Super complete SEM optimization solution! Practical case analysis

This article will teach you how to make an executable SEM optimization plan from several aspects, including background, competitive market analysis, company status analysis, and specific promotion plans. Since the article involves actual cases, some product names, privacy data, etc. are processed.

1

Project Background

1. Company : XXX Education;

2. Introduction : Traditional education and training institution, well-known XXX training base, professional courses include a, b, c, d, e, f, etc.;

3. Scale : Directly-operated schools include Beijing, Changsha, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, and Shanghai;

4. Objectives :

a) The most direct goal is to increase the number of enrollments (conversions) at each campus and reduce the enrollment cost (CPA) at each campus.

b) Indirect goal: to shape brand influence and strengthen potential impression within the industry.

c) The second is to broaden the company’s service channels, facilitate after-sales service for students, and deepen brand awareness.

5. Prospects : As China vigorously develops its cultural and educational industries, the demand for talent in many industry segments, including a, b, and c, is also rising, accompanied by a bullish outlook on the employment and salary market. Various traditional and new education and training competitors are also increasing.

2

Competitive market analysis

1. Educational Model

1. Offline teaching: Traditional education models mostly rely on online and offline advertising for enrollment, and offline classroom teaching, which still belongs to traditional education institutions.

2. Online education: With the rapid development of mobile Internet, the layout of BAT giants (Tencent Classroom, NetEase Cloud Classroom) and the participation of other vertical education platforms have continuously eroded the share of traditional education. More young generation students have begun to accept small tuition fees and flexible teaching methods.

Many traditional education companies have also begun to turn to the Internet + education industry. Including New Oriental, they use new media, apps, YY channels, WeChat live broadcasts and other online education platforms to continuously attract traffic, establish fan word-of-mouth groups, continuously interact with students in teaching, reduce investment costs, and deepen brand influence.

2. Competitors

1. Direct competitors

Including A, B, C, D, E, F education, etc.

2. A type of potential competitor

Including Internet + education platforms and some small teams. Due to the development of mobile Internet, convenience, low investment, simple payment and large scale of the population, more and more individuals or small teams will begin to join, including independent online teaching by small team teachers.

3. Second category of potential competitors

In addition to educational institutions other than this vertical education, including academic education, English education, and other IT education companies, students have a wide range of choices. After all, the purpose of vocational education, apart from professional interests, is mostly oriented towards employment in the talent market. In particular, the above-mentioned educational companies are also the places where our company’s students are diverted. Examples of this include New Oriental, Suntech, and Jade Bird.

3

Analysis of company status (SEM related channels)

1. Online Team

1. Departments: including media department (SEM, online), brand department (technology, art, editing, copywriting, etc.), consulting department, and front desk department.

Each department is responsible for its own independent affairs with clear responsibilities and powers, but communication and coordination efficiency are compromised. In particular, the media department, brand department, and consulting department are three important links from traffic introduction to final conversion, and they influence each other. Lack of coordination or inefficiency in any department will lead to strategic adjustments in other departments and may also easily lead to buck-passing.

2. Business in charge: There are 5 campuses in total, and currently there are 4 SEM specialists. Their years of experience and time in the company vary. Most of them have just joined the company. In addition, many of them have switched from the medical industry and still need to have a deeper understanding of the education industry and the company's situation. In addition, there is no daily/weekly training script system for the online department. It is a flat management system with no SEM and online superiors.

3. Business launch

1) Delivery platforms: Almost all of them are concentrated on keyword search marketing (SEM), including Baidu (accounting for more than 90%), 360, Sogou, and Shenma (basically none).

2) Delivery terminals: More than 95% are concentrated on PC, and there is almost no delivery on mobile terminals. In fact, most of the traffic is concentrated on mobile devices, and competitors are all focusing on mobile devices. Checking the rankings for key words, our company has no ranking on the mobile side, while competitors A, B, especially B and C basically dominate the mobile rankings. The popularization of smartphones since 2009 means the development of mobile Internet, and the overall search volume is on mobile devices.

(This picture is the company's traffic source visitor table, basically all PC traffic)

(This picture shows the top 30 search terms in the company's music)

The following is a report on the search term to view the Baidu Index (user market research)

Judging from the partial search term index captured above, most of the terms have a high share on mobile devices. In addition, from Leyu’s search terms in the past 30 days, it can be seen that most of the consumption is concentrated on product terms + training. The only brand term with a high conversion rate is XXX, and other brand terms do not appear. The product + (school/class/which/institution), which has the second highest conversion rate, also has a low share. Our goal is to try to make the report contain more brand words and school or institution words with high conversion rates.

