3. Take a holistic approach to PPC bidding and ad creative
Running paid ads that include timely promotions and a call-to-action alongside natural search results for your brand can actually increase overall click-through rates (CTRs) on natural search listings, providing higher ROI across your search efforts.
Search optimization technology provider SearchIgnite conducted a study for a leading financial services provider to quantify the impact on a marketer's conversions, revenue, and spend when paid search is run alongside top-ranked natural search results.
Results showed that natural search clicks were 17 percent higher on days when paid search ads were running, garnering more "free" clicks simply by running paid search ads alongside natural search results. In addition, total conversions and revenue on both paid and natural terms dramatically increased on days when paid search ads were running.
Revenue increases more than compensated for the cost of the paid advertising as well. For every dollar spent on paid search for the brand terms tested, incremental return in revenue was 900 percent higher than when no paid advertisements were running. This study showcases the impact that natural and paid search have on each other.
Ensure that your paid search ad creative aligns with your enterprise-wide promotional calendar so that the consumer experience is seamless across various offline and online channels. In addition, be sure to leverage and test different calls-to-action and offerings ("Free Shipping," "Limited Offer," etc.) to see what works best during a giving time period, and especially during peak seasons.
4. Optimize landing pages
Landing page optimization should be status quo for most sophisticated search marketers. For retailers, advanced optimization efforts can propel a search campaign from good to great. For example, retailers can set up inventory-based optimization that automatically pauses and re-allocates paid search spend when inventory is low for a specific product query. Alternately, users clicking on paid search ads for those products could be sent to a higher level category page, thereby opening up the product options available to them. These optimization techniques serve to provide a better experience for the searcher and drive more efficient spend and higher ROI for retailers.
5. Develop a content diversification strategy
Universal search results -- i.e., non-text listings such as images, videos, and maps -- are growing in prominence across all of the engines as consumers seek out diverse types of content on the engines. As such, brands should incorporate content-building into their SEO strategies and seek to diversify their content types as much as possible. These types of content could include, but are not limited to:
- Blogs and microblogs such as Twitter (join the real-time search revolution)
- Reviews and ratings (gain trust with and help educate your consumers)
- Videos (show off product demonstrations and more)
Broad, non-brand queries often trigger universal results or, in the case of Bing, "decision paths" to help consumers refine their search. Review the most critical "head terms" in your keyword portfolio and keep an eye on Google and Bing's universal results/decision paths to determine when and where to build out your content.
6. Think locally
Get mapped if you have a brick and mortar presence. This helps capture consumer interest when looking for physical locations and can aid in drive-to-store efforts. Make sure you have a local landing page strategy that includes a unique landing page for each location and a specific URL with details and content that is unique per location.
For a more holistic and complete search strategy, leverage and incorporate these detail pages into your paid, natural, and feed initiatives as well.
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