Search Marketing Bid Strategies

Search Marketing Bid Strategies are becoming increasingly important to the value of Search Marketing Campaigns, not only can they save you 60%-70% of your daily budget, they can easily increase your return on investment.

I'm often told by clients to make sure they are at the top of the sponsored listings and ahead of their competitors - don't argue, no buts, just get us there. But is this the best scenario?

Many will tell you yes, it's essential to beat your competitors and being in that first position gets a higher click through rate which means more customers to your site, reading your content and viewing your offering. Which means a better chance of getting conversion, right? That's all a pretty good reason to pay top $$, but is it the best option for your campaign?

Chances are that it's not, it's costing you excess spend, lowering your conversion rates and helping your competitors. Web users are getting more savvy, they know more often than not know the workings of sponsored listings and it's these savvy users you want to target with your campaigns.

It's all too easy for the lazy people at the start of the buying cycle to click that very top ad. Even more so if it's highlighted in blue :) Remember, people are price conscious just like you. They will click that juicy link at the top of the page, review that product and then go hunting for the cheaper product. So in that case, if you're number 1 - you have just been burnt.

So lets use a Position Bidding Strategy.

Get out of the bidding war at the top of the pile, escape the lazy searchers at the start of the buying cycle (lets face it, they just aren't ready to purchase today) and lets target a bid position of 4. While it might be pretty scary that your competitors are now getting 2.5 times the traffic you are, they are also getting 2.5 times the number of lazy searchers.

By dropping our search marketing bid position to number 4 we are effectively now getting 40% of the traffic while only paying 14% of the cost. That's a nice little saving, but what is even more important is that the users clicking our targeted ads are actually reading the ad text and selecting us from the page because of our ads content rather than a our position just being the most convenient.

That means our campaign is now much more highly targeted and gives us the chance to post a better return on investment or leads capture with a more optimal campaign. Of course this kind of a strategy certainly differs depending on your competitors actions and the nature of your products.

Like it Spicy, With Flash Video

Intergrated flash video websites are increasingly becoming all the rage. As broadband jumps up a notch every 3 months, the creative types with a client looking for something a little trend setting come out to play.

Take this new website from Interactive agency Spacedog. They have turned a new spicy buffalo sandwich into an interactive wonderland, with your guide being a sexy blonde who stars in the new burger joints TV campaign. She steps you through the website in full flash video glory, rendered on a sleek white background the use of the flash video is simple, yet class leading.

The use of flash video is certianly something that should talked about in any new interactive brief, it's uses are ever expanding and can turn your ordinary website into an award winning interactive campaign.

Hammer & Coop Campaign

In a clever campaign, Mini gets tonnes of action with their own Hammer & Coop. You've probably seen the banner campaign on the home page of Ninemsn, Mini have created their own mini-series, a cheesy action comedy with a man and his car.

It's a 6 part webisode series that's actually pretty darn good. Directed by Todd Phillips who surprise surprise, directed Starsky & Hutch. The website has some pretty cool features - seamless flash video, a fantastic action hero name generator and an entire extras section. Check it out. It might just be more entertaining than YouTube today.

Stop People Stealing Your Flash

It's easy forget the new generation of flash designers/developers coming through the ranks that are searching for the same answers I was just a few years ago.

So here it is, the easiest and quickest way to protect and stop people stealing your flash video, flash animation, flash applications and flash actionscript. It's called a container file. A blank, empty, useless swf that does nothing apart from calling another flash file onto the stage.

A container flash file is great for more that just protecting your flash, it also gives you a platform to load your website or video .etc and set it exactly how you want on the stage. That be centered, spanning, fixed or layered - what ever you need.

Container Flash Example:
loadMovie("mywebsite.swf", _root.dropZone);

So for a basic example of how you would use a container flash file, lets assume we are going to use it to launch our flash website and protect its flash video, animation and actionscript. On frame one you would set up a blank movie clip called/labeled dropZone, you would place this file where ever you would like the website to be loaded - presumably centered. Non spanned.

Frame one, on an actionscrpt layer, you would insert the code above. This calls the external "mywebsite.swf" file and places it in the dropZone (yor target area). Your external website swf would contain the preloader and once the load movie command is executed - your preloader will load in from the external file and your website will apear.

This basically stops people using something like "sothink swf catcher" to harvest your flash file. Now all they will get is a blank SWF. :)