Yesterday, Chris Sherman from Search Marketing Now presented another webinar jammed packed with useful information. This session entitled ‘Multi-National Search Marketing: Effective Strategies for Global Marketers‘ was sponsored by iProspect and moderated by Claire Schoen.

Chris was a perfect speaker due to his experience covering search and search engines since 1994. He is the author of several books, including ‘Google Power’.

Chris started out the presentation by outlining that he’ll cover why we might want to go global, what types of campaigns work best and how to do it.

The first slide discussed the fact that a lot of people perceive that Google has taken over the earth. Yes, Google is dominant and if you are running a search marketing campaign, you understand that Google’s reach can give you that global coverage. Chris said we may ask ourselves why should we should bother going multinational since Google has a global reach. But, Chris believes there are other opportunities out there.

comScore does a monthly report on worldwide search share. Google does have the dominant share – about 63% – that’s just under 2/3 of all the market share worldwide. Despite the all the media about the Yahoo/Microsoft merge, the reality is that Yahoo worldwide, they are number one in terms of the number of people who visit them. In terms of search – they are number 2. If you aren’t using Yahoo, you could be missing out on certain benefits – particularly worldwide.

The number 3 player is Baidu.com – they are the dominant player in China. Over time as the Internet expands in China, Chris believes those numbers for Baidu will go in the double digits very quickly.

There is a tie for number 4 – Microsoft sites and NHN Corp. Finally, the other 90+ search engines have a 13% market share. If you actually start drilling down you’ll find some of these players are dominant in certain regions.

• Google totally dominates North America and most of Europe.
• Yahoo is dominant in Asia, except for:
  • China (Baidu 61%, Google 20%)
  • South Korea (Naver 74%, Google 4%)
  • Russia (RIndex 57%, Google 23%)

Almost 1/6 of the population is out there searching and doing about 61 billion searches per month. If you drill down, 75% of all searches are outside North America. To Chris, that is the most compelling reason you want to consider doing a multinational search marketing campaign.

Chris posed the big question…‘do we have to go through the details of translating?’

• Depends on your goals. You can have a strictly English campaign and it will work best for global brands and products with the same name in all cultures.
• An alternative is to mix campaigns that mix and match English and target market language (keywords, ads, creative landing pages, etc). Takes a bit of experimenting to discover what works best with this mixed approach.

• Varies from country to country.
• Chris discussed how people use different search terms, have different eye tracking, and result scanning patterns, different click through styles. Studies have proven the differences between North American searchers and others – like those from China.
• This means you will likely need to do translation, search optimization and cultural optimization. You need to make your content appealing to the search engines and the searchers through their various needs that they are expressing through their search behaviour.

• Chris counseled us that if we are going multinational, we will have to commit a reasonable amount of resources to ensure the campaign is successful. Even before we being, we should consider whether a paid search or natural search campaign is more likely to be effective in a given market.
• Sherman feels that in larger markets – you are probably o.k. to do either – or both if you have the resources.
• However, for smaller markets, you should consider each individually. (In smaller countries where you could be targeting the millions or hundreds of thousand of people – you need to carefully consider who is the market leader in those countries).

• Use your marketing department to carefully weigh the probability of ranking with both country size and internet reach. Remember that Internet reach varies greatly (example, China is under 20% while other countries have much greater Internet reach – but with a smaller population).
• Do you have sales and logistics resources in a market? May not need them and may be able to successfully do it all online, but if you can’t you need to have the resources in place.
• Are we able to handle shipping, different currencies, duties and taxes?
• What about support? Do our support people speak the language? People may want to call or send an email. Do we have the people in place to handle this?

All of these things will impact whether the search marketing campaign can be successful.

• First thing is to find good translators
  • Must know local idioms (need to understand the local dialect, terms etc).
  • Must be able to translate unique or technical terms for your product, service or brand
• Translate text, images and navigation. A lot of people overlook translating images and navigation – you need to make the user experience rock solid.
• Crucial – Make sure SEO is involved from the beginning. Don’t want to do SEO as an afterthought – get them involved right from beginning so that you’ll end up with a more effective website and the SEO specialists can help you avoid potentially costly mistakes.

