Credit Crunch Survival and Opportunity for Finance Advertisers

The credit crunch has led to increased uncertainty amongst finance advertisers, but it has also opened up opportunities.

Finance Product Trends

As the general public becomes more concerned with their financial security, adCenter accounts in the banking sector have seen average YoY increases of over 200% in impressions and 190% in clicks (September ‘07 vs. September ’08). These increases have been steady since January ’07.

(Source: Microsoft adCenter Internal Data)

ISAs, which normally have a short-run seasonal flurry of activity in March and April in the lead up to the new financial year, have recently seen increased levels of traffic that do not conform to traditional seasonality.

Although searches for first time mortgages have dropped substantially, searches for remortgages have increased as many households are finding that their fixed-rate mortgage deals are coming to an end and they are looking to remortgage to find a better deal or equity release loan.

User Behaviour Trends

The credit crunch has had a direct impact not just on what users search for but also on how they search:

1. Users are searching more now than they did before the credit crunch, as they shop around for the cheapest deal. Live Search impressions for financial products have increased by 65% YoY, while clicks have increased 51%.

Using ad copy to prequalify traffic to your site (for example using such disclaimers as ‘homeowners only’ or ‘no tenants’) while attracting the maximum number of relevant customers has become a priority. The use of an extensive negative match list is also an essential way to reduce irrelevant traffic, especially with the increased number of searches for financial news stories in recent months (searches for ‘bankruptcy’, ‘crash’, ‘redundancies’ etc).

2. Users are becoming more sophisticated in their queries. Live Search data shows that the numbers of searches on top product keywords, such as ‘car insurance’, have been going down slightly while searches on the more targeted generics (middle-to-head terms) are maintaining or increasing their search volumes.

3. As price becomes the key factor in financial product purchases, top generic finance search results are increasingly dominated by comparison engines while performance on more targeted terms (middle-to-head) is stronger for direct insurance advertisers.

It may be more cost effective for direct insurance advertisers to adopt a bid strategy that aims to maintain a top 3 position for middle/top generic terms while maintaining a page 1 position on the top terms such as ‘car insurance’ or ‘home insurance’.

Chart: Difference in CTR Performance Between Comparison Sites and Direct Advertisers on Top Versus Top/Middle Insurance Keywords. Source: adCenter Internal Data

Becoming More Cost Effective – Exact Match and Demo Targeting

Relying less on Broad Match bidding and more on Exact Match will make it possible to improve the relevancy of your ads and CTR and help reduce CPCs. Exact Match bids should be at least 10-20% higher than your broad match bids to ensure that the most relevant ad shows.

adCenter’s unique demographic targeting capabilities can represent the most cost-effective way to increase bids as you can increase bids for just your target audience rather than applying a blanket approach of increased bids across all users, effectively minimising waste.

Top Tips to Prosper During the Credit Crunch

· Be aware of new micro trends and opportunities on different financial products, and optimise in a strategic way

· Prepare for and make the most of key seasonal periods

· Focus strongly on mid-tier finance keywords

· Use detailed and attractive ad copy to set yourself apart and prequalify traffic

· Use detailed and extensive negative match lists to avoid irrelevant traffic

· Use Exact Match bidding strategies to grow CTR and reduce your CPCs

· Use adCenter’s unique demographic targeting to up weight your bids to target your desired audience – increasing chances of conversions and improving ROI

If you have any questions or comments please visit the adCenter Forum.

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Increase CTR Using Keyword Insertion with Default Text

Last month my colleague Libby Thomas wrote an introduction to Dynamic Text Insertion. You may remember she mentioned that a study has shown that inserting the exact keyword into a paid listing improves CTR by 38% on average.

Keyword Insertion

With adCenter, the easiest way to include the search term is through {keyword} insertion. This function allows you to drop the term from the search box straight into your ad. But what if inserting the keyword would take you over the 25 character limit for titles or the 70 character limit for descriptions?

Default Text

You can define default text for use with {keyword}. The default text is then used in your ad whenever the ad would otherwise exceed character limits. You can also use default text with {param1}, {param2} and {param3}.

If your ad title is "{keyword} in Stock Now" and one of your {keyword} variables is "Mountain Bike Parts," the resulting ad title, "Mountain Bike Parts in Stock Now," would exceed the character limit for ad titles. As a result, your ad would not be displayed.

However, by using default text in your ad title, you can keep your ad text within the allowable character limit. If your ad title is "{keyword:Bike parts} in Stock Now" and someone searches by using your keyword "mountain bike parts," your ad title would be displayed as "Bike parts in Stock Now”.

