What we learned... What we would advise for the next time around...

Dear GOMCHA Team Members,

Let's start a discussion about what we learned and what we would recommend for others the next time around. Here's our recommendation as follows:

Identify early in the process key web marketing contacts within your target organization, meet with them and review program details well in advance. Allow twice as long as you think you need to take in order to fully grasp the client’s business so that you can effectively map the Google Adwords campaign to the client’s business and marketing objectives. Dive into the topics of Google Adwords, use the online tools to understand how the program works. Read all of the manuals that are provided. Use the online search help facility on Adwords to dig into topics that require more understanding. Get to know local search engine professionals and take them to lunch to get to know the business more thoroughly. Join GOMCHA, Search Engine Land, SEMPO and other search engine marketing websites as they are great sites for getting information on how search engine marketing works. They are also very useful when you need to understand a particular topic. The Skins team used Gooruze to get a detailed understanding of how Dynamic Keyword Insertion works which led to one of our key findings in this project.
Focus early as possible on the Content network and eliminate high impression/very low click sites as soon as possible. Pay close attention to the high yielding keywords used to search for the client’s website. Make sure to incorporate keywords found not only in the company’s HTML source from their website but also consider using keywords found on competitors websites. Be careful here not to infringe on trademarks. Take care not to duplicate keywords in different ad groups as this will negatively impact your program. Leverage learning experiences by encouraging all participants to post their results on GOMCHA. Work closely with the client to impart all knowledge and information gained in the program. Our client was very responsive to learning from our findings and gathered more enthusiasm as the program progressed. As a final exercise, our team will meet with the Client's market team next week for an hour debrief and program hand off. The idea is to discuss how best to transition the campaigns and the knowledge gained over the next few weeks so Skins can run with the program from here.

OK ... are there other good ideas and recommendations out there? I bet you there are!!!

Take Care and All the Best,

Jim O'Farrell
jamesofarrell@hotmail.com