Essentially Min bids and inactive keywords are out. Instead, you will see a First Page bid estimates and keywords will always be active (though not always showing because of relatively low QS). The other change will move from periodic quality review and score updates to dynamic, on-the-fly scoring. At this time, I am focused on the minimum bid changes.
What this means to you depends on where you are in the marketing chain. From the campaign managers to the product managers, these changes can have very little, or a very big impact. There are however, much broader implications for those who are managing the spectrum on online activity and relationships. In some cases, there is only one channel that a company will use. While I believe this is very limiting to the potential benefit, it is easier for someone to manage - fewer plates spinning. It is only justified if there are no venues for exploiting more online channels. For those who choose the harder, but more profitable road of managing multiple channel types, this gets interesting.
___________________
Affiliate / e-tail program managers will have to pay attention to the landscape with the new changes. There are several ways to manage the search landscape ranging from no bidding to a free for all. Though they are quite common, I have never been a fan of bid caps as a way to manage programs. The market is too dynamic for a fixed value to have relevancy over time. As a way to keep some people out, there is a strategy to set bid caps so low that you know it is below reasonable minimum bids ( a de facto "no bid" rule). So, it is possible that players who would not spend the min $1.00 or $5 or $10, can now appear for $0.50. Discouraged from the market place before, these people placed virtually no price pressure on keywords. Now, they have a chance to enter the market, get some results and start appearing. Do you have any mechanism to maximize profit by ensuring only your best partners are showing up?
Before you think, "no bidding on my brand" as a way to keep it easy, be leery of this relatively lazy strategy - it is the realm of the naive and ignorant. With it, your life may seem easier, but you give up a chance to let your best partners help you while simultaneously exposing your marketing underbelly to the competition.
Competing brands or products will now find it easier to enter your bid landscape. If you are Sony and none of your affiliates or e-tailors are allowed to bid on your brand, minimum bids often made it cost prohibitive for your competitors to do so as well (quality score issues created high minimum bids). So, you could possibly control your brand's bid landscape (for many categories, even the minimum bids have not discouraged bidding on competitive brand keywords). This is no longer true. Mitsubishi, Sharp and others will not be hit with minimum bids and can enter your playground much more easily. So rather than have e-tailors that target segments of your customers to whom you cannot cater, you have given up the landscape to your competitors.
While this has always been an issue for the "no-bid" group, the reality becomes even more severe once the Minimum Bid is removed as a competitive obstacle. I can tell you, we will leverage it; any good SEM will. Your best defense to to build up a small, but strong group of e- tailors that will promote your product and services. Take up the bid landscape for your brand with partners that can leverage segments of your market where they are stronger than you are. This is not an issue of duplicate listing. It is an issue of directing users to experiences which are truly geared for their stage in the buying cycle or buying motivation.
Some segments are upper funnel. Corporate sites provide a level of confidence and information sources that upper funnel users are looking for. Other sites, typically e-tail sites with time and resources to optimize against conversion, are far more adept and managing the lower end of the funnel. Well over a year ago, I vented against the branded keyword sales being a given.
I have seen first hand the differences in subtle changes, importance of MVT for the experience and managing SEM based on long term / annual trend performance.
Combine this with a compensation structure that encourages performance rather than one which simply encourages spending (cost plus) and the right partners, and you can develop a channel that is motivated to drive down market costs (their margins are directly affected) while maximizing your sales.
This change in Google's policy provides and opportunity for online marketers to evaluate their search programs and how they will manage the diverse consumer base. They can either take the easy way out and limit sales, or they can maximize their market potential.
No comments:
Post a Comment