The Soap Opera

The Soap Opera

Google AdWords Campaign

University of Wisconsin Whitewater Graduate School of Business

Spring 2006

Class:

Internet Marketing 772

Instructor:

Dr. Marilyn Lavin

By:

Ali Tolga Agrali,

Patrick Becker,

and Renee Becker

Table of Contents

1Search Words/Phrases

The Search for Applicable AdWords Words and Phrases

Final Selections

2Copy for Keyword

3 Geographic Area

Globally

North America

Regionally

Locally

Geographic Summation

Final Selection

4Budget for Campaign

5Rationale for the Budget

Budget Distribution Analysis

Maximum Cost Per Click

Conclusion

Appendix A: ‘soap’

Appendix B: ‘patchouli’, ‘maja soap’

References

1

1Search Words/Phrases

For simplicity, we have made the following three assumptions for the first part of this paper: We have assumed a $500 budget, a generic 8-month period of time, and are interested in advertising nationally.

The Search for Applicable AdWords Words and Phrases

‘soap’

The word ‘soap’ is an obvious choice. However, it is likely to be too general of a search term for our $500 8-month budget. However, we need a baseline to compare other keywords with. The estimated costs and volume of clicks for ‘soap’, for the entire US, is as follows:

Based on this estimate, the $500 budget would be exhausted in about a day. Obviously s more specific keywords, or phrases, are needed. It also may help to narrow the geographic region, though we will discuss that point later in this document.

Overture ( a division of Yahoo Inc., offers a free keyword selector tool. It offers search rates in Yahoo for a variety of complimentary or similar words or phrases. This is superior to the Google tool, which only offers possible keywords. Inputting ‘soap’ into this tool gives the suggestions in appendix A. Our baseline word, ‘soap’, was searched 76,579 times in February 2006, on Yahoo!.

The first phrase on the list in appendix ‘A’ that comes to mind after visiting the homepage of the soap opera is ‘glycerin soap’. This is still likely too broad of a term, though is it more specific than ‘soap’. We input it into the Google traffic estimator, using English for language, and US for region:

These results are much improved. Our $500 budget would last about 90 days. Some careful selection of days with in the 8-month period would be the only additional step needed. For example, advertising only on weekends (Friday – Sunday) is a potential scenario. However, this is just one praise of many that a potential customer might use to find a supplier such as the soap opera. Also, the cost per click is more expensive than ‘soap’, at a little over $1 per click.

A less searched term from the list on appendix ‘A’ is ‘organic soap’. For comparison, we input this phrase into the Google ad words traffic estimator with the same other settings:

This praise is a little less expensive than organic soap, and would likely result in a few less clicks per day. Using this key phrase alone, our $500 budget would last about 166 days, or around five and a half months running daily. It is a good fit to the budget. However, this term does not a clear connection to the unique products that the soap opera offers. For example: this term does not appear on the company store homepage.

Title Tag Keywords

Perhaps a more distinctive phrase, or phrases, could be found that better match the company offerings. The first phrase in the homepage’s title tag is ‘maja soap’. This is followed by ‘primal elements soap’, ‘mason pearson brushes’, and ‘ahava hand cream’. The Google AdWords Traffic estimates for these phrases are:

These results are interesting. They have vastly different cost per clicks. It can safely be assumed that other companies are using the later two praises as their AdWords, with some serious competitiveness over the ahava hand cream key phrase.

What is Searched for by Customers?

After exploring thesoapopera.com, we were overwhelmed by the wide selection of very unique products from around the world. Wishing to find some more specific search terms that would reflect the distinctiveness of the soap opera, one of our group members went down to The Soap Opera to look at the products they have on display and speak to some of the employees. We hoped that this would help us to learn about the actual store itself and help us to narrow down our ideas for possible AdWords.

The store itself was packed with unique, colorful, and attractive products just like their web site. She even saw some familiar products form the web site, like some of the soaps. She also noticed that they had a sign up advertising their web site by some of the soaps. But once again there were a lot of products to look at so Renee opted to actually speak to some of the store employees to try and gain some insight into their products and sales.

