Search Strategy for a Struggling Economy

Search Engine Marketing – for all of the hype (and rightfully so) – is finally being affected by the economy. Although we still consider it the best converting online platform, we are definitely seeing the indirect results of clients pulling back budgets. We’re seeing it easier to spend a lot of money. We’re seeing conversion rates slipping a little. And best of all – we’re seeing clients moving more money to search in hopes of a strong end to the year.

Without going into a long explanation about how search is not a stand-alone medium, I wanted to simply explain a changing strategy that we’re implementing here at Media Two that could save a lot of others money and headaches. Get back to the basics.

We’re getting back to manually changing ads out in the engines. Regrouping keywords into appropriate ad groups that have ads that match the content . Lowering our bids on keywords. Limiting the keywords we’re bidding on. And most importantly, turning off the bid managers. Why? Because we’re after the short-tail conversion.

The value in the long-tail conversion goes without saying, but in a time where clients are cutting back Broadcast, Print and everything that doesn’t answer to the bottom line, search engines can start to jumpstart a clients marketing again when focusing on the short-tail. Think of it in these terms… The long tail terms are still being bid on because of the eventual value. But with overall marketing budgets being cut, if an agency or client doesn’t scale back on these, then they’ll start to be short on budgets. This shortfall on budgets is the perfect supply and demand equation for a client that focuses their time and effort on the here and now.

I’m not saying that cutting off your conversion funnel is the right thing to do, but let’s face it – these are tough economic times and when the client dictates that you spend less and convert more – you need to focus on what will give the client the biggest bang for the buck right now. Once you’ve proven that this philosophy works, there will then be more marketing dollars to expand on your strategy. But right now – stay focused on cutting your costs, and maximizing your conversions.