

o   The above also applies to keywords – people will be using the words ‘cheap’ and discount’ more (Google trends shows increase in people searching for word ‘cheap’ since Oct)

o   Do some competitor ad analysis and find ways to make your ad copy stand out

o   If you have a trusted/well known brand make sure that the brand name is prominently in the ad copy to make people trust you and be more willing to convert

·         Why is the recession good for search? –

o   As companies and advertisers look for ways to cut their marketing spend, people who would normally be reluctant to try new advertising methods or have never tried search before will discover PPC & SEO and realize the value of it

http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/webinars/081030_Webinar/

This article was prepared by Lauren Macnab of Tug Search.