• Chris warned us that English content that’s optimized does not automatically become search friendly when translated. Translation is an art and may alter the content in such as way that it doesn’t rank well at all in your target market.
• Similarly, you can’t simply translate English PPC ads and landing pages.
• Tip: Translate your keyword list first, before any other content. Get a good sense of those critical keywords that you are hoping to capture with the searchers.

• The long tail means targeting less common keywords or phrases – that long tail exists in all other languages but it is not the same in all other languages.
• Romance language searches tend to use fewer, more common words.
• English & Dutch/German searchers tend to use more terms and less common terms. Right now, long tail will probably be more effective in those languages.
• Paradox? In the UK – nine keywords account for 5% of all searches.

• Chris said he is often questioned about duplicate content in multinational campaigns. If you have the same language content on multiple servers in different countries, you may be subject to duplicate content penalties. Be aware, but don’t necessarily be alarmed. They may only be trying to find the main source of your content, regardless of where you are located in the world. However, if you are finding that search engines are getting confused, you may need to do some work changing content, or putting it into other formats etc. Really boils down to your individual situation.
• Content translated into different languages and hosted in different countries is not duplicate content to search engines (at least today…) May change but today isn’t a concern.

What should the right domain be – a dot.com or a country specific domain?

• Boils down to your intent. If possible, go for both – especially for companies trying to target regions with regional pride, you will want to go for country specific domain.
• For example, IBM has one global website, with subdomains for individual countries.
• Sony, by contrast has local domains in all countries.
• Be careful of those ‘choose your country’ top level pages! If you have a dot.com and are going to redirect to another country – don’t make those pages search engine hostile! You want the search engine to be able to find the country specific domains. Make sure navigation on homepage – no matter what you do with it -better not block the crawlers from finding the content on all the different websites you create.

IP Address gives the physical location of where the server is based.

• Chris said he has found that when search engines are ranking content, they will look at the IP address to decide whether it should give more weight in country specific results to sites with local IP addresses.
• Challenge: legal or residency requirements in some countries. In some cases, you may need to prove you have some legal presence in that country before you can get a local IP address.
• Google’s webmaster tools allow you to specify country, and Microsoft says this capability is coming.

• Localized links are crucial when you are going into a multinational campaign. It is not enough to translate and set up a site in a different country.
• As with any site, it needs links pointing to it to rank well in search engines.
• And most of these links need to come from local authority sites, not from the mother ship or out of country sites.

• Can be the most cost effective way to have multinational reach.
• Geotargeting can be very precise.
• Translate both ads and landing pages.
• Use PPC as a research tool to help identify most effective keywords in a specific language/country.

• For global brands in multiple countries, Chris suggested we trust the offline brand experts here.
• Some cultures like and accept global brands (ex. China) – others prefer homegrown, localized brands.
• Especially important – emphasizing brand attributes in a culturally appropriate way. You have to be sensitive to that and don’t neglect images!

• PDF report ‘Global Search Report 2007′ by einternet is available online and has a wealth of information.
• Ex. China is on track to become the number one in terms of searches on the Internet but they have a low penetration of the population. Conversely, Denmark has 70% penetration and there is another search engine beyond Google that is popular. Report is full of good information that can help companies choose smaller markets.

• Chris concluded by stating that multinational search marketing offers a very appealing way to reach more customers, but it is not for everybody.
• Success requires deep, localized knowledge of markets. If you don’t have that knowledge, you need to reach out to a partner that has that knowledge.
• Campaigns must be optimized and tailored for both language and culture. Not enough just to take optimized content, translate, and expect it to work in another country. Have to tailor that information for the language and culture you are trying to target.

After this very informative presentation, there were a few minutes for questions.

How would we find out about legal residency requirements? – If you are trying to establish a site in a specific country, the hosts in that country will spell out what is require. For example, in Australia you need an Australia Business Number. Go directly to a particular host based in a country and find out the requirements that are necessary to actually register a site there.

How do you find translating services in a specific country? You can go on the web and find translation services, the key there is to get a translation service that can also work with an optimizer. The best thing to do is seek out a local SEM firm or a global SEM firm and see what they can do because they are probably going to have the contacts to do this type of work. Do not rely on automated translation systems – these are rough only and will backfire in an overall search marketing campaign.

