SEARCH MARKETING: Is this what you are looking for?

THE SEARCH MARKETER'S CHEAT SHEET

1. Just do something. The best way to get a grip on search marketing is to try it. Sign up with Yahoo!,

Google, Baidu, MSN or any search engine that delivers the desired audience and meets your needs. You'll

get your hands dirty and you'll be surprised what you will learn about the channel.

2. Avoid popular and obvious search terms. Look for words that describe your business but are a little

unique and chose combinations that could drive people to use your defi ned search parameters and arrive

at your ads quicker.

3. Think about your ad. Yes they look simplistic those little text and link ads but you need to compete with

the organic search results. Creating an impactful message and linking in a few words can be as challenging

as getting your message out in 45-sec cinema spot.

4. Create an unfair advantage. The upside to the United States and Europe moving quicker than Asia is

they are doing a lot more on the innovation front. Think beyond text and link ads, think images, audio and

video search marketing options.

5. Track, tweak, tinker. Those in built measurement tools aren't for show, use them and if something

doesn't work test out different ads, different keywords and don't settle until the results hit the up curve.

6. Get some learning. Hit the blogs of the search engines - the Google guys are particularly prolific - and

read their tips on running campaigns and choosing keywords.

7. Call for help. If you want to try paid search and haven't got time to get yourself up to speed, a lot of

agencies are bolting on search marketing skills or growing them organically, so seek them out but stay in

the loop so you continue to learn.

FEATURE ARTICLE: THE SEARCH MARKETING TOOL KIT

It's the never fail, can't lose and idiot proof Asia marketing proposition - give them something for nothing and they will beat a path to your door. Start a line for something free or cheap and no one will ask too many questions before joining the queue.

So how could an advertising channel which offers the opportunity to run marketing messages without paying a cent, until a potential customer interacts with your brand, fail to grab Hong Kong marketers' attention?

In its simplest form this is precisely what search marketing offers. Search marketing still remains largely the domain of smaller family businesses whose marketing budgets (they probably wouldn't call them marketing budgets) mean, apart from the

sign on the front door, this is about the only marketing they can afford. Baidu recently reported significant growth in people signing up for search marketing campaigns in China. The company said it had 128,000 active online marketers, which looks small compared to mass populations of the mainland and Hong Kong, but shows more

people are now using search marketing.

As the guys at Google say, it's all about "organising the world's information". So while consumers may just be able to survive without their YouTubes or their Facebooks, it's unlikely they could survive without their Baidu, Yahoo!, MSN or Google. Actually they would probably survive, but the web would be a chaotic jumble of rubbish with some imbedded useful stuff. The problem would be how you would find the useful stuff unless you knew the exact locations of the sites you were looking for.

Search curious? Here's the run down.

The real kicker is that there is so much information contained online, consumers often don't know exactly what they are looking for. The genius of search engines is that consumers don't have to know exactly what they are looking for, they can use fairly vague terms - keywords - to seek out what they are or might be looking for.

Search marketing allows marketers to ride the search engine's coat tails and suggest their products and services at locations consumers might like to go when they are looking for vague or more specific information online.

The theory behind search marketing is pretty simple despite the many attempts by consultants to complicate it. A search engine says "why don't you place ads on our content - actually it's not really our content but we are indexing it - and when someone goes looking for the sort of thing you are selling we will make sure they see your ad".

So even if your company's website doesn't come up in the organic listings you can still cheat the system and get your brand in there anyway. Afterall, how does the consumer know what they are looking for if you don't tell them.

As any good marketer knows, the search engines are well aware that their most important assets are their customers, in this case the searchers, so while they let you cheat the system by getting your sponsored or paid link ads next to the real or organic results, they are very careful not to overwhelm the free ads. However Baidu has been accused of muddying the waters with a mix of paid and organic results.

What's holding marketers back?

Forrester senior analyst Brian Haven who wrote the report Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2007 thinks marketers are moving slower into emerging media channels like this than consumers and found in his research that marketers wanted "proof of use". But he adds: "We bet marketers calling for ‘proof of use' really need to increase their own familiarity with the medium and its application for their customers.

"Many marketers refuse to try new channels until they see how they deliver for comparable businesses. For example, 42% of marketers won't try behavioral targeting without case studies and 38% say they need to see successful examples of microsites before giving them a whirl," Haven says.

So what do you need to know?

The steps to setting up a search campaign, if you decide to go it alone and without an agency or consultant, are fairly straight forward.

First you select search terms that you feel are most relevant to your products and services.

Chose keywords. Keywords that are relevant to your site's content but aren't too obvious, the obvious ones will be taken and will be very expensive to buy. If you are paying top price for your keywords and you aren't converting customers then it might be an expensive error. The hot new thing is buying multiple key- words for a combination of keyword searches.

Decide where you want the campaign to run. It might be to your advantage to run the ad outside of just Hong Kong and most engines hosting sponsored search offer geo-targeting which allows a campaign to run only in a specified geographic.

