Search Engine Marketing is Industrial Strength Lead Generation (Or Should Be)

Selling B-to-B Services and Products?

Use Search Engine Marketing to give your business "Industrial Strength" Lead Generation.

With nearly 11 years of successful and global search engine marketing lead generation success under my belt, it's easy to assume that everyone should by now understand that good b-to-b marketing and lead generation should include a high dosage of brilliant PPC (pay per click), SEM (search engine marketing), and SEO (search engine optimization) at all times.

But for many companies, search engine success is clearly not working. Many B-to-B companies ignore, discount, flounder, under-invest, follow foolish or bad advice, and badly under-perform when judged by the harsh light of search engine marketing results.

Companies burdened with poor Search Engine Marketing (SEM) capabilities are literally leaving high value quality business leads (money) on the table, just waiting for someone else to pick them up. Entire business streams worth millions of dollars are won or lost this way.

Industrial Strength Lead Generation.

I know, because I've been on the winning side of these search engine wars for a long time. I'm picking my competitor's pockets over and over and over again. Your competitors may not even be aware there is a "search engine battle" for leads going on! Guess what? They lost before the fight even started.

Intelligent search engine marketing, both organic and paid, works extremely well in generating quality leads. When managed properly, SEO, PPC, and SEM work so well they should be considered as strategic "industrial strength" lead generation machines.

How well does search engine marketing work? From my experience, obtaining 67% of all monthly visits to key B-to-B websites by search engines is not unusual. Organic search can often run at over 58% of total visits, while paid search visits produce around 9% of visitor traffic. My approach is to use paid search to produce an additional, smaller, flow of quality leads. Paid search is like adding cream and sugar to your coffee, where organic search is the coffee and paid search is the cream and sugar. Organic search should ideally carry the larger lead gen load.

The percentage of leads generated from search engine visitors via the web is very high. I can't imagine running any serious lead generation campaigns without search engine marketing being a top tactical and strategic component.

Search engine marketing  pulls in leads from unexpected, previously unknown, high-value contacts. Would you like to experience a successful trade show every day, churning out valuable leads for your business on a 24/7/365 basis? Then pay attention to search engine marketing. Success will come for the diligent, the patient, and the persistent.

Stick with the basics and success with SEM will happen. With technical B-to-B, it really helps to know and understand the markets and customers you are targeting. Build relevant, concise, and precise content, using thier terminology and jargon, not yours. Be customer focused. Use proven and sound SEO and PPC practices, and ignore bad, 'trendy', incompetent, or 'black-hat' advice.

When properly designed and applied, Search Engine Marketing is true "Industrial Strength" lead generation.

Give Your Sales Teams What They Crave This Valentine's Day - Good Leads

Updated February 2017.

10 Ways to Increase Your PPC Click-Through Rates

10 Ways to Increase Your PPC Click-Through Rates Today - A webinar presentation from WordStream and Hanapin Marketing.

If you directly manage or supervise Paid Search Campaigns, like Google Adwords or Microsoft BING, this presentation on click through rates (CTR) is highly suggested.

We benefit from higher click through rates with more efficient campaigns, lower cost per acquisition (CPA) and higher conversion rates, if thoughtful targeting, organization & structure, keyword selection, negative search terms, and other campaign settings are used to better weed out non-relevant (wasted) clicks and spending.

Presented by Larry Kim (Founder, CTO of Wordstream), Sean Quadlin (Writer and account manager at PPC Hero & Hanapin Marketing), this presentation on "10 Ways to Increase Your PPC Click-Through Rates Today" is well worth watching and learning. You'll be inspired to improve the PPC CTRs for your own campaigns.

 

10 Ways to Increase Your PPC Click-Through Rates Today [WordStream and Hanapin Marketing Webinar] from Internet Marketing Software - WordStream

Paid Search Marketing Wisdom @ SES San Francisco 2012

Pay Per Click Analytics Marketing Tips at SES San Francisco 2012

I attended as many PPC focused sessions at SESSF 2012 as I could. The presentation by Steve Latham and Crispin Sheridan was a motivating, and useful addition to the full day of PPC training I had earlier in the week. See Fun With Adwords @ SES San Francisco 2012 for more details on Monday's two 1/2 day classes devoted exclusively to PPC.

