Amy Seeburger • Account Director and Digital Strategist • 77 N. Washington St., 8th Floor, Boston MA 02114 • 415.404.2650

Advanced Automation August 23, 2012

Overview

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HUMAN EXPERTISE + AUTOMATED TOOLS

MARKETING SUCCESS

Use of technology platforms like Marin, Kenshoo, and SearchCenter have become a ubiquitous aspect of search campaign management in the past 12-16 months The benefits of these platforms are clear with tools streamlining bulk campaign changes, reporting, and bid management; all of which translates to more efficient workflow and back-end results for performance marketers That said these platforms are not stand-alone solutions; the human-element of search management continues to play a critical role in effective management of campaigns.

Objectives

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Cost Per Lead (CPL) Lead costs need to strike a balance between volume and efficiency to meet objectives. Pulling front end levers such as rank and CPC ultimately determine conversion activity on site

Cost Per Click (CPC) CPCs are increasingly competitive and high cost for health insurance related terms making it critically important to properly optimize conversion data

Ranking Maintaining overall brand visibility is an important component to streamlining other KPIs. Higher ranks yield higher CPCs, which need to be offset by conversion rates and streamline CPL

A case study with an AMP client in the health insurance category illustrates the success of leveraging automated tools and human expertise. The objectives were as follows:

Potential Automated SEM Tools

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SEM TOOL OFFERING

Bid based on: Click Thru Rate (CTR) Click/ Impression Volume Quality Score

CPA Bid Rules ROI Bid Rules

To meet the objectives and manage those metrics, AMP focused on two sets of automated tools: Google + Marin Software.

Marin Software Capabilities

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Challenges to Efficient Bid Management

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Marketers face a number of challenges to effective bid management. The marketer’s goal is to maximize a given outcome under a variety of constraints. While this should be a straightforward exercise, a variety of factors complicate the process, including: sparse data, business complexity, consumer behaviors and competition.

Optimization Based on User-Defined Goals

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Marin Bidding allows users to maximize a given KPI such as clicks or conversions, while constraining under targets such as cost-per-lead or budget

Leveraging Marin + Human Expertise

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What Tools Don’t Know

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Dayparting Mondays are

highest volume day of the week

Media Email drops,

TV/Radio spots, etc

Seasonality Traffic picks up

later in the year.

The More Data, the Better

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INCREASED CLICKS + MORE IMPRESSIONS

BETTER LEAD VOLUME & EFFICIENCIES

CPA bid rules make daily decisions based on previous days data, so the more data we could provide, the better the results.

Pre Bid Rules

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Being that the campaign was already manually optimized around CPL vs volume, automated bid rules were implemented within AMP’s SEM platform based on CPL goals.

Set goal Click Per Action

Create bid rule folders

Trial & Error

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Open threshold

Test timing

Though the new CPL bid rules acquired volume at a CPL under goal, the volume was too small to hit overall volume goals. To solve for the restricted volume, AMP opened the CPL parameters to levels higher than goal in attempts to offset the first weeks dip in volume.

Trial & Test More

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Even when the allowable CPL was doubled, the SEM platform still defaulted to acquiring the most efficient leads regardless of volume.

Conflicting Goals Require Attention

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CONSTANT BID ADJUSTMENT

EFFICIENCY VOLUME OTHER BUSINESS

OBJECTIVES

In light of this volume challenge, a solution needed to be applied in order to drive toward not only efficiency but maximum volume at efficiency. The SEM platform’s bid management solution needed to be supplemented by additional business rules.

Mondays and Tuesdays were high opportunity days in terms of both search volume and lead activity. Low volume and performance data from Sunday was therefore inhibiting the campaign’s ability to capitalize on opportunity early in the week. The technology alone was not adapting for future opportunity, a new approach was needed. To hit volume goals, the initial bid rules were re-set with two additional components, time of day (TOD) and bid to position.

Daily bid to CPA goal

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Scalable volume & efficiency

Conflicting Rules Make Sense

Bid to position, regardless of CPC every Sunday night

Bid to position every morning within 20% of original CPC

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By pushing all keywords to top positions and then allowing Marin to adjust according to CPA resulted in clear top performers.

78% INCREASE in lead volume

16% DECREASE in Cost per Lead

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NEW EFFICIENCIES

Evolution

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EXPANSION INTO LESS EFFICIENT AREAS

SUCCESS AUTOMATED TOOLS

Thank You!

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