Yahoo! Search Marketing > Yahoo! Search Marketing Help > Sponsored Search > Fine-tune Your Account
| Learn about: | Generating Sales | Generating Leads | Generating Traffic | Generating Local Business | Related Resources |
Generating Leads
If your business goal is to have customers to submit their email addresses or contact information to receive further information later then you are seeking to generate leads. The following tips and techniques may assist you:- Setting Up a Campaign
- Selecting Keywords
- Writing Effective Ads
- Setting the Right Bid
- Optimizing Your Landing Pages
- Tracking Your Results
- What is the account stucture?
- Top 5 things to consider before creating a campaign
- How to create a campaign
- What is the Advanced match type?
- What is Content Match?
- What is Geo-targeting?
What is the account structure?
Keywords
A keyword is a single word or multi-word phrase that relates to the products and/or services you wish to advertise. When potential customers are looking for information related to your keywords, your ads may be displayed.
Ads
Your ads are the marketing messages that your potential customers will see. An ad is comprised of the title, description and URL.
Ad Groups
An ad group contains your ads (the marketing messages you created) and your targeting criteria (such as keywords). Your ads are rotated against your targeting criteria and are displayed to your potential customers. You can create multiple ad groups within a campaign.
Campaigns
A campaign is made up of one or more ad groups that share the same budget, schedule and geo-targeting criteria. Typically, campaigns are created to achieve a marketing goal (for example, a summer clearance campaign, a new product launch campaign, or a campaign that targets customers in a specific geographic location).
Account
Your account contains all the elements you need to advertise in one market (i.e., the United States and English-speaking Canada). An account generally represents a business, or a portion of a business, that has a particular budget as well as marketing objectives.
Top 5 things to consider before creating a campaign
- Group your keywords by a certain attribute, i.e. by product, product category, offer or geographic region.
- Decide on your bid for each group of keywords.
- Think about the core message you want to communicate to customers, and create specific ads for each group of keywords. This can help improve the relevancy of your ads.
- Determine the most effective landing pages in order to help increase conversions (purchases or lead submissions). Learn more about optimizing your landing pages.
- Place tracking tags on your site so you can understand the performance of your campaigns and help optimize your results. Learn how to install tracking tags.
Log in to your account. Click the “Create Campaign” button on the Dashboard tab.
Follow these steps:
- Name your campaign.
- Set up geo-targeting by market, U.S. state, Canadian provinces or city and surrounding areas, also known as DMA1(if this applies to your business objective).
- Select your distribution tactic: Sponsored Search and/or Content Match.
- Create ad groups with keywords, ads and a bid. if you select Sponsored Search, you can choose either Advanced Match or Standard Match Type.
- Set the budget for your campaign.
- Schedule a timeframe for when your ads will be online or offline.
- Review your campaign details before you activate your ads.
What is the Advanced match type?
Your potential customers may search on many variations of your keywords. It would be overwhelming for you to bid on and manage every possible variation. The solution is the Advanced match type, which enables you to leverage your existing ads to appear for a wider range of relevant keywords.
For example, if you activated the Advanced match type on the keywords “hotel,” “flight” and “vacation,” you could receive customers searching on terms like these:
- New York hotel
- California luxury hotels
- flight to Paris
- London flight
- family vacation
- vacation adventure
Content Match complements your Sponsored Search campaign by displaying your ads for a broad range of content throughout the Yahoo! distribution network, thereby providing an additional source of targeted leads. The Content Match distribution partner network includes numerous popular content and information sites. You also have the option to define separate bids for your Content Match ads.
Learn more about how to use Content Match.
Geo-targeting allows you to target your ads to potential customers located or interested in particular geographic areas within the market selected for your account. For example, if your business sells real estate within the state of California and you select California as a geo-targeted region, your ads will be shown to potential customers located in California, as well as to customers who may be located outside of California but enter search terms such as “California real estate.”
