How to carry out SEM delivery in the toB industry?

As a veteran Internet bidder who has worked in the SaaS industry for 10 years, I have always wanted to summarize my advertising experience. However, my writing skills are not good and I am lazy, so I have been putting it off until now. Please forgive me for the poor writing. If you feel it is helpful, please leave a message to communicate.

The author is mainly engaged in CRM products in the SaaS industry, and later worked in the finance and taxation industry for a period of time. The following are some of the author’s personal insights on the toB industry.

1. The transaction cycle is long and the cost of trial and error is high.

The follow-up process is complicated, and some customers may need sales follow-up for half a year or even a year. Once a company selects a product, it is difficult to replace it within a few years, so customers will be very cautious in their selection.

2. Compound interest, focus on renewal rate.

The product basically makes no money in the first year, and a lot of labor costs and marketing costs are required. After the sales are completed, services need to be implemented, which tests the company's delivery and promotion capabilities. The renewal rate is the core of the company's profitability. The money earned is from the second year, third year and beyond after the transaction.

3. There are many decision makers.

Because it is a business, the process may require approval at various levels, and the key decision maker may be the boss/sales director/marketing director. In short, it is difficult to find key decision makers. Decision makers are more rational than ToC.

4. Users pay more attention to brand when making selections.

Because the selection cycle is long, decision makers may search for many keywords to understand products and competitors for selection, and the final transaction will most likely fall on brand words. Brand content is easier to understand, and the content is more ToC-oriented and has higher attention, providing trust endorsement for ToB business. A good brand is definitely a plus for a deal.

1. Traffic words are relatively concentrated and are all core words. Long-tail words have less traffic, and high-quality traffic is more difficult to control.

Taking CRM as an example, traffic is concentrated on product words such as CRM, customer management system, and sales management system, and long-tail words rarely have traffic. This leads to everyone competing for core words. Long-tail words have no traffic, and traffic is the basis of acquiring customers. The search population for core words is more complex. Students learning CRM will also search for it, and people who want to know what CRM is will also search for it. So in the end, the core word CPC is more than 20 yuan, but the conversion of core words is not good.

2. Competition is too fierce, there are few effective customer acquisition channels, and many companies are all in SEM

Through the author's testing of distribution channels over the years, there are relatively few channels that truly have volume and conversions. The conversion rate of the traditional telemarketing model is already very low, which has led many companies to go all in on SEM. In this situation, SEM competition is a red ocean. Because traffic is concentrated, there is no traffic without a high price. If a high price is paid, the input-output ratio is too low, and the cash flow cannot keep up (there is basically no money made from the first contract, and profits are made on renewals). Established manufacturers have venture capital and background. For example, in the CRM industry, FunShare, SalesEasy, Red Circle Marketing, etc. have raised hundreds of millions of yuan in financing, and foreign companies such as Salesforce, Zoho, and Microsoft are eyeing them. These manufacturers have sufficient market budgets, and industry traffic is concentrated. There are only a few advertising spaces in total. The result of competition is that the cost of effective leads is getting higher and higher. Companies that compete head-on with these companies for rankings will soon face cash flow pressure.

To sum up, the search traffic dividend has disappeared, and the current 2B industry customer acquisition market is a red ocean. In order to overtake others, SEM must be made more sophisticated and require a higher level of SEM operation.

I have said so much above just to explain my views on the industry. In this time of huge competition, how can we better carry out SEM delivery? Here comes the useful stuff. Let’s take CRM delivery as an example.

To launch a product successfully, you must first understand the industry, the product, and the competing products. Based on the understanding of products and sales, build accounts, plan keywords, write creative ideas, plan landing pages, and develop delivery strategies. Below we take the CRM industry as an example and analyze them one by one.

