adCenter Blog

Education Industry Growth and Search Optimization Best Practices for Microsoft adCenter

2010-03-17T16:01:00Z

The education industry has seen rapid traffic growth in the past year due to Bing query share growth and many students and professionals looking to expand their knowledge. Last year, adCenter historical data shows that clicks peaked during the month of May. With similar trends expected in 2010, now is the time to test ad copy, optimize keywords, review match types and update negative keywords to ensure optimal performance and high lead generation for your education-related site.

Testing Ad Copy

Securing budget to test ad copy in advance of a peak seasonality month can result in high click increases, thus giving your site an increased chance of capturing a lead. Consider testing dynamic (also known as "param") ad copy, especially for ad titles and descriptions. For those of you unfamiliar with how parameter keyword insertion works, I highly recommend checking out Kim Farmar's post on dynamic ad copy. In recent months, several education advertisers have seen success using a mix of 'TM" symbol, "official site" and "degree" and dynamic ad copy in the ad title. Microsoft adCenter's ad title character limit is currently 25, while ad description is 70 characters. Testing call-to-actions including "courses", "classes", "degree", "online", "accredited", "apply" or any combination of these words can help to increase CTR. Typically, it is best to run a test that will result in at least 1,000 impressions per ad and run only 2-3 ads per ad group. This enables you to have sufficient data to make an educated data-driven decision if the test ad copy is worth expanding to other ad groups within your account.

Optimizing Keywords

While the user sees your ad before deciding to click to your site, keywords act as the bridge between the user's query and Bing showing the most relevant ad. Choosing and categorizing keywords correctly will help with performance, typically resulting in increased lead generation.

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence is great for building out and categorizing keyword lists. I have mentioned it in many posts because it contains a powerful toolset and let's face it, keyword expansions can be heavily time consuming. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence helps to eliminate these problems and provide you with insights into what match types and positions perform best per keyword.

Demos and training for the tool can be found by clicking the links above. Bidding on brand, programs, degree types, class names will help to extend your reach and impression impressions.

When you are ready to upload, you can use the adCenter Desktop (tutorials listed at bottom of page) to load your keywords into adCenter. I highly recommend testing out the new version of the adCenter Desktop as it is much faster and more stable than previous versions. I also highly recommend limiting ad groups to 20 keywords (increases keyword-ad relevancy) and utilizing normalization best practices.

Review Match Types

Think of match types as the road on the bridge between keywords and ads. Different match types do different things and you some match types perform better than others, depending on the keyword. Detailed match types and best practices can be found in Hana Ondrusek's post, Understanding How Match Types Affect Your PPC Campaigns in adCenter. Using exact match on single word keywords such as "degrees" is recommended; words like "degree" can match to a variety of different longer tail keywords. Bidding across all match types and utilizing keyword negatives typically results in greater keyword efficiency. The aforementioned Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can help you to bid accurately per desired match type and position. The education vertical is becoming more competitive by the day and with more and more focus on education, it is best to update negatives frequently.

Update Negatives

Using negatives to improve performance (including match types) is a well-known best practice. Paying more for unqualified traffic is not efficient and if you have tight budgets, it makes a greater difference. Negatives specific to education that you can leverage for your campaigns include "graduation", "high school", "elementary school" and "junior high school". Adding negatives specific to your brand, programs and type of degrees will help to eliminate unqualified traffic, ensuring your ad shows for "bachelor degree", but not "bachelor party".

Besides testing ad copy, optimizing keywords, reviewing match types and updating negatives, it is important that you allocate the appropriate budget based on the desired volume and keyword bids. If you are bidding $10 per keyword and only have a campaign budget of $500, chances are, several keywords will not show.

What best practices do you use when optimizing education campaigns?

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ISA that Time of the Year: UK Financial Reforms and What They Mean for Your SEM Campaigns

2010-03-16T11:35:00Z

It's that time of year again when it seems that almost everyone is talking about Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) and the various ways to get the most out of them. Indeed, April 6^th 2010 heralds the start of the new tax year here in the UK, and with it comes a whole new set of rules governing the amount of tax-free savings that can be made. In this blog post, we will cover the main changes that have occurred and will offer our views on how to leverage them for maximum impact on your search campaigns.

What is an ISA?

So, to start with the basics - what is an ISA? An Individual Savings Account is a government initiative to encourage people to save in a tax-efficient manner. Any UK taxpayer will ordinarily see at least 20% of interest earned on any lump sum kept in a regular bank, building society or unit trust account (more for those in higher tax bands) head the way of the taxman. This does not apply to ISAs, and as such the benefits of having one are fairly obvious.