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Learn more about how to use geo-targeting.
1DMA® is a registered service mark of Nielsen Media Research, Inc., and is used pursuant to a license from Nielsen Media Research, Inc., all rights reserved.
- Top 5 guidelines for creating keywords
- Advanced techniques for generating keywords
- Organizing keywords into campaigns and ad groups
Top 5 guidelines for creating keywords
- Exclude keywords and keyword combinations that explicitly describe a direct online purchase (e.g. “online shop” or “buy online”).
- Try to predict what your customers will type in when searching for the service or product you offer.
- Choose a wide range of keywords that may generate enough leads to follow up on or create a sufficient database for your follow-up.
- Take into account keywords with multiple words (“large format print for storefront”).
- Periodically add new keywords and remove the non-performers to keep your account administration at a manageable level
- Use the Find Keywords panel in your account.
Advanced techniques for generating keywords
Select niche keywords:Strike a balance between popular (frequently searched) keywords and niche keywords. Niche keywords with little or no competition typically generate a small amount of traffic, but the traffic is typically targeted and may come at a very low price. (e.g. “LINUX network admin” or “storage hall building kit”)
Analyze your site:One of the best places to look for ideas is your own web site.
- Look through all the pages of your site and identify the words that are most relevant and interesting to your customers.
- Review your product names and descriptions for ideas.
- Check your web server logs to identify the keywords that are leading visitors to your site.
- Consider what you want your customers to do. Do you want them to fill out a contact form, take a quiz, or call you for a quote? Generate keywords that lead customers to complete the desired action.
Organizing keywords into ad groups and campaigns
To keep your account organized, you can pool your keywords into ad groups and your ad groups into campaigns. An ad group contains a set of keywords that apply to a single ad (title, description and URL).
Example: How to organize keywords into ad groups and campaigns.
| Keywords | Ad Group | Campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Santa Monica apartment LA real estate Hollywood property |
Los Angeles | California Real Estate |
| San Diego apartment La Jolla beach house San Diego estate |
San Diego | |
| SUV information Sedan test drive Coupe new models |
Auto | Newsletter Leads |
| Basketball update Sports news Athletics newsletter |
Sports |
Example: How to associate keywords with ads (title, description and URL)
| Keywords in your ad group | Ad |
|---|---|
| Santa Monica apartment LA real estate Hollywood property |
Greater Los Angeles Area Real Estate Request property listings in your price range throughout L.A. www.electronic-planet.com |
| San Diego apartment La Jolla beach house San Diego estate |
Greater San Diego Area Real Estate Request property listings in your price range throughout San Diego. www.electronic-planet.com |
Ad groups help improve efficiency by enabling you to manage one ad for multiple keywords. You can even start testing multiple ads within an ad group to determine which message attracts the most leads and/or converts at the highest rate. Learn more about ad testing.
Determining how many campaigns and ad groups you need depends on the size and complexity of your business. Consider the following divisions when organizing your account:
- Product variations (life insurance, health insurance, car insurance)
- Product class or family (insurance, mortgage, loan)
- Products (laser printers) vs. services (network administration)
- Products that have one attribute in common (shipping region, price, service level agreement)
- Buying cycle for a particular product
- Trials of new keywords
- Seasonal keywords(holiday, end-of-year clearance)
- Include your keywords in your ads
- Clarify your business type
- If contacting you requires your prospects to call you, mention it in your ad
- If contacting you requires a contact-me-form be filled in by the user, mention it in your ad
- Address newsletter sign-up options in your ad
- Top five things to avoid
- Ad testing
Include your keywords in your ads
To make this easy for you, Yahoo! Search Marketing offers the Insert Keyword feature. This feature can enable you to save time and help increase the relevance and click-through rate of your ads by using the keyword token to dynamically insert the keyword that matches a searcher's query into your ad's title and/or description when it is displayed. Learn more about 'Insert Keyword'.
