Data Driven Decisions

Over the course of my time in Search Engine Marketing, a question is often asked that almost never needs to be; "what do you think?"



For better or worse, thinking is one of the things that isn't inherently needed when it comes to making decisions to help improve the performance of your Search campaigns. This is by no means an endorsement to act without thought, but if data either isn't present or substituted with whimsy or opinion, the results can only be attributed to luck. The problem with this arises when you want to replicate the results or to build further upon them. Unfortunately, luck isn't scalable.



Data dependency is one of the key elements that helps separate SEM from being classified as a hobby. It's one of the main reasons why so many business love the idea of it and attribute so much credit for conversions to it. If you were to remove the ability to attribute success on a keyword level, companies wouldn't be able be flocking to search the way they are.



The growth in keyword and local search all boils down to data. Analysis is a lever of search that has to be carefully understood.



For keywords, data is keenly used when being applied to match types, time of day, bid amount, and position. It strikes me as odd when the conversation switches to spending more money to help improve performance over optimizing existing opportunities. Usually, you can use data to turn off non-performing keywords while increasing the bid for better keywords and testing their velocity in a higher position. In a perfect world, the top producing keywords would be split out from the rest of keywords in at least 3 different ways in Google alone.

• Splitting keywords between Google.com and it's syndication partners.
• Having keywords present as Exact, Phrase, and Broad match.
• Isolated in their own campaign with a separate budget.

This way when you make a change to a keyword, you're able to make a decision that won't have as many sweeping changes to the performance of your keywords. This is the kind of additonal flexibility that allows you to gain more insight which will only help you make better data decisions.

For copy, you want to make sure that you're constantly testing creative so that account is always evolving. Being complacent is the beginning of the end. You want to set things up so you can track performance from both the front and back end. Finding copy that drives a phenomenal clickthrough rate is great! Until you find out that there isn't a direct proportion between CTR and revenue. Then you're left asking yourself if you care more about CTR or revenue. It's a rhetorical question because no one gets paid from CTR. Having the mechanisms in place to track data all the way through the cart will provide tremendous leverage to radically improve performance.

Before a single keyword is launched, it should become a best practice to gather as much data as you can beforehand. If there's anecdotal data that can be used to help determine what keywords previously drove spend and conversions, you have the benefit of using this when you're setting your account up. The TCO (total cost of ownership) of an SEM account can be high depending on the size and complexity. You can minimize this by working "by the numbers."