Paying for clicks

| Tim Daly

Hundreds of companies have sprung up in recent years offering paid search engine marketing (SEM) management services, and with them, a multitude of pricing

SEM Top 10: Tame Your Affiliates

| MCM staff

Managed wisely, search engine marketing and affiliate programs can coexist peacefully. When the programs are left unchecked, however, many catalogers find themselves competing against their own affiliates, driving up their overall marketing costs, increasing their use of discount offers, decreasing their average margin, and possibly harming their brand.

SEM Top 10: Monitor Brand vs. Nonbrand

| MCM staff

One of the most important analyses a retailer can perform is the breakout of brand vs. nonbrand paid-search economics. As you drive your program to its target metric, evaluate its success excluding the effect of the sales and cost associated with sales on your brand.

SEM Top 10: Bid for Profit, Not Position

| MCM staff

Faced with the bid spasms of some of their competitors, marketers may be tempted to measure their success by the most readily visible metric: position on the page. But bidding to position is dangerous

SEM Top 10: Test, Test, Test

| MCM staff

Savvy direct marketers understand that ongoing testing is the key to improving results. Done right, paid search advertising lends itself well to this rigor:

SEM Top 10: Target Your Ad Copy

| MCM staff

Targeting your ad copy is a powerful lever: It can raise your ad efficiency by increasing your qualified clicks, so you grow sales in a way that