The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

 A marketer’s relationship with a search engine often resembles that of a dog owner. There are hundreds of breeds to choose from and they can be a wonderful part of your life (business). They bite if they aren’t trained well, and the level of enjoyment (success) is entirely dependant on the amount of time one invests in the relationship. 
 


One of the biggest mistakes dog owners make is forgetting how much fun a dog can be. Dogs are fast learners, they adapt to every climate, and their hair and drool are all worthwhile, because you know that when you come home, your dog will be there, wagging its tail and happy to see you.  
 


So try checking in on him more often. Take him for a walk a couple of times a day, instead of once a week. Find out if he behaves better in the morning or in the evening. Sometimes it isn’t beneficial to have a search campaign running 24/7.  Dedicating certain times of day to walking your dog (such as matching the hours that your store operates to the hours that your search campaign runs) could lead to more effective results.



Sometimes it takes a single training session to dramatically improve your dog’s behavior. But real improvement happens over time. In fact, the likely scenario is that you, the owner, are being continually trained by your dog on how to communicate more effectively. So one of the biggest risks you can take is not trying something new. If a dog is left to its own devices and never learns a new trick, it will get old faster. It won’t be quite as happy, and your relationship won’t be as successful as it could be. 
 


Here are three quick lessons I’ve learned about search marketing after bringing home my puppy: 


1. Monitor your campaigns daily. They change rapidly, and if you tweak them regularly the improvements you see can be significant.
2. Don’t run every ad you have 24/7. Showing up for every search result all the time isn’t always beneficial. If you are a brick-and-mortar shop that doesn’t sell stuff online, it will be more cost-effective to run your search campaigns only during business hours (or begin an hour earlier than you open for business, and end an hour after you close.) 
3. Test, benchmark, and adapt. The worst thing a search-marketing campaign can experience is its owner’s neglect. Prices for keywords are changing all the time. Don’t overpay, and don’t lose your preferred position by letting your campaigns run on autopilot. 

Sometimes, bringing in outside help to train your dog is necessary. Shameless plug; Clickable is a great trainer. The Clickable ActEngine™ gives fresh new ideas to improve your campaigns daily. If you are in a rut, your dog seems listless, and expensive (because he is chewing through your marketing budget faster than you can keep up), or you’re running out of ideas for new tricks, check out Clickable’s University, or give your search marketing campaigns a tune up with a free 15 day Clickable Trial.  



Trace Johnson, 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.