ISAs are a very seasonal product, traditionally peaking between January and May every year. This is a direct result of their product lifecycle which can be updated with additional funds at the start of every tax year. This pattern is quite noticeable in the graph below; there are peaks in April in both 2008 and 2009 which highlight the traditional seasonality of the ISA products.

New Legislation for the 2010 Tax Year

The most notable development for the upcoming financial year is the increase to the amount that can be saved. In his last budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling unveiled new allowances taking the annual limit from £7,200 to £10,200, of which up to £5,100 can be saved in the form of cash. This came in to being in October 2009 for the over-50's and has already resulted in some impressive statistics, with recent figures suggesting that almost half of ISA savers over 50 have extended their allowances.

As a result of these reforms, the nominal traffic pattern for ISA products has changed in the past year; with the new legislation, there have been shifts in search patterns which are outside normal seasonality. In particular, in October 2009 there was a peak (a 181% increase Year on Year using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence) that was the direct result of the increase in ISA allowances and was outside traditional seasonality. Looking forward to the April timeframe, it will be important to consider potential increases in traffic when setting campaign budgets for the seasonal uplift.

Monthly Traffic from Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

ISA Opportunities

With the new limit soon to be available to anyone over 18, there are understandably a lot of positive murmurings around the impact that ISAs will have - not only for individual savers, but also for the economy as a whole. Bearing all this in mind, the opportunity for advertisers will be considerable in the coming weeks and months as we are expecting increased traffic to ISA products.

Bing is already receiving more traffic in 2010 than in previous years (a 156% increase in JAN-FEB when compared to 2009 using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence) and this should continue through April and May. Many banks have not yet released the rates for their new products and consequently much of the search traffic should fall in April and May. Much of the Bing search traffic for these products is received during weekdays from an evenly split gender ratio. There is also a slight bias towards the older age groups (see below).

Demographics and Daily Traffic from Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

On a final note, it's worth bearing in mind that this year the Easter break coincides directly with the start of the new tax year - with Easter Monday falling on 5^th April 2010. Therefore it will be more important than ever to have ISA applications submitted in advance of this deadline, preferably by the 1^st April 2010, meaning that search campaigns will also have to be prepared earlier than normal.

Gabe Ingalls & Chris Francis

SES New York 2010 – Hear Microsoft Speakers on Bing & adCenter

2010-03-15T12:21:00Z

Just a week to go until Search Engine Strategies in New York! The conference looks like being one of the best yet with keynote speeches by David Meerman Scott, Google’s Avinash Kaushik and our very own Yusuf Mehdi . Yigal Elnekave , Robyn Raybould and myself will be speaking and moderating a variety of sessions on paid search and adCenter, and throwing some social media tips and best practice into the mix as well. Stefan Weitz and other folks from the Bing team will be out in force too talking...(read more)

SXSW Panel: Is App-vertising the Answer?

2010-03-13T23:25:00Z

I am in Austin, Texas at the SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festival this weekend attending panels and moderating one of my own. I had a chance to sit in at a panel about “App-vertising.” The premise of the panel was the large and increasing amount of money spent (and revenue gained) on mobile applications and their means of monetization. The panel consisted of Alexander Muse from Big in Japan, Allison Mooney from MobileBehavior, Garrick Schmitt from Razorfish, Sean Galligan from Flurry...(read more)

Financial Services in 2010: Credit Cards - Trends and Seasonality

2010-03-12T18:26:00Z

Credit Card debt had a large impact on the breakdown of the economy and causing many Americans into bankruptcy. Because of this, major reform hit credit card in February passed down from the government. Most consumers see this as change for the better, while banks and lenders are expecting huge financial losses due the impact from these changes. 2010 will be a rocky period for credit cards, with a lot of media exposure pushing research search traffic due to the credit reform thus making successful marketing harder to accomplish. On the bright side, the end of 2009 ended very positively for credit cards, clicks were rising while average CPCs continued to stay low as many smaller advertisers stayed away. For 2010 stay focused on driving highly qualified traffic through proper ad copy and keyword coverage.

