Lessons from the Moose on paid search marketing

IRCE 2008 Conference Multi-Media CD-ROM

Paid search is more costly and competitive than ever. As a result, it’s critical that dollars be spent wisely and best practices be employed.

Moosejaw Mountaineering, an outdoor apparel and gear multi-channel retailer, has been conducting paid search marketing campaigns for years. And it’s learned many valuable lessons.

The following are the top five paid search marketing lessons Moosejaw has learned, according to Jeffrey Wolfe, chief operating officer and CFO:

• “Make sure you can accurately measure overlap of different search campaigns,” Wolfe says, “so when you’re running the return on investment analysis of each search campaign you aren’t giving more than one credit for the same sale.”
• “To maximize profitability, move paid search marketing dollars to search terms where your organic listings are not as strong,” he says.
• “Use services like DoubleClick Performics that allow for automatic paid search bidding based on the actual conversion rate and profitability of each term,” Wolfe advises. “Otherwise you risk overspending on terms that aren’t converting.”
• “Make sure a search listing points a customer to the most targeted spot on your web site,” he says, “so if, for example, they are searching on Google for Patagonia fleece jackets, you don’t send them to a page of all jackets.”
• “Set up tons of search terms,” he concludes, “so you can capture the more costly sales from the high-traffic terms and the less costly sales from the low-traffic terms.”