Example listing for keyword: online trading platforms
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Compare online trading options Comprehensive info on online trading options. Sign up free today. www.url.com (presume FinanceXYZ.com is no an actual site) |
Manage Your Assets Online See what's hot on the stock market. Get all the info to trade online. www.url.com (presume AAA-Finance is not an actual site) |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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Many businesses advertising in the search listings are online stores. Since you don’t sell products on your site, make sure you attract customers looking for your type of business.
Example listing for keyword: custom t-shirts
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Custom T-Shirt Shop in Santa Monica Visit our Santa Monica, CA store for a wide range of custom t-shirts. www.url.com |
Get Custom T-Shirts at CustomDesign.com Choose from a wide range of custom t-shirts, caps and bags. www.url.com |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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If contacting you requires your prospects to call you, mention it in your ad
If your goal is for customers to call your business, mention it in the description. This will help you attract the appropriate customers and properly set their expectations. Bear in mind that you are not allowed to include a telephone number in your ad.
Example listing for keyword: Santa Monica real estate
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Property to Buy and Rent in Santa Monica Call 7 days a week, 8am to 8pm for the latest available properties. www.url.com |
Santa Monica Realtor Services Visit our web site today and own a new apartment tomorrow. www.url.com |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
|
The referenced web site implies information is available online. |
If contacting you requires a contact-me-form be filled in by the user, mention it in your ad
If you want customers to visit your site and fill out a contact form, mention it in your description. Using your ad to tell potential customers what you want from them may translate into targeted and motivated leads to your site.
Example listing for keyword: IT administration
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles Network and IT Administration Windows, Linux and OS networks. Submit your service request online. www.url.com |
IT and network professionals Windows, Linux and OS networks. Visit our web site today for rates. www.url.com |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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Address newsletter sign-up options in your ad
If you want customers to sign up for a newsletter or other content, mention it in the description. This should help you attract customers interested in information, rather than shopping.
Example listing for keyword: IT administration
| Good Ad | Bad Ad |
|---|---|
| German Sports Cars Top News Request our newsletter for the latest info on hot German sports cars. www.url.com |
Sports Cars Online Get latest auto info. Visit germanautos.com today and feel the vibe. www.url.com (assume germanautos.com is not an actual site) |
| Why is it good? | Why is it bad? |
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- Superlatives (“best,” “lowest,” “hottest”) and exaggerated language. It comes across as less trustworthy than clear, factual language.
- Inaccurate claims.If you get users to your site under false pretenses, they will be annoyed and will lose confidence in your business.
- Language and product presentation that are too “salesy.”
- Ampersands (&) and numbers in place of words (“buy 2 get 1 free”). They look junky.
- Titles and descriptions that are too generic. Even if it’s tempting to have one creative per thousand keywords, the listing will:
- be perceived as less relevant
- experience a lower click-through rate
- yield fewer conversions
Within an ad group, you can test multiple versions of your ad to determine which message works best. The various versions of your ad will be randomly displayed in the Sponsored Search results for the keywords in the ad group. The test will generate a quality index score that reveals which ad generates the highest response.
Ad Group: "LA Real Estate” Keywords:
- Santa Monica Apartment
- LA Real Estate
- Hollywood Property
- Venice Beach House
- Huntington Apartment
| Ad Copy to be Tested | Point of Differentiation |
|---|---|
|
Greater Los Angeles Area Real Estate We have a huge database of properties in California to rent or buy. www.usa-realtyprofessionals.com |
Focuses on variety and selection |
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Los Angeles Estate at top Value Find the most reasonably priced apartments in the Los Angeles area. www.usa-realtyprofessionals.com |
Focuses on price and value |
| Secure a Future in Greater Los Angeles Huge variety of property to buy in L.A. Financial advisors available. www.usa-realtyprofessionals.com |
Focuses on “buy only” and mortgage advisors |
It’s important to make sure the ads you test remain relevant to all the keywords in an ad group. Therefore, we suggest you set up ad groups that share key similarities, such as product type and shipping options.
