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The Growth Of Digital Search Engine Marketing For Co-Op Advertising | March 08, 2016 (0 comments)
Toledo, OH—There’s a growing trend in the world of jewelry co-op advertising. Finally, brands seem to be catching on to the fact that digital media should be a part of a successful retailer’s marketing mix. Over the last year or two, we’ve seen more and more brands mandate that in order for retailers to receive full co-op reimbursement on their marketing dollars, they must allocate a percentage of their annual budget to digital media. At Fruchtman, we’ve been preaching for quite some time now that digital media must have a place in your annual marketing plan, so we’re obviously fans of this trend and happy to see brands catching up.
One of the options we typically see offered as part of the digital co-op mix is paid search marketing, most often times through Google AdWords. This gets us Fruchtman folks excited; we’re a certified Google Partner and are big proponents of search engine marketing (SEM), after all. However, we caution our clients to be careful, do their homework and examine the specific requirements by brand before signing on the dotted line – careful, like many other things the devil is in the details.
When considering commitment to annual co-op paid search campaigns with your brands, make sure to ask some basic questions:
- Is the brand requiring me to use general keywords that could sabotage my other brands’ SEM campaigns?
- Many brands will suggest or even require you use general keywords such as “jewelry”, “diamond” or “watch”. These keywords can compete with your other paid search campaigns, and steal impressions and clicks from them.
- Where will the paid search ads click through?
Almost always, we structure our paid search ads to click through to the respective brand page on our clients’ websites; so, for example, a Brand X paid search ad for Client Y would click through to the Brand X landing page on Client Y’s website. Increasingly, we’re seeing brands require that in order to be considered for co-op reimbursement, paid search ads must click through to the brand’s website as opposed to the client’s. That means the Brand X paid search ad would send consumers straight to Brand X’s website. If your brand is requiring this, remember that your marketing dollars would be used to drive traffic to the brand’s website, not your own, providing you very little benefit.
Is the brand requiring you to have them execute and maintain the SEM co-op campaign, or will they give you the flexibility to allow whoever is controlling the rest of your SEM campaigns to control the co-op campaign as well? Again, you want to make sure that your SEM campaigns aren’t competing with one another. If there are “multiple cooks in the kitchen,” this could lead to severe cross over with your campaigns and ultimately wasteful ad spending.
Let’s also address some critical distinctions between luxury jewelers’ SEM campaigns and non-luxury jewelers’ SEM campaigns. The demographic searching for jewelry from a local mall store is likely to be drastically different than the demographic searching for jewelry from a luxury store. All search is definitely not created equal.
A lot comes down to keywords, and how they’re used. We’ve had jewelers come to us that have chosen to focus more on board/generic keywords in the past such as “jewelry”, “bracelet” or “ear rings” to cast a wide net and capture more impressions – this is not something we recommend. Broad keywords historically capture of lot of impressions, sure, but also almost always garner lower click through rates. The key is targeting. A fine jeweler should focus more on specific keywords (i.e. “fine jewelry”, “diamond tennis bracelet” or “gemstone ear rings”) in an effort to exclude those that cannot afford their product. The goal is not only to get clicks, but to get the most qualified clicks. More qualified clicks means diminishing waste, helping increase your click through rate and lowering your cost per click. Simply put, it gets you get “the most bang for your buck.”
There are also tools that exist within the SEM platforms that allow campaigns to target by age, sex and income. A marketer is able to increase or decrease bids by campaign; again, this can help to tighten up your targeting and diminish wasteful impressions.
You want to take advantage of those co-op dollars being offered by your brands – we get it. And many times this means playing by their rules. The key is to make sure all of your digital marketing campaigns complement one another, leading to the most effective use of your marketing dollars.
On the surface this seems to be an easy task and common sense; however, as you dig down into the all of the digital options that exist today it can become pretty confusing. Not to worry—that’s what experts like us exist for, to help you make sense of the madness and put the digital puzzle together. It’s incredibly important for jewelers to work with a digital partner that not only knows the ins and outs of SEM, but also knows the jewelry industry. As Google continues to offer the lion’s share of search, jewelers should ask their potential digital partner(s) if they are Google AdWords certified. Ask them if they’ve worked with other jewelers, and if so what type of jewelers. Ask them their average click through rates and cost per clicks for their other jewelers.
Want to know more? Contact us at suits@fruchtman.com and let’s talk co-op, SEM, digital media and growing your business!