Directories? They are emerging as a good resource and they are gradually becoming better at accommodating advertising needs. Directories are very good if you have the time and resources to find the good ones. They can give you very good reach for not a lot of cost/effort.

Thanks to Chris Sherman and iProspect for a very informative and worthwhile session. I learned a lot about going multinational and I’m sure everyone else who attended appreciated the wealth of information! You can listen to entire recorded version by clicking here.

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On Thursday, Christine Churchill, President of Key Relevance presented an informative webinar on How to Select a Paid Search Management Application.

This session presented by Search Marketing Now and sponsored by Marin Software was an excellent introduction in how to determine whether you need a third party search management application and if so, what considerations you need to make when selecting the application.

Ms. Churchill started by demonstrating that the projected growth of paid search is high. In fact, US paid search advertising revenues were $11.76 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $26.79 billion in 2011 (JPMorgan and Company reports “Nothing But Net”).

All indications point to paid search continuing to grow. New players are entering into the market and those involved are increasing their spend. Double digit growth is expected.

Yet – with all this growth, there are still many difficulties associated with managing PPC.

Difficulties Associated With Managing PPC

• Complexity of running paid campaigns has grown.
• Bid prices and ad positions are now longer transparent.
• Increased competition.
• Dynamic industry where change is the norm.

In the past few years, complexity has grown in PPC. The relationship between bid price and ad position has become less transparent. Now, the quality score affects the bid price and the position of the ad. Relevant ads are rewarded over less relevant ads.

The move away from transparency has made it more difficult for the PPC manager. More and more competitors are driving up the bid price, which created a tipping point where running PPC efficiently was very difficult and required a high level of proficiency.

Options for Managing PPC

Companies have many options as to how they manage their PPC campaigns.

• Train/hire in house staff
• Outsource management
• In house staff with outside consulting
• Above choices along with PPC management application.

Christine commented that as the complexity grew as noted above – companies realized that they needed trained personnel to manage the PPC. All of the above are options for your company; she says that each company needs to determine which one works best for their organization.

She then went through each of the potential options.

Train / Hire In House Staff

• Can be difficult/time consuming.
• MarketingSherpa survey (Sept. 07) found that filling in house SEM specialists was very challenging.
• Almost a third of respondents in the survey said it was very difficult to attract qualified employees.

• More difficult to fill SEM roles than filling other roles in marketing. Short supply of trained staff.
• Requires ongoing resources and commitment from company management.
• Most in house staff wear multiple hats and are pulled in many directions.
• SEM skill set portable and in demand – need incentives to keep good people.

Christine stated that if you want to make the in house staff option work for your organization – you need to support your staff in attending industry conferences and allowing them to read up on the area so that they stay current since the industry is constantly changing. The cultures of companies can make it difficult to keep good staff so management needs to be willing to provide ongoing support and resources to the internal search marketing area.

Outsource SEM

• The MarketingSherpa survey (Sept. 07) found that the number of companies getting outside help has increased in the past 12 months.
• More than half of the big paid search spenders use full service search agencies.

Churchill commented that outsourcing is a popular option for many companies. In paid search, more than ½ of the big spenders use full service search agencies. Many clients like one stop shopping and will hire for services in addition to paid search.

In House With Outside Consulting

• This is an excellent option because both sides can help each other. The inside staff can learn from the knowledge and expertise of the outside company and the outside company can have internal players to draw on for internal business information.
• The agency recommends high end tactics and strategy.

PPC Management Using Software

Churchill cautioned that 3^rd party software is not the total answer. While the tools are useful – they do have limitations such as:

• PPC management is more than just bid management.
• Some PPC management software is outdated:
  • Some engines incorporated dayparting and other features into their standard interface.
  • Bidding games don’t work anymore with the advent of quality score in the main engines.
  • One engine dominance – Google has nearly 70% of search volume.

However, there are some definite benefits to third party software:

• The software allows the marketer to be more effective.
• Saves time and simplifies management – lets you create ads, adjust bids, budgets and creatives across search engines.
• The 3^rd party tools have the capability to optimize for ROI or other metrics across campaigns and provide consistent reporting across ad networks.
• They provide better performance insight by providing a better understanding as to what is working across engines.
• Keep data private.

