Search Advertising
Be there when people are searching.
Search Advertising Overview
Every day, billions of searches are conducted on search engines worldwide. While Google dominates this landscape, Bing also plays a significant role. Amid this vast sea of searches, a portion is undoubtedly relevant to what your business offers, whether it’s a product or service. Additionally, there are effective strategies to ensure your ads appear contextually—targeting users based on their search behavior on websites outside of a Google or Bing search.
At OEPMA, we help business owners like you reach the right audience at the right moment. By leveraging advanced search engine advertising techniques, we ensure your offers are visible to potential customers, driving sales and generating leads.
If you’d like to explore more about Search Advertising and how it can help your business grow, please contact us today.
Frequently Asked Questions About Search Advertising
What is search advertising?
Search Advertising is a method of placing ads based on the content people type into search engines. It comes in two main forms:
Instant: Your text ad appears immediately on the search engine results page (SERP) when someone searches for relevant keywords.
Contextual: Display ads are shown based on a user’s previous search history.
Let’s use an example:
Imagine you own an outdoor store in Knoxville, TN, and want to promote kayaks in spring. Here’s how you’d use Search Advertising:
- Set a geographic area for your ads to appear.
- Choose relevant keywords (e.g., “kayaks in Knoxville”).
- For SERP targeting: Your ad appears as a paid result when someone searches for your keywords.
- For contextual campaigns: Your visual ads start appearing after someone has searched for your selected keywords.
You can implement both strategies simultaneously for a comprehensive Search Advertising approach.
Why do I need someone to manage my search advertising campaigns?
Search advertising might seem straightforward at first glance – just add keywords relevant to your business, right? However, the reality is far more complex, and professional management can make a significant difference in the success of your campaigns.
Search platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads (Bing) are ultimately businesses focused on their own profitability. Having someone who understands the ins and outs of these platforms can save you substantial amounts of money.
A competent agency’s primary goal in running your campaigns is to target users who are searching with transactional intent – those likely to make purchases or engage in actions that generate revenue for your business.
Many business owners make the mistake of simply following the search engine platform’s suggestions or even allowing the platform to run the campaign automatically. We strongly advise against this approach.
To illustrate the importance of professional management, consider this real-world example:
We once took over an account for a lawyer with a very niche practice area. Upon reviewing their account, we discovered they were advertising on extremely broad terms. Our analysis revealed that 50% of their budget in the previous year had been spent on searches completely unrelated to their area of practice. As a result, they were inundated with daily calls and inquiries about services they couldn’t provide. This not only wasted their advertising budget but also consumed their employees’ time in handling these irrelevant submissions.
A well-managed search advertising campaign relies on much more than just “adding some keywords.” It’s about understanding the nuances of the platforms, continuously optimizing your campaigns, and aligning your advertising strategy with your business goals.
Professional search advertising management ensures that your campaigns are finely tuned to reach the right audience, minimize wasted spend, and maximize your return on investment.
What are negative keywords?
Negative keywords are a powerful tool in search advertising that help you refine your campaign by eliminating irrelevant searches. When you add negative keywords to your campaign, you’re essentially telling the advertising platform not to show your ads for searches that include those terms.
The importance of negative keywords becomes clear when we look at some real-world examples:
The “Jobs” Scenario:
Imagine you’re running a landscaping business and you’re using the phrase match keyword “landscaping company”. Without negative keywords, your ad might appear for searches like “landscaping company jobs”. While this search includes your keyword, it’s clearly not from someone looking to hire a landscaping service. By adding “jobs” as a negative keyword, you prevent your ad from showing up in these irrelevant searches.
The “Salary” Situation:
For lawyers, a common issue is appearing in searches related to lawyer salaries. If you’re a criminal lawyer, your ad might show up for searches like “how much do criminal lawyers make” or “criminal lawyer salary”. These searchers are likely not looking for legal services. Adding “salary” as a negative keyword helps ensure your ad is shown only to potential clients.
While the click-through rates on these types of irrelevant searches are typically low, there’s no benefit to having your ad appear for them. By using negative keywords, you’re not only saving money on potential wasted clicks, but you’re also improving the overall relevance and effectiveness of your campaign.
Negative keywords are absolutely vital for fine-tuning a search advertising campaign. They help ensure your ads are seen by the right audience – those who are actually interested in your services and more likely to convert.
How fast should I see results if I perform search advertising?
When it comes to search advertising, the speed at which you’ll see results can vary, but here’s what you can typically expect:
Initial Results
Once your campaign is properly set up and launched, you should begin to see traffic and conversions within days, or even hours. However, it’s crucial to understand the dynamics at play in search advertising platforms.
Platform Dynamics
Search engines like Google and Bing have numerous advertisers to accommodate. In competitive industries and locations, multiple advertisers are vying for the same ad space. The platforms aim to balance advertiser satisfaction to maximize their own revenue. In our experience, they avoid allowing a single advertiser to absolutely dominate, instead preferring a diverse mix of businesses competing for searches.
Integration Period
Due to this balancing act, it may take a few days or weeks for your ads to be fully integrated into the system. The platforms want to maintain a healthy ecosystem with many active advertisers, as this maximizes their profit. They’ll work your ads into the rotation gradually, ensuring fair distribution of ad impressions among advertisers.
Long-term Performance
While you may see early success, campaigns typically don’t reach their full potential until they’ve been running for several months. This extended period allows for:
- Fine-tuning of your campaign
- Accumulation of data for optimization
- Adaptation to platform algorithms
Variables Affecting Performance
Several factors can influence your campaign’s performance and timeline:
- Your industry and its competitiveness
- The strength of your offer
- Quality of your landing page
- Market demand for your product/service
- Ongoing evolution of the advertising platform
Platform Evolution
It’s important to remember that search advertising platforms are continually changing. Strategies that were effective six months ago may not yield the same results today. Staying informed about platform updates and industry trends is key to maintaining campaign effectiveness.
In conclusion, while you can expect to see initial results quickly, achieving optimal performance is an ongoing process that requires patience, continuous monitoring, and adaptation to both your specific market conditions and the evolving landscape of search advertising platforms.
How should I define success from my search advertising campaigns?
When it comes to measuring the success of your search advertising campaigns, focus on what truly matters: conversions and cost per conversion.
Conversions are the actions that directly impact your bottom line – whether that’s sales, lead submissions, or any other activity that brings in revenue. These are the concrete results that translate into business growth.
Cost per conversion tells you how much you’re spending to achieve each of these valuable actions.
While other metrics like clicks, impressions, and cost per click provide useful data, they shouldn’t be your primary measure of success. A low cost per click might seem attractive, but if it’s not leading to conversions, it’s essentially meaningless.
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of data these platforms provide. However, at the end of the day, your campaign’s success boils down to two key questions:
- Are you getting conversions?
- Are you getting those conversions at a cost that makes sense for your business?
Everything else should be viewed as supporting data to help you optimize your campaigns towards these primary goals. Don’t get distracted by metrics that don’t directly tie to your business outcomes.
Remember, a successful campaign is one that drives real business results, not just impressive-looking numbers on a dashboard.
How much does it cost to have OEPMA manage my search advertising?
Our month-to-month management fee is straightforward:
- For accounts spending under $6,000 per month on ads, we charge a flat rate of $600 per month for our services.
- For accounts spending $6,000 or more, our fee is 10% of the ad spend, up to a maximum of $3,000 per month for accounts spending $30,000 or more.
If your account requires initial setup, there will be a one-time setup charge ranging from $250 to $1,000, depending on the complexity of your account.
Our services are billed on the first business day of each month for the previous month’s ad spend.