Paid Search Analytics and Multi-Touch Attribution Analysis
Moderator: Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board; President, Page Zero Media
Speakers:
Steve Latham, Founder and CEO, Encore Media Metrics
Crispin Sheridan, SES Advisory Board; Sr. Director Search Marketing Strategy, SAP

Make Adwords work smarter for you.

There were good strategic key points and take-aways in this informative session. Some suggestions may seem obvious to someone familar with Adwords, but these points go deep and require going beyond the routine.... using drill-down efforts to really benefit from gained knowledge and insight. These suggestions can have subtle and important implications in the success of your PPC campaigns.

A good rule of thumb is to never get complacent with your PPC campaigns. Ignorance is not bliss with PPC, it is merely just another way for Google to make more money off your Adwords account!

• Paid Search is much faster than any other marketing channels. Exploit this advantage.
• Paid Search provides a sense of urgency, on a constant basis.
• Paid Search provides a form of inexpensive market research. 
• Start your PPC campaigns with actions, then apply and study the analytics.
• PPC Factors and Measurements to look at:
  CPA (cost per action), ROAS (return on ad spend), CTR, Conversion Rates, Ad Quality Score, Match Type, Ad Text.
• Bid Management Tools can be useful. Try automated tools for routine work. Monitor!
• Inaccurate bids are some of the biggest costs in PPC today.
• The Quality Score is connected to search intent. A poor quality score score can be a warning of misguided notions about potential client behavior.

There are 7 suggested areas ripe for PPC Campaign Improvement:

1. CTR and Conversion:

• Ad Content makes a big difference. 
• Test your ads often. Don't rest. Try A B tests. Use Ad extensions. 
• Conversion Rates can be misleading if the volume is low. Don't assume!
• Understand and use setting filters and negative search terms.

2. CTR on Keywords:

• "Sculpt" your campaigns. Remove or move poor quality score keywords. Filter. Use negative search terms to weed out wasteful clicks. Focused keywords "tend" to perform better than broad search.
• Get the keywords closer in intent to your ads.
• Get more granular in your campaigns and ad groups.
• Conversion Rate is an important quality factor, but what if the search term is generating quality first time visitors who are researching, in discovery mode, and don't convert on the first click? It is very important to use analytical data to track actual behavior over time before slashing low conversion rate keywords.

3. Bad Segments:

• Are there differences between device behavior? PC versus Tablet versus Mobile? Apple versus PC?
• Are time zone settings, geography and language campaigns in need of dire attention?
• Adwords 'teems with waste' - - find and prune.

4. Attribution and Analytics:

• Try to understand how PPC works with your other marketing channels. Dig into Analytics for insight. The book Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Cliftin is highly recommended.

5. Steady and Constant Account Adjustment and Expansion:

• Always look at adding new products, services, offerings. 
• Capture trends and opportunities before your competition have time to think about it or react.
• Target category leadership.
• Try using Display Ads, Geography and Language settings. 
• Never stop experimenting. 

6. Reshape your Adwords accounts to pursue 'high intent keywords'.

7. Be proactive. Less reactive.

• Over time, you'll be spending much more of your PPC time working on opportunities than fixing problems.

SES Conference: Search Engine Strategies Live. Day One

I've just finished day one of Search Engine Marketing University..... an action-packed day at the SES Conference during CONNECTED Marketing Week. Today was a deep dive into search engine marketing and related areas. More tomorrow. Between the SEO and PPC presentation tracks it was a full and richly educational day. I had no time for the other tracks on Social Media, Accelerator and Kick Start topics. There is just too much to absorb, unless you send a team. I've never been able to attend an SES conference before due to timing and logistics.... finally did it, and I can say SES was well worth the wait. If you have to pick one mega-conference on Online Marketing, go to an SES Conference. You will learn literally hundreds of tactics, ideas, options and strategies to help make your marketing more effective and efficient. And there are two more days to go! 