When To Consider PPC Management Software

Christine went through many scenarios where it would make sense to invest in PPC management software:

• If running an extremely large or complex campaign.
• If running campaigns across multiple engines.
• If media spend is in excess of $50k per month.
• If you want to optimize in bulk.
• If the manager is spending more time doing the math than being creative, planning, or doing other efforts to improve performance.
• Have well defined metrics and goals.

What To Ask When Selecting PPC Management Application

Breadth of Service

• Which engines does the application support?
• Does it scale to the size and volume of my business? Is there a limit on the number of ads, keywords or changes per day?
• Is the reporting sufficient? Can it email reports? Does it generate graphs and charts? Does it track different digital media types and conversions across different engines?

Churchill stressed that these questions are important. For example, if the software doesn’t support your most important engine, then it doesn’t make sense to investigate it further. As for reporting, different managers will want different reports – make sure the reporting will meet your needs.

Features

• Does it offer features not supplied in search engine interface (i.e. dayparting for engines that don’t offer it, monitoring competitors bids, performing global campaign changes).
• Is dynamic keyword insertion supported?
• Does the tool support how you measure conversions? Are these separate conversion tracking modules?
• Does the tool include keyword generation options?
• Does application offer click fraud monitoring?

Bidding Related

• Transparency – is it a black box or is there defined logic for the bid change?
• Does the tool learn over time and automatically adjust bids?
• How does the software handle low volume tail phrases or infrequent success metrics?
• How does it hand the Google minimum bid?

Ease of Use

• How difficult is the tool to learn to use? Is training available?
• Does it provide one centralized platform to manage the account?
• Does the application provide a dashboard for top level metric tracking?
• Does the application have mature help text and online documentation?
• How difficult is it to import or export data?Can the software adapt quickly and easily for seasonal campaigns.

Maturity/Flexibility

• How long has the tool been on the market?
• What are the demographic characteristics of targeted tool user?
• Does the application stay in sync with the search engines?
• How does it handle changes made by the search engines such as when they suddenly upgrade their systems with little warning?
• Is it an online or downloadable tool?

Christine suggests that mature software tends to be more stable and have more of the features that people really need. Ask the questions above to help you determine the maturity.


Pricing and Support

• Is there a free trial to test out the application?
• What are the terms of the contract?
• What is the pricing model?
• What level of technical support and customer service comes with the tool?
• Are there service level agreements regarding the performance and availability of the tool?
• What rollout support is included?

Other Factors

• How much testing time should be allotted after initial setup to confirm that setup is correct?
• Is it a management service or tool? (For a company wanting to do it themselves, the service may be overkill. Paying for a service you may not want is an unnecessary expense. For others, a full service experienced team to handle the account may be desirable.
• Confidentiality – is the data kept private?
• Does the tool act as handcuffs? Is it easy to leave application without hurting or rebuilding the campaigns?

After reviewing everything a company should consider when selecting a 3^rd party PPC management tool, Christine discussed whether PPC management software is a replacement for the human in the campaign.

Is PPC Management Software A Replacement For The Human In the Loop?

• Christine emphasized that absolutely NOT – the software is simply a way of reducing the drudgery of managing a large account – it is not a replacement for the human brain.
• It frees up the human to do more creative work such as:
  • Developing and testing new landing pages and ads
  • Strategizing and planning out new campaign ideas
  • Focusing on the big picture instead of the minutia

The tools are a great way of removing much of the tedium of managing a PPC campaign.

• Several options exist for managing a search marketing campaign (hiring, training, outsourcing, doing a hybrid solution, all of these options and combine with PPC software).
• PPC management is more than just bid management. Bid management is just one variable of successful search engine marketing – it involves bidding, using effective keywords, creating successful landing pages etc.
• PPC management software can be an effective way to optimize a large complex paid search campaign.
• PPC management applications can save time and free account managers from the drudgery associated with managing a large campaign. This allows managers to make better use of their time, increase creativity and make better decisions.

I found Christine Churchill’s presentation to be very informative and provided the audience with excellent information to have on hand when selecting a paid search management application. I would like to thank Christine Churchill from Key Relevance and moderator Claire Schoen for another excellent Search Marketing Now webcast!

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At the onset, Chris indicated that the goal of the presentation is to help those attending to better manage their paid search efforts.

