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12
Paid Search Process or Results? Don’t Ask the Chicken or the Egg
April 12, 2008 |
The debate about which is more important - process or results - which of the two the customer is willing to pay for - is like the age-old question of the chicken or the egg. Like the chicken or the egg question it is next to impossible to have results without process. And for lack of better reference - the results a customer desires is the result of a solid, continuously improving process. Although I’d say it’s easier to argue that you have to begin with focusing on process. I’ll leave the chicken and egg debate to the scholars.
For me the answer to the process or results question lies in what I have read about the lean management system and what I am now beginning to implement within my daily work as a Search Engine Marketer. The most compelling confirmation of focusing on process to drive results can be found in the excerpt below from Bob Emiliani’s book Better Thinking, Better Results
The senior management team’s focus was on managing the box score, not the scoreboard. Fore example, the head coach of a football team does not tell the players that they should win the game by a score of 27 to 24. In business terms, this would be like setting up a top-level profit, cash flow, or multi-million cost reduction goal. Instead, the coach focuses on basic units of measure that players can relate to such as first downs, time of possession, running yards, passing yards, turnovers, etc. In most cases, a sports fan can look at the box score and figure out who won the game. Orry Fiume [Wiremold VP of Finance & Administration] recalled how he handled a new product line team leader’s request for product cost information:
” We hired a new product team leader. After a few days on the job, he came to me and asked for a report that showed the selling price and cost of each product that his team was responsible for [results]. I asked him why he thought it was important to know the cost, and told me that he wanted to ‘cost reduce’ those items that were not making an adequate profit. I ended up telling him that his job was to eliminate waste [focus on the process] and not to worry about the cost of any individual item. And by eliminating waste, he would be able to reduce the total cost even further than by focusing on individual part numbers.”
The message should be loud and clear - focus on the process and you will achieve or exceed desired results. Even though this example is related to finance and administration within a manufacturing company, the focus on process to drive results can be applied to any industry, even Search Engine Marketing.
When it comes to Search, and specifically PPC, myself and team members at Commerce360 focus on the process of building or re-structuring paid search campaign structures in a way that is logical and clear. Do we care about results? You bet. And so do our clients, but there has to be a starting point and it begins with the process of developing a campaign structure in a way that lends itself the potential for great results. To better clarify, it is impossible to start with a result of generating X% ROI and build an AdWords campaign structure to meet those requirements. Instead, working through a process of developing a thoroughly planned and logically implemented AdWords campaign structure will ultimately generate the desired ROI as conditions allow. And I say ‘as conditions allow’ because we can organize and continuously improve campaign structures with great efficiency, but ‘after the click’ we are left in the hands of the user’s decision to make the conversion.
The added benefit the process of building and continuously improving paid search campaigns in the way we do at Commerce360 lends itself to being able to reduce the number of poorly targeted ads (defects) being served on the various search networks. Alternatively, when there is a problem our paid search campaign structure enables us to immediately identify where the problem occurred and how to fix it.
So if there are any results driven readers out there who would debate that results should be the focus rather than focusing on process please drop me a line.
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