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Promoting Your Business Through Search Engines | |
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SoHo NEWS & TIPS
Helping You Make the Most of Your Small Office/Home Office
SoHoTIPS.com
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Greetings,
Search engines can be a great way to promote your business.
Today's issue will help you learn how to use a search
engine to the benefit of your business.
Best,
Mandi
Be sure to visit the SoHo News and Tips blog!
SoHo News & Tips Blog
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NEWS & TIDBITS
- Alberton's will shut down its on-line grocery
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- As of April 2008, the NYT will shut down a
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- 105-year-old Brooks Mays Music files Chapter
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- Chipmaker Broadcom to restate earnings and
additional expenses, to the tune of $750M+...
- Hooter's Chairman Brooks found dead in his home.
He was 69...
- Petco agrees to be acquired by two private equity
firms...
- The CEOs of GM and Nissan/Renault agree to a 90
day review of a potential alliance...
- A federal judge has approved Ford's health care
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Promoting Your Business Through Search Engines
By KEVIN J. DELANEY
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.
Businesses of all sizes have found that advert-
ising on Web search engines provides a powerful
boost to their sales. They're also discovering
that it can require more of their time and savvy
than traditional marketing outlets like the Yellow
Pages.
Mark Williams has spent nearly all of his market-
ing dollars advertising on Web search engines
including Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. since start-
ing ShavingCream.com two and a half years ago.
Mr. Williams credits search ads, one of the
fastest-growing forms of advertising in the U.S.,
with helping build his online retail business to
a projected $200,000 in revenue this year. "It
has fostered super-healthy growth," says Mr.
Williams, 49 years old.
But managing search ads for the Menlo Park, Calif.,
retailer of men's grooming products online also
eats up about 30 hours of his staff's time each
month. And rivals recently began driving up the
price Mr. Williams has to pay each time a consumer
clicks on one of his search ads, causing him to
consider tapping other types of online advertise-
ment. "It's a demanding game to play to stay on
top of it," he says.
Search advertising exceeded $5.1 billion in the
U.S. last year and represented the largest
category of Internet ads, according to the Inter-
active Advertising Bureau trade group and consult-
ing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Big blue-chip
companies such as General Motors Corp. continue
to increase their spending on search ads, while
smaller organizations such as Wentworth Military
Academy and Junior College in Lexington, Mo., have
also come to see search engines as a key way to
reach consumers.
But because consumer search patterns change and
competing businesses can jump in and out of the
search ad market at any minute, advertisers say
they have to stay on top of it to get the most for
their money. Changes to the search companies' ad
systems make it even more dynamic. Google and
others sometimes add new variables or weight
existing ones differently when determining which
ads are displayed most prominently or what the
advertiser pays per click. They also regularly
roll out new features, such as letting advertisers
restrict display of their ads to specific times
of the day or only to people in specific geograph-
ic locations.
Changes Every Day
Search advertisers bid in an online auction system
to have their ads displayed each time a consumer
searches for a specific keyword or keyword phrase,
such as "mortgage" or "Nantucket bed and breakfast."
The advertisers pay only when a consumer clicks on
their ads, forking over roughly 50 cents per click
on average, according to analyst estimates. Related
"contextual" ads are displayed when the advertisers'
chosen keywords appear in articles or other content
that a consumer is reading on a Web site.
The automated online systems operated by Google,
Yahoo, Microsoft Corp. and others let companies
start advertising almost immediately, committing to
spend as little as $5 in some cases. To simplify
search advertising, particularly for small
businesses, Google's AdWords Starter Edition only
requires advertisers to fill out a one-page online
form, for example, before their ads start running.
BellSouth Corp.'s combined Yellow Pages and online-
directory unit offers search-related advertising
as part of a flat-rate monthly package.
Many businesses say they're very satisfied with
the results they get from search ads. Wyndham
Hotels & Resorts, a unit of New York-based Cendant
Corp., calculates that it generates $14 in revenue
for every $1 it spends on search advertising.
Encouraged by such returns, the hotel company has
increased its search ad spending by 500% since
2001. Roughly two-thirds of its online ad budget,
and close to 15% of its overall marketing budget,
goes to search ads pegged to keywords such as
"Bahamas hotel" and "Phoenix golf."
"Search marketing is a basic foundation -- you have
to have it," says Kevin Rupert, vice president of
marketing and strategy at Wyndham.