Learn more about ad groups and ad testing.
Budget-based bidding vs. position-based bidding
While it can be tempting to study the search results and try to bid to specific positions in the listings, this is not generally the most effective way to achieve profitable sales. Bidding this way might even put you into a bidding war with your competitors. Furthermore, margins and marketing budgets are not the same for each advertiser.
Instead, we suggest budget-based bidding. Your goal should be to allocate your budget to the ads that deliver the most profitable sales for your business.
The following key metrics are required to calculate the most effective bid per keyword or ad group:
- Maximum marketing budget per sale
- Maximum impressions (how often your ad is displayed in a search result) for keyword or ad group (based on the information in your account or the Find Keywords wizard)
- Average click-through rate (3.5% could be used as a standard in case no historical data is available from testing)
- Conversion rate (number of sales divided by the number of visitors to your site).
To decrease the time required to manage your account, we suggest setting bid at the ad group level. Managing bids at the keyword level requires a significant amount of time and may not necessarily lead to the most profitable results.
Optimize your bid at the ad group level
When creating a new ad group or managing your account at the ad group level, you will be able to define your bid for an ad group. When doing this, you may want to take advantage of our helpful tool that calculates estimated average clicks for your proposed bid. The tool also provides you with information on the estimated average position of your ads and share of available impressions.1
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If you would like to set budget limits independent of your bid, you have the option to set an Account Daily Spending Limit. By using this feature, you simply cap the budget on a daily basis and your estimated monthly spend limit will be automatically smoothed over a period of 30 days.2
This feature benefits you by:
- Helping to ensure you do not exceed your monthly maximum budget.
- Helping to make sure you do not go offline too early in the month, which can happen if your keywords get a lot of traffic and generate a high amount of click costs.
Learn more about the Account Daily Spending Limit.
1The numbers are calculated using your bids and historical data. Please remember that this is an estimate only and not a guarantee of click volume.
2Your daily spend caps are targets only. Please note that you may be charged up to 10% above your account daily spending limit.
- What is a landing page?
- Top 5 tips to optimize a landing page
- The first impression
- Geographical limitations
- Navigation
A landing page is the first web page a user will see after clicking your ad. This could be your homepage, a dedicated page for a product or service or a deep link to a specific product in your online store.
Top 5 tips to optimize a landing page
The following optimization tips for landing pages and web site navigation can help make your Sponsored Search campaign more effective.
- Offer transparent and easy-to-understand navigation, and create deep links that go directly to the advertised product or service.
- Use landing pages that show multiple ways to get in contact with you and additional information that might bind the customer to your offer.
- Make sure users will have a positive experience on the landing page.
- Ensure that your online shopping engine and shopping cart are safe and easy to use (if applicable).
- Maintain good server availability and remove any broken links from your site.
As you develop and refine your web site, keep this simple principle in mind: make sure your landing pages are about the customer, not about your company. Providing users with the information they are seeking enhances the customer experience and improves conversion rates. For best results, include the following on your landing pages:
- Keywords in a prominent location
- Unique product photos
- Product reviews and comparisons
- Offers (such as free shipping), discounts and rebates
- Consumer testimonials or case studies
- Buyer’s guides
- Method of contacting you directly (email or phone number)
If you are a local store, local or regional service provider, or even an online store that only ships within a certain region, your landing page should contain this information. It would be best to provide this crucial information in the title and description of your ads.
- Try to see your web site through the eyes of a potential customer.
- Make an obvious pathway to the product/service the customer was looking for.
- Avoid too many navigation layers between the customer and what they are looking for—2 clicks maximum.
- Deep links that lead directly to the offer and relate to the search query and ad are ideal.
- If a sale is your primary objective, move noncommercial related content/information below the fold.