Mr. Sherman started by stating that all big brands do have big sites – but that not all big sites are big brands. The presentation was broken into two segments – what you need to do to set up your PPC program for success and the marketing end of things related to search.

Know Your Goals. First off, Mr. Sherman counseled the audience that the first thing anyone working on a paid search program needs to define is the goals. With any search marketing campaign, it is crucial to look at goals and understand what you are trying to accomplish. Without knowing goals – you cannot measure success. Ask yourself these questions:

• Why are you doing PPC vs. SEO or even other types of marketing?
• Are you measuring the right things?
• Is PPC the most effective use of marketing resources?

Beyond The Basics. You need to get the right keywords, budgets and bids – however, when you are working with big sites and big brands, other things are equally important.

• Running a paid search campaign for a big site means far more than managing keywords, bids and budgets.
• Basic blocking and tackling is important, but there are several other key factors for running a successful campaign.
• You need a strategy that focuses on your own success metrics, yet fully accounts for the competitive landscape.
• You need an array of tools to automate manual tasks, offer feedback to fine tune strategy, and ideally, automatically adjust to constantly changing conditions.

Chris stressed that we need to understand what is we are trying to accomplish with PPC. Need to look at the competitive landscape and ascertain what our competitors are doings. For the big brands – whatever the competitors are doing will influence what you will do. You have to adapt and be flexible.

He also noted that you need to automate things wherever possible. Spend your time thinking at the higher level and leave the day-to-day work to automated tools (if you can). These tools are very sophisticated now and they can adapt in real time to changing conditions. Based on the business rules you supply, the tools will change the campaign and respond to what is happening with competition.

Leadership is Important. One of the important things that Chris Sherman feels is overlooked is the critical importance of leadership. In order to be successful, you need to work with all different groups to make sure all the stakeholders are getting their needs satisfied and that you are in alignment with other areas in the campaign. You need to influence not just the team – but top management as well. Top management is critical as they need to buy into your efforts for budgets etc. You need to show them that the campaign is working.

Managing Expectations is Key. Mr. Sherman posed the question …what happens when you find you are in a battle for position – against another group in your own organization? How would you deal with those types of challenges?

He feels that it is important to manage expectations amongst everyone.

You need to identify the owners vs. influencers. The owners own content and have the final say over specific campaigns. Equally important is mapping out the role of the influencers. Just make sure everyone has clearly spelled out roles, responsibilities, and evaluation metrics. If you can get these roles clearly mapped out it can really help drive the design and implementation of the campaign.

Global vs. Local Control. Another important area to define is whether the campaign is controlled globally (head office) or down to the local level (field office). One idea is to segment keywords and creative. For example – corporate could have the responsibility for general brand terms (a searcher just beginning an info quest) and local could have control over more specific, less branded terms (where the searcher knows what they are looking for).

Bidding Strategy. Chris suggested thinking of your keywords as you would your financial portfolio. Just as with your investment portfolio, some keywords will be winners while others will be losers. You will need to continually rebalance your portfolio after you understand how they are performing (trim the losers, invest more in winners) to maintain proper exposure to achieve business goals.

Automate Bid Management. As mentioned previously, Chris stressed how automation allows you to increase volume. With these powerful tools, you can perform rapid testing of ad strategies, position, time of day, day of week and other variables. Automation works well with both concentrated and localized strategies. With good bid management solutions, you can learn from testing and adjust your campaign in real time – 24/7.

Watch – Learn – Then React. You need to use your own goals and metrics as a baseline and then based on the feedback from the metrics you know when to raise bids, keep an eye on the status quo or dump the underperformers.

What to Do If Your Organization Has Separate Terms for SEO and PPC. If you organization has separate terms for SEO and PPC – communication is key. It is so important for the separate departments to share data and to beware of inconsistent or conflicting messages. The organic and paid search side must share data and be consistent and not competing.

PPC vs. SEO. One is not better than the other – instead big brands should use each for maximum effort. PPC is best for fluid, changing content, promotions and the beginning stages or search. However, it is less effective for getting people to evergreen or static content. PPC on the other hand is great to test creative for SEO campaigns.