So now that you know how to use Keyword Insertion with Default Text, why not give it a try and see how much your CTR increases?

Thanks for reading,

Phil

Search and the Art of Fly Fishing: Optimizing for Your Customers’ Buying Cycle

Search engine advertising is about moving your customer from search page to landing page. It’s about selling the click but selling it to the right person, the person likely to buy your product, service, subscription, or information. It’s about the customer, a fact that some advertisers seem to overlook.

I’m a fan of fly fishing; I’m just not any good at it. I once took a class and was unable to catch anything in a pond stocked with hungry trout! Still, I appreciate the artistry required, the intimate familiarity with the trout’s lifecycle and environment. Trout rise to different insects as they hatch at different times of the year, even different hours of the day. A fly offered at the wrong time or with the wrong presentation is likely to be ignored. There’s a lot of similarity between fly fishing and search engine advertising.

Present me with an ad that doesn’t acknowledge
where I’m at in my buying cycle and
I’m likely to ignore it. I’m a trout!

Your customers have a buying cycle. It begins with recognition of a need. It may be a vague, undefined need but it’s a need. Take my experience on Cougar Mountain.

Cougar Mountain has been described as Seattle’s backyard wilderness; 3,000 acres of wetlands, meadows and forest on a very old mountain. After walking a trail on Cougar Mountain, my ankles ache and I realize that my Converse tennis shoes, although fashionably retro, are probably not the best footwear for a mountain. I need something better.

Researching a solution to my need is the next step in the cycle. It’s likely an iterative step as I become more informed about alternatives. Maybe I begin searching on general keywords like “hiking boots,” then recognize what I really want are “hiking shoes,” and finally “light weight hiking shoes” as I define the features important to me. I begin comparing specific brands of hiking shoes. And finally, I begin shopping prices for specific models. Each iterative step has its own set of keywords different than the one before. Each step requires different ad copy to remain relevant.

Early in my buying cycle, an ad that prominently features “Hiking Boot Reviews” would likely appeal to my ignorance. I don’t yet know what I don’t know. When I realize there is something called a hiking shoe, an ad that includes “Hiking Shoes” and “Buyer’s Guide” might attract my attention. Once I’ve determined my short list of hiking shoes, then an ad that includes brand, model and a special offer might get me to rise to the fly. Present me with an ad that doesn’t acknowledge where I’m at in my buying cycle and I’m likely to ignore it. I’m a trout!

Your Customer As Organizing Principle

It’s common practice in search advertising to create large ad groups of loosely related keywords, write a few static ads, and finish with an ad that dynamically inserts the keyword phrase into the title or body copy. It’s easy. When your campaigns include thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of keywords, easy becomes very attractive. It’s the equivalent of fishing with dynamite.

“…speak to the dog,
in the language of the dog,
about what’s in the heart of the dog.”
Persuasive Online Copywriting
Bryan, Jeffrey Eisenberg

Dynamic keyword insertion increases click through rate, no question. The searcher sees their keywords reflected in the ad and perceives greater relevance. Searching is a goal-oriented activity driven by relevance. So dynamic keyword insertion increases click through but compared to what? Loosely organized ad groups with irrelevant ad copy? Not surprising.

Instead, organize your campaigns into smaller ad groups of closely related keywords focused upon your customers’ progression through the buying cycle. Pitch your ad copy to the questions and concerns of your customers as they move from acknowledgement of a need through fulfillment of that need. Quoting Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg’s Persuasive Online Copywriting, “…speak to the dog, in the language of the dog, about what’s in the heart of the dog.” (Somehow, paraphrasing with “speak to the fish, in the language of the fish” doesn’t seem as impactful.)

And yes, it’s more work than fishing with dynamite. It requires finesse, timing, a deep understanding of your customers, and probably far fewer keywords. Think there’s no cost to those millions of long tail keywords if no one clicks them? Think again.

UK Search Spend Up 28% – How Does This Affect You?

The IAB has announced today that UK internet advertising spend in the first half of 2008 grew by 21% compared with the same period the year before. Online advertising now has a healthy 19% share of the UK’s total advertising budget with marketers allocating £1.7B of their budgets to online channels. PPC lead the way as advertisers showed a great deal of confidence in the medium: “Paid-for search continues to lead the way, growing by 28% year-on-year and was worth £981 million in the first half of...(read more)

Dynamic Text Insertion - Introducing adCenter’s Superhero

Following on from Kate's advice on how to manage your PPC campaign during the "downturn", I'm going to add another secret weapon to your marketing armoury to help you squeeze even better ROI out of your adCenter Search Ad activity.