- Why tracking is important
- Getting started
- What to do if you don’t have online conversions
- Using conversion only tracking
- Calculating your ROAS
- Tracking and analyzing your traffic
Tracking the performance of your online marketing enables you to effectively analyze your results, adjust bids and revise ads to make your account more successful. Tracking is essential to help you spend effectively so that you are getting the most out of your advertising investment.
Tracking measures the rate of conversion, which is a completed transaction event on your web site. What constitutes a conversion varies from business to business. The most common conversions are:
- Site registration
- Newsletter sign-up
- Request for price quote
- Other lead-generating activity
If you’re ready to start tracking your results, the first thing you must do is determine your desired CPA (cost-per-acquisition), which is the amount of money you’re willing to spend acquiring a new customer.
If you keep your quality index score high, you may achieve a higher position at lower cost: We suggest that you conduct a trial period during which your ads can receive enough clicks to provide you with the data you need. You can achieve that by attempting to obtain a high average position as the business objective for your campaign. Learn more about quality index.
As soon as you have gathered enough information (determining which keywords perform best, and how much you have to spend to win a certain number of customers), you can start optimizing your account: add, remove and modify keywords, improve your ads and adjust your bid.
What to do if you don’t have online conversions
Most conversions are made by way of:
- An online shopping engine
- A newsletter sign-up form
- A lead submission form for your sales force
- An information request form
If you don’t offer the option for an online conversion, you have to rely on manually collected information to better understand your cost-per-acquisition. This is usually the case when you offer a telephone number or an email address that your potential customers can use to contact you. In this case, we suggest that you do the following:
- Make the question “How did you find our telephone number?” standard for your customer service or sales force.
- Set up a dedicated number or email address for each marketing initiative.
- A lead submission form for your sales force
- Send your customers a short survey (bundled with a sweepstakes, perhaps) to ask how they found you.
Using conversion only tracking
Yahoo! Search Marketing offers free, easy-to-use [span]conversion only tracking method (basic tagging) that can help you optimize your marketing budget. You simply place a tag on your web site’s confirmation page, and then you can view conversion information in your account.
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Landing Page
The landing page is the destination of the URL you are using in your
ad. It’s the first page a customer gets to see. It is where they start
the conversion process (e.g. shopping, submitting information, signing
up for a newsletter, etc.).
E-commerce or Sign Up
During this part of the conversion process, the customer is using the
e-commerce or the part of the web site where they can submit their
address or sign up for a newsletter. The confirmation page will be the
last page of this process confirming the purchase or the submission of
information.
Confirmation Page
The conversion tag is a short piece of code that is part of the
confirmation page’s metadata. Each time the confirmation page is viewed
at the end of the shopping process, the page view is counted as one
conversion.
Learn more about conversion only tracking.
When your goal is to acquire traffic, your ROAS is calculated as:Value of Traffic Sold (e.g. your ad revenue)
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Amount Paid for Sponsored Search Traffic (i.e. total click cost)
Tracking and analyzing your traffic
In order to track and analyze the traffic on your web site, you will need to acquire specific software tools or learn how to analyze your web log files (see example below). Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may provide these tools, or you can buy them from a third party (ask your ISP for a recommendation).
| Regular URL | http://www.electronics-planet.com/television |
| Tracking URL | http://www.electronics-planet.com/television?OVRAW=buy%20plasma %20television&OVKEY=plasma%20television&OVMTC=advanced |
Yahoo! Search Marketing provides you with the ability to use [span]tracking URLs, one of the most common techniques that associates where visitors came from with what they do on your site.
With tracking URLs, you will be able to learn:
- Which keyword brought the customer to your site
- What the customer was searching for before clicking your ad
- Which search engine referred the customer to your site
Learn more about Tracking URLs.
Based on this information, you can start optimizing your account. For example, you can determine which keywords generated the most traffic, and then bid those keywords aggressively to help generate even more leads.
