Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Defining Paid Search Objectives
let's establish paid search objectives before we talk about the optimization itself. Paid
search can be used for many reasons, such as increasing sales, customers, orders, leads,
traffic, or to help decrease costs and be more cost efficient overall. Paid search can also
help you build the brand.
With all these possible uses for paid search, i want to emphasize the importance
of putting together a detailed plan for how and what you want to measure. you need a
set of crystal-clear objectives before you begin thinking about optimization.
this plan must clarify what web analysis should accomplish according to your
paid search objectives. make sure you have a framework that cuts through the clutter
and lets you focus on the right problems and the methods suggested for solving those
problems.
Tips for Clarifying Your Objectives
282
When defining these objectives—a process that includes management or other key
stakeholders—you are bound to end up with a set of tasks that goes beyond optimiza-
tion alone. that's absolutely acceptable. For example, you may be advertising your
limited participation in a specific industry conference while continuously advertising a
major product or service. these are two different animals when it comes to the results
you want paid search to help you achieve.
For you to create clear-cut optimization objectives, it helps to be able to look
at a
part
of something—whether that is the landing page, the keywords, or the call to
action—and, based on the analysis, recommend a change to that part.
i suggest you choose to see search and paid search as channels by themselves.
this decision depends on the size of your budget allocation. When you run traditional
mass media campaigns, you will see that they have a strong impact on your web traffic.
effective mass media will impact your direct, organic search, and paid search traffic.
Note:
Search has become omnipresent as a finding method and typically the glue between channels.
I have general comments on this topic in my post on search-dominant visitors versus navigation-dominant
visitors:
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/10/search-dominant-visitors-vs-
navigation.html
even if your organization focuses on mass media and you are aware of the traf-
fic effects, you might miss the opportunity to measure the impact and value of other
channels based on your superior measurability in paid search.