Falling CPCs in 2009

CPCs fell throughout 2009, lower than any time in 2008. The economy was the biggest driver of this trend and this also impacted impressions as they dropped off by mid April. On the flip side clicks started improving in late 2009 due to the increase in people looking to save money through rewards program. This helped bring a positive trend into 2010. Reward/Loyalty terms such as "rewards", "gift cards", and "cash back" all saw major click gains the second half of 2009. Alternatively the term "credit" saw major impression drops from the first half of the year to the second, dropping millions of impressions due to all the impact from the credit card fall out. Make sure to leverage this increase in reward keywords in 2010 as people are looking for ways to save money. Other than keywords, driving top positions is key to success in 2010. Outside of position 1, clicks and performance fall off significantly. Over 80% of clicks for the top 10 credit card keywords are served at position 1, though the costs are severely higher. Max bids increase significantly as positions increase, sidebar bids average around $1.00 while mainline ads range from $4.00-$6.00. Fighting for positions in the credit card verticals requires a high max bid threshold.

Hitting the Target Demographic

Ad copy is just as important as position in the credit card vertical as advertisers with high brand recognition drive performance. A combination of using "Official" and a trademark in the title creates significant lifts in CTR. Both these qualifiers in the title push brand recognition when competing against lead aggregators and small credit card resources. Using keyword insertion also leads to improved CTR, by increasing the relevancy of an ad. When pushing keyword insertion make sure to leverage branding in the body of the ad copy. The demographics on the credit card vertical is not that much different than financial services as a whole. Top searchers for credit cards are females 35-49, with click spikes for females in the 18-24 age group and the 25-34 age group. In the older demographic of 65+ traffic drops significantly. Demo-targeting opportunities exist to help lower cost and improve ROI by removing the older and younger demographics from high volume high CPC keywords.

Credit Card Reform

The Credit CARD Act went into effect on February 22^nd 2010. There were many sweeping changes to credit card rules and regulation. These changes affect both the consumer and the credit card companies. Here are a few highlights from the bill:

. No retroactive interest rate increases on existing card balances. Credit card issuers can't interest rates for the ensuing 12 months after an account is opened. If your rate does go up after 12 months, it will apply only to new charges, not an existing balance.

. Consumers now have the right to opt out of -- or reject -- certain significant changes in terms on their accounts

. Credit card issuers will be banned from issuing credit cards to anyone under 21, unless they have adult co-signers on the accounts or can show proof they have enough income to repay the card debt.

. Credit card issuers would have to give card account holders "a reasonable amount of time" to make payments on monthly bills. That means payments would be due at least 21 days after they are mailed or delivered.

Bing UK TV Ads – Video Interview with Ashley Highfield

2010-03-11T10:22:30Z

Last night saw the first Bing TV advert go live in the UK. In November, Bing UK reached an important milestone: we removed the beta tag having added innovative features like Visual Search , Categorised Search and Twitter Integration . Our user base has since grown and got more and more engaged with the Bing search experience. In this interview, Ashley Highfield, MD & VP Consumer & Online Microsoft UK, who’s responsible for consumer products like Bing, Windows 7, Windows Phone, MSN, IE8 and...(read more)

U.S. adCenter Customers: Help us improve your adCenter Reports and Analytics tools and get a $100 adCenter credit

2010-03-10T20:25:00Z

Hi everyone, a call for reporting feedback from the adCenter Team. Please note that at this time, only U.S. adCenter customers are eligible for the ad credit. Full details below. We want your feedback! Microsoft® adCenter is working on our next-generation advertising reporting and analytics product, and would like to know what you think. We’re trying to understand how you use campaign reports, what features you’d like to see built next, and how important new functionality is to you...(read more)

Brand Best Practices: Highlighting Your Brand in Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns

2010-03-09T17:59:00Z

Following on today’s post on the Microsoft Advertising Blog, New Whitepaper: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Digital Advertising for Brand Campaigns , today I’m going to address some best practices for incorporating your brand into your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns on adCenter. Without a doubt, one of the reasons SEM is such an attractive advertising method is its transparency in tracking return-on-investment (ROI) ; simply compare what you’re making in sales to what...(read more)

Editorial Review in Microsoft adCenter: Common Disapprovals and How to Fix Them

2010-03-08T18:00:00Z

It’s a fairly common scenario. You’ve amassed your keyword list with Microsoft Advertising Intelligence , written stellar ads and uploaded your new campaigns to adCenter. You wait a few hours and then perform a few searches for your keywords on Bing. While you find most, there are some you’re not seeing your ads for. You consult the Ad Preview tool and still come up empty handed. You log in to your adCenter account (or open adCenter Desktop Beta or check your e-mail) and find that...(read more)

Keyword Normalization: What You Need to Know Before Uploading to Microsoft adCenter

2010-03-05T16:00:00Z

Keywords can be tricky things. You think you’ve got the most relevant, robust keyword list on the planet, but you run it through the keyword expansion wizard in Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI) just to be sure no stone was left unturned. The next thing you know, you’re creating new ad groups and writing ads for a whole host of new keywords you just couldn’t pass up. Who knew there were so many terms related to your products and services? Before you start going through your...(read more)