SES Morning Session.

There were so many useful bits of expert knowledge broadcast to the large audiences today that I can only give you the briefest of outlines:


The Tools of the Trade for PPC:
Moderator: Kevin Lee, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Didit

• Speakers:
• Thomas Bindl, SES Advisory Board & Founder & CEO, Refined Labs GmbH
  Jeff Ferguson, CEO, Fang Digital
  Tim Mayer, Chief Strategy Officer, Trada

"Better ad targeting can save up to 30% in costs without losing conversions."
"Don't look at Search as a silo. Look across channels."
"PPC audit process - look at structure, creative, tracking."
"Utilize Negative search terms"
Try "Match Type" campaigns to further target.


The Tools of the Trade for SEO:

Google and Symantec Exhibit Booths at SES.

• Moderator:Rob Garner, Vice President Strategy, iCrossing
• Speakers:
  Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
  Jamie Smith, CEO, Engine Ready
• "First set your website priorities and KPIs."
• "Review of Keyword research tools, SEO tools, Paid Search tools." 
• "Visibility = Impression / Rank / Position"
• "Search marketing SERPs are changing, thanks to local search, instant search, etc."
• "Multichannel Analytics Beta available from Google. Ask your Google Rep about it."
• SEOToolSet Version 5 now out - - excellent presentation by Bruce Clay.
• "Social Media is emerging. Facebook has organic and PPC search sectors."
• "Search Engines enjoy higher conversion rates."
• "If you want to be in the top three organic search results, you better study the guys in those spots and BEAT them at their own game."
• Google and Links: "Trust Score getting more weight. Page Rank getting a bit less. All in an effort to reduce spam results."
• 
  
• Insider Tips to Ad Optimization:
• Moderator:Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board and NYTimes Bestselling Author, bryaneisenberg.com
• Speakers:
  Nicholas Gadacz, Director of Search, CafePress.com
  David Greenbaum, Founder and CEO, BoostCTR
  John Yi, Marketing API Program Manager, Facebook
• "Get a copy of 'Ad Magic' from your Google Rep."
• "Use a team of Ad writers for better results - - reduces the blind spots."
• "Test Test Test - - - CTR and Conversion"
• "Facebook is optimizing for 'word of mouth' - - we're only 1% finished!"
• "Facebook is about a 'Friend's voice', not a 'brand voice' in terms of influence.
• "Facebook will provide more metrics for advertisers, they're coming."
• "Use resources to find those WORDS that SELL."
• 
  
• Google Adwords Author, Expert and Trainer Brian Geddes was spotted during the morning sessions.
• Website SEO Expert and Author Matt Bailey was spotted at SES, and he hosted a table during lunch.
• 
  
• Crossing the Digital Divide: The Leap from Search to Display:
• Moderator: Chris Sukornyk, CEO, Chango, Inc.
• Speakers:
  Emily Iverson, Director of Display Media, Booyah Online Advertising
  Bill Leake, President and CEO, Apogee Search
• Yes, Display Ads do matter and they are going to play an even bigger role. And you can bid on them like Adwords. Search is "Pull" advertising. Display is "Push" advertising. You benefit from having both.
• DSPs are Display Side Platforms - - Services you can use to coordinate and bid on Display Ad space across many websites. Use only one DSP agency at a time or you'll bid against yourself.
  DSPs can be very cost effective compared to massive display campaigns negotiated with large sites like Yahoo, NYT, etc.
• "Use auction driven display ad options - be smart."
• The "Lift Factor"
  Search + Display Ads running: +119%
• Search Only: +82%
• Display Only: +16%
• "Google will be a winner in Display Ads."
• "Display + SEO + PPC = the biggest lift." Integrate them all.
• Display Ads are the best tool to fight market lack of awareness and low visibility challenges."
• "Exploit Google Trends for potential niche targeting and brand awareness."
  