Renee spoke with two different employees. They were each asked which product sells the best, what attracts people to their store, which brands sell the best, and what their top three products are. The first employee stated that everything sells very well; but that they are known for their wide selection of natural products that they import from around the world that people in and around Madison cannot buy anywhere else locally. The second employee stated that there was not one particular product that sold the best. He said that he could not even list the top three best sellers in their store. But he did say that a lot of people specifically come in and ask for products containing patchoulin. He stated that patchoulin is a natural ingredient that is in a lot of the most popular products they sell like soaps, shampoos, lotions, fragrances, and oils. He lastly stated that any products containing patchoulin sell very well.

Renee decided to look at some of the products to see if she could find any name brands that were consistently listed on number of products through out the store. She thought that some of the brands that had multiple products being sold in the store and on-line might be another source of AdWords. Burt Bees and Crabtree and Evelyn were two name brands that Renee recognized as being high quality and natural products that other people on the Internet might recognize and look for. The group thought that those brand names might get more hits than specific ingredients, but they also might be more expensive in cost per click.

After comparing the on-line store and the shop on State Street we determined that the atmosphere presented in each was very similar. Our own observations about the web site like the natural products that were very unique also were consistent with Renee’s findings in the store. We decided that we would take the information we learned from the stores employees and use it for our campaign. We started out by investigating and researching patchoulin by entering it into the AdWords traffic estimator.

Investigating ‘patchoulin’

The AdWords Traffic estimate for “patchoulin’ is unclear:

Also, Overture’s search tool also lacked in results for ‘patchoulin’.

Patchoulin is an oil, and is the common name for Pogostemon Cablin Oil. AdWords traffic estimator results for this phrase is:

‘pogostemon’, or ‘pogostemon cablin’, clearly does occasionally get searched on Google, yet is not competitively sought as an adword. It has definite possibilities to bring in some business occasionally.

The Overture keyword selection tool comes up with the following search frequencies for ‘pogostemon cablin’:

‘Patchouli’, which is spelled similarly to pathcoulin, is a frequently searched term on yahoo, with 6,887 searches in February 2006. Frequently searched phrases containing ‘patchouli’ include ‘patchouli oil’ (4,835 searches),‘patchouli candle’ (1,071 searches), and ‘patchouli soap’ (265 searches). The complete list of similar phrases is in appendix ‘B’. The Google AdWords traffic estimates are:

‘Patchouli’ has a surprising 3-4 clicks per day estimate, and is reasonably priced as compared to competitively used phrases such as ‘ahava hand cream’. Using ‘patchouli’ alone with our $500, 8-month, budget would yield 71 days, or about two days per week.

Meta Tags

One final search was to review the meta tags in use on the company home page. We assume that these keywords and phrases reflect popular and profitable items sold on the company on-line store. From this we found two additional phrases, ‘bert bees’, and ‘crabtree evylin’. Interestingly ‘patchouli crabtree and evylin’ is one of the suggested search terms in Appendix B, Overture’s keyword suggestions for the ‘patchouli’ keyword. The Google AdWords traffic estimates for these two phrases is:

‘Crabtree evelyn’ is rather expensive per click. Also, the estimated frequency would exhaust the budget in less than a week. ‘bert bees’ is less expensive, comparable in cost per click and estimated clicks per day to some of the other brand names in the home page’s title tag.

Final Selections

We have come up with a number of valid words and phrases that have good potential of driving customers to the Soap Opera’s web store. However, the estimated costs per click are expensive for some. Also, the estimated traffic is low, less than one per day, for others. Finding a happy medium, while staying within budget, is a challenge.

We feel it would be best to focus on just one or two keywords or phrases, in order to maximize the response for the relatively small budget. As the company gains experience with Google’s AdWords, other keywords or phrases could be tested.

‘pathcouli’

We strongly suggest the use of the keyword ‘patchouli’ as one of these choices. It is a distinctive commonality for many of the stores products. Store employees specifically suggested this keyword as something distinctive about the store offerings. They went on to state that customers specifically come to the store and request products that contain patchouli oil.