Research you can use in search marketing efforts from SMX West panel

2010-03-05T00:50:00Z

Microsoft Advertising publishes a fascinating library of research and case studies in the online Research Library . I’d recommend that you spend an hour browsing there if you’re trying to learn some new best practices that will help in your online advertising. At SMX West on Wednesday, I had the chance to hear from others in the industry about some of the new research they’ve published with some fascinating insights into the behavior of shoppers, searchers, and advertising consumers...(read more)

SMX West Search Marketing Boot Camp - Paid Search Fundamentals

2010-03-04T16:00:00Z

Now that we're on to our third and final boot camp session, we know that 1) keyword research is the first step to getting your message right and 2) content is king and there are several ways to enhance copywriting for success with search marketing. In this last session, we will review some basic information around paid search and important tips shared at SMX West.

There are a few things to keep in mind with regard to Paid Search:

1. While Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are complementary, with PPC you can:

Get going quickly (you don't have to wait for the search engine to index your site)
Discover what words convert (you are in control of which words you use in your ad campaign)
Manage the risk of algorithm changes (with PPC your placement is not affected by algorithm changes to the search engine)
Rely on predictable, dependable flow of traffic (you have more control over how and when your site is served up within search engine results pages [SERP])

2. PPC Allows you more control over messaging

You write the ads that appear
You determine what pages visitors first land on
The top 3 search engines cover 96% of the market, so be sure to get it right on these three!

3. Some key terms (with definitions) you will hear as they relate to Search Engines and Advertising Networks

Keywords: words and phrases that trigger ads to show
Ads: really, really short text (or graphic) sales pitches
Bids: how much you are willing to spend to show your ads, get clicks and conversions
Targeting: options include geographic, time of day/day of week, demographic, and browser/mobile devices
Landing pages: the pages you want people to see first and "land on"
Process: Managing all of the above plus tracking results, conversions, return on ad spend plus testing and improving leveraging tools and resources

How do paid search auctions really work?

Keep in mind that Search Engines want their results to be relevant to the searcher. For this reason, the highest bid doesn't necessarily get the top spot.
Ad Rank is the order (or spot) an ad appears on the SERP and is determined by Quality score X Max bid. This was intentionally left off of the key terms/definitions list as it's only important to know that ad rank exists - your biggest focus should be on creating great PPC campaigns.
Quality score is made up of relevancy (keywords, ads, landing page) and historical performance (CTR)

When setting up and managing a campaign, there are a few things you should keep in mind and answer to guide your behavior with search advertising:

What is the primary goal of your campaign? Is it leads, sales, brand building, driving traffic, etc?
How do you define success? Offline or online sales conversions, steps on the path towards sales conversions, something else?
How do you measure success? Do you use the free conversion trackers offered by the top 3 search engines, use a third party web analytics tool, gauge success by how much the phones ring, or measure the increase in total company sales and profits? There are several ways to measure success - just be sure you are measuring it somehow.

Tips:

Where you have an advantage...exploit it! Improve your ad position and ROI with targeting - bid on time zone and demographics that make sense for you
Search Engine ads (direct "pull" advertising) work differently than Content Network Site ads (indirect "push" advertising), so manage them accordingly
Measure actions - don't manage just CTR or CPC! It's important to actually track conversions (since this is what you are doing all of the work for, right?) and not click-throughs! Important to note that Google and Yahoo! ad optimizers only optimizes CTR.

I hope you enjoyed this boot camp series fresh from SMX West and can leverage these fundamentals to realize much success with your search marketing!

You Want More? SMX West Search Marketing Boot Camp - Copywriting for Search Success

2010-03-04T04:34:00Z

They claim it's "pretty simple". You can be the judge of that. Personally, I find copywriting almost as painful as my original thoughts of what "boot camp" would entail (see SMX West Search Marketing Boot Camp anyone? Keyword Research Tools and Techniques). That said, if you are a copywriter, like copywriting or just want to know how to tailor your writing for search success, this session provided tons of tips and tricks to improve your site through copywriting. I've tried to pare it all down to one page of highlights.

Why should you care about copywriting for search success?

The best SEO is great content
Copywriting is where the rubber meets the road in terms of SEO
Search engines key off of text, not images

What is good content?

