Know what you want…
Seems simple right? In my experience, dealing with hundreds of clients over the last 12 years, very few can actually quantify what they want.
Some tell me they want marketing help (far too vague), but when I ask about success metrics, they almost invariably cite traffic as their primary success measure. Now, not to discount traffic, but that’s not what pays the bills is it?
ROI shouldn’t be calculated on traffic*, but by counting other other measures. If your aim is engagement, count comments, reviews, buzz. If your aim is sales, count overall revenue increases, direct conversions, increase of average sales…
In an SEM campaign in particular, knowing what you want is vital, because every click costs you. Your campaigns should be highly segmented, helping you know where each dime goes, how each ad performs, how each keyword you’re buying contributes to the goals you’ve set.
Search Engine Guide has an excellent post up today about segmenting your keywords:
There are four distinct keyword segments each representing a different phase of the searcher’s buying cycle. After going through the process above you should be left with one or more groups of keyword that can be optimized into a page or several pages. The next step is to take each group and segment them even further based on those keyword segments.
Once you know what you want, you can do A/B testing to determine where your money’s going and whether or not your plan is working. Know what you want and you have a heck of a lot better chance at getting it.
*there are a few, rare exceptions to this rule