Pay-per-click bid management software is a great solution. A bid management tool is a software application that allows advertisers to manage pay-per-click keyword bidding. These tools are a great way to manage large campaigns. Bid management software helps advertisers control spending and get maximum value from the lowest budget bidding. By alerting advertisers of errors and position drop, bid management tools are great options for keeping the advertiser informed at all times. From one interface, marketers can manage keywords across all major search platforms.
However, bid management software is not for me.
Despite all of the great services bid management software offers, it is not a solution for me. For a beginner, and possibly an intermediate advertiser, these tools may work. However, there is much more to paid advertising than one tool can provide.
- “Bid to Position” is a non-issue
Search engines are no longer this simple. Pay-per-click marketing includes quality keywords, relevant ads, great copy, and landing page relevancy. These influences are not measured in bid management tools. Quality score plays a stronger role now. - There is more to analytics than the “Last Click”
Bid management does not take into account all other online promotions. I would love find any analytics program, bid management or not, that can measure “the assist.” If a user sees display advertising, searches 5 days later and buys, that revenue should be credited partially to the display ad. - Search is not just about keywords
Search Engine Marketing consists of social marketing, branding, personalization, data feed (i.e. Google Base), etc. These tools can not be measured in bid management. - Offline Activity
Bid management rules do not know about upcoming promotions or unwanted press. Nor can they anticipate seasonal changes, at least not as thorough as human contact. - Consumer Intent
The intent of the customer can not be measured through a tool. Pay-per-click management requires an understanding of the business and the unique customer. Pay-per-click marketing is most importantly “marketing”. Marketing requires insight, customer understanding, intuition and more. Bid management takes a simplistic, tunneled-vision, approach.
Tags: Bid Management, PPC
July 19th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Great post. The “assist” I think will be coming soon…at least in the next year or so. Just look at the recent acquistions by Google, Yahoo, and MSN and you can see it’s only a matter of time. If the Google aquisition of DoubleClick gets approval then they’ll have the data necessary to provide information on individuals who interacted or clicked on your banner ad and then later did a search for your brand or other keyword you’re bidding on, clicked on your PPC ad and made a purchase.
Now that will be some powerful data that will allow you to begin to fully understand how the various aspects of your online marketing mix work together to drive conversions!
August 7th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Great post. Can you recommend any bid management tools?
August 11th, 2007 at 8:15 am
I can’t actually. There are many out there, but none I can recommend.
If anyone has any suggestion, please list them here.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Very interesting post. You are right, bidding on Search Engines is a more complicated affair these days, with opacity and the more important role of the quality score.
I wouldn’t say that all bid management tools are obsolete. At my company, we have created a series of tools that improve your quality score so that even in an uncertain bidding environment, you are in the most favorable position possible. Tools include sophisticated ways of discovering new keywords and tools which allow you to easily create highly relevant ad copy, a quality score booster.
THere are obviously certain aspects of any business which simply cannot be handled by a machine, but I wouldn’t say that bid management tools should be ruled out.
I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but I think quality score improvement tools are going to be the future of any bid management solution that seeks to stay competitive.