The B Team

Secondary search — the use of a secondary search-engine marketing team to complement existing search campaigns — can do wonders for a company. But for many marketers it's still under the radar.

Let's say a large firm has a rigorous SEM program that it keeps in house or outsources. To gain the benefits of secondary search, the business would engage an entirely new SEM team to bid on keywords with different ad text and landing pages.

There are distinct advantages to such a division of efforts. Primarily, organizations that do so can expect to dominate search-engine positions, outmaneuver industry competitors and maximize syndication when the search engines display ads in different media. The idea is similar to a country that does all it can to win an Olympic gold medal…but also works hard to pick up some silvers and bronzes.

Having a second, walled-off team allows organizations to do things that'd be impossible under a single roof. For example, the major search engines make it hard to lock up multiple paid positions in a single search campaign. But a secondary search team makes this easy to achieve. A company's lead SEM team can concentrate on gaining top placement for primary keywords while a secondary group can focus on lower positions.

Testing is another advantage. Anytime a firm can see its primary SEM efforts (the control) compared against an entirely separate campaign (the test), great insight can be gained. Remember, SEM's goal is not about search-engine positioning — it's about return on investment.

What delivers the highest ROI? Paying a premium for higher placement? Paying less for lower placement? Or having both? Only testing can reveal the answer.

And, of course, having multiple suppliers for any business process is the best way of keeping vendors honest. This is even true (maybe especially true) when the “vendor” is an in-house team. Our clients that use secondary search have no qualms about letting us know that our work is being measured against that of others and that they have readily available benchmarks by which to compare our success or failure.

You may wonder if secondary search is logical in the auction environment that is SEM. Is it really wise to bid against oneself? But consider that since you're bidding up keywords to get multiple placement rather than simply premium placement, it can make perfect sense. And if you go into the process with discipline and specific goals — such as your primary team aiming for positions 1 to 3 and your secondary team angling for positions 4 through 6 — you can eliminate conflicts.

You might also question whether the search engines are on board with the whole practice of secondary search. Well, they are. While they don't care for an company jamming up primary keywords in a single campaign, they're fine with separate teams with separate budgets on separate campaigns working toward the same goals. When search becomes more granular it's easier for users to find the exact information (and landing pages) they seek. In short, since the user experience is improved, the search engines are content with the practice.

Firms with large online presences are the ones choosing secondary search the most these days. In some cases several different vendors are used depending on the SEM program's scale and complexity. The central tenet they follow is that search continues to grow. Since they usually dominate top positions already, they want to be included in that growth rather than seeing more competitors enter the fray.

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LARRY ORGAN (larry.organ@consumerbase.com) is CEO and founder of ConsumerBase LLC in Evanston, IL.

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