Search for B2B

Introduction

By James Farmer, Publishing Director, B2B Marketing

This chapter aims to give you an insight into one of the most important marketing channels of the 21st century. The content in this chapter is based on professionals’ observations, across thousands of campaigns which have been run or consulted on. Search engines are continually developing their algorithms and rule sets, which affect search ranking without revealing how or why changes have been made. This chapter will provide help for both the novice and seasoned marketer who uses the web to drive traffic. The authors of the sections will take you from campaign set-up and management, to measurement and analytics, covering the do’s and dont’s.

Getting Started

By Rachel Tyler, Microsoft Advertising and Hanne Tuomisto-Inch, Banner

• What should you think about before embarking on your B2B search campaign?

• What are people searching for?

• How does search fit into the organisation’s marketing and communication strategies?

• Is your search strategy based on a specific campaign by aiming to support a multi-year search infrastructure for the company?

• Will traffic be driven on objectives or campaign activity?

• Where will you be driving traffic to on your site? – look at links to specific pages not just your organisation’s home page

• Do you have the right tracking links/reporting capabilities?

• How will you define success and track the success of search versus other activities you are planning?

What are your campaign objectives?

It is important to get this clear. Your keywords, copy and landing page will all be influenced on what type of campaign you are running. Is it brand awareness or response driven? Do I need a call to action or do I need to be specific? It is critical to consider the mindset of your target audience.

What is your target audience?

Defining your target audience will help you understand your recipient’s search behaviour and develop your campaign. People are often not searching for solutions, but instead researching problems they have. The words people use to search are not necessarily obvious – the more detailed you can be, the more effective you can make your campaign.

How do you define and measure search marketing success?

It is important to decide what metrics are important to measure upfront. There is a variety of data which is available through search platforms. It is essential to make a decision of what you will measure and how much you are willing to pay for the action (click/visit, download/lead/sale).

Do you have compelling reasons for people to give their registration data?

Business audiences are often reluctant to give up their contact details, unless there is a fair value exchange. The call-to-actions you offer need to match with the objectives and the buying cycle that your prospects are in. For example, independent, third party research and whitepapers are relevant in the awareness / early information gathering stage. Case studies and technical solution sheets and free trial offers are more relevant later in the buying cycle. Content needs to be unique, relevant, compelling and valuable.

What is your competitive landscape like?

Carry out research to evaluate how competitive your market sector is in terms of search activity. Based on an initial keyword list you will be able to get average bid prices from Google tools. Furthermore, using tools like Hitwise and Adgooroo will allow an understanding of competitors’ copy, keywords and volume of activity, both on PPC and SEO. These will be crucial in determining how aggressively you need to launch your campaign and how to get a competitive advantage over your key rivals.

Combining paid and natural search

By Lisa Ditlesfsen, Head of Search, Base One Interactive

It’s the question everyone asks: search engine optimisation (SEO), or pay per click (PPC)?’ But the more compelling question is, ‘How can we integrate them?’ Integrated Search is the key to successful Search Engine Marketing, short and long-term. Although SEO and PPC advertising are in principle very different strategies, both rely on content optimisation to increase ROI, and together they give more powerful results than either strategy can achieve on its own.

Why content rules

A few years ago, pay per click advertising was lauded as the fasttrack alternative to SEO you just chucked loads of money at PPC for immediate results and rankings, and you didn’t need to change your whole website to get them. But times have changed, and this key difference between SEO and PPC is disappearing.

This is down to the Google Quality Score, which calculates how relevant your paid listing is for the keyword/phrase you are bidding for. To get a high quality score you need to optimise the content on the page the ad directs users to (the landing page). Ongoing optimization is vital and necessary for notable results.

Are you overlooking a big mutual benefit?

You may know that SEO contributes to successful pay per click advertising, but PPC can also boost your SEO strategy. The data you can collect from running a PPC campaign, such as total impressions for each keyword, is invaluable to help determine how and where to target specific keywords for use in the organic listings. Marketers can use PPC campaigns to test creative messages, and then apply the test results to meta data for SEO campaigns.

Get everyone talking

For successful integration, communication between the SEO and PPC teams is imperative. Whether your search marketing is outsourced or handled in-house, it’s crucial that all relevant departments are sharing information and updates. Sharing information such as keyword performance data across SEO and PPC efforts makes them both more likely to produce conversions and, ultimately, results.

