PSAC20 Day 1 John Lee
Session 2: Topic: Strategies to Capture New and Emerging Searches
Microsoft’s John Lee shares tips about DSA ads and more.
About John Lee
John Lee is Learning Strategist at Microsoft Advertising and a frequent speaker ands writer on PPC topics.
Some key points:
“Right now can you be flexible and get yourself out of a fixed mindset with your campaigns and put yourself in a position to grow and learn. So the path we will take to get there is with one of my favorite questions is the key word dead? The idea of tending to the whole forest, a section on taking action, and then we’ll recap with some key take aways. So putting on my learning specialist cap there is the is question is the key word dead so I included this here more as a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing because no it’s not. uMy opinion is please stop asking that question when the keyword officially dies you will know, Google will tell you we will tell you. For Microsoft advertising, right when that day comes you will know not be left wanting for information.”
“I think you to shift your mindset to search queries matter more and that’s really the currency of what’s happening in search. Always has been but even more so today than ever so all the search queries right there’s billions of them every day but 20% of those are new. Do that math of just a billion that’s a lot of queries that are new, so how do you capture that query data, what are you doing with that query data, and more importantly how do you make yourself open to new query data when it comes so we’ll start this thought process.”
“You need to be looking at what’s happening with on-page content when we think about shopping feeds or other types of data feeds. Of course dynamic search ads that’s right there in the middle for a reason we’ll come back to that add customizers what’s happening with responsive search ads so this will give you a bit of an idea of the delicate dance we’re going to have here over the next few months. Success for us as ppc folks digital advertisers to consider that entire ecosystem.You cannot get away with hiding in the ad platforms and spending all of your time there. If you do you are you’re doomed to fail.”
“When we think about taking action let’s consider content first. So of course that lives here on the left side of this so content strategy so my the way that I look at it is content with a search query conscious right so you want to bethinking about how how can create new content work. With my partners my client etc to create new content in the back of my mind I’m thinking search queries but that shouldn’t necessarily be the only thing you’re worried about this is a great opportunity right now for PPC and SEO teams where they are separate but to be working together in harmony. There’s so much magic that can happen when that takes place and they absolutely should but think about just the depth and the variety of content. Think about this is my content, you know whether it’s a blog or stand alone page, you know if there is an industry or vertical frame of reference. Think about the long haul if I create a piece of content that’s referencing my industry what does that mean? What it potentially means and we’ll get to this like with the dsa side or dynamic search ads that I can start to match the queries that fall within my industry at vertical clearly define product and service details that’s kind of a no-brainer but certainly should be there right don’t blog for the sake of blogging make sure that a blog article ties back into what it is you’re selling and timeliness and accuracy matters.’
“Using an editorial calendar and and there’s a lot this is probably one of the most loaded bullet points in my entire entire deck here in that what i’m getting at is think seasonality. Think topics of the day that people are are worried about potentially searching about so be timely in that case but think ahead also when it comes to seasonality and how can you get content out there that will help you match to queries that are tied to say Memorial Day or Fourth of July or whatever. I’ve been seeing all kinds of memes right we’re all you know in quarantine stuck at home we’ve missed some holidays we may miss a few more I’ve been seeing a lot of memes around we’re going to have like the epic holiday at some point later this year hopefully.”
Dynamic search ads are awesome if you didn’t know this already. Dynamic Search Ads are the reason my presentation exists today because they live in this magical spot between all of this activity content targeting and ad experience. It is all of that and then some tied up in a neat bow. So that’s why i’m going to talk about it so it’s that sweet spot to catch emerging searches emerging queries,”
“Suffice to say that the quick summary of Dynamic Search Ads is…it’s a way to say hey Google hey Microsoft here’s my website or here’s a bundle of websites or here’s a page on my website look at that. Then here is the body of an ad, I would like you to match my page or pages and this ad to potential search queries throw in a dynamic headline and serve that ad to that person to make a really relevant experience. That’s DSA in a nutshell a little more complicated than that but that explanation will have to suffice for today.”
“And how did we get there it’s called an auto target so again it’s not a keyword right now we’re not dealing in keywords here we’re dealing in auto targets. so a url contains product we can also add them as exclusions right and so it uses a lot of the logic from our experience of keywords but changes it considerably and here’s a really rough but simple scenario so you know potential auto targets which you know again could be in a separate ad group and I would recommend that they are. Having that catch-all right okay all pages or at least the pages I want you to look at excluding a few just as a safety net right that catch-all a broad category a specific product or service type and then maybe one page right so think about this nice neat funnel you could just as easily supplant a shopping example here right if you think about how product groups and that bundling strategy works it’s a lot it’s of that same logic and it goes deeper than that as well you should also think about this from a bidding perspective too. Bid low on your catch all but high on those super specific auto targets you know flex in between as needed but that’s a really good rule of thumb to get yourself started with this magic sauce and getting back to this idea of capturing emerging searches you let that bad boy run, accumulate data and then look at those search queries. What’s popping for you, what’s converting, what are you singing, and you’re like oh my god I’ve never even though about that phrase being relevant to my business and you know what not only are they searching that in volume but they’re converting on that as well. That is really magical stuff right there.”