Small Business SEM: It’s a Wonderful Strife
Don’t despise the words “test” or “testing” in the context of your search marketing campaigns.
Thank goodness search engine marketing for small business is not like traditional print advertising. For anything professionally printed, there is a saying that “We didn’t release it, it escaped,” or something to that fashion at least. Usually this is said because the end product could have benefited from perpetual optimization and improvement. Once in print, it cannot be altered. New versions can be released, but the older versions live in infamy. The problem is that at some point the ad needs to go to print, and by then the avenue for publishing, whether it be a newspaper, magazine, mailer or anything else, has been determined and at least partially paid for. There is no turning back; something needs to printed, so it might as well be your latest version of the ad.
In print advertising, you receive data that indicates demographically percentage breakdowns for each segment of possible audience. To a greater extent the audience can be described and categorized into nice, neat little boxes and therefore can be addressed in a manner that is expected to illicit a favorable response. While this is comforting on one hand, I think it would drive an optimization oriented fiend like me crazy knowing that print is chiseled in stone.
Search marketing campaigns can be optimized on the fly and nothing escapes due to dead lines. Were anything to escape, the pit crew can make modifications to the race performance as the car (campaign) makes it laps. Rarely if ever, does the campaign require pulling off the track into the pit itself. Changes can be concurrent to running live.
This should be of incredible comfort to your business. While past experiences and perceptions of searchers cannot be reversed, you can rest assured that the best of your best are out on the playing field right now. Updates to performance can enhance campaign effectiveness within seconds. Can a NASCAR pit crew change out tires without the car pulling off the track?
That fact of the matter is that no level of experience is going to put the perfect strategy together the first time, that doesn’t need optimization as time goes on. The faith-restoring qualifier to that statement however is that there is arguably more science and art poured into a campaign after it goes live than before. I am more hesitant towards advertising that once released cannot be optimized to morph into an efficient course of interaction between a company and its potential customer base. Relish the idea that its going to be better over time. Soon enough the engines will come to authoritate (made up word, make you an authority) you and find your website favorable and consumers will appreciate you for it.
So when you here that tests need to be performed, and that testing variables is how accounts are optimized, be thankful that nobody can say “it is what it is” at the end of the day, because all of it can get better. If it can be measured, it can be optimized.
Tags: Small Business SEM