3) Region of deployment: Each campus covers surrounding areas, among which the Beijing campus has the largest coverage, and other campuses cover surrounding provinces and cities.

4) Delivery time: 8 am to 12 pm, no delivery effect based on time period. About 1/3 of the plans often go offline early (some go offline at 6-7 pm.)

5) Delivery account: Currently there are 4 accounts (later branch campus/2 accounts) Main account (accurate) Sub-account (accurate phrase)

6) Account structure: Plan divided by region, product unit segmentation, account consumption words account for less than 1% (consumption words are calculated on an annual basis), a large number of words have no display and no clicks, and many materials are suspended. The CPC is too high, with some click CPC reaching 200 yuan.

7) Scale of deployment: The monthly budget is around RMB XX million. According to data from January to November 2017, the average number of consultations at the Beijing campus is around XX per month. The ROI is between 3 and 4. Since September this year, various costs have increased and the ROI has hovered below 3. CPA costs rose by nearly 50%. The Leyu conversation rate is 2%-3%, the consultation rate is 70%, the effective consultation rate is 70%, and the registration rate is about 13%. (Registration/click) is between 1/500-1/600. The conversion rate of brand words (registration/click) is around 1%.

8) Keyword volume: including brand words, competitor words, product words, general words, industry words, crowd words, and no activity words (such as winter and summer vacation activities, price discounts, etc.)

9) By looking at the search terms for the registration in 2017 (Beijing campus), the results of the personal statistical data analysis are as follows:

XXX keywords in the whole year, total number of registrations xxx

10) Data reports: Currently, there are many and complex data reports. The above data are summarized by individuals from a large amount of data. There are no time period analysis tables, plan conversion tables, unit conversion tables (product course conversions), keyword (part of speech) conversion tables (five-star important), etc.

11) Consulting and communication software, including Leyu, Marketing QQ, Baidu Business Bridge, 400 toll-free number, etc.

12) Port. Currently, websites are basically made on the PC side, and there are no good mobile websites.

4

Promotion plan (detailed strategy)

1. SEM Strategy

Each campus has two independent accounts for SEM operations, main and sub-accounts. The main account is precise (short and precise), and the sub-account is mainly precise-short and precise-short synonyms. Some words can be set up as (short core) based on the conversion report. Main account ranking (1st-3rd place), sub-account ranking (2nd-5th place). The bid of the sub-account is 30% lower than the bid of the main account (based on the competition ranking analysis of each campus). The goal is to ensure that both accounts are ranked and separated by positions. (Note: This is a previous case so it is the old matching method)

1. Ideas for account building

The plan is still established by region, with products as units and parts of speech subdivided into units to ensure that structural parts of speech are uniformly divided into the corresponding units.

Idea: Remove duplicate keywords as basic keyword materials based on the original main account, select words - filter words - segment words - add words - creativity - URL allocation (unified parameter tracking) - bid - matching mode - budget - time period

Architecture: as follows

Basic materials are distributed to other SEM personnel, who make detailed changes based on the campus they are responsible for, including adding words, modifying creative ideas, allocating URLs, bidding, etc.

Infrastructure responsible person: XXX (communicate with xx, this material is unified for each campus) Account responsible person: 4 SEMs

Account setup completion time: 1-2 days (meeting time to be determined)

Add words: Don’t add too many regional words

Creative: Unified URL: Click PC, which starts with www, click YD, which starts with m

Display URL: www.xxx.com/TEL:XXX-XXXX-XXX m.xxx.com/TEL:XXX-XXXX-XXX (especially 360, Shenma Sogou platform creative display URL must be in this form with a phone number)

URL parameters: unified as plan-unit-keyword (specifically, it will be determined by pinyin abbreviation or numeric parameters or by using Baidu URL tracking.)

