SEO and SEM Campaigns – Episode 3

This is CPG Insiders, the podcast that helps consumer packaged goods companies survive and thrive in business. Now, your hosts, Mark Young and Rob Taylor. Welcome, everybody, to this edition of CPG Insiders. This is Mark Young and Rob Taylor. Thank you. So, Rob, today what we're going to talk about is something that we, we get asked a lot about, and that is, does a consumer packaged goods brand need to have a paid search or organic?

Both.

So one SEM. Paid search or SEO? Organic search strategy?

Yes. Show's over. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of CPG Insiders. Just kidding.

But it is, it is true. They all need it.

They all need it. And that does it. Surprising that it still comes up, isn't it? You know, it was a question that was always asked before and we thought it would go away. And it's still, you know, people still ask that, which surprises me.

So they give you some examples here. So before the show, I had our paid search director go in and pull some numbers for me.

Right.

And the category I pulled up was toenail fungus. Kind of disgusting.

Yep.

But a real thing. And a real thing that we have a client that.

Yep. Full disclosure. We have a client that sells for that.

Yeah, it's in that space. So here's the deal. We pulled up all the different terms of toenail fungus.

Okay?

So it could be toenail fungus, toenail fungus treatment, toenail fungus cure, toenail fungus pills, toenail fungus lotion, whatever the case is. Last month, 534,000 people in America typed one of those terms into Google search engine, not counting the other search engines. This is just Google.

Right. So half a million people looking for a solution to the problem.

So exactly. A half a million people raised their hand, picked up a device or sat at a computer, said, I am so interested in the topic of toenail fungus that I'm going to type that into my device or computer and read what comes out.

That's crazy that it's that high. But also a good example of something that is super nichy.

Right.

Not all that common and still getting half a million searches a month.

Now, here's the point of this. The point is we do all of this work. Radio commercials, TV commercials, print ads, Internet, whatever the case is. But this is what I want to get the audience to think about. If you make a product that treats toenail fungus, wouldn't you first want to walk into the room where a half a million people have raised their hands and said, I have this issue. Because when you run a radio commercial, a thousand people hear It a thousand people don't have toenail fungus, you're hoping to land on the people with toenail fungus. In this particular case, a half a million people are waving at you, saying, over here, I have an issue. I don't want to actually be in that room, to be honest with you.

Right. But you know, it's a good example for Mr. Client to say, you know, yeah, you need to be in that space. Did he pull any other numbers or just the toenail fungus?

That's the one I had him pull. And they all look similar. So here's really where I'm going with this. And that is if you were, if we were to be building a football team or whatever the case is, what do we want to do first? We want, we want to start with the basics, right?

Yeah.

We need a good foundation. That search strategy needs to be the foundation as well as a really good, well built, powerful website. That search strategy needs to be a foundational piece of any consumer packaged goods advertising campaign. Because whatever they're making, somebody's looking to fix it.

Somebody's looking to fix it. But you bring up a good point. I get this question a lot from friends and family who have small businesses and they come to me for help with paid search. You know, can you look at my ads? Can you do this, whatever. Yep. Take a look at it. And then they think that just having the paid search out there and granted it's, it's a part of it, you can't, you need those eyeballs. But once you get them, the website needs to be really, really good and really tooled for that audience. So I'm glad you brought that up because that's another component of this. And a question I was going to ask you, which kind of just answered was, you know, would you ever recommend to a CPG company, just do a paid search campaign and essentially let it launch on that or let it sustain itself on just paid search?

I probably wouldn't build a campaign that was solely on paid search, but I would be very hesitant to build a campaign that didn't have it as a component.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if we're paying for eyes and ears in traditional media or digital media, nine times out of 10, they're not going to go out right away and buy the product. Maybe not nine times out of 10, but they're going to try and research it, especially if it's a new product. So if you don't have that paid search campaign or paid search component or a great SEO component to your website, you're missing out.

So here's some stats that you know, Rob, but I'm going to share these. So first off, the click, it's a pay per click model. So the pay per click model on toenail fungus to be at the top of the heap, assuming your website is relevant, to be at the top of the heap. A click right now for toenail fungus is around 80 cents to a dollar. Now, you look at that, you're a marketer. And I'm selling a toenail fungus product that sells for, let's say, 10 bucks retail, which means I sold it to Walgreens for $6. Do I want to spend a dollar? Because a dollar doesn't guarantee that I sold it. I'd probably be willing to spend a dollar if I knew I was going to sell it. But a dollar just to get somebody to click sounds like a lot of money.

It does sound like a lot of money. I'm surprised it's actually that low because of all the prescription products out there where there are massive margins. So I'm surprised that the space isn't more crowded, frankly.

Well, some of the words are a lot more, but averaging. Okay, but here's the key to that. One of the things we know from paid search strategy from, from research is that for every one person that types in toenail fungus cure and clicks on the ad, there's a dozen other ones that are only looking at the ones that came on the, on the top.

Right.

And they're not clicking anything. They're just looking, oh, here's three brands for toenail fungus. And it's. And they see the extension. Oh, it's at Walgreens. They never click it. They just go to retail and get it.

