The first step in setting up your search marketing account is to write an ad. But what about campaigns and ad groups? Budgets and bid strategies? Keywords? Beginning with an ad may seem counter-intuitive, though it’s the ideal way to start. Before dealing with the peculiarities of search marketing, stick with the fundamentals of all marketing: messages, target audiences, and revenue goals.

1. Structuring Your SEM Accounts
11.23.09

2. Who We Are
Clickable is a platform that makes online advertising simple,
instant and profitable. Our purpose is to help businesses survive
and thrive by simplifying online advertising success.
Hanny Hindi
Clickable Search Marketing Guru
Matt Mack
Clickable Search Marketing Guru &
Assist Account Manager
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3. Agenda
Our Goal Today: To describe how to
organize your SEM campaign for simpler
management and greater profitability.
1. The distinction between campaigns and ad
groups.
2. Campaign-level settings: targeting, revenue
optimization, risk management.
3. Ad group-level settings: precise offerings, high
Quality Scores, low costs.
4. Network-specific issues.
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4. A Sample Business
To keep things simple, we’ll stick with a
concrete example: Sal’s Pizza.
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• Sal’s Pizza operates
in two locations:
Brooklyn, NY and
Newark, NJ.
• Besides delivery,
Sal’s sells calzones,
soups, salads, and
desserts. In addition to
retail business, Sal’s
offers catering.

5. What is Search Engine Marketing?
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6. What are campaigns and ad groups?
Campaigns are the highest-level entities in
your account.
• Campaigns allow you to manage targeting,
revenue goals, and risk.
• A well-structured account won’t have too many
campaigns.
Ad Groups correspond to each of your
specific products or offers.
• For the purposes of organizing ad groups, you will
need to define your offerings very specifically.
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7. The Structure of an SEM Account
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(from SEMSunday)

8. Campaign Settings: Geo-Targeting
By setting “geo-targets,” you avoid expenses
associated with ads in irrelevant locations.
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Targeting levels:
• Entire Market
• Continent
• Country
• State/Province
• Metro Region
• City
• Radius, and more

9. Campaign Settings: Revenue Goals
Product types with different revenue
potentials should be in their own
campaigns.
• In the case of Sal’s, the retail and catering
businesses are fundamentally different.
• The retail business is directly related to revenues
generated online, for single orders. (Because of the
direct revenue, this would be tracked with a “Return
on Ad Spend,” or “ROAS” goal.)
• The catering business is generating leads for larger
sales. (Lead generation uses a “Cost Per
Acquisition,” or “CPA” goal.)
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10. Campaign Settings: Mitigating Risk
High-Traffic keywords allow you to cast a
wider net, but they introduce two risks:
• High Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
• Heavily trafficked terms (such as “restaurant”) have
significant competition, and higher cost-per-click.
• Low Click-Through Rates
• High-Traffic terms are often very generic, and
therefore less likely to drive clicks.
• Fewer clicks means a lower Quality Score, and,
therefore, higher overall costs.
High-Risk terms should be in there own campaigns,
with lower daily budgets.
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11. Best Practice: Search and Content
Search and Content
ads are different.
• Search ads have
significantly higher
CTRs than content.
• Content ads have
significantly higher
impressions than
search.
They should always be
managed separately.
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12. Ad Groups : Keeping Offers Specific
For the purposes of your ad groups — the
repositories of your keywords, ads, and
landing pages — your offers should be
described very specifically.
• “Pizza” would be too-broad a category for Sal’s.
• Keyword groups could include …
• pepperoni, pepperoni pizza, pizza with pepperoni,
meat pizza
• veggie pizza, vegetable pizza, pizza with vegetables
… and each of those keyword groups should
have specifically targeted ad creatives.
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13. Ad Group Settings: Quality Score
Tighter alignment between keywords, ads,
and landing pages means more clicks,
higher Quality Scores, and lower costs.
• A major determining factor in your Quality Score is
the “Click-Through Rate”
• Driving up your Quality Score will drive down your
actual bid.
• More relevant ads are not just cheaper, they’re
more likely to convert and drive bottom-line
revenues to your site.
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14. Summing up…
Recap: Proper structure simplifies
management and increases profitability.
1. Set your audience targets at the campaign level.
2. You can use separate campaigns to meet
revenue goals and mitigate risks.
3. Separate Search and Content campaigns.
4. Ad group-level offerings should be extremely
precise: 5-keyword ad groups are OK.
5. Improving your Quality Score drives up
conversions and drives down costs.
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15. Network-specific Complexities
Every network has its own taxonomy:
• Geo-Targeting can be set at the ad group or
campaign level in Yahoo Search Marketing, or the
ad group and campaign level in Microsoft.
• Daily budgets are set at the campaign level in
Google and Yahoo, but the ad group level in
Microsoft adCenter.
• And so on…
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16. Using Clickable Pro to Simplify SEM
Clickable Pro is an online tool that makes
search advertising Simple, Instant and
Profitable.
• Manage all of your campaigns, across all search
networks, in a single, intuitive interface.
• Take action based on recommendations
generated by Clickable’s ActEngine (for everything
from best practices to bids and budgets).
• Create white-label, customized reports.
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17. Using Clickable Pro to Simplify SEM
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18. How to Sign Up for Clickable
Simply go to www.clickable.com/signup and
try the product free for 15 days.
If you want more support getting started
with search marketing, consider Clickable
Assist, our fully-managed solution:
www.clickable.com/assist
Or email us: editor@clickable.com
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