Search Engine Marketing, also referred to as SEM, is one of the most effective ways to promote your product or service offering and grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. There are many ways you can use the new algorithmic features of platforms to leverage the impact of these digital ads. And, the immediate benefit is measurable. Not only can you put your ad directly where people are looking, but you can quantify its traction and value in real time. However, with numerous businesses competing for the same attention, running these campaigns requires meticulous attention to detail and the right strategy to help you deliver a positive Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Return on Investment (ROI) In this Master Class, Ariel will share insights into how to leverage these features by drilling deeper into the following topics • Contrasting SEO and PPC, when and how to invest in each. • PPC as a marketing research tool, exploring match types and impression shares • Scaling issues with PPC, can we get more of the same quality traffic? • Manual vs algorithmic pricing • The rise of Audience adjustments • Feed based remarketing and shopping

1. MASTERCLASS
Ariel Sumeruk
FOUNDER AND MD,
CONVERSION SCIENCE
JOHANNESBURG ~ OCTOBER 30 - 31, 2019
DIGIMARCONAFRICA.COM | #DigiMarConAfrica
DIGIMARCONSOUTHAFRICA.CO.ZA | #DigiMarConSouthAfrica
Search Marketing
Master Class

2. Ariel
Sumeruk
Theoretical Physics
Financial Quantitative
Analyst
Head of BI and MD of largest
search Affiliate marketer
2006-2012
Google regional trainer
Owner and MD of
Conversion Science 2012 to
now an SEM and analytics
specialist agency

3. Agenda
• Search in action
• Contrasting SEO and Search PPC
• PPC basics
• Major changes in PPC of the last couple of years
• Best areas to focus resources
• Audience Segmentation for better analysis

4. Search in action

5. Search in action

6. Search in action

7. Search in action

8. Search in action

9. Search in action

10. Tapping into the cloud of intent
• Search is great for capturing demand
• But it does not work well for creating awareness
• A well structured campaign will serve both to
• Drive relevant traffic seeking your product or service
• A low cost market research tool to help understand
demand for your product or services

11. SEO vs PPC search
• SEO , Google algorithm determines relevance and
placement
• PPC , you pay for each click on search results and position
is determined by a combination of relevance and price
willing to pay per click
• SEO results can take some time to start showing and are
susceptible to massive swings in traffic.
• PPC results are immediate, you control traffic volumes but
each and every click costs.

12. Characteristics of SEO
• Can generate ongoing traffic with once off investment
• Needs active investment if relied on for sales and lead
volume.
• Can be used effectively for tangential content, e.g content
that is related but does not signal impending purchase
• Can be viewed by some as “endorsement” from Google

13. Characteristics of PPC
• Easy to regulate volume of traffic
• Payment for every click forces proper evaluation of traffic
and metrics such as lifetime value of customer
• Provides market research type information on demand for
your products

14. Match type basics
• Exact Matching
• [red high heels] -> red high heels
• Phrase Matching
• “shoes for sale” -> black formal shoes for sale in JHB
• Broad Modified Matching
• +shoes +sale -> sports shoes with jell insert for sale
• Broad matching
• Shoes for sale -> sneakers available online

15. Major developments in PPC
• Better audience segmentation
• Feed based bidding
• AI driven optimisation

16. Audience segmentation
• Google uses information from all its platforms( when
people opt in) to generate multiple behaviour signals
• E.g on search, youtube, gmail, android
• This creates very rich information on user activities which
can be used for targeting.

17. Time for creativity
E.G.
Men between 35-50
Interest in
environmental issues
In the market for a
camera
Exclude People from
North West and
Limpopo

18. Feed based bidding
• Google shopping
• Dynamic remarketing

19. AI bidding optimisation
• Much better then it used to be.
• Uses signals that are only available to Google on user
behaviour.
• Works best if there is sufficient volume of conversions per
month, but getting better at working with little data

20. What still is under our control
• Clean campaign structure for gaining market insight
• Adcopy experimentation
• Ensuring the signals we send back to Google are
meaningful and correct
• Majority of times there are many errors in conversion
tracking
• Many useful signals are never sent , e.g. white paper
downloaded

21. Adcopy and campaign structure
• Most beneficial activity is making sure that adcopy is a s
tailored as possible to keywords by having closely themed
ad groups.
• This improves relevancy of ads and increases their
clickthrough rate which leads to higher traffic at lower
cost per visitor

22. Segmenting traffic to gain insight
• Looking at averages does not give useful insight when it
comes to predicting future campaign performance.
• People searching for your brand tend to convert at higher
rate but the pool is limited and tied to brand awareness.
• Searches for generic keyword are often much more
numerous then brand but they convert at significantly
lower rates
• This necessitates segmenting the reporting based on this
criterion

23. Illustration of segmentation
Brand Audience Generic Audience
Audience
description
Familiar with and Love
your Brand
Have interests in
your products
Size 10 000 1 000 000
Conversion
Rate
5% 1%
Cost per
visitor
R0.1 R5

24. Segmentation impact on projections
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
Sale
Cost
sales
Generic
Search
DisplayBrand

25. Thank you
Ariel Sumeruk
Conversion Science
ariel@conversionscience.co.za