Yep. This has been, I would call it the shifting sands, because this statistic probably won't hold true forever because it didn't used to be that way. But currently, as of the recording of this show, that is true. So it's important to note. So you're not necessarily paying. You don't pay anything if nobody clicks your ad. But if we are bidding high enough and visible, we're at least getting those eyeballs.

And that's why it's important to be at the top. And especially we have to keep in mind that when we're talking about search, the majority of searches today are happening on a mobile device. So when we look at search on a mobile device, if there's three ads, there isn't even an organic result showing up.

Right.

So it's important that you get yourself to Be at the top of that list. But you have to keep in mind for every one person that clicked, there's another dozen people that are just looking for brand names.

Right? Looking for brand names and locations.

Now let's say, Rob, that they do click what needs to happen. And let me set the premise here for you folks. When people click on Google, I want you to think about your own habits. You go in and you type in, we'll use toenail fungus. You type in toenail fungus and you decide to click on something, you will spend six seconds waiting for that page to load and looking to see if the page is relevant. And within six seconds, if it doesn't load and you don't see exactly what you're after, what will you do?

You hit the back button.

Correct.

Or slide. Whatever, whatever the model is on your phone or the tactic is on your phone. Yeah, you go back, but in essence.

You'Re going to go back to the search.

Right. So that's what we were talking about earlier with the needing a good website. In this case, it needs to complete that conversation or at least carry the conversation forward. So is my expectation immediately met after I click that ad and the first thing I see am I going to engage with you?

So this kind of results in why websites? You know, the old model of building a website was everybody always thought about a website being built from the homepage. And we had pages underneath the homepage. Websites today really need to be built around the deliverable and to really be thought of as a group of landing pages because the homepage isn't even that important in many cases now.

No, I mean, unless you're specifically targeting the search result or I'm sorry, the click destination to the homepage. But if you're going to be smart with your keywords and with your ads, you're not going to do that. You're going to try and get that as specific as possible.

So let me give you a different example. I'm going to tie search into web design for a minute. Okay, let's say that we were talking about a. I'm going to say topical analgesic. So we're talking about a topical pain product. And the topical pain product could be used for joint pain, it could be used for muscle pain, it could be used for cramps, it could be used for arthritis. Okay. Now I go to the search engine and I type in pain relief for arthritis pain. When I click that, what do you want that page that I land on to look like?

I want it to look like what the User would expect. And the user expects a product that is talking about a relief for their arthritis pain. Not back pain, not shoulder pain, not hemorrhoid pain. They want arthritis. You know, it's again, like you said, I'm raising my hand saying I have arthritis. And I want to continue and complete that conversation. It better damn well be about arthritis. Right.

So you're not going to land me on a homepage saying product ABC does all these things.

No, no, no.

You're going to land me on a page that says, finally, quick topical relief for your arthritis pain.

Yep.

Because I typed in pain relief. Arthritis pain relief.

What a good rule of thumb for guidance when people are trying to decide what to do or how to target these things or how to direct them or whatever is think about your own frustrations. Because when you're searching, I know we approach this as an advertising agency or a marketing firm or a products business or whatever. You're a user at that moment. So if you're going forget products that we have, if you're trying to find rims for your motorcycle and you don't get what you want quickly enough, you leave, you go somewhere else. So our job is to not frustrate the user and to get them to the answer they're looking for as quickly as possible or better than the next person. Because if we do it better, we have a much better chance of converting that user into a buyer.

Now, there's three types of categories that we do paid search, and those three categories are intent terms, conquest terms, and consideration terms. Now, the conversation you and I have been having right now would be in the consideration category. I have arthritis. I don't know who you are. I'm looking for something.

Boom.

ABC topical arthritis relief production. Talk about.

Call that the problem solver category.

Right. That's the broad terms. Let's talk about a minute. Let's talk about intent terms. Now, intent terms is I know exactly who you are. I know that I'm going online and I'm looking to buy fungi cure fungus product. Why do I need to have a paid search campaign? Yeah. Because I'm number one organically.

A lot of times people like you were saying earlier, they want to find you, they want to find where you're at. So we need to be there. They don't often click those terms. They just need to see it.

And we have to keep in mind of another thing that's happening right now. And what's happening is you look and you say, well, I'm the number one organic term for my Company name. Now, remember, the searches are on a mobile device. The organic search result probably isn't even on the screen.

May or may not be visible. Right?

And what's coming up are three ads. Now, what you have to understand is those three ads could a. They could be Amazon selling your product, very likely. And they're likely to be your competitors that are conquesting you.

Right? Which is that other category.

Which is the other category.

I mean, you're defending your domain. You're defending your goal, if you will, by buying, even though you do have a good search presence. But even then, I mean, even the best search presence can vary from day to day. The organic search can change by the minute, and so can the paid search.

So when we're talking about this conquesting, all of the big companies are doing conquest and they're all defending themselves. So an example would be this. I go in and I type in BenGay, but at the top comes up Icy Hot. Now, what happens is the people at Icy Hot are actually buying the search term Ben Gay.

Right?