Matching mode: main account (fine/short and fine), sub-account (fine-short and fine-synonymous-core), after the structure is built, the word parts of each unit are divided into matching modes according to the length of the word and the flow index. (Short words - precise, medium words - short and precise, long tail words - short synonyms)

Bid (idea): Based on the annual keywords and regional conversion tables of each SEM

Based on the average customer spending of X yuan, the target is ROI=4 (ROI=3 is basically break-even), ROI=average customer spending/CPA, so the CPA is maintained at XX yuan. Calculated based on the highest brand word CVR of 1%, the highest CPC bid is XX yuan.

The bid of the main account is reduced by 30% for the secondary account (depending on the campus location), and the effect is based on the ranking position.

The specific bid is to set a benchmark bid first, except for brand words and competing words, where 30 is the highest benchmark price (brand words are the first to compete), and other words are based on the highest benchmark price of xx yuan (core high-priced conversion words). Afterwards, the strength of the parts of speech decreases according to different courses and geographical distances.

For example: In Beijing, the price of a training institution is 75 yuan, and the price of the same word is reduced by 30% in Hebei and 40% in Shandong.

Beijing area: a training 50 yuan a study 30 yuan a course 15 yuan which technology is promising 5 yuan

Region: In addition to the platform budgets (Baidu, 360, Sogou, Shenma) that have been initially formulated, the budgets allocated to each campus should also include regional budgets. The following is a personal summary of the 2017 Beijing campus regional conversion data:

Allocate the budget comprehensively based on the daily region (schedule). If the effect is not good, remove the promotion in that region. Generally, only promote the core time period, or only promote the key units (core conversion words) and reduce the bidding budget.

Time period: strictly follow the established budget strategy to ensure that the budget consumption is met, and do not shut down the plan early, especially during the evening peak period, to direct traffic to the evening shift online and consulting. In addition, the bid coefficients for different time periods are different.

Terminal: This requires strengthening the delivery of mobile terminals, setting the budget and bidding ratio for PC and mobile terminals, but you have to wait for the brand department to design the mobile terminal page first. At present, you can set up some old mobile terminal pages that can be delivered.

Reports: 4 reports, including account table, plan table (region table), unit table (product course table), keyword table

Daily, weekly and monthly tables are summarized in the same table, which is convenient for later comparison and analysis of data by day/week/month

Account summary table (including Baidu, 360, Sogou, Shenma) Purpose: To know the results of each campus yesterday, the results of each platform and account

Weekly time Total consumption Total impressions Total clicks Total conversations Total calls Total effective consultations Baidu 1 Baidu 2 360 1 ….

Plan Summary (including each region) Purpose: To know the daily effect of each region

Weekly time Beijing consumption display click dialogue total telephone consultation Baidu 1 Baidu 2 3601 Sogou Shenma

Unit table: (Main product course table) Purpose: To know the conversion data of various product courses

Keyword table: This performs data analysis on each account separately to understand which words have the best conversion effect, as well as the conversion effects of some major categories of words.

Person in charge: XXX will be responsible for the template report. The report format will be unified and completed within one day. In the later stage, each SEM specialist will independently prepare reports for their respective jurisdictions.

In addition, after the account is set up, before making new keyword bids and regional budgets, each SEM specialist is responsible for analyzing the statistical reports of each campus under their jurisdiction (March 2017-November 2017), regional tables, platform conversion tables, and keyword conversion tables (brand words) to obtain data to locate each regional budget, bid ratio, and keyword maximum bid indicators.

Responsible person: SEM specialists; Completion time: within 1 day

Supervision: XXX amount of new words every week, XXX new creative ideas every week, XXX processing of invalid words/inefficient words every week, XXX processing of low display and low CTR creative ideas every week, weekly log report.

The invalid word rejection in the daily search term report must be completed on the same day, and the search terms must be rejected after get off work the previous day on the next morning.

Check the keyword conversion report daily/weekly and process the high-consumption non-conversion keywords.

Create a core word monitoring folder (high conversion word folder) and focus on ranking

Create a traffic word monitoring folder (focus on controlling consumption)

Each account (Baidu) establishes an advanced search template, so that the template parts of speech can be unified in matching mode and bidding.

Website: Three-step strategy (website is an important part of conversion rate)

Step 1: Optimize the old mobile page first, including code, layout, etc. to make it suitable for mobile delivery.

(SEM delivery personnel are responsible for checking the existing mobile pages of each product, identifying problems, and making partial modifications to the pages.)

Person in charge: All SEM personnel shall summarize and send to XXX (communicate and coordinate with the brand department)

Time: Complete all mobile optimization within one week.

