If W. Edwards Deming Were a Search Engine Marketer…

January 24th, 2012 | Written by: Matt LeVeque

WITH THE RECENT economic tough times we are facing it