How to combine several campaigns and stop competing with yourself: 5 ways to avoid a trick

Original author: www.marketingsherpa.com
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Note: below is a free translation of the article “How to Coordinate Multiple Campaigns Without Competing Against Yourself: 5 Ways to Avoid Pitfalls” , in which the author considers typical ways to optimize the costs of contextual advertising and its coordination with natural search engine promotion.

When conducting multiple campaigns for different brands or divisions at the same time, the difficulties in implementing promotions in search engines increase many times. Nobody wants to compete with themselves for certain keywords or take profits from one campaign in favor of another.

This article describes how a travel agency in Michigan was able to competently implement search engine optimization for thousands of its private sector partners, which increased website traffic by 142% and referrals to partner sites by 1770%. 5 strategies for organizing SEO campaigns focused on the main portal and managing PPC advertising partners are described. George Zimmermann, vice president of Travel Michigan, an economic development corporation in Michigan, and his team create leads for 13,000 travel and hotel businesses based in Michigan.

For several years, the main sales source for Travel Michigan was the site - Michigan.org. It increases the attractiveness of the state to potential visitors and provides links to suitable hotels, restaurants and other places of recreation.

“For us, one of the biggest challenges is getting Michigan.org to a prominent position,” says Zimmermann. “We are a big pipe: our partners from the private sector want to receive as many visitors from us as possible.”

Search engine optimization is a natural choice for his team, but here two main questions arise: how to manage traffic that will satisfy the needs of all partners from the private sector on the site? And how to coordinate various campaigns between individual companies so that they do not compete with each other for popular search phrases?

In the tourism sector there is a fairly high competition. Therefore, they did not want their efforts to reduce traffic for one group of companies through campaigns for another.

The marketing team has developed a strategy that any campaign manager can use to increase search traffic. They combined SEO with those paid search campaigns that did not compete with the first approach, and gathered everything in one place. Also, in the process of market analysis, the most attractive search phrases that could be used without danger of harming other campaigns were revealed.

Below are 5 of their leading strategies:

Strategy # 1. Analyze the market to find the most profitable opportunities.


The Michigan team analyzed the current state of search queries for the tourism industry and identified those points of application that provided the best effect. The following factors were also taken for analysis.
  • The positions of the largest competitors in search results and the strategy of their paid ads. Travel Michigan's competitors include travel agencies from fairly large states, including California and Nevada. They tracked those sites that displayed leading positions in industry phrases, and used tourism and travel-oriented text and multiple links from their industry partners.
  • Search phrases that provide the most traffic and conversion for Michigan.org . Conversions could result in conversions to partner sites or a subscription to the Michigan.org email newsletter.
  • Search phrases that have very high competition or cost. Travel Michigan had a budget constraint, so it was highly unlikely that their ads would be in first place for general requests, such as “travel,” “fishing,” or “skiing.” Major news agencies and travel sites such as Travelocity.com usually pretend to these phrases.
  • Search phrases that are competitive enough for Travel Michigan. The marketing team found suitable sites for competitive battles that could be won.
  • Leading regional markets for potential buyers. The Zimmermann team had a good idea of ​​which regions were the largest suppliers of tourists, for example, large cities in the Midwest. Then they used these sources of potential customers to check the result of the promotion of geo-oriented search phrases.
Non-tourism sites may not have the opportunity to geographically target their ads. But in this case, you can take advantage of the demographic or psychological characteristics of users, or even appeal to their loyalty.

Strategy # 2. Building Search Campaigns Around Phrases That Are Too Paid Search


The team designed its search engine optimization actions around high-frequency queries, which had an unreasonably high price for competition through a paid search campaign. The following describes how they achieved improvements for positions in search engines.
  • We look at 2-3 phrases that are most suitable for tourism in Michigan, for example:
    • Michigan travel
    • Michigan beaches
    • Michigan skiing
  • Testing potential SEO phrases in paid campaigns with a limited budget. Historically, search queries do not match actual search results. The team had a list of several potential phrases that were tested for two to three months in a paid search to determine which ones attracted the most traffic.
  • We analyze the current pages to select from them those whose content can be changed for SEO. There were a lot of informational texts on Michigan.org that the team periodically corresponded to include more key terms that were chosen as the most promising in search engines.
  • Encourage partners to write texts on their own . The team helped partner sites plan to write new texts, I propose topics and key terms for articles that are consistent with the overall SEO strategy.
The same technique can be used in a company or organization by coordinating the actions of product managers or local marketing departments to create new or change current texts.

