Stemato.com - Stephen Tompkins’ Blog

Measuring ROI for online campaigns is time consuming work full of numbers and spreadsheets that seemingly go on forever. The media planners days are filled with data crunching and searching for the metrics they need from various sources. Everything from time spent to search queries crowd the typical day and marrying this data together has become a great challenge. It seems everyone has a custom solution.

And as online marketing tools progress, products that deliver excellent data visualization tools will hold a significant competitive advantage moving forward. Why? Well, the ability for a planner to quickly gather the data they need to make decisions is crucial to success and a great dashboard is the lynch pin of this process.

With this in mind I started thinking about Search Marketing interfaces. The differences between many of them are minor but the experience differences are major. The ability to consume keyword group data and which keywords are performing is integral an integral function for search marketers.  But many interfaces create a complicated gossamer of reports and internet pages to give you the information you need. It can feel like Indiana Jones searching for the Ark of the Covenant to find what you need.

Many of these interfaces gives you great amounts of aggregate data but fall short in providing a great quick glance at the keyword and keyword group level. I am aware of all the dashboards that these programs have but I still need more. Its this keyword data that have been thinking about lately. What if you could quickly see in graphical terms what is performing vs. underperformers?

In the following weeks, I am going to build out a sample of this data visualization that I am talking about.

Keyword research can be a daunting task. Relationships between consumers and brands can be like the difference between Japanese and English. Finding an appropriate starting point for setting up your first search campaign can be the biggest roadblock. After determining what product or products to build your campaign around putting together a great set of keywords is the next step.

Keywords form the spine of the your search campaign; getting these relationships right is important to your success. Where do you begin? Corporate websites, brochures and other marketing materials can be a good starting point for relevant terms being used to discuss your brand but they sometimes lack closeness to the consumer. Don’t be alarmed though because consumers have left a virtual digital treasure chest of keywords waiting be discovered in blogs, message boards and forums.

Here is my 5 step process to begin to gain insight in the blogosphere to what is being said and using it for keyword research:

1. Compile a list of blogs that talk about your brand - Perhaps the most important step is to explore the blogosphere and see who is talking about you. Del.icio.us, Google Blog Search and Technorati are a great place to search your brand and see who is talking about you. Then put together a list of the ones you find to be have the most scope and activity. Look for plenty of comments and large readership. Check for hints including RSS subscribers and comments counts.
2. Read and look for patterns of conversation - Pay particularly close attention to the comments and specific language being used to talk about your features, models and brands in them. Do they use model numbers or branded terms* to discuss products? Comments are insights straight from consumers about the language that is being developed around you. Tag clouds also hold interesting patterns.
3. Make a list of terms - Compile a list of terms that you see in multiple places. Segment the list and make sure you don’t forget the long tail.
4. Rank terms on list - Once you have a master list of all your consumer-driven keywords# put them in order of importance. Focus on consumer talk and how they might search for you not how you would search for your product.
5. Decide how much to bid on terms - Should you bid more on terms that are from consumers or same? Should they be contextually driven or keyword? For instance, Chevy is used more in conversation than Chevrolet according to BlogPulse. Does this chart mean you should invest much more into contextual advertising for the term “chevy”? One thing is certain you would get more placement due to its increased term use.

These 5-steps are starting points for introducing consumer-driven keywords into your paid search campaign. You can not only increase your paid clicks but gain valuable CRM insights into your brand by adding them into your web strategy. The only question left is. When do we start?

* I remember when I worked at a satellite radio manufacturer we had one radio that was called: XTR1, Jimi and Stream | Jockey. Combing through forums, blogs and message boards would have yielded consumer preference for its name.

# Keywords that originate from consumers of a brand and are not necessarily brand driven.

There are many tactics to influencing the SERPs (search engine ranking pages) but you can still end up with listings on your search shelf-space that can damage your brand. Using defensive branding and reputation management measures can be the cornerstone to fortifying any good online marketing plan against negative entries. My colleague says keyword-buys, social-media and press releases are all good weapons to have in your arsenal but one less obvious tactic flies under the radar. That is buying negative domain names and linking them to a positive result.

I was reminded of the importance of fortifying your brand’s domain today, when I read an article in the Guardian, that showed the influence cybersquatters were having on the London Mayorial election between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. This site was particularly scathing in the way it portrayed Ken Livingstone as a freewheeling politician attempting to turn London into New York. And to make matters worse, they were using the domain kenlivingstone.org and showing up on the first page of Google results for the keywords “ken livingstone.” (Ken Livingstone’s real site is located at kenlivingstone.com.)

This is a prime example of the importance of making sure that you purchase the top results of your brand’s domain name and the negative results. Or risk someone else purchasing and deciding how you are portrayed online for you.