The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

It's a new year, and, as always, an opportunity to reflect on things we might do better in the year to come.  This time of year, many of us resolve to drop our bad habits or pick up good ones, both in our personal and professional lives.  In the spirit of the new year, I've assembled a list of my and my clients' ten worst search marketing habits.  Are you afflicted with any of these?  I am—at least sometimes. 
 
2009 promises to be a tough year for all of us, no matter what business we're in, and there's less room than ever for the same old flawed practices we used last year. In 2009, I resolve to give up these ten habits and be shrewder and more successful, but also less stressed out.

 
1. Broad Match
It's easy — and quite tempting — to dump keywords into our ad groups without considering the appropriate match type for them.  However, although broad match is the default match type in Google, it usually isn't the right one.  If you're not using phrase match or exact match, you're probably getting clicks from all kinds of keywords you wouldn't expect. This year, try making phrase match your default match type, and only use broad match when you want all the distant synonyms and far-off grammatical permutations.
 

2. Position One Lust
It's oh-so-tempting to want your ad to appear in position one on the search results page, above all your competitors.  But, if your ad is in position one, you're probably paying too much.  This year, let go of your desire to appear on top, and be the smartest rather than the highest-up by bidding for position two or three.
 

3. Trying to Get More Clicks and Higher Click-Through Rate
Getting more clicks or a higher click-through rate is not a direct indication that your campaign is thriving.  The clicks statistic is easy to digest, easy to find, and seems very tangible.  But remember: you're paying for those clicks, and if the people who click on your ad aren't converting when they get to your site, the additional clicks do more harm than good.  When you write ads that make it perfectly clear what your product offering is, this should increase your clickthroughs from your target audience, but it will also decrease your clickthroughs from people who don't want what you're offering (which is a good thing).  In 2009, pay less attention to your click statistics and pay attention to the higher-level statistic of conversions, whatever your conversion metric might be  If you're getting more clicks, and they're the right kind of clicks, then your conversion numbers will go up too.
 

4. Paying Too Much
Many of us set our bids higher than they need to be, and as a result we use up our daily budgets before the day is out (see my recent post about optimal budget setting).  If you're consistently using up the full daily budget that you set in a search engine, you're almost certainly paying too much per click.  If you're hitting your budget cap every day in 2009, you should reduce your bids, pay less per click, and get more clicks for your money.
 

5. Exasperation
Search engines offer us complex, multi-featured products—which is good.  However, all the features and settings can be daunting.  We are left feeling guilty or exasperated that we have not taken advantage of all the different things we can do with this immense tool.  However, we should remember that not every tool or setting is for everyone.  For each business, and for each campaign manager, there is a correct amount of attention and complexity, and there is such a thing as too much.  You have other responsibilities too.   This year, don't stress yourself out with SEM complexity.  Do what's right for you, and no more. (Shameless plug: if you haven't signed up for a free trial of Clickable, that's always a great way to reduce complexity too.)
 

6. Desire to "Set It and Forget It"
A result of exasperation is that we often try to get our SEM accounts into a state that we can just leave them in and not have to do anything more.  But SEM is an ongoing process.  Market conditions change, our businesses change, and the opportunities on search engines change.  Just as you shouldn't try to do everything all at once (see #5), you shouldn't try to get to the "end" of your SEM process, the point where you don't have to do anything anymore.  Instead, in 2009, try to find an equilibrium, where you give your SEM campaign regular attention, and take the actions that most benefit you.
 

7. Homogeneity
There are a lot of different kinds of people out there looking for businesses and products like yours.  Some of them respond to one kind of messaging, others to a different kind.  Some of them will prefer a more general, high-level landing page on your site that tells them who you are, while others will respond better to an interior page that is highly-specific to the keyword they searched for.  You never know which kind of people—which kind of strategy—is going to be your sweet spot until you try them all.  In 2009, don't use just one search engine, and one ad copy and one landing page.  Resolve to mix it up and diversify.


8. Self-Centeredness
By this, I mean thinking about things from your perspective, not your customers'.  Unlike other marketing channels, search is a medium in which your customers reach out to you and control the terms of engagement, rather than vice-versa.  Too often, we try to describe why our product or service is great in terms that are meaningful to us, without considering that our customer base uses very diverse language to describe what they're looking for, and can vary in how receptive they'll be to different kinds of messages.  In 2009, put yourself in your customer's shoes and imagine searching for a product like the one your business offers.
 

9. Agooglophobia (Fear of the Non-Google)
A majority of search engine queries are done on Google, but it is by no means the only one out there.  Too many of us neglect the other 30 percent or so of the search marketplace because we don't want to take on the extra management load or have to learn a new technology platform.  Especially if you use an account management system like Clickable, it's actually very little additional work to run a concurrent campaign on Yahoo and MSN, which can use the same ads, ad groups and keywords as your Google campaign. In 2009, if you don't have an account with Yahoo and MSN, start one.


10. Neglecting the "Long-Tail"
Just as we often neglect the smaller search engines, so do we neglect the smaller (less-frequently-searched) keywords—the niche markets and terminology.  The many small-time keywords and audiences that together add up to a majority of the whole — the so-called "long tail" — are easy to leave out, because they require a little more effort than the big fish.  If one or two keywords or ads account for the majority of your traffic, you need to add more keywords and ads.  In 2009, try to triple the size of you campaign by adding many new pieces of specific, refined, long-tail inventory.

Ehren, Clickable SEM Guru

Note: Clickable employees volunteer several hours a week to helping other search marketers succeed. “Clickable Gurus” participate in numerous online search communities to provide straightforward answers to numerous questions, and, each week, one of the gurus posts a search marketing tip to the Clickable Blog.

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