Posts Tagged ‘SEM’

Search Marketing Spends Increasing Worldwide

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

It’s not surprising that a recent E-Marketer study shows search marketing spend is increasing around the globe.

eMarketer search spend by tactic

People realise that in the current economic climate they really need to justify their marketing spend.  I think all marketers are increasing their focus on results, measurement &  budget accountability.

The graph above shows that 45% of respondents intend on increasing their PPC spend.  Pay per click advertising is cheap and effective.  You don’t need a designer to create the ads and you can set your own daily budget to keep costs under control.

Online banner advertising, email marketing & paid search or pay per click advertising can all show a clear ROI for every dollar spent.  If you are using the correct tracking tools you can see exactly how many people have converted on your site and from where for every dollar of advertising spent.   If only we could see those results for all forms of advertising.

The key to getting the best results online are measurement & optimisation.   Are you using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics or Omniture to track online conversions?  Are you keeping an eye on what people are saying about you using online reputation management ?  If not, you should be.

Track, test, optimise and make sure that you’re getting the best ROI for your ad spend.

Google Releases Search Insights

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Yesterday Google released Google Insights for Search a wicked tool that lets you track & compare search volume for keywords by time, region/country and category.

There are so many uses for this tool!

  • Find out popular terms for your advertising messages, this may change my country/region and this tool will be able to show you that!
  • New market research - use the tool to quickly scan and find potential new markets for your product or service.
  • Planning seasonal changes, the yearly trend view can you give you some expectations around seasonal traffic changes.
  • Track PR - you can use the keyword comparator to see how your brand is tracking in relation to your competitors.  You can see search spikes in relation to any recent PR you or your competitor has done.  The list goes on!

Here are a few examples I’ve been playing around with.  Lately I’ve been taking Bikram ‘Hot’ Yoga classes (crazy I know!) so I was wondering where Bikram is most popular around the world.  Funnily enough New Zealand is second behind the States for regional interest and has higher interest than Canada where I’m currently taking my classes:

Google Insights for Search, Bikram Yoga Results

Google Insights for Search, Bikram Yoga Results

Let’s try another search a little closer to home - Small Business Accounting.  As I expected New Zealand is top for this search term - go Xero!  Interestingly, South Africa is close behind, a new market for them perhaps?

Small Business Accounting, Google Insights Results

Small Business Accounting, Google Insights Results

Frequency Capping Now Available on the Google Content Network

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Wow! Google have been rolling out all sorts of awesome Adwords features lately!  Now you can track frequency rates and put a frequency cap on your Google Adwords Content Network campaigns.

I won’t rewrite their info, you can read the full story here.

Quick SEM tip:  You should always set up separate campaigns for your content network targeting. Don’t just tick the box and have content network turned on within your normal Search Network campaigns.  You should set separate bids and conversion goals and specific ad copy for content campaigns.  I’ll write more on this soon…