Strategy # 3. Create affiliate paid campaigns


The marketing team has expanded the existing cooperative advertising strategy with the actions of industry partners. Individual enterprises or groups of organizations, for example, the association of travel agencies of beach cities, carry out paid search campaigns and receive funding from Travel Michigan.

The harmonization of paid advertising campaigns between travel agencies located within the state helped Travel Michigan avoid competition in rates between different managers. The following describes how they managed the campaigns:
  1. The team met with each partner and analyzed its current search strategy and goals. They checked:
    • Key phrases used in marketing
    • Site architecture and content
    • Existing keyword list for paid campaigns
    For marketers who analyze search campaigns between different departments or departments, this may come down to the coordination of several agencies that are engaged in promotion in search engines for each department.
  2. Existing word lists were reinforced by additional terms that the Travel Michigan team tested for potential traffic volume, while partners checked them for relevance.
  3. Competitors were analyzed, including non-Michigan sites, and other state partners who could compete for the same search phrases.
  4. When potential overlap in search terms used by Travel Michigan partners was discovered, strategies were developed to prevent intra-state competition.

Tactics # 1. Analyze terms that may be useful to a specific group of partners


This can be done using trial campaigns and tracking traffic and conversion, for example, referrals to partner sites from Michigan.org. If a certain group of partners creates a b on most of the clicks and conversions, it can "enjoy" this phrase. Then the team worked on finding alternatives for other groups of partners with less traffic.

Tactics # 2. Alternate campaigns for the same keyword list


If certain phrases worked almost the same for the two groups, the team could create schedules for alternating paid campaigns between the two groups. For example, one group could use a certain phrase for a month, after which the current campaign was stopped, giving way to another group for another month for the use of this phrase.

This strategy has also helped partners with limited advertising costs stretch their budget for paid ads.

Tactics # 3. Target paid campaigns to relevant landing pages on Michigan.org


For an individual traffic partner, the Zimmermann team could usually direct traffic to the partner’s page on the travel site itself. A special section was created for the group of partners (a small site), which provided suitable texts for the group of partners.

Strategy # 4. Explore additional opportunities for buying advertising time and current events to identify situational phrases


For consistent SEO optimization and paid campaigns, they tracked ongoing marketing events, such as media advertising and individual events. To identify additional phrases, they searched for:
  • Major tourist events in which Travel Michigan was planned to participate. Phrases related to such events were added to their search campaigns.
  • Slogans that were used in offline marketing campaigns that potential visitors could use to search. For example, all marketing in Travel Michigan uses the heading “Pure Michigan,” so the team kept track of possible search activity for that phrase.
  • Using your knowledge of upcoming events, such as activities planned for the next year, the team could develop SEO-strategies around key phrases related to Event Marketing ( event marketing ).
  • For upcoming events or random trends in search activity that did not allow the use of standard SEO techniques, the team could launch paid campaigns to attract traffic.

Strategy # 5. Track results and use data for incremental changes


The team consistently monitored search results and user behavior to optimize campaigns.
  • Each partner located on Michigan.org receives a quarterly report detailing its traffic that goes through the state website.
  • A team of marketers looked at the user’s paths through the site to find pages with a high bounce rate , the usual ways to use navigation, or the paths that most often lead to conversions. These results helped set up site changes that resulted in the most traffic from natural search.
  • Paid campaign data was shared with partners to demonstrate ROI or to resolve any potential disputes between groups of partners regarding search traffic. Until now, according to Zimmermann, partners have respect for marketing strategies aimed at preventing the overlap of their paid campaigns. Using the collected data, the team can demonstrate why in each case a decision was made regarding the use of keywords or the alternation of campaigns.
Increasing overall search traffic on Michigan.org is beneficial to all of its partners. Below are some results:
  • 142% increase in overall Michigan.org traffic, making this site the number one state-owned tourism destination in the country
  • An additional 114,000 visitors coming from paid advertisements to Michigan.org every month
  • 1500% increase in traffic to partner pages on Michigan.org
  • 1770% increase in referrals to partner sites
“The more traffic we drive to Michigan.org through search engine optimization, paid campaigns, or other leveraged marketing, the better for everyone,” Zimmermann sums up. “We generously distribute this traffic and create notable links to our partners. We want them to receive these visitors as well. ”

Useful links throughout the article:


Sample pages for SEO and paid campaigns
www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/travelmichigan/study.html

Fluency Media plans and manages SEO and paid campaigns:
www.fluencymedia.com

Travel Michigan
www.michigan.org

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