Who Should Attend

• In-House Marketing Team
  • VP of Marketing
  • Creative Services
  • VP/Director Marketing Communications
  • Media Buyers
  • Media Planners
  • Creative Team
  • Search Engine Marketing Directors
  • Search Engine Marketing Managers
  • Search Engine Marketing Specialists
  • Webmasters
  • Web Designers
  • Web Development Team

• Agencies
  • Account Executive
  • Account Manager
  • Account Services
  • VP of Media
  • Media Buyer
  • Media Planner
  • VP Client Services
  • Director Client Services
  • Supervisor Client Services
  • Creative Team
  • Search Engine Marketing Directors
  • Search Engine Marketing Managers
  • Search Engine Marketing Specialists
  • Webmasters
  • Web Designers
  • Web Development Team

All Laredo Group Courses are non-technical and designed to enable students to immediately understand and engage in interactive digital media and marketing in its many forms. They are for all who need an understanding of Internet advertising best practices, ad programs, vocabulary, how ads are delivered and measured, how to differentiate and use branding versus direct response ads, and to understand the opportunities and limitations of what can be accomplished with online advertising and how this benefits advertisers. A limited number of students is allowed in each Course, so each student can be assured of maximum interaction and learning and robust program presentation and curriculum, comprehensive manual and experienced instructors...in a setting that allows for greater interaction between instructors and students, providing more immediately relevant dialogue and information for each individual student.

Course Outline

• Introduction
  • The search marketing landscape
  • Search trends, search ad spend
  • The role search plays in the online and offline advertising world
  • Search engines in the marketing mix
  • Why participate in search engine marketing
  • Everyone knows my brand, why do I need search marketing?
  • Search marketing beyond ecommerce
  • How search engines work
  • How consumers use search engines
  • Basic terminology and types of search marketing
    • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
    • Pay-per-click (PPC)
    • Paid inclusion
  • Anatomy of a search results pages
  • Who are the players
    • Primary search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK
    • Everybody else (the 2nd and 3rd tier engines)
    • Vertical engines
    • Local search players

• Search Marketing Objectives & Budgets
  • Search marketing in the media plan
    • Why should companies participate in search marketing?
    • How does search marketing effect other forms of advertising?
    • What key performance indicators (KPIs) should search marketers consider?
  • How to develop and allocate SEM budgets
    • How much of total media budget should be allocated to search?
    • Do I need millions to participate in SEM and SEO?
    • What division should run search marketing?
    • How much money should be dedicated to each search engine?
    • How many search engines should I start with?
    • What percent of budget should be allocated to search marketing?

• Search Engine Optimization
  • How do search engines rank sites
    • Staying on top of changing search algorithms
    • Page rank
    • Resources
  • How search engines find your site
    • Submissions to find your site
    • Continuous web-crawling
  • Keyword strategy
    • Selecting keywords to optimize for
  • What do search engines look for at your site
    • Copywriting for search engines
      • Writing SEO-specific pages
      • Frequent content changes
      • Relevancy
    • Analysis of web site code
      • Meta tags
      • Alt tags
      • Flash-site alternatives
    • Internal linking strategy
  • What do search engines look for outside your site
    • Link building strategies
    • Public relations for SEO purposes

• Paid Search Engine Marketing
  • Using research in the buying and planning of SEM
  • Keyword selection
    • How many keywords to start with
    • Tools & resources
    • Competitive intelligence
    • The long tail
    • A/B testing
  • Copywriting
    • Headlines
    • Ad copy
    • Display URL vs. actual URL
  • How to set up campaigns
    • Google AdWords
      • Campaigns
      • AdGroups
      • Match types
      • Negative keyword lists
      • Content network
    • Yahoo!
    • Others
  • Bidding strategies
  • Executing the plan and managing the campaign
    • National, regional and local strategies
    • How many keywords to start with
    • Large vertical strategies
    • Niche market strategies
    • Ecommerce strategies
    • Paid inclusion
    • Timing:
      • Seasonal
      • Day of week
      • Day parting
    • Limited search inventory vs. cost-effectiveness
  • Adapting SEM plans to ever-changing competitive marketplaces
  • Cross-media effects
  • Approaches for small vs. large advertisers
  • Consumer vs. B2B search engine marketing
  • Issues and implications
    • Trademark & legal issues
    • Costs of keywords
    • User/searcher issues

• Local Search
  • Is it right for me?
  • Local search players
  • Local search budgets

• Landing Page Development
  • What happens when users leave the search engine
  • How does the landing page effect search engine marketing results
  • Landing page best practices
  • Landing page testing
  • Landing page optimization

• Search Engine Metrics & Campaign Optimization
  • Search engine marketing metrics and optimization
  • Developing and assessing metrics for SEO and performance-based programs
    • Determining the appropriate ROI measures
    • Measuring branding and other intangibles
  • How to optimize your SEM efforts
    • Establishing appropriate costs/visitor and costs/action
    • Beyond the click – understanding lifetime value of visitors & customers
    • Understanding & making trade-offs
    • Refining search goals and programs

• Search Engines & Tool Vendors
  • A map of industry players, capabilities, features, functions & benefits

• Wrap Up and Q&A