Testing is So Important. Don’t assume PPC reinforces SEO – sometimes one strategy can undermine another. It is important to note that 70% of all clicks are still coming from organic results. Use organic search to help resolve conflicts between teams and dominate SERP (search engine result pages). If searchers see you in the natural listings and sees you in the paid search – it does reinforce legitimacy for the searcher.

Marketing Issues. After focusing on the tactical issues that need to be resolved with paid search, Chris switched gears and focused on marketing issues that are unique to big brands. He started by stating the branding is not direct marketing. With direct marketing, your focus is on conversion and outcome. However, with branding – it is more complex and takes place in stages. Branding can lead to conversion, but it isn’t the primary goal.

It is important that the paid search messaging should be tailored to match each of these stages.

Chris also stressed the importance of the role of perception. That is, the perception of what is in the searchers mind will ultimately influence what the searcher does. It doesn’t matter what keywords we have – but what the searcher has experienced leading up to sitting down at the computer.

Four Stages of Branding. Mr. Sherman then presented his perception as to what the whole branding process is about. It is a useful model to think about as you are creating your marketing messages.

• Building brand awareness (early stage – overcoming low recognition and emotion. Your marketing messages need to raise awareness.
• Reinforcing brand awareness (middle stage – emphasis on solidifying brand attributes and positive associations).
• Enhancing preference and favorability (late stage – emphasis on persuasion). Really want to reach out to consumers at this stage.
• Reinforcing brand loyalty (post sale). Here your messages are reinforcing their purchase decision to help them stay brand loyal in the future.

He also mentioned that search ads are only one part of the branding message – direct mail, radio, TV and online graphic ads are important too. Remember that your other types of brand messages can have a huge effect on the way people respond to search results. Search ads should complement your other efforts – they are important, but they are just one part of what you are trying to do. A good rule of thumb is – if you are doing an effective job on the other fronts, you should have a positive response to your paid search efforts.

It is a mistake to silo your ads. If you have a big brand, search ads are just one other component of all the other methods and techniques you have. Search ads should complement all your other efforts. They are important – but they are just one part of what you are trying to do.

Other types of brand messages have an impact. If you are doing an effective job on other fronts – they are likely to respond to your PPC.

Leveraging Online Strategy. Consider a mix of search and display ads. Chris sited the Microsoft Lending Tree study (11-07) where people who were exposed to both search and display advertising were:

• 556% more likely to visit LendingTree.com
• 650% more likely to fill out an online qualification form (so that the company could continue the sales process).

Use Your Search Data. Use your data! The data from your search campaign (demographics, time/day of search etc.) can help refine other brand campaign elements, and vice versa.

Get information from your search campaign – mine your data to find out important information that can help you relate to the prospects in ways that they have expressed through their search engine behavior. Remember to filter this information back to all your marketing efforts. It is a great testing ground because you get immediate feedback from people using it.

SERPs vs. Content Networks. SERPs are where all the direct marketers want to be. Content networks are when the search engine distributes ads to partners (ex. Google to the NY Times). Branding works both on SERPs and on content partner pages.

Since your conversion goal is less important – it is useful to be on both. There haven’t been any studies to determine effectiveness, but Sherman believes that they work in the case of branding. Again, he counsels that the only way to really tell is to go out and test with your own campaigns.

Conclusions

• Paid search for big sites requires leadership, not just skilled search marketing techniques.
• Search can be an effective part of a comprehensive branding effort.
• As with all types of search marketing – success will be determined by the quality of execution on your goals.

At the end of the presentation, there were a few minutes for questions.

• What tasks can be automated?
  • Tons of tasks can be automated. For example, the bid management process, what time of day should an ad be running, what parts of the world do you want the ad to be running in. More and more of the processes are lending themselves to automation.

• How do you manage crossover keywords – how do you do that when you share amongst multiple departments?
  • It’s is important to define the owners and influencers. Those issues are quickly diminished if the owners and influencers are identified. The ruthless approach is necessary to determine who owns the keywords.

• How do you rebalance your portfolio of keywords?
  • It involves taking a hard look at all your keywords and how are they performing relative to the goals you have set for them. It involves going through the entire portfolio and matching each keyword against your goals. It is driven by bottom line but also by how those numbers relate to the business goals established for each individual keyword.

Thanks to Chris Sherman, Search Marketing Now and iProspect for an informative web seminar.

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