Step 2: Quickly imitate the templates of peers (other IT, or English and other education and training) and copy the module content. Create different single pages according to product courses. Bananer can change the part of speech without changing the main body, or directly anchor the link to the module to which a single page belongs based on the keyword part of speech.

Take a design course as an example:

How much does design training cost?

Keyword URL: www.xxx.com#price module?Tracking parameter bananar chart: Buy point price description;

aWhich design training is best?

Keyword URL: www.xxx.com#Company Advantage Module?Tracking Parametersbananer Diagram: Company A Training Advantage Description;

Launch a URL and start replacement promotion. Negotiate the time estimate with the Brand Department and implement it as soon as possible.

Step 3: Create corresponding landing page URLs for different product courses and even different parts of speech for the same product.

Online:

Daily/weekly/monthly conversion rate report, sorting the online departments by conversion rate in monthly units. The wiring order with higher conversion rate is first. Regular training meetings on sales talk should be held at least once a week. Flexible changes should be made within the existing sales talk system to summarize the sales talk techniques for common issues, including courses/prices/loans/teachers/employment and other common problems. For each common problem, set up multiple sets of solutions and conduct AB testing.

In fact, users have 100 kinds of demand questions, but at least 60% of them are common. If you can answer 60% of the common questions well, you can basically achieve a set rate of more than 60%. The other 40% of the problems vary from person to person. It is also a question that determines the ability of online teachers.

At the weekly meeting, we summarize the words used by online teachers with high conversion rates, and jointly discuss and form a reference plan for the words. At the weekly meeting, each online teacher raises his or her most difficult questions and the questions that are frequently asked in conversations. Everyone refers to and jointly finds the best solution and tries it out. At the same time, we will periodically make inquiries to market peers or potential peers to discover market changes of our competitors.

consult:

Basically the same as the online department, it is recommended to reuse the data. First, capture data from mobile phones. Second, QQ, WeChat and telephone data, regardless of whether it is converted into registration or converted after multiple tracking, should all be directed to the WeChat public account. Each consultant’s private WeChat and QQ should create a personal QQ space and circle of friends, and then direct the data to the public account. The long-term potential impact will also increase the conversion rate.

Summary: The entire SEM model includes SEM delivery-website-online-consultation-front desk. Each link will affect each other. The final result is to get more conversions and lower CPA. Simply evaluating the conversation and consultation volume of SEM may also lead to misunderstandings. A high conversation and consultation volume may be pure consultation but useless for the final conversion. In other words, the front-end data looks good, but the back-end conversion is very asymmetric. This is something we need to pay attention to.

For example, crowd words (what technology has good prospects) generally have a large number of clicks and dialogue consultations, but the final conversion rate will be very low. At the same time, the user experience of the website directly affects the volume of conversations and calls. The low efficiency of online and consulting conversions on the back end will also affect the front-end SEM delivery strategy.

2. Other delivery strategies (online advertising) after SEM delivery becomes stable

Significance: Baidu's share is gradually decreasing, and its reputation is also getting lower. With the changes in advertising positions, CPC will gradually increase. The share of mobile alliances and social advertising is gradually increasing. Many direct or potential competitors are looking for other channels to divert traffic. Finding low-cost channels to quickly enter is a way to reduce CPA.

Channels: Tik Tok, Kuaishou, Fanstong, Baidu Alliance, Guangdiantong, Toutiao information flow, DSP, etc.

Features: The biggest difference between the above channels and SEM keyword search channels is that SEM is a precise keyword demand, with high CPC, but also high conversion rate, while similar to alliances and information flow D

SP ads are display ads with much lower CPC, but the conversion rate is generally lower than SEM.

However, better keyword positioning or crowd and media positioning can still achieve results. In particular, Baidu Alliance advertising can be positioned by search keyword, and targeted at returning customers to regain lost visitors. Currently, many educational companies have added these channels.

The key links in optimizing these channels are: audience positioning - materials - websites.

Personnel: In the early stage, you can add only one DSP delivery person to conduct a small-scale delivery trial.

Well, the above is the complete version of the SEM optimization plan. Although some product names, competitor names and data have been processed, the ideas can be fully used as reference.

Author: Lazy Yangyang talks about marketing

Source: Lazy Yangyang Talks Marketing