They can't use Ben Gay in their ad, but they can buy the term. They can put an ad up here that says, try Icy Hot better than anything else on the market or whatever their ad is. I went looking for Ben Gay. I don't even see a Ben Gay ad because it's not paid. It's inorganic. And now what I see is, I see Icy Hot. So now Icy Hot has the opportunity.

To convert me right again back to the user. The user is looking for a solution to a problem. They know the product name as Icy Hot or Icy Hot's agency. They know that the user is looking for a solution to the problem that Ben Gay solves. Icy Hot also solves that problem. So why not get those eyes? It makes sense. That's why conquesting makes sense. It just gets expensive.

Now, by the way, let's say I own Ben Gay. If I don't, if my ad agency of my search team isn't proactively defending my terms, Icy Hot could actually run an ad that says, try Icy hot.

Better than BenGay, or better than other leading brands or. Yeah, right.

But I could actually use Ben Gay in the ad if Ben Gay's not defending the terms. So that's why you have to have an agency that's going out there and actually defending your trademark and blocking other people from buying your trademark. So kind of recapping this, there are three types of search that we want to look at. Intent, that's your name. Consideration, that's the category conquest, that's you going after your competitors and know that your competitors are going after you. Which is the other reason why you need a paid search strategy, because you need to move yourself to the top so that somebody else isn't buying it. And one of the last thing that we'll address here is what's called quality score. So when we're talking about a quality score, Quality score runs anywhere from 1 to 10, 1 meaning the worst, 10 meaning the best. The search engines, especially Google, they actually have what we'll call it a spider that crawls over your site and measures keywords and the usage of words and decides how relevant the site is. So if I'm buying I own Ben Gay, I'm buying the term Ben Gay. Obviously the name BenGay is all over my site, which means my quality score will be very, very high.

It also factors in the words, the text in the ads though too. So it's not just the site.

Agreed. It has to be properly used. I can't just go and put the word Ben Gay a thousand times on my site. That used to be the trick.

It used to be the trick. There were a lot of tricks actually that you could do that were less obtrusive or less visibly obtrusive. But you know, now that you do that, Google shut you down pretty quick.

Yeah, well, I mean, we used to use, you know, take a black page and put black font on it and say bengay a million times. Yep, can't do it anymore. So you, you can't scam the system. So what it amounts to though, where I was going with this is when that company goes to buy, when Icy Hot goes to buy Bengay, their quality score is going to be a two or a three.

It's not going to be as good, which is going to drive up the cost for them.

Right. So the point of this, folks, is this. Then when you look at a search engine and you see the three ads, the ad that's at the very top, quite honestly could be paying 50 cents. The ad in the second position could be paying $2, and the ad in the third position could be paying $5. So it seems counterintuitive that why is the ad on top that would get the most clicks the lowest amount of money? And the reason for that is because Google focuses. Google's looking at the long term value of their brand. And what they're looking to do, and this is smart on their part, is they're always looking to deliver the most relevant choice, the most Relevant content to.

The user as quickly as possible.

Right. So even though Google's only going only going to get 50 cents versus $2, they know long term it makes the brand stronger. So that's what's going on.

Yep. And you know, we've get questions like this a lot too, where it's, you know, why is my term or why is my ad placed here today? Or that those things shift around a lot too, based on the day and who's bidding and how much money is left in your budget and all that stuff. So that's just a real quick sidebar. Your ad may move around. You may not be in the top position every time now, by the way.

If you have any, you know, if you have questions on search, if you want to talk to somebody who's a search expert, we have those people here.

Yep.

You are free to call and have a chat with them. It's not going to cost you anything. And we'll be happy to answer any kind of questions that you have on search. But the bottom line is you need a search campaign for every cpg. It needs to be the base. You need to have relevant landing pages.

Yeah. And just interrupt. I would say, I would call search a component in a larger digital strategy. I think that's how clients need to think about this moving forward is it's a critical component to the digital strategy because of that landing page is so important.

Absolutely. And we will cover the digital thing. I'm glad you brought that up, Rob, because years back, not that many years back, people would call us and they say, well, we need to have a digital strategy. What people need to understand is there's no such thing as the digital strategy. There is video, there is banner ads, there is content, there is search, there is contextual, there is. The digital landscape is massive.

Yeah. There is no one size fits all for clients. But there are definitely critical components like paid search that needs to be a part of the larger strategy.

Yes. I think paid search is the thing that we can safely say every CPG company needs to examine paid search. They need to look at their search terms. And I can't think of one that a paid search strategy shouldn't be at the base of their advertising.

No. I mean if you have any advertising budget, a percentage of that, and it can be small, but a percentage of that must be dedicated to the people searching for your product. There's no way around it anymore.

Yeah. Well, what we said at the beginning of this, why would you go out and look for people who might have a problem when the person who's already raised their hand and said, I have the problem is right in front of you.

Yeah. No, it's a no brainer.

Absolutely. And that's it. So if you have any questions, you can get a hold of myself, Mark Young, Rob Taylor, and you can go to cpg insiders.com or you can go to jekyllhyde labs.com and we'll be back with another show.

Thanks, everybody.