TrueInsight Newsletter

The Search Party
How Smarter Collaboration Can Lead to Better Search Marketing Results

Admit it. Putting your search marketing efforts in the hands of an outside partner—like an Internet marketing firm, ad agency or consultant—is scary. You know that the relationship will allow you to better scale your marketing activities, take advantage of Internet marketing expertise, and cut costs, but there are still questions that keep you up at night. Will I lose the ability to precisely target those customers that I have so lovingly researched and called my own? Will these search experts abandon, dilute, or destroy the messaging and creative that I have worked so diligently to get just right? And what if it all goes wrong?!?

Fear not: as any search marketing expert can tell you, you, the marketing decision-maker, are THE most important member of the search marketing team. Sure, your search partner will do all the heavy lifting for you, but it’s the intimate company knowledge that you offer–or fail to offer—that can ultimately determine whether or not a campaign succeeds.

TruePresence has identified the four essential steps you can take to start collaborating smarter—and more successfully—with your search marketing partners:

1.Reveal your marketplace research—all of it.
As David Singh of Underscore Marketing notes, “The foundation [of a search campaign] is the most important part of the process—get it right and you prevent 70 percent of the problems before they happen, get it wrong and the campaign is likely doomed to fail before it even gets started.” And the first thing that your search marketing team needs to know is you—your business and your competition.

Talk with your team about your products/services as comprehensively as possible—do not hold anything back. Paint a very detailed portrait of who your target market is, who your ideal customer is, and why. Who is your biggest competition? Is there a difference between your local competition and your search competition (i.e., the businesses occupying ad space on search engine result pages for queries related to your business)? What is your key value proposition—what differentiates you from the rest, and why?

2.Review your keyword list.
One of the many advantages of hiring a search marketing partner is the industry-by-industry keyword expertise they bring to the table. But no one can match your company expertise. You know your company, products, and services best, and will be able to enhance your search team’s keyword list with some “insider” ideas. Examine it closely for any opportunities to further customize it. Search on any additional keywords that you think may be worth pursuing and observe the paid and natural search results. You can get additional keyword ideas by simply looking at the titles and descriptions of the listings—and even more by visiting your competitors’ sites.

You even have the ability to choose “negative” keywords—keywords for which you do NOT want your ad to appear. Identifying these can help you qualify your leads even further, and ultimately increase ROI.

3.Share your existing advertising and marketing materials.
Of all the forms of advertising available, search ads have the strictest space limitations. Headlines must be kept to 25 characters, and after that you only get two more lines of body copy, with a 35 character limitation on each.

But just because the space is limited, doesn’t mean you can’t get creative—or accidentally go completely off brand. It goes without saying that a unified brand is one of your company’s most valuable assets. Don’t forget to share it with your search marketing team. They can ensure that the same brand identity you’ve built offline lives in your online search ads as well. Clearly explain to them your brand’s message, and give them samples of all your marketing materials: print ads, brochures, sales sheets—whatever you’ve got. As experts in their field, they’ll know how to creatively preserve your brand identity within the space the search engines give them.

4.Get involved in campaign tracking.
One of the greatest benefits of search marketing versus other marketing channels is the ability to precisely track your campaign’s success—clicks, conversions, even the number of phone calls generated. Naturally, your search team will have the expertise to oversee this process, but once again, your intimate knowledge of your company’s existing online efforts can ensure that your campaign is being tracked as effectively as possible.

The most important pages to track in your search campaign are your confirmation pages (or thank you pages). If your campaign leads visitors to a stand-alone landing page (often the ideal scenario), then the tracking decision is easy: the page that is served after a user clicks on the landing page’s “Submit” button is the page that will measure the lead or purchase conversion.

But if your search ads direct users to a microsite or website, then they may have other conversion options, like Contact Us, Request Information, and Get a Quote forms. Make sure your search team is aware of all these forms and their matching confirmation pages to make absolute certain that none of your search traffic is missed.

With a search marketing team on your side, you get the best of both worlds: their expertise and your "insider" company knowledge. The more information you provide to your search team up front, the greater your success will be in the end.