November 5, 2007

Biznology Blog by Mike Moran

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Search by the Numbers

I enjoyed speaking in Chicago on Friday at the final American Marketing Association Hot Topics seminar on Search Marketing. I've spoken at two previous versions of this event, but had never been at the morning sessions—this time I was able to hear the talks from Stephan Spencer and Alan Rimm-Kaufman, which were very interesting.

I especially liked Alan's analogy that branded paid search keywords (such as "Land's End Men's Oxfords") are like white pages listings, while non-branded searches (such as "Men's Oxfords") are similar to yellow pages listings. Your search campaign needs to address both "white pages" and "yellow pages" opportunities, and they should separate them when analyzing success. You should naturally expect higher conversions from white pages queries—those customers are far more "sold" on your company.

Stephan (as usual) had a wealth of tools he demonstrated, but also added inside information that I didn't know (that I think people expect me to know as an expert). One tidbit is that Yahoo! Site Explorer requires that you be logged in to provide the most accurate information. Stephan explained that you get different (less accurate) results if you use the site anonymously. I've never used the site without being logged in, so I had never noticed that—it's a great insight for search marketers and I jotted it down.

If you're interested in getting my charts, you can download Search by the Numbers. Thanks to Stephan and the AMA for inviting me to contribute to the series. If you keep hanging around experts, you'll always find more to learn.

Posted by MikeMoran at November 5, 2007 1:04 PM

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Comments

Hey Mike, thanks for some great tips.

I also looked through the slides on "Search by the Numbers". On Slide 25, any thoughts on why the tools don't or can't let you adjust your bids on keywords to maximize profits. I understand that this would require collection of a lot of data, but seems do-able?

Thanks,
Nadir Hussain

Posted by: Nadir Hussain at November 7, 2007 2:16 PM

It's actually very hard, Nadir, because you'd need realtime access to a company's expenses (to be allocated across sales) as well as the transactional numbers. I expand on this idea in my post today (http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/archives/2007/11/why_dont_bid_ma.html).

Posted by: Mike Moran at November 8, 2007 12:59 PM

Thanks for the nice mention, Mike.

For anyone interested, my AMA slides also online, here:

http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2007/05/25/ama-hot-topic-nyc/

Cheers --

Alan

Posted by: Alan Rimm-Kaufman at November 16, 2007 6:18 AM

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