My ‘day job’ involves managing multiple search engine marketing campaigns across different search engines. Anyone who has worked in an in-house SEM role would likely agree that keeping track of interface changes, competitors and A/B testing of ad units is no walk in the park.

To complicate matters even more when one is managing a campaigns that use broad terms its likely that the terms wind up not only competing with one’s competitors in the category, but also with one’s self.

In the category ‘automotive’ it’s likely that the key phrase “Sports Utility Vehicle” would be chosen. But let’s say you have several product managers responsible for the promotion of their lines. The tendency is to immediate use the keyword ‘Sports Utility Vehicle’ for all lines regardless of the fact that it competes with others in the business.

Figure 1

Each of the automotive lines in Figure 1 (above) are prime targets for ‘Sports Utility Vehicle’ among countless others. If no additional analysis were given then the product manager for the Escape would compete head-to-head with the vehicles in the same category – not an effective use of the promotional budget.

A Different Approach

If a search marketer does the heavy lifting required to manage their campaigns using a complex network of spreadsheets he / she can overcome this challenge. But let’s face it, tools are better at this type of work. The space remains relatively young, but I recently happened across a start-up in NYC that currently offers a Beta product which solves this and many more of the common challenges facing search marketers today – Clickable.com. Clickable ties directly into the Google, Yahoo! and Live Search SEM interfaces. Accessing the data directly it provides a real-time heat map which shows where a marketers attentions needs to be applied first.

The interface is very robust and allows one to drill down into the data using a rich flex(?) interface. They are currently working to allow for the data to be exported in the common file formats, but that feature continues to be on the to-do list.

Earlier in this posting I wrote about the keyword dilemma. Well they haven’t yet solved for that, but the feedback I provided in my discussion was received with great enthusiasm – I look forward to the inclusion of this feature as the product rolls into its Gold Version.

Check out Clickable here >