Content is best when it is written for users, while also keeping search engines in mind - it's all about balance between these two
Always start with keyword research (uncover words that people are using to find sites like yours) and build content that matches the needs of searchers. Choose keyword phrases that are most relevant and specific.
Base your copywriting around those words and answer their query on your web page
Keep in mind that every page must include plain language that naturally uses keyword phrases
Remember that each page must make sense on its own (when a person generates a search on a search engine, they may land anywhere within your site - their visit doesn't always start at the home page)

A few Dos and Don'ts when it comes to SEO Writing. I found these very detailed and helpful, so wanted to pass along.

SEO copywriting myths debunked; SEO copywriting is NOT:

Writing a certain # of words
Bolding/italicizing keywords
Writing to a specific keyword density
Optimizing for just one phrase
Repeating keywords a certain # of times (there is no magic number, use the word as it makes sense within your copy/don't force it)

SEO Writing Tips:

Be Descriptive
- Not "our product"
- Instead try "our Hawaii meeting planning services"
Edit your current text by finding generic words and replacing with keywords (where appropriate)
- Barn vs. Classic barn
- Structure vs. Carriage house
- Design vs. barn house design
- If you'd like to contact us, fill out this brief form vs. If you'd like to contact us for help with your next meeting planning, fill out our special event planning request form
No single words; expand into phrases
- For example, "furniture" can become:
  - Rustic wood furniture
  - Solid wood furniture
  - Wood bedroom furniture
  - Barn wood furniture
Don't fake real content - fix your site!
- Write clearly and descriptively to your target audience
- Don't add useless articles
Professionally written copy is key
- It brings highly targeted visitors that want exactly what you offer and converts them into customers

If you're reading these Boot Camp posts, I'd love to hear from you. As we offer new/updated content and plan for future posts, it's helpful to know whether or not you find it useful, so please let us know. All feedback is welcome - both positive and constructive. Do you want to see more/less/same amount of detail? Are there other Boot Camp / Fundamentals topics you want to see covered?

Stay tuned for the final post in this Boot Camp series - Paid Search Fundamentals - which is coming soon.

Search advertisers quiz the paid search reps at SMX West

2010-03-04T01:58:00Z

What’s new in mobile ads? How can advertisers exclude ads from displaying in legacy browsers? What improvements are planned to make international advertising easier? When will Microsoft allow more negative keywords? When will adCenter provide a longer history of reports? The brave representatives from paid search advertising at Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo were on the hot seat as questions flowed in from the audience of search advertising professionals during the panel session, Ask the Paid...(read more)

Search and Display at SMX West - 1+1=3 (or 4, or even 5)

2010-03-04T01:40:23Z

Much research has been done to demonstrate the combined power of search and display. Here are some links to ClearSaleing, Eyeblaster and Microsoft research, for example. What made this panel at SMX West 2010 interesting is the best practices and advice shared by the speakers - Dax Hamman of iCrossing, Brian Kaminski of iProspect, Justin Merickel of Efficient Frontier, Jonah Spegman of Scripps Network Interactive, David Oliver from Yahoo!, moderated by Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence.

If you're a search advertiser and have never done display or successful display campaigns, I hope you will find these tips helpful:

1. Integrate your teams and your messaging for search and display - although you may choose search and display at different stages of the purchase funnel, these campaigns should not be run in isolation. If your banner ad talks about "chicken recipes during Thanksgiving", the keywords and search ad should be aligned to this message as well.

2. Increase search during heavy display spend - whether you're using display for brand awareness or direct response, you'd want to make sure "leaked" leads are converted through search.

3. Learn about and start using media exchanges - also called ad exchanges, they could deliver display reach on a high-quality inventory at auction-based prices.

4. Don't forget about the "art" component of display - the emotional and visual connection of an image plays a big role in the ad effectiveness. Partner with a creative agency or use tools for dynamic creative optimization that would allow you test which creative performs best at a relatively low cost.

5. Integrate search and display with the offline channels - while search must always be "on", display can be tied to events, PR and other marketing activities.

6. Examine the impact of search and display campaigns holistically - speakers gave several examples where display drove search and where search drove display. Attribution models are not always easy to build, but are very important for ROI measurement (P.S. Microsoft has a tool and service called Engagement Mapping through our Atlas platform).

7. Optimize display for inventory and audience - inventory optimization involves ad size, frequency, time, site, placement. You can optimize for audience by examining your own data more closely and by bringing 3rd party sources.

8. Follow privacy and data ownership discussions - your digital marketing might be affected by the developments in these areas.

Display used to be available only to advertisers with big budgets, but small and mid-size companies can start running display ad campaigns and align them with search and rest of marketing activities.

Thanks for reading!

Rimma

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