Creating the ad. If you are using traditional text and link ads, there isn't much room for creativy in the way it actually looks as they just consist of a headline or title. Keep it simple and say precisely what the proposition is in as few words as possible.

What are you willing to pay? Set a price you are willing to pay when someone clicks through to your web page from the ad. You should also set a budget, this means if you are only dipping a toe in and don't want to have to explain why your inexpensive search marketing "experiment" ended up costing thousands for no result. The Yahoo! sponsored search system allows you to start your bidding at 0.51 cents. Monitor and make the changes. With search, unlike mass media advertising, pulling off your ad and starting all over again, with the major search engines, it is just a matter of going into the search marketing dashboard and making the changes and then sending the ads live again. Yahoo! offers Ad Testing which allows you to benchmark several styles of ads at once and most other search engines offer similar functionality.

Have a nice arrival hall. Your one chance to make an impact when someone clicks on your sponsored link in search market results is to catch their attention when they arrive at the site. If the search ad is tactical and it leads to an offer or a competition or even a survey, there needs to be a landing page and it has to be attractive and easy to use and it should fulfill the promise you gave in those few lines in the paid search ad you've posted. You have, after all, grabbed the searcher and now they are primed and ready for your pitch, so it can't fall flat.

The future

While in Hong Kong marketers are still coming to grips with the first wave of search marketing and the opportunities it can bring, there is a lot of new technology being injected into the channel in the US to enhance what marketers can achieve when they inject messages into the path of primed consumers. The search market is growing, even if the Hong Kong is not, but once marketers jump in and start kicking the tires they should like what they see.

But remember, as trends in search change, so should your campaign. Consumers, while more traceable in the search realm are no less fickle than they are in the offline world.

 

 

LOCAL (LANGUAGE) HERO V WORLD DOMINATOR

BAIDU

Is A Chinese language search engine, named for a poem describing the search for beauty amid chaos.

Does This is the most popular search engine in China and one giant thorn in the side of Google's global domination

plan for search. This site is wildly popular with the Chinese and particularly younger netizens because as well as site

searches it can also search huge numbers of MP3s and videos.

Ad platform Paid search ads, cross placement on MSN sites, music search, paid results on eBay in China via eBay EachNet, like most other engines Baidu auctions off search terms.

You'll pay On a per click basis or as they describe it on a P4P or pay for performance depending on what you end up paying for your search terms.

They say "As a native speaker of the Chinese language and a talented engineer, Baidu focuses on what it knows best - Chinese language search. Applying avant-garde technology to the world's most ancient and complex language is as challenging as it is exciting. We not only provide our customers easy access to one of the largest online audiences in China but also targeted groups

with defined interests as indicated by queries.

We say Baidu has cornered the Chinese language search market and certainly seems to be the place to draw the attention of China's savvy young consumers in sponsored search campaigns.

While search is a relatively new marketing channel for the mainland Baidu has moved fast, sealing deals and cross pollinating its offering to take advantage of other brands including the deal it did

late last year to get its paid search listings on MSN Live, and other partner websites in China. It also has a deal with to put text-based advertising on China's eBay EachNet. In China Baidu seems difficult to beat.

GOOGLE

Is Where it all started. The guys mightn't have been the very fi rst to come up with the idea of serving ads to

search results but they sure made it popular and monetized it.

Does Just about everything. The breakneck speed of innovation in the Googleplex is astonishing and much of

the innovation is in the field of advertising which means this is where marketers get to touch the vast population

of consumers who search with Google locally and internationally

if that is appropriate for your brand. Google started it with sponsored search using the now famous text and link ads

but is now dabbling in Video ads as well as serving search based ads to searches of all kinds of media. Most of the world loves this brand and it means a lot of your customers are probably using it.

Ad platform Adwords. This is the system, which most have followed, of allowing advertisers to purchase via auction the words or search terms they feel most closely relate to their products or services. When that search term comes up the ads are served as paid or sponsored results.

You'll pay A one off US$5 activation cost for the "starter" edition of an Adwords account and then when your ad is clicked on you pay for whatever you have managed to secure your search terms for in the auction. The more popular the words the more you'll pay.

They say "Reach people when they are actively looking for information about your products and services online, and send targeted visitors directly to what you are offering. With AdWords cost-per click pricing, it's easy to control costs-and you only pay when people click on your ad."

We say The credo is simplicity, Google makes it look easy then gives you the tools to get started immediately. They have been doing this a long time so they understand search and they are happy to pass the knowledge with tutorials on selecting search terms, increasing the effectiveness of your ads. The sign up is simple, the management is simple and you have lot of control over budgets so you don't overspend or over extend. It might begetting trounced in China by the home grown hero

but Googling is still one of he worlds most popular pass times (and business imperatives) and it continues to increase the possibilities for advertisers.