Since the second half of 2007, the benefits of Bid Management Tools (BMT) have been debated in many articles and blogs. In most of those articles, the general opinion seems to be that BMTs are useful if you have a lean search marketing team and require a tool to manage large scale, multi-engine, multi-country, multi-product-line campaigns which have huge long-tails. Though there are downfalls for using BMT straight up as is, there are methods to navigate around their functionalities to improve on reporting or optimization.

Certainly, BMT aids teams in defining, managing, reporting and optimizing keyword costs across multiple search engine platforms, the main trio usually being Google, Yahoo, MSN. Mostly, BMT are set to optimize for a targeted CPC, CPA, Average Positions or Targeted ROAS. BMT then adjusts bid pricing, pauses or activates the list of keywords according to your set Optimization Rule (also known as Bid Criteria or Business Rules, depending on your choice of software)

Checking for caveats in BMT user manuals, they largely fall back on whether the engine naturally bears that functionality; for example, enterprise level BMT may have over-ride Day-Parting functions available only to Google campaigns, only because other search engines naturally have not introduced this functionality. In addition, not all tools are multi-byte friendly which leaves those of us in Asia with a few expensive options. Relying solely on BMT may numb the campaign managers from figuring out creative ways of manipulating campaigns for better performance. Regardless of whether you currently use a tool or manage your campaigns manually, below are 5 considerations for optimizing beyond BMT, and 2 case in point examples.

1. Keep Campaign Structures Dynamic
Make it a point to keep changing ad-group structures at least every quarter. BMT may in aggregate save costs and lower ROAS over time, but when campaign structures are re-defined, it is possible to see a greater impact in terms of greater volume (either clicks or conversions) or lowering costs. The upside is that you'll have saved time in micro-adjusting bids and positions manually, and have more time to rethink campaign structures.

Certainly there may be times when a restructure backfires on you, but that's all part of the learning. It takes a fearless, innovative search team with quick reflexes to react to data dips (or peaks) creating campaigns with a continuously upward ROAS trend over a 3 year lead generation campaign.

2. Use Granular Campaign Structures
Some BMT's lack the ability to report data by Ad Distribution; i.e. Search and Contextual Targeting numbers are rolled up onto the campaign level. Being able to bid differentially on the BMT is crucial as any search marketer knows there is a difference in intent of search and post-click behavior between the two. Since targeted CPA needs to be managed differently, search marketers may fall back to engine level reporting and campaign management from engine consoles. Alternatively, opt for breaking search vs. content into separate campaigns so that BMT can report and optimize using different business rules applied to campaign or ad group or keyword levels.

3. Focus on getting a higher 'Quality Score'
Google and Yahoo both have their own optimization tools (Google Bid to Position, Conversion Optimizer & Yahoo Campaign Optimizer). These tools work on quality scoring, where CPCs are discounted and ranks are promoted dependent on how each engine spider determines the relevancy of the landing page to the search query. Such a change means that BMT auto-bidding can only affect so much if pegged to targeted CPC, CPA or ROAS, because customized landing pages are much more effective now, and "bidding for the sky" is only a tactical quick fix.

4. Customize Your Landing Page Content for Long-Tail Keywords
In North Asian double-byte countries where Yahoo is strong and eyes are turning to Baidu, their editorial policy ensures that advertisers are only allowed to buy keywords visible on the landing page. This limits us to only buying keywords which are directly relevant to product, e.g. in contact lens industry, "contact lens" is allowed, but not "eye care" – unless that phrase appears directly on a landing page with customized body content about how to take care of your eyes. Hence, customizing your landing pages will also ensure you get enough of those long-tail keywords into Yahoo and Baidu.

5. Landing Pages need to be SEO Friendly
Getting your landing pages SEO friendly right at the start of a leads generation campaign will over time help visibility on organic links. Apart from the objectives of awareness and obtaining share of visibility on search engines, organizations are embracing SEM as a long term demand generation channel. So, it is good practice to put the right foot in the right direction by making your customized landing pages SEO friendly and content rich, for driving up organic links and driving down paid search CPC. When planned and executed well, your keywords, ad text, landing pages all orchestrate together into a harder working holistic search campaign.

Two cases below showcase results after implementing a mix of the above optimization techniques -

Case 1:
For one of our ongoing global leads generation campaign for a B2B enterprise content management company across North America and Asia, we customized more than 45 over landing pages, one for each country, language, product, solution and incentive type. Each individual page titles, descriptions, headers, alt tags, and body content was written to mirror our keywords and ad text across all engines. Over 4 weeks, Google Quality score showed that Poor quality score was reduced and moving positively toward "OK" and "Great". We saw a 30%-40% decrease in overall CPCs for the campaign.

Case 2:
In an ongoing USA B2B telecommunications client campaign, which our cost-saving central bureau in Singapore runs, we doubled the leads generated by adopting a hybrid of both BMT and restructuring campaigns. We used BMT to auto-optimize positions and target CPC because manual optimization for the huge amount of keywords would have worked out to exorbitant man-hours. This drove CPC down by a marginal 3% only. For CPA optimization, our handful of campaigns was broken up into many granular parts according to respective product lines, ad distribution, solutions, verticals, fat-head words and long-tail words. Managing fragmented campaigns gave us more control in throttling media budgets across the entire portfolio, allowing us to achieve 20% increase in conversion rate, and a 39% increase in leads in just 3 months. This led to a 20% decrease in CPA for the campaign.

The largest value a search engine organization or marketer can deliver is constant learning, innovation and testing, to continuously drive media efficiency and scale volume and responses. If you aren't already making these changes to your search campaigns, do consider testing them out on smaller campaigns first and then grow from those learnings.