Additional support for this keyword is the estimated click frequency, of 3-4 per day. This is sufficient traffic to have a noticeable impact on the store’s bottom line over time. It has been proven that buying behavior on-line is similar to buying behavior in stores. Having in-store customers specifically requesting products containing patchouli should transfer well to the same search being performed on-line. Also, we feel that patchouli is a specific enough search term to result in a high-completed sale percentage for customers found using Google’s AdWords advertising. These people are likely to be searching for a source to buy products containing patchouli oil, such as soap and hand cream.

‘maja soap’

We suggest a second potential search keyword/phrase of ‘maja soap’. Being that ‘maja soap’ is the first item listed in their title and meta tag, we assumed it must be an important product that they sell. It has one of the lowest costs per click for the brand and trade names featured in the store’s title and meta tags. Also, maja soap is offered at the top of the store’s home page, suggesting that it is a good selling, and profitable, item.

‘Maja Soap’ has a much lower estimated click through rate than ‘patchouli’, though should still bring in some clicks, and sales, of Maja soap. Overture’s keyword suggestion tool showed 252 searches for ‘maja soap’ on Yahoo! in March 2006. Additionally, there were no other variations of the phrase of any relevance, as shown in Appendix B.

Traffic and Cost Estimate

The Google AdWords traffic and cost estimates for a campaign using both ‘patchouli’ and ‘maja soap’, for the entire US, is:

From this estimate we can see that ‘patchouli’ is likely to be the driving force in this advertising campaign.

2Copy for Keyword

In order to make an educated decision about which words to include for the copy of The Soap Opera, we felt like we had to do more research than just looking at all of the wonderful products that were listed on their web page. We started by looking at what exact products we saw dominating the majority of Soap Operas’ web pages. We noticed that they were selling a lot of different kinds of soaps, hair products, lotions, oils, and other bath products as was consistent with their store on State Street. We concluded that The Soap Opera’s website targets the same luxury item shoppers target market as the company’s store.

Our next logical step was to look at The Soap Opera’s title tags and meta tags. Their title tag was listed as <title.Maja soap, mango soap, primal elements soap, mason pearson brushes ahava hand cream</title>. Their meta tag was listed as <meta=maja soap, mango soap, primal elements soap, mason pearson brushes, ahava and cream, glycerin soap, natural hair conditioners, natural handmade soap, natural sea sponge, bath body splash, perfume oils, vic complection cloth”>. We thought that looking at the meta and title tags we could see what products The Soap Opera thought were important.

After comparing out list from their web page, the actual store, and the meta and title tags, we decided that a more simple approach would be best to try and capture people searching for general items and more specific items. Simple approach meaning that we decided to use the words ‘patchouli’ and ‘maja soap’ to try and direct a niche in The Soap Operas market base who look for ‘maja soap’ or products that contain ‘patchouli.’ The people who are searching on these key words would probably be looking to buy a certain product as opposed to people who search for just ‘soap.’

Taking some of their most featured products like glycerin and maja soap, which are natural products, we thought it would be best to include the words ‘natural’ and ‘soaps’ in the beginning of the copy. We then thought since we learned from store employees that products containing patchouli were their best sellers, we should list some of those more general products in the copy assuming that some people searching on the web would be looking for those items with a specific ingredient in them. We were told lotions, perfumes, and oils also contained patchouli so those were the next words we decided to include in our copy. We hoped that some people looking for specific items like maja soap or glycerin soap would look at the copy and decide to continue on to thesoapopera.com.

We thought that trying to include specific keywords like ‘maja’ or ‘patchouli’ in the copy itself would be restrictive in the range of products that are offered in the advertisement. This is particularly true in the case of the ‘patchouli’ keyword, which is the workhorse of this campaign. We feel that customers would be searching for products containing patchouli, and not patchouli oil itself. This includes soap containing patchouli. By simply stating ‘Imported natural soaps’, both searches for soap containing patchouli, and maja soap, are covered.

Using the keywords ‘maja’ or patchouli’ to search would lead people to the copy. The copy that would come up would show the products like soaps and lotions that patchouli and maja are ingredients of. People who come into the store are looking for soaps, lotions, oils, and fragrances that contain patchouli, as we were told by knowledgeable store employees. We thought that some of the same people who are fans of products containing patchouli would search the same way on the Internet looking for products that contain patchouli. Especially since The Soap Opera can ship their loyal fans favorites right to their door.