Low-Cost Search Tactics

Although search marketing is not known as being an extremely expensive marketing endeavor, it still takes some monetary resources. Not every small mom-n-pop business has the budget to fund these efforts. There are some small businesses that even have to make a choice between paying utility bills and investing in search marketing strategies.

Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster explains that, in spite of these circumstances, the Web offers every business an opportunity to be found, even with a small budget. First and foremost, a business needs to have an online presence with a website. The site does not need to be elaborate, but needs to be able to operate and provide basic functions.

He recommends utilizing David Mihm’s site called GetListed.org. This site gives actionable tips and information for small businesses and the best part is, it is free. If you are going to do paid search, Van Wagner suggest being conservative and local in what you do.

Low-Cost Search Tactics

Discover Who Your Audience Is

How well do you know your audience? Many advertisers think they know their audience well, but unfortunately, some do not utilize all the resources that would help them know their audience even better.
Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist with Google, explains how tools such as Google Ad Planner and Google Insights for Search provide data that help advertisers truly understand the demographics of their audience. These tools essentially allow users to build a target audience profile based on actual data and analytics.
Avinash says, “The reality is, you can focus by using data.”
He went on to say that he has found that many advertisers only have opinions on their audience but neglect to run experiments and tests to validate their views. Although experiments and tests take time, they save advertisers from targeting the wrong audience.
Is your advertising campaign working? Can you prove your target audience with data? If not, you may need to re-evaluate and make sure you truly know who you are targeting.

Paid Search Marketplace

We hear and talk all the time about the evolution of the search market and the opportunities that it brings. In this video specifically, James Colborn of Microsoft talks about the opportunities created for advertisers in the area of paid search.

James says the main stumbling block for advertisers is finding how to integrate search into the media mix. Advertising and searching used to be based on one keyword, but now searchers have become smarter and therefore, so have their queries.

For search engines, the challenge is to address the user’s motive for going to search. As search has developed, they are better able to detect user behavior and also the information a user readily provides to social networks.

James says search integration is the key to uncovering the right solution for advertisers. Microsoft strives to find the right mix of media to provide an effective result for advertisers. They are also making sure that their solutions are compatible with what people are doing online.

According to Virginia Nussey and her liveblog of the Orion Panel James spoke on, there is growth potential in search engines offering new outlets for the advertisers. She also reports that Microsoft is “very interested in becoming the key search provider for Facebook and offering educational opportunities to advertisers…”

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Advertising Based on Factual User Data

When Facebook launched its advertising platform back in 2007, the company received a lot of criticism from users primarily regarding Beacon. Nearly a year and a half later, users have grown accustomed to the ads and webmasters and site owners are taking advantage of the tremendous opportunities. Tim Kendall, the Director of Monetization at Facebook, walks us through Facebook’s advertising system in this video from SES NY.

According to Tim, site owners and webmasters want to know how advertising on Facebook compares to the paid search campaigns they are used to doing. He says Facebook’s self- service advertising product is similar to paid search because it is based on a cost-per-click standard.

The primary difference between paid search and Facebook advertising is that paid search is centered on the user’s behavior and Facebook ads are based upon the data and preferences that users submit to Facebook. Tim says:

“We [Facebook] think that a Facebook ad is a way to reach customers before they search.”

In the above video, Tim demonstrates how to create an ad campaign for “tents” on Facebook. Before beginning the demo, Tim gives an example that 138,000 people in the United States search for tents in exact match queries on Google. This would mean that retailers selling tents have a predetermined allotment of 138,000 opportunities to sell their product. On Facebook however, those retailers can target millions of users who have shared an interest in hobbies such as hiking and camping, which could produce potential customers.

As Tim illustrates above, creating an ad on Facebook is a simple process that consists of a title, an optional image, and the text body. After the ad is complete, identify the target audience by selecting keywords from users interests (e.g., hiking, backpacking.) Facebook also displays an approximate reach based upon the number of people that included hiking as an interest on their profile. Once the target is selected, provide a bid according to standard cost-per-click (CPC) practices. The auction works just as any other online auction works.

Facebook believes it can provide a target market that is more direct than most other ad platforms. Also, the company believes that by offering this “demand generation solution” it will increase the number of searches.

Tim says that the product has exceeded its expectations and that some people are even getting better ROI on Facebook than they were getting with paid search. He said Facebook will continue to improve and develop their tool according to advertiser’s wants and needs. For more information on Facebook Advertising, visit www.facebook.com/advertising.

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