1. Account planning

Because the total number of keywords is small and the traffic is concentrated, I used to make plans based on regions, with one bid for first-tier cities and one bid for second-tier and third-tier cities. This can avoid wasting money by bidding too high for high-priced keywords in second-tier and third-tier cities with less competition. However, after Baidu launched oCPC, the second-tier company will host the account and the bids will no longer be subject to manual control, so the plan is built based on the product attributes. The specific plan is:

1) CRM general terms (CRM/CRM system/CRM software/price/cost and other related terms)

2) Customer management system (customer management/customer information/customer management system/customer management software/price/cost)

3) Sales management system (sales management/sales process management/sales management system/price/cost, etc.)

4) Word of mouth (good CRM system/CRM system ranking/which one is good/price/cost, etc.)

5) Brand words (company name/how it is, etc.) are more important. The final conversion rate of brand words in the toB industry is very high. If you have invested in the previous ones and fail to secure the last step, the loss will be very large.

2. Landing page planning

According to the population divided by the plan, separate special pages are created, pain points are refined, copywriting is planned according to the needs of different keywords, and then free trial forms, customer service tools, and 400 telephone numbers are deployed.

It should be noted here that the free trial form and the direct product registration are different. It is recommended that the SEM landing page use the trial form as the entrance, and then guide customers to register the product after sales follow-up. This is helpful for evaluating SEM effects, and there are fewer items to fill in the form, which is conducive to conversion.

The leads obtained by 400 telephones and business bridges have the highest intention, and the form limitation rate is about 30%. Because we only look at input-output and do not evaluate the number of registrations, our SEM delivery only looks at the number of valid leads on that day for data analysis. Leads that need to be nurtured are directly classified as invalid leads and do not require sales follow-up. They can be directly guided into product registration.

3. Data acquisition and data analysis

Accounts and landing pages are basic operations. The core of delivery is still data acquisition and data analysis to guide delivery. It can be said that there is no difference in account operation, landing page, or creativity. Whether the investment is good or not depends entirely on data analysis and delivery strategy.

We do not make reports to submit to leaders for review, but to find problems in the delivery through data reports, then solve them, and make adjustments to improve the delivery effect of the account.

SEM makes decisions through data analysis, so data must be organized carefully. If the data is wrong, the consequences of the adjustment can be imagined.

Below I will introduce in detail how to track conversion data.

1) Using the Jimuyu page, you can directly obtain the keywords of the lead source. The consulting tool AiFanFan can also directly obtain the search keywords of the clues left. The clues of direct phone calls can obtain conversion words by adding a middle number.

2) Students who use their own website landing pages can monitor conversion keywords by adding tracking URLs to the landing pages. There is a button to set the tracking URL above the Baidu Assistant.

After setting, confirm and it will be added in batches. Then you need to deploy code on the landing page to capture these parameters, and submit them to the backend along with the form information when the customer submits the form (if you don’t understand, find a technical solution, it’s very simple). The customer service tool can directly see the visited URL, find the clues of the phone number, and then extract the conversion words and save them. However, conversion words for 400 phone numbers and other numbers can only be asked by sales.

Because the author is engaged in CRM system development, the leads obtained through forms, business bridges, and 400 phone calls will be directly transferred to the CRM system manually or automatically for sales communication filtering. After sales follow-up, the region of potential customers, potential products, potential grade classification, follow-up records, etc. will be filled in on the CRM (if there is no CRM, the records will be summarized in Excel).

We summarize and organize the lead data, and then combine it with the consumption data in the Baidu account background, so that we can evaluate the cost of effective leads for the day, where they come from, what the keywords are, how the high-consumption keywords convert, and how the consumption conversion is in each region. By comparing these data with the previous data, we can get the adjustment direction of the daily delivery strategy.

The above content may be difficult to understand. The general meaning is that by monitoring the conversion of keywords, regions and other dimensions and combining them with the keyword consumption and regional consumption in the Baidu backend, you can clearly obtain the guiding strategy for the next step of delivery.

4. Detailed explanation of data analysis dimensions and adjustment methods

Through the above-mentioned means of monitoring the delivery effect, we can summarize the following dimensions to analyze and formulate delivery strategies.

