I’m in Las Vegas at Pubcon, the internet marketing conference organised by the folks at WebmasterWorld.com
It’s a huge event running over three days and includes six tracks on SEO: Organic Search, SEM: Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliates, Video and Multimedia and Interactive Site Reviews.
Yesterday, among many others, I attended the PPC Vendor Panel where all the search engines get together and update the audience with what’s new in their worlds.
This year’s panel was interesting as the economic downturn has obviously been top of mind inside marketing departments across the globe and all the panellists were keen to give some advice as to how to weather the storm!
Aggregating their wide-ranging advice this is what they recommended:
- Advertise on multiple search engines. There is value in every top search network.
- Be aware that duplication of advertising campaigns across search engines increases brand awareness.
- Combining the power of a multi-search approach will increase clicks and ROI if managed properly.
- Consumer behaviour reflects economic trends so analyse through analytics what people are typing in to reach your site.
- Make sure your ads reflect your value proposition. Establishing trust is very important especially when trying to encourage consumers to part with their cash!
- Now, more than ever, is the time to measure what is going on on your site. So through analytics and your regular PPC reporting, try and spend more time diving into the data to make sure you’re squeezing every ounce of ROI out of your campaigns.
Our very own Doug Stotland from the adCenter team in Redmond added his advice on how to bridge the BRG or Big ROI Gap!
When we’re out and about chatting to customers we often get asked what the best way is to keep that return on investment growing in such a competitive environment like search engine marketing.
Doug’s three point advice suggests advertisers:
Adapt and adopt as the market changes
Keeping abreast of changes in the market place will enable you to move quickly and take your campaigns further when new providers come into the arena or established publishers change tack or emphasis in one way or another.
Capitalize on innovations coming to market
Learn about your customers and target more precisely e.g. utilizing demographic targeting in adCenter
Improve CTR which increases volume and lowers your CPCs
Increase post-click conversions
Define ROI the right way
Build your capabilities
By adding more knowledge to your armoury you establish a more effective skill-set for you and your company. Attending conferences, networking, reading blogs and seeking out training all help to make us better search marketers.
I attend and frequently speak on these kind of panels. This one was actually very helpful with few, if any, sales pitches at all.
This session left me with the feeling that all the speakers were super-passionate about helping marketers get through this difficult period with as little fall-out as possible.
Jobs well done!
Cheers
Mel