How to Waste Money on Search Engine Marketing…

Spending on search engine marketing is growing exponentially – and so is waste. While purchasing highly desirable (and therefore expensive) key words is the glamour part of search engine marketing, the back end is where marketers can make – or lose – their money. In fact, there is so much money being lost on bad follow-through that marketers must be making a concerted effort to do so.

I don’t know why marketers want to lose money on search, but for those who insist on doing so, I offer five helpful hints. For the rest of us, each hint is followed with suggestions on how to market more efficiently to prospects who have come to your Web site via search.

1. Don’t get to know your visitor…

A better suggestion: Use the data you already have and any other nuggets you can glean.
Offers should be refined for specific customer segments, such as gender, referral source, keyword, new or return visitor, and any others that we can mine. Create personas to use as a guide. From the anonymous browser to the identified customer, Artificial Intelligence modules can now detect the most promising prospects from their browsing behavior.

2. Don’t make a direct connection between search terms used and the very first page you show to the visitor…

A better suggestion: Create relevant landing pages.
For example, if a customer searches for a high-yield savings account and clicks on a link, that link must take him or her to a page that specifically deals with that subject — not to a generic home page where the customer must find the product herself. With so many choices, customers most often will just move on. The market reality is that there is simply not enough affordable traffic to sustain business growth, unless the marketer optimizes the landing page as well as the search terms.

Offers must be relevant based on insights and different scenario testing. Content must be relevant and meaningful. And, design must reflect the needs and expectations of the target audience. We are trying to establish a profitable relationship here and relevance is the father of engagement.

3. Don’t pay attention to the copy of your ad…

A better suggestion: Be specific in your copy.
Yahoo gives you 190 characters (including spaces) in your text ad. MSN adCenter gives you 140, while Google allows just 70. No pictures, no colors, no company logo… nothing, just a few words. It’s a small canvas and your words are fundamental, so be very careful not to waste them on generalities. Studies have shown extraordinary variations in the effectiveness of different copy (see point 5).

4. Don’t measure what matters…

A better suggestion: Decide on a short list of key success metrics and measure, measure, measure.
The Web has a great strength in its availability of performance data — the amount of data available is also a weakness. Some of the leading Web metrics packages offer more that 5,000 reports out of the box — you probably need 5. Watching how customers behave on your website, and using the information to drive structural, offer placement and editorial improvements, is integral to increasing conversion.

5. Don’t use what you learn to drive improvement (continuously)…

A better suggestion: Test, optimize and test again.
Test as many combinations of content variations as you can or want to, and track any sequence of conversion behavior. Use A/B split or multivariate test campaigns to meet your conversion goals. According to a Stanford University study, the following are the conversion components that should be tested and optimized (there are more): Headline, Offer, Lead, Benefits, Images, and Look and Feel.

We’ve been perfecting this approach for 50 years. Here at Wunderman, the result is called After The Click. After The Click Marketing is the bridge between search engine marketing and relationship marketing. It employs the tried-and-tested methods of the direct and relationship marketing industry and is a critical evolutionary step towards what Lester Wunderman says is the ultimate advertising: Personal Advertising based on relevance.

Mark Taylor is Executive Vice President of Digital Marketing Solutions at Wunderman.