Skip to main content

How to get a Bigger SEM Budget


In a recent Search Insider post, Gord Hotchkiss asks the question: "Will Agencies Get Search?" After making a convincing argument that search "blows away other channels"—because it makes your product service easy to find when buyers are actually looking for something like it, rather than interrupting them while they are doing some else (which is what most advertising is about), Hotchkiss identifies four reasons:
  • Search is small.

  • Search is measurable.

  • Search is hard ("You’ll never hit a search home run with one inspired brainstorm...You just keep plugging away, tweaking keywords and pulling in prospects").

  • Search is utilitarian.

And concludes by saying "And for all these reasons, I don’t think big agencies will ever truly get search." Maybe he's right, and big agencies won't get it (though smaller agencies, like the one I work for, certainly do). And the more interesting question to me, in looking at the four points above, is: why don't advertisers spend more on search? It's generally not a terribly expensive proposition, the results are easy to track, it's generally not a core competency of the internal marketing team, and, again in the words of Hotchkiss, "search works because it’s the customer driving the process, not the advertiser."

Yet according to Forrester Research, "While 87% of B2B marketers we surveyed last year said that they use email in marketing, most lagged behind in adopting interactive tactics such as search (57%)." Given the advantages of search engine marketing (cheap, measurable, effective), why do nearly half of B2B companies ignore it?

I believe the answer is that a lot of advertisers have had bad experiences—not because SEM isn't effective, but because campaigns were poorly implemented. And when that happens with search, the numbers are obvious. If you produce a lousy campaign in a medium that's difficult to measure (e.g. TV or print), it may not be apparent. But because search is extremely measurable, bad results are front and center: low click-through rates, high cost per click, and worst of all, poor conversion.
__________________________________________________________

Looking for a new career?

WebMarketCentral now offers a focused career opportunity search tool just for marketing & sales professionals, powered by CareerBuilder. Check it out.
__________________________________________________________

So to return to my question in the headline—how do you get a bigger budget devoted to search? In two words, easy to say though not easy to do: earn it. As an example, I was asked several months ago by a client to take over a floundering SEM campaign. The return looked awful at the time, and Google was helpfully "recommending" that the daily search budget be increased by 67%. There was no way, quite understandably, that the company was going to throw good money after bad by heeding that suggestion. I was asked to fix it or shut it down.

Three months later, cost per click had been reduced by nearly 20% (through bid optimization), the click-through rate increased by 25% (better ads), lead count was up 13% (landing page optimization), and most importantly, cost per lead decreased by more than 30% (following SEM best practices).

Furthermore, through day-parting, bid optimization, and dropping non-productive search network sites, Google's budget increased recommendation was cut in half. With search now producing demonstrable results, the client was happy to increase their search budget by 33% to maximize both brand exposure and leads.

So, returning to the question Hotchkiss asks, "Why don’t more ad agencies and brand advertisers get search?,” we see a vicious cycle at work: because (some) agencies don't get search, their campaigns produce poor results. Because results are poor, clients won't increase their budget allocations. And because search budgets are small, agencies won't invest in becoming experts. Clients deserve better.

*****


Contact Mike Bannan: mike@digitalrdm.com

Comments

All Time Greats

7 Reasons Every Business Needs to Twitter

This post has been moved to 7 Reasons Every Business Needs to be on Twitter on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter del.icio.us tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter icerocket tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Google AdWords and PPC

MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing strategy or social media tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! The Pure Unfettered Power of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and PPC Campaigns Just like optimizing your site to rank for keywords, you can use our online marketing tips to pay to run advertisements on Google so that your business is shown on the first page of search engine results. Ranking this way is instantaneous whereas SEO (Search Engine Optimizati

How to Use SEO: Leverage SEO To Be Found Online and Boost Your Online Marketing

All businesses that want to attract customers online, no matter the business size or age, have few options other than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO In The Box™ by Results Driven Marketing®, LLC There are roughly 1.8 billion websites online, and basic SEO allows Google to find and index or catalog your webpages.  After that, Google serves you up to searchers in the organic section.  The question remains: where they list your site, on page one or page 22 or further back? SEO controls your positioning. Do you want to be found online or not? If your business is online or you want your product or service to be found online, then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must, and knowing how to use SEO to leverage the power of the internet is vital. Arguably, an effective SEO strategy gets you on the organic results section of the search engine results pages (SERP). Organic traffic is highly valuable and requires high-quality SEO. But even businesses that use l

Getting More Out of Each Click with "Post-Click Marketing"

With the economy now officially in a recession (as if we didn't know that), marketers are under increasing pressure to do more with less. On the interactive marketing side, few marketers will get budget increases enabling them to drive more clicks. The challenge, then, is to maximize marketing productivity—to get more leads out of the same number of clicks. This is the first of two posts that will look at how to improve conversion rates to get more value from each click. One answer to this challenge is provided by "post-click marketing," a.k.a. lead automation management vendors. While the specifics of each service vary, all of them essentially: automate the process of extracting visitor IP information from your log files; match the IP address to an organization; filter out ISPs; and map the company name to one or more external databases to provide additional information (company size, industry, key contacts etc.). The better services also use geo-location filte

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Optimize Your Site

Looking for some online marketing tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing and an seo strategy can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! Optimize Your Site to Improve Search Engine Rankings Most small business owners know that their websites need to be optimized in order for search engines, like Google and Bing, to find them and rank them on the search engine results page. If you don’t know, that’s okay. You can learn all about Search Engine Optimization and SEO best practices here to help impr

Top-Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Advertisements That Make Sense

MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource ! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper DM advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective Digital Marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top notch-digital marketing tip! Advertisement Congruence If your business is running ads this is one of our most important online marketing tips! Ad congruence is when your ads and landing pages look alike or have the same message. Have you ever clicked on an ad and been taken to a page that looked nothing like the ad? When your ads look like the web pages they lead to, customers will feel like they are in

Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 2

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Social Media Marketing on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis del.icio.us tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis icerocket tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foe

Book Review: Website Optimization

This post has been moved to Book Review: Website Optimization – Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool del.icio.us tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool icerocket tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom