How many event marketers take advantage of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? Show of hands…

How many know that SEM refers to paid search?

Without question, one of the most significant opportunities for event marketers lies in the keyword query that a potential attendee puts in Google, Yahoo, MSN, or AOL when searching for something. Search is the most targeted and effective form of advertising because of the information solicited by the search box. Search marketing has the unique ability to link a product, service, or opportunity with an engaged, interested audience.

Search is a performance based marketing program enabling you to deliver to your stakeholders clear, measurable results for the dollars spent promoting your event. Sound good? So how many event marketers have any idea of how to get started?

1. Set an objective. As a performance based marketing program, you would be wasting money simply spending dollars and just drawing traffic to your website. Is your intent to sell tickets? Solicit newsletter registration? Define an objective other than traffic. With no more value than eyeballs on a Super Bowl commercial, traffic itself is not an objective but a means to an end - you might make the highlight reel for a cool advertisement but have you sold tickets? Assuming your goal is to put butts in seats, how many are you tasked with delivering?
2. Define your goal. The objective is nice to have, but you need to determine a budget for your paid search program. So, how much of that objective must you deliver? State the actual number for now, and not just a goal for the search program. You’ll determine if that’s realistic for the search program later after you gauge how much volume search delivers: If you have a million seats to sell, proudly say so now!
3. Now, what are you willing to pay to drive traffic to the website where your audience will fulfill your objective and reach that goal? First, be realistic. We’re going to figure out if the amount you are willing to spend is sufficient relative to what it costs to get the traffic. Sound hard? Not at all. Think of that budget and recall, roughly, how much did it cost to move a ticket to the last event. $10? $20? When you sum up the costs allocated to marketing for your previous event and consider how many tickets were sold, how much was the price per ticket? Does the cost per ticket sold, multiplied by your goal equal your budget? Do you need more money for this program or do you have to lower your expectations?
4. Let’s go to Google AdWords now. Adwords is the best place to start as many argue it is the easiest to set up, besides the fact that Google dominates the majority of search traffic. The other engines all perform a little differently, requiring unique setup, considerations, and expectations. Start with Google and learn the ropes.“But I don’t have a large budget. Shouldn’t we start with one of the smaller sites?” Absolutely not. As a performance based marketing program you only buy what you can afford; the size of the search engine only means you have access to more or less volume.
5. When entering keywords on which to run a program, start with your brands terms: the name of your business/foundation/organization and the name of the event. Be prepared that performance of brand terms will likely exceed assumed expectations for performance. By bidding on brand terms you are reaching an audience already engaged with and seeking your event. If it cost you $20 to move a ticket to the last event, your brand keywords may be 80%, half, or 1/4th that cost.“Wait… why would I pay to get traffic from people searching on my organization’s name?” Search is one of the most effective means of navigation as the majority of people online use a search engine to easily find the website they want. There is an amusing, applicable anecdote about the search industry: The most popular search on Google is “Yahoo.” Users rarely type in your website address so you want to make it as easy for them to reach you through search as possible. Before shaking your head and deciding against bidding to run your brand names in paid search, think of the alternatives: who else appears in the search results for you brand? Do you want any of your enthusiastic, engaged audience going anywhere else?Still not sold? Do you pay to be listed in the yellow pages?
6. Create keyword copy. Write 3-4 variations which Google will automatically rotate to feature the most effective ad. Don’t limit yourself to your tag line or the advertisement used in print, TV, or radio ads. Sure, those will likely be effective as users who saw the ads search for your event but your goal is to attract as many people as possible. Let Google work its magic by encouraging users to visit your website through different messages, offers, and opportunities. You may learn something new using that which works best as direction for your offline ad campaign at the next event.
7. Set bids. Using the insight derived from our objectives and goals, set a CPC (cost per click) that you assume will work for the keyword. Again, think through the math. This time conclude what a single click, a single visit, to your site is worth. Did you conclude that you needed 1000 clicks to your website to sell 10 tickets? If those 10 tickets cost $50 each, then from 1000 clicks you make (on average) $500 (10 X $50) or $.50 per click. You may be willing to pay $.50 per click, decide to try harder ($.60) to get more volume or remain conservative ($.40) to conserve that budget or impress management. You are making somewhat of a leap of faith here as you aren’t yet certain what will work, but compare this allocation to the money you just spent on posters around town or a radio commercial. In this case, you only pay for the traffic to your site AND you can adjust the amount spent per click (bids) later to optimize performance.
8. Monitor the performance of your brand terms and keep in mind a couple scenarios: 1. You will likely be disappointed with the low volume of searches. If not many yet know of your brand or event, it would be premature to expect volume from these brand searches. Don’t be discouraged. We’re going to look at how to increase that reach next. 2. You will also likely be pleased with performance. The audience searching on brand terms and event names probably wants to buy tickets, sponsor your event, or in some way participate. Not everyone or every search will be that effective, so temper those expectations as we broaden reach and begin to attract people who are just curious and need to be introduced to your event.While monitoring performance, constantly ask yourself if your bids are accurate. Are you tracking more ticket sales or registrations than expected? Perhaps not as many relative to the amount of traffic from Google? Increase or decrease the bid accordingly to acquire more volume by bidding more or restricting the spend until it meets your expectations.
9. Expand your keyword list. Start with the most obvious alternatives: other names for your event, the industry in which you participate (i.e. “retail conferences”), and variations of the event type (i.e. conference, seminar, session, event, gala, fund raiser, pot luck). Your goal is still not volume, but targeted reach. Most importantly, think broadly and don’t limit yourself to your brand! Keep in mind that search is not nearly as effective as a form of brand advertising, as it is attracting an audience. Search Marketing is known as “pull” advertising in that it draws users to your website. Limiting yourself to your brand only serves to cut yourself off from a valuable audience. Is your event called “The Super Special Conference”? Only bidding on that keyword limits you to attracting only people that are familiar with that event and know it well. Certainly, you want to refer to the event name properly in the ad copy but you should have keywords in your campaign such as “The Super Conference” “The Super Special Summit” “The Special Seminar” - those are not consistent with your brand or the event name, but iterations that someone may recall. Including those keywords ensures you grab that audience.Now, expand beyond brand iterations. Include industry terms, names, and references. Leave out your brand entirely and think, “the industry conference” “industry summit” and “industry event” As you expand your perspective, expect your experience with volume and performance to change. The broader keywords will likely drive more volume, but will also cost more relative to the first group you set up. That’s okay! Those brand keywords should exceed expectations allowing you to spend a little more on the broad terms.
10. Still need a safety net? Set budget caps; but do so warily! You originally defined a budget for your search marketing program, but if the campaign is meeting expectations, it is wise to find money to continue the campaign - isn’t it? It is: On one hand, certainly, you want to acquire more efficient volume and on the other hand, Google handicaps campaigns that have budgets as they imply to Google a limited opportunity for them to make money from your advertising. Simply put, setting a cap tells Google they can only make so much money. Avoiding a cap suggests the sky is the limit! Best practice: optimize the program by removing poorly performing keywords until your overall spend is brought within your comfortable range. Doing so leaves the suggestion that you are willing to spend more for the positive results while limiting the risk of that occurring by reducing the program size. CAUTION! Search activity can change on a dime. Anything from a TV commercial to a scandal can immediately prompt users to search, in droves, for your business or event. Without budget caps, Google will continue to run your program ad infinitum. If you’ve set your CPC limits to meet your expectations, most people are ok with this boon in traffic, but recognize that you could suddenly exceed your budget without limiting the program from doing so.  But wait…
    Even that best practice comes with a downside. Remember our effort to run 3-4 different promotions in the ad copy to let Google auto-optimize the campaign? That only works if you let it run and acquire performance data. Shutting off poorly performing keywords too quickly may leave an opportunity on the table.

Welcome to search marketing. Where do you go from here? Continue to iterate: build out more keywords, adjust bids, run more ad copy, and repeat. Be patient, set a range of expectations, and be prepared to benefit from the best performing marketing channel around (well… after the free listing with us that is).

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We had a chance to sit down with Local Biz Bits’ Larry Sullivan who specializes in and promotes local search marketing as a means to help small businesses build on-line visibility. Larry is an independent web marketer and designer in Augusta, GA where you can find him through LRSxpress Web Services. His interest?  Everything from our Facebook app to the Zvents Media Platform which is what our partners use to syndicate events and local search; most importantly, how to use events to promote your business.

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Most event marketers overlook the tremendous potential their website has to promote events. Search engines, the overwhelming primary source of traffic to your site, depend on structured, exposed content yet event calendars are oftn the worst examples of this ideal (read: search friendly) format. Search engine optimization, the practice of improving the quality and design of content so that the engines index more than just your homepage, is easier than people think.

Think of a search engine as a library. Each page on your company’s website is a book in that library: some of the books are good, others popular, some miss covers or have been misplaced never again to be found by the librarian. Users are more likely to use a library if it is well organized and promotes the most popular books and greatest variety of books so they can easily be found. Obviously search engines want to promote you, your job is to ensure that your books, the event pages of your website, don’t have torn or missing pages and that the material is accessible, valuable and popular.

Unfortunately for you, search marketers and in all likelihood the SEOs (the person who provides suggestions to the web developers to ensure content is search friendly) at your company typically focus on improving the most important content on your site: the homepage, product or services information, and categories. In doing so, they quickly dismiss promotional content like online coupons, store event calendars, and store locators; namely, the content that draws foot traffic through the door of your local business.

Far too often, websites make an easy mistake by presenting in-store event calendars in a javascript application that allows them to easily update the content (just ask the developers if they use ‘Javascript’). Doing so ensures that search engines, the library, can’t index those pages; users will never find those pages and you miss out on the most significant source of traffic. Sure, customers who arrive at the homepage will see your prominent link to a “store event calendar” but most customers arriving online are there because they intend to interact online. You want to reach the offline customers using search engines to find your business.

To ensure that search engines such as Zvents and Google can index and promote your event details; forward this list of priorities to your in-house search marketing manager, the SEO, or take them directly to the web developers. Getting your event content designed and exposed with the following in mind helps helps your reach our millions of unique users searching for local things to do, in-store events, and sales:

• Most importantly, and to reiterate what we’ve just explained, do not use Javascript!
  • In fact, your developers should never use Javascript; tell them to avoid it like the plague
    • Are there uses for Javascript? Sure there are, but the lost search traffic outweigh any benefits you get from a feature that can be created in some other language (code)
  • Also avoid Flash and do not present the event details in an image or banner
  • Use text in simple HTML, dhtml, or CSS.
• Do not move your event calendar.
  • We should be able to find it at the same URL today and six months from now.Ensure a consistent layout of the event calendar and refrain from changing that design
• Design a simple template for the event calendar, use it to promote all events, and refrain from changing that design
• Clearly identify event details
  • Event name (just the event name, not your business)
  • Start time (with AM or PM)
  • Date
  • Short description and a link for more details
    • By the way, a link and short description aren’t necessary but they really help - the name, time, and date are critical (but that should be obvious)
• Location should be displayed separately and consistently
  • Business name (your event name is not Spring Sale at Macy’s Palo Alto - The business name is Macy’s Palo Alto and the event is the Spring Sale)
  • Address including city/state (it doesn’t hurt to use the abbreviation of the state and the full name)
  • Zip code

Think your calendar is ready to be crawled? Submit it to us and we’ll unleash the search bots to index the content. Know though that submission to a search crawler is no guarantee that you’ll get indexed. Engines may find problems with the calendar that prevent us from promoting it. To ensure you get indexed add your business listing directly then tell us about the events.

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Next week the search industry converges on San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center for the leading search optimization and marketing conference Search Engine Strategies. Ask.com’s CEO, Jim Lanzone, will be there, discussing the beautiful Ask3D interface, as will Google’s Marissa Mayer to share their insight on personalized and “universal” search results.

Co-organized and hosted by respected search authorities Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Strategies delivers valuable search and marketing information through a forum which allows search engine professionals to debate and discuss industry trends.

One of the most significant trends is Local Search so, of course, we’ll be there sharing how you can work with Zvents and benefit from:

• Increased SERP share of voice


• Traffic to your website and in-store


• Tools to easily find, share, manage, & promote your events


• Incremental reach through syndication with partner newspapers and media sites

Join us at booth #330 and enter for a chance to win a cool flip video camcorder.

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