In a world of instant everything, food, phone, news and stock price changes, one would think that in a marketing or public relations crisis, a company or competitor would use any media at their disposal to strategically position themselves and leverage their product in a media storm. As an example, let’s look at Toyota. In the news now for weeks owing to an issue with their brake pedals, floor mats and now maybe even their automotive computer systems. Toyota reacted slowly and the media has been relentless. Consequently in January, Ford and Chevy both outsold Toyota, while Toyota sales dropped 16% (Reuters, Feb 2 2010).

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I was reading a post by Sarah Tillitt the other day regarding conquesting campaigns (search campaigns where companies buy the branded terms of competitors) and her entry struck a chord with me because conquesting campaigns and reputation management invariably come up during the course of any search marketer’s career.  It’s one of those sticky points where brands get really fired up about, but aren’t really sure how to respond to. I was fortunate enough where the first incident I had to handle had a three month window of time. This is most often not the case.  I was doing search for a very large pharmaceutical company whose patent for a flagship drug was coming to an end and they needed a search strategy to protect against the attack of the generics. 

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It’s common for businesses to ask how SEO is going to help their paid search efforts. This is an often misunderstood relationship, and when working with Fortune 500 companies, you can’t simply say because I said so. So, I thought I’d tackle this with a three-fold approach:

1. Market Share

2. Improved Metrics

3. Revenue

Market Share

For small service-oriented or e-Commerce businesses, click-through-rate and conversions are paramount. However, for large companies, brand recognition is an equally important component of search marketing. Combining organic search with paid campaigns increases exposure for important branded and non-branded key phrases, ensuring that you are in front of your target audience at critical times. It’s pretty simple math – more listings means more chances someone will see one of your listings and associate your company with the search term. When presented with a viable opportunity to increase exposure and position your company as the industry leader, why wouldn’t you?

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Looking for new (and exciting) opportunities for your paid search campaign? Trying to go beyond the same ol’ boring text ads? If so, this post is for you.

Both Google and Yahoo are constantly enhancing their paid search offerings, and this time, they are turning to images, although in two completely different ways. Google’s feature is called Promote Your Image (PYI), and will be used to test run an image with a text ad in its Global image search section results. Yahoo will focus more on the main search engine results and will also offer videos, quick links, etc (Yahoo Image Search).

Sounds complicated? It’s actually pretty simple.

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Do a search for almost any product or service and you’ll most likely see a variety of paid ads on the results page. Search marketers often talk about the importance of “being there” when a potential customer is looking for you. But some advertisers don’t want to be there just when their own customers are searching; they’d like to be present when their competition’s customers search as well!

Campaigns that target the competition by bidding on competitor brand terms are known as conquesting campaigns. Do a search for BMW and you’ll see an ad for Infiniti in the results. A search for the home store Linens ‘n Things shows an ad for Macy’s housewares department within the results. What are some of the benefits of conquesting campaigns? What are the downfalls?

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