Be prepared to switch sides

To get the most out of an integrated SEO and PPC campaign, you’ve got to play to the strengths of each strategy. So don’t be afraid to adjust the focus: sometimes PPC should take the lead, and sometimes SEO will be your main driver. For instance, once a website generates significant results from the organic search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising should be used to increase traffic. If you don’t perform well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for certain terms, make sure you have solid PPC coverage on these terms.

PPC campaign management strategies

By Petra Studholme, Paid Search Manager, Simply Business and David White, CEO, Weboptimiser Keyword Research

The first step to PPC management is extensive keyword research based on your website, products and target customers. You need to find as many keywords relevant to your company. First focus on high volume keywords, then include so-called tail-end (more obscure) keywords that are low volume but are cheaper to bid on.

Targeting

In addition to targeting your customer by highly specific keywords, most search engines now also give the option to target by geographic location (local versus UK), demographics (target by gender or age) or behaviour. These tools can help to make your campaigns more focused to the right audience hence improving your click through rate (CTR), lowering your cost per click (CPC) and improving your ROI.

URL

It is essential to get the display URL correct as it will help users find your site. You are able to add keywords or product group to your URL. This is extremely effective (for example www.SimplyBusiness.co.uk/insurance). It is important to check that all your links and URLs work. Search engines will ignore your page if it is broken.

Design

Before you can think about PPC management, you need to come up with good creatives. Focus on your website and your unique selling points which you need to get across to your target audience. For example what differentiates you from competitors and the message you want to get across. Think like your customer and what they want to “hear” from you. It is vital to test different creatives for different product groups. Run two to three creatives per ad group and test them against each other to find the strongest performing ad. Consider where you are directing users to, sending customers straight to a lengthy complicated form may not be the right thing to do. Creatives should be refreshed at least every six months.

Profiling

Another important aspect of your PPC management is the profiling of your existing and prospective customers. By using the data you have it is possible to target your audience and attract them to click on your ads. Analysis can also help you identify patterns and hot spots for certain days of the week and times of the day where you are most likely to get the maximum out of your PPC investment.

Campaign management

Organise your target search terms into campaigns and ad groups that reflect segments of your target market. You are then able to create a range of advertisements that are designed to promote each group that you want to target.

Marketing Mix Integration

By James Farmer, Publishing Director, B2B Marketing Magazine

It is a great irony in the market that only a small percentage of B2B firms have successfully integrated search marketing with their wider marketing mix. Search marketing is not a new media channel, if a week in politics is a long time, then 10 years of search, as part of the marketing mix, is a lifetime. The market has been able to effectively integrate telesales with direct marketing (DM), advertising with direct sales, direct sales with branding, telesales, DM and advertising; however SEO and SEM has not been as successful.

The best way to look at search, in an integrated model, is to break it up in the short term and mid to long-term marketing objectives.

The short term - Initial new product/service launches:

Don’t use search as a one trick pony, it is not the sole marketing solution. Even the search engine owners use the full marketing mix in their marketing efforts. Search is a very powerful channel, but there are drawbacks… there can be wastage if used poorly and it will not give your product full market exposure.

It can take up to 3 months to get new content on your site or a new website listed on natural search results. Therefore, you cannot sit around and wait that long for the search engines to find and list your new content. During the early weeks of your launch, you need to put aside a portion of your budget exclusively to PPC advertising.

Where is the integration though? Within ‘search’, PPC should be seen as part of the initial direct marketing effort to drive awareness to your new product/services. The PPC offer/positioning should tie into your overall marketing objectives. For example, will you be using PPC, and possibly direct mail? Select a mix which will drive response against your objectives. Each marketing channel needs to be measured against the next to see which is driving the best results i.e. how much does it cost to make a sale or recruit a prospect? Once these numbers are crunched, then select the most effective channels.

The mid to long-term – Continuing to push an established product/service

Well-built sites/micro-sites will quickly optimise over 3 months in “natural search”. Managing to obtain a top position listing is key. Once the site is listed at the top, then you can hold back on PPC. The next steps should be maintaining natural search levels and improving on wider keywords to build even greater natural search optimisation. At this point, integration of the campaign will subside. The web should drive quality traffic, this is why managing quality leads via SEO is imperative. Monthly targets need to be met, and quality is always better than quantity. If the SEO is not pulling in quality leads, then one must repeat the product launch plan, within the best performing integrated marketing mix, including more PPC, until you can re-optimise your site to draw in more targeted prospects via natural search.

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