Arguably one of the most important criteria for a search ad is to be as targeted as possible. According to a study by Advertising.com, inserting the exact keyword into a paid listing improves CTR by 38% on average.

There are two main ways of making this happen:

Keyword Insertion

Admittedly the easiest way to include the search term is through {keyword} insertion. This function allows you to drop the term from the search box straight into your ad. Although this is really convenient, there are disadvantages which can seriously impact your CTR. For example, the keyword might run over the character limit or it could contain poor spelling or incorrect grammar which will result in your ad looking messy and unprofessional. This will reflect badly on your website and brand.

Dynamic Text Insertion

But worry not, help is at hand. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Dynamic Text Insertion. This adCenter function utilises the placeholders {param1}, {param2} and {param3} and can help to transform your account. Unlike {keyword} insertion, Dynamic Text Insertion is versatile whilst remaining scalable and simple.

How does it work?

Dynamic Text works in a very similar way to {keyword} insertion but instead of instructing adCenter to pull keyword data you can direct it to pull data from a pre-determined source which you have created.

- If submitting keywords via a spreadsheet – Dynamic Text should be placed in the ‘Dynamic Text {param2}’ column

- If submitting keywords via Microsoft adCenter click into the relevant ‘campaign’ and ‘ad group’ and then once you’ve reached the ‘keywords’ tab, click on the ‘edit keywords’ button.

- Alter {param1}, {param2} and {param3} as appropriate. The ‘Bulk Edit’ function can be used by ticking next to the keyword parameters you wish to edit and then clicking ‘Bulk Edit’.

- {param1} is typically used for destination URLs as it offers more characters with which to ensure the link is as detailed as possible. {param2} and {param3} can be used to include as much of the keyword and other engaging information (e.g. price points) as possible. The bulk editing function makes it really easy to update your dynamic text when required.

Why should you use it?

adCenter’s dynamic superhero can rescue your campaign. In the example campaign in the diagram above, the keywords are all very similar (‘cheap hotel paris’, ‘family accomm paris’ and ‘room single paris’) so would naturally be collected in a ‘Paris’ ad group. However, there are nuances between each keyword that indicate very different user intent – one searcher’s focus is cost while another’s is family. You can reach all of these different users by using dynamic text insertion to tailor your ad to them personally.

So let adCenter’s dynamic keyword insertion save your day by implementing it now!

Thanks for reading,

Libby

Tips on Preparing Your SEM Campaigns for the Online Holiday Shopping Season

Personally, I don’t understand the people who consider Labor Day weekend to be the start of the Holiday shopping season, but they most certainly are out there -- my sister-in-law is one of them. She starts thinking about the Holidays right after Memorial Day weekend, carefully adding to her shopping list of possible gifts as she thinks about them throughout the summer months so that she’s ready to go once Labor Day weekend hits. It’s a level of Holiday Season anticipation that I’ve never encountered before, not even when I was a Santa-loving child myself. This is also the sister-in-law that, when I was just dating my husband and we spent Christmas Eve at his parents’ house, woke us all up at 5am to start opening presents... even though she’d kept us up until 1am watching “A Christmas Story” over and over again on Christmas Eve. Did I mention she’s 34 years old?

Anyway, holiday-happy relatives aside, the point of this post is to urge you, dear advertiser, to make sure your PPC campaigns are firing all cylinders for the trickle of holiday traffic that begins now and grows to a fever pitch as the month of December approaches. I just did a quick check on the “Research” tab in adCenter for the keyphrase “christmas gift ideas” and found there were 241 searches on these terms last month, as well as some historical data that shows over 1,000 searches on this phrase during September of last year, peaking at 11,802 searches during the month of November. December was only slightly lower at 11,369 searches.

Here are 6 tips to help you make the most of your online advertising efforts this year:

1.) Create new SEM campaigns specifically for the Holiday Season

Rather than going through your current campaigns to add keywords and ads with holiday-specific content, it’s far easier and more efficient to create holiday-specific campaigns that you can activate just for the holiday season, and then pause once the holidays are over. You can re-use these campaigns year after year, saving yourself a lot of time and effort in uploading specialized content, only to delete it all once the holidays are over. For more information on setting up holiday-specific campaigns, you can look over my previous post on creating specific campaigns for Mother’s Day that explains the concept in greater detail.

2.) Make sure your budgets are large enough to keep your campaigns live

The Holiday Season is infamous for gobbling up your advertising dollars quicker than any other time of year -- you don’t want to check in on your campaigns and find that they went into budget pause either early in the day for campaigns set to divide across the month, or else near the end of the month for those set to spend until depleted.