All the same, competition to buy ads linked to
certain keywords and other factors means that
Wyndham and Range Online Media, a Fort Worth,
Texas, search-marketing specialist firm that the
hotel company works with, need to keep a close
eye on the search ads. Wyndham stopped bidding on
"Disney hotel" and "Orlando resorts," for example,
because other travel companies bid the per-click
price high enough that it was no longer worth it
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Many big companies have created staff positions
for search experts to handle such issues. Even
online advertising specialists say search market-
ing demands lots of attention. "Every single day
there's a new change, a new iteration," says Curt
Hecht, chief digital officer at GM Planworks, a
unit of Paris-based Publicis Groupe SA's Starcom
MediaVest Group that handles all buying and plan-
ning for the estimated $3.2 billion General Motors
advertising account. "The agency that falls asleep
at the switch on search is not the best for their
client," says Mr. Hecht. General Motors bids to
have its ads displayed alongside roughly 750,000
to one million keywords, including "GM," "Chevy"
and "Buick."
Some entrepreneurs have built businesses almost
entirely thanks to search engines, even spending
only minimal dollar amounts or nothing on search
ads. At the same time, they can be puzzled and
frustrated by search changes that affect their
firms.
Tricky Parts
James Krzeminski of Fernandina Beach, Fla., last
year created one site to sell outdoor accessories
such as patio heaters and a second one offering
pig chef figurines for sale. Without buying any
Google ads, he generated a steady stream of visit-
ors who had found his sites through the regular
search results offered by Google. By March, the
two sites were bringing in revenue of $800 to
$1,000 per day on average.
But, around that time, his sites started dropping
much lower in Google search results, Mr. Krzeminski
says. Fewer users found his sites, and his average
daily sales on the sites fell to about $100. Mr.
Krzeminski blames one of the regular changes Google
makes to how it orders its search results. "It has
made it extremely difficult," says the former soft-
ware developer and accountant. Google occasionally
alters how it weighs different factors in deter-
mining which search results are the most relevant
for any given query, which can shuffle the results
and thus affect businesses that relied on being in
the top links listed.
Other small businesses say they wrestle with
issues such as click fraud, which occurs when
someone clicks on one of their search ads with ill
intent. In some cases, business rivals click on a
competitor's ads repetitively to drain the company's
search ad budget and gain better ad placement them-
selves. The search companies say they police for
click fraud and either don't charge advertisers or
issue refunds in cases where it slips through. But
some business owners complain that it still occurs,
and that it takes time and money to monitor for
fraud themselves.
Experts for Hire
In the face of such complexity, advertisers often
hire experts to manage their search-engine market-
ing. So-called search-engine optimizers try to
help clients get their sites to rank higher in the
normal results search engines provide by employing
a variety of techniques, such as changing the
structure of the sites to be more easily indexed by
search engines. Search-engine marketers help
clients manage the search advertisements they buy.
Wentworth Military Academy and Junior College, for
example, two years ago hired the search-marketing-
and-optimization firm MoreVisibility of Boca Raton,
Fla., and now spends about $10,000 annually through
the firm. MoreVisibility earns a commission and
spends the rest on search advertising and other
services from the search engines, such as guarantees
that Wentworth's site will be listed in indexes.
Retired Lt. Col. Robert Hill, vice president of
enrollment management and marketing at the private
school, says it's worth the money, given that "the
number of inquiries coming through the Internet has
steadily increased since we started doing this."
At ShavingCream.com, Mr. Williams largely taught
himself how to get the most out of his search ads.
Today he advertises alongside about 250 keywords
through Yahoo and about 1,500 with Google. Mr.
Williams regularly changes the text of his ads in
response to the changing market, strategies of
rivals and new products, and adjusts his bids and
overall ad budgets to anticipate seasonal increases
and decreases in consumer traffic.
Over roughly the past six months, aggressive
competitors have driven up what he has to pay for
search ads through online auctions, he says.
Whereas it might have cost as little as 35 cents
for each click linked to specialty men's shaving-
product terms last year, today they can cost upward
of a dollar. Mr. Williams is considering other
types of online ads as a result, and plans this
month to open a retail store in the San Francisco
Bay area in the hopes of increasing sales.
Search is "a great environment to build your
business, there's no question," says Mr. Williams.
"But it's an ever-changing environment and it
demands appropriate attention."
So what did you think about this issue? Drop me a line and let
me know at mailto:mandi@gophercentral.com
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