Hey search marketers, how's your bid strategy? Well, whatever is, it better be an aggressive one, said pepperjamSEARCH.com President and CEO Kristopher Jones at the most recent Search Engine
Strategies show in New York. As paid search prices move up and competition continues to heat up, Jones says that developing an automated approach that picks and chooses the right battles is essential
to SEM success. It's all about ROI-based bidding, bid jamming, bid surfing, and bid shadowing, he said. The first refers to constantly updating and maintaining specific bid positions based on an ROI
objective. The second means strategically bidding a penny below a chosen competitor, forcing them to pay the highest possible CPC. Shady? No, Jones says--more like a little friendly fire. Besides,
your competitors are likely trying to do the same thing to you. Bid surfing refers to "surfing" for large price gaps, generally 20 cents or more, and exploiting them to be placed in the Top 5 for
less. The final tactic was bid shadowing, which means holding a position above or below a specific competitor's bid, moving in tandem alongside their bid movements. Deploying aggressive bid tactics
like these will ensure that you don't keep getting beat out by competitors. Of course, you have to have the technology to do these kinds of things, and that means you need to hire an SEM agency.
Read the whole story at Search Engine Watch »