  Here in one day, four sessions, is plenty to think about and act upon. And I'm not including the sessions I missed from the other simultaneous tracks.... SES is huge and offers a lot to absorb.

Managing Adwords Avoids Increasing PPC Cost

Many B2B Adwords managers suffer increasing costs of pay-per-click campaigns in order to "stay competitive". And every Adword veteran has treasured paid search-terms that were not only effective, but really cheap and cheerful a few years ago. Now, thanks to more competition for keywords on a global scale, these same search terms are becoming more and more expensive to run with high rankings.

But there are strategies which help avoid this PPC price trap...

During the last year, I didn't experience Adword PPC inflation, but rather PPC deflation.

My overall global campaign costs are reduced and campaign quality has increased:

1. Total Adword Spend down over 50%
2. Already low Cost per Conversion down over 50%
3. Cost per Click down over 25%

And by spending less and with more selectively I gained better quality:

1. An already high Conversion Rate jumped over 35% from the prior year.
2. With conservatively counted conversion rates of over 8%, 20% and higher.

To get these happy results, I focused on separating search-term wheat from the chaff, by going for more long-tail terms and exact and phrase match options which have relevance to my targeted customers, micro-managing time and location settings, using Adsense content ad filters heavily, and using google hegative search terms aggresively to help my campaigns stay focused on the markets I wanted, and where and when I wanted them. I was able to acheive this across campaigns, global geography and languages without using an outside consultant.

Simple Adword campaign changes can yield big results.

Ad Position:
Another great way to limit PPC costs is to focus on the number 3 or 4 or 5 ad positions. Why? 1 and 2 get more clicks, this is true, but they get many more casual clicks of lower quality. You pay more for less.

By being lower in rankings but high enough to get noticed you filter out casual clicks and attract more quality visitors from the core market you seek. You pay less for more.

Monitor Conversion Rates before Click-Through-Rates:
For B2B at least, getting conversions for the sales funnel is more useful for ROI than the initial clicks. Follow conversion rates closely. Click-through rates do offer guidance for potential keyword search term trimming, enhancement and improvement. But the Conversion Rate rules as a top priority for gauging your campaign quality, effectiveness and efficiency.

Trim, Filter and Block Search Term Options:
For example, if you were targeting "Engineering Services", which is very broad search term, back in 2003 it was cheap, but it's not now. The search term is hyper-competitive in Google Adwords. But instead of total surrender, or gritting your teeth and paying more and more in a never-ending price war spiral with your competition, get creative with long-tail search terms to help get around tough PPC situations like this.

Ask yourself; who are your real, paying, customers?

If your target is the Engineering Services for the Nuclear Cold Fusion Industry, for example, then you have options which will be cheaper to run and more effective. Try not using the high cost search term "Engineering Services", it is too broad and expensive. Try more focused search terms like "Cold Fusion Engineering" or "Cold Fusion Energy Engineering" or "Fusion Widget Engineering", etc. Google's Keyword Tool can help you discover related many terms as searched for in Google. Choose quality search terms over 'popular' ones. A search term may be very popular, but perhaps too broad and expensive to run an ad for. Going for long-tail search terms will usually be much less expensive than "Engineering Services".

Extremely important when using the Keyword tool is to also identify the -negative search terms you want listed. Using negative search terms reduces the chance your ad will show up for a search term that is not related to your product or service, thus helping avoid wasted clicks, which saves your campaign budget. For example, having a negative term set for "software" and "web" is a wise idea for any campaign going after "Cold Fusion Engineering" search terms! You don't want to be confused with a software company if your product is a service providing nuclear industry technical engineering expertise.

It is true that there will always be search terms that you absolutely want.... you along with 10 of your favorite cut-throat competitors. In those cases still try to find allied long-tail search terms and negative terms you can use...use the geography and time settings. These and other tactics will help you keep your PPC spend down.

In B2B marketing, there are thousands of technical and industry niche search terms which produce few clicks but yield high quality visitors and profits. It takes some time to research and implement these actions, but they will pay off in the end.