3.) Set aggressive bids

The largest budget in the world isn’t going to do you any good if your bids are set too low for the keywords you’ve selected. Increased competition for popular keywords and holiday-specific terms tends to drive bids higher during this time of year. I would be remiss in my duties as an SEM professional if I didn’t take this opportunity to direct you to the adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007 to help you estimate what competitive bids should be. Yes, it does require Excel 2007, but there is a free 60-day trial version available for you to test drive (and use the Add-in with).

4.) Expand your keyword list

Building on the current theme, all the money in the world allocated to your SEM campaign isn’t going to bring in any business if you don’t have a wealth of relevant keywords to help trigger your ads. You may think that you’ve exhausted every keyword possible by wracking your brain for ideas related to your products and services, but chances are there are some you’ve overlooked. I can’t stress enough how useful the Add-in is for building your keyword lists, but if you’d like a quick fix view of potential terms, you can always enter in some key phrases on the “Research” tab in adCenter. You may also want to explore some of the keyword generation features on the adLabs site.

5.) Offer Holiday Season Perks

Ad copy that features eye-catching offers like “free shipping”, “overnight delivery” and “free gift wrapping” will entice buyers to click on your ads. Just make sure that the landing pages in your campaign validate this claim somewhere on the page or else you may run into editorial disapprovals. For more tips on ensuring your ad copy is optimized for top performance, you can refer to Shefali Singla’s post, Constructing an Effective Call to Action for Your Ad Copy.

6.) Use Dynamic Text in Your Ad Titles

Coupling holiday offers in your ad text with dynamic keyword insertion for your ad titles makes it so shoppers who see your ads will not only see ad titles matching the keywords they searched on (increasing the likelihood that they’ll click on them), they’ll also see all the cool things you’ll do for them in appreciation for giving you their business. If you do opt for utilizing dynamic insertion, be sure to upload the keywords for your new Holiday campaign as you would want them to appear in your ad title, i.e. with the first letter of each word capitalized. For more information, you can read more about this in my previous post, Tips to make sure your dynamic ads appear as capitalized in adCenter.

If you have any questions or comments, please visit the adCenter Forum.  The forum is a great way to connect with other PPC marketers, as well as to give feedback and offer suggestions on what you'd like to see in future adCenter releases.  Microsoft employees monitor the posts in the forums daily, so you can be sure that your questions will be answered.

Good luck!

Tina Kelleher

Microsoft adCenter Media Specialist

Getting Started with adCenter: Ads

Hi friends! It’s me again, here to share with you the basics on how to get ads set up in your adCenter account. Be sure to check out parts one and two of this series: Getting started with adCenter: creating campaigns and Getting started with adCenter: creating ad groups.

You can create ads individually or in bulk. I’ll walk you through how to do both here. Upon logging into your adCenter account, navigate into the Ad Group in which you want to create ads.

Individual Ads 

Click on Create an ad.

You’ll then be able to create ads one at a time within the adCenter UI. Note that you’ll be able to preview your ad to the right as you write it.

Once you’ve created your ad, click on Save, and your new ad will be included in your list of ads for that ad group. You’ll be given a warning if your ad copy does not fit within editorial guidelines and you’ll need to fix the problem before adCenter will allow you to save the ad (for example, your ad text is too long, excessive capital letters). Read a full review of adCenter’s editorial policy.

Importing Ads in Bulk 

You can also import multiple ads into adCenter by clicking on the Import Ads link within the Ads section of your account. You’ll be able to download the proper format in either Excel or .csv, fill it out, save it and import it into your account! With only 4 columns, this is another great option to import ads.

Ad Copy

In writing your ads, remember, this is your one chance to grab a searchers’ attention. What are you offering that your competitors aren’t? What specials are you currently running that would entice someone to step into your site? Make sure you are listing these in your ad copy!

More helpful hints when creating your ads:

• Use Dynamic Text– this instantly customizes your ad copy, making your ad more relevant to the searcher, and therefore more desirable! For more details on this, see Charles Thrasher’s blog on Dynamic Text.
• Relevancy – How do your keywords and ad copy correlate to the landing page where you are sending your customer? Being aware of the keyword-ad copy-landing page connection will not only help you increase your CTR and Conversions, but you also spend less time with editorial rejections. A clear win all around! For more information on this, see Hana Ondrusek’s blog post.
• Length – Ad Titles need to be 25 characters or less; Ad Text need to be 70 characters or less. Check out the formula Tina talks about to ensure that your ads are within these limitations.

If you have any questions or comments, please let us know in the adCenter Forum.