1) Time period

We need to make a time period table to determine the consumption in each time period and the lead collection situation in the current time period. One day's data is of little guiding significance. We insist on doing it for 1 to 2 weeks, and we can basically determine that the delivery effect is good in that time period. Then focus on the ranking of the time period with good results and allocate more budget. The time period with poor results can be closed or the budget can be reduced. In this way, a lot of costs can be reduced.

In addition to the daily time periods, we also need to analyze the delivery effect data on weekdays and non-working days, as well as the delivery data during working hours and non-working hours, to compare whether there are obvious differences. Some industries have better results during working hours, while some industries have better results during non-working hours. We allocate the budget based on the data during this time period. When it is good, we spend more to make it better, and when it is not good, we spend less to reduce costs. For example, in the CRM industry, Monday is the best, Friday is the worst, and there is no advertising on Saturdays and Sundays. Normal bidding is done during working hours, and the bidding coefficient is halved at night.

2) Region

Pay attention to the regional report of the delivery, and then determine the following data based on data conversion (CRM can follow up to the transaction, so the author uses the transaction volume as the final result of data analysis, rather than the commonly used number of calls)

1. Regions with large volume and high transaction volume
2. Regions with large volume and low transaction volume
3. Small volume, high transaction area
4. Small volume, low transaction area
5. Unlimited area

Divide the regions according to the above 5 types, and then adjust according to the following strategies

1. For regions with large volumes and high transaction volumes, the budget can be increased, but the reasons for the high costs need to be analyzed and adjustments made.
2. Increase the budget in regions with high volume and low transaction volume, grab rankings and traffic, and then continue to follow up on the results.
3. In areas with small volume and high transaction volume, reduce the budget, lower the keyword ranking, only invest in good time periods and keywords, and follow up on the results.
4. In areas with low transaction volume and small volume, increase the budget and try to increase ranking to see if you can increase the volume. It is also possible that it will only increase the cost, so continue to follow up.
5. If there is no volume and the region is purely for spending money, then an evaluation needs to be conducted, and the characteristics of the industry and the product need to be considered. Some products are not suitable for first-tier cities and some are not suitable for third-tier cities. If you really can't handle it, stop and don't run away to avoid wasting money.

3) Keywords

By combining the account's monthly keyword consumption data with the keyword transaction data in the CRM, we can obtain the input-output of each keyword. The longer the delivery time, the richer the accumulated data and the more accurate the data model. Every day we only need to focus on the rankings of these high-conversion words and the conversion results. According to the 80/20 rule, the placement of 20% of the words in an account determines 80% of the results. For the CRM industry with concentrated traffic, we basically only need to focus on 10% of the words in the account.

4) Time period

It is necessary to organize and retain daily, monthly, and quarterly data, and then make adjustments through the following cycles.

sky

Every morning, we analyze the daily delivery results by year-on-year and month-on-month comparison, and then adjust the bids, matching methods, and negative words based on the search term report and keyword report.

moon

Monthly statistics of monthly delivery reports are more instructive for global adjustments because the monthly data volume is large and the data models are much larger than daily ones.

Every month, I will sort the search term report in descending order by clicks and consumption. Irrelevant words are discarded, and high-conversion words are marked for future daily ranking checks. Then count the monthly regional consumption, compare the number of effective leads and transactions in each region in the delivery results, the ROI of the transaction amount, and set the next delivery budget and regional bid coefficient for each city. Keep records of key areas and follow up on subsequent placements.

Year

For SEMers, historical advertising data is a valuable asset for corporate advertising. With these historical data, we can avoid making the same mistakes again. Therefore, annual data summary is more critical. It allows us to consider the feasibility of the project itself from a large dimension, evaluate input-output, and specify future advertising plans.

The ads are still running, and the data we get are only current data, but the decision our boss needs us to make right now is: how should we invest in future SEM? How much budget is needed? What effect is expected to be achieved? These issues can only be supported by historical investment data, and judgments made on the spur of the moment will not convince the boss.

Due to limited space, I will stop here today.

Author: Aiqi SEM

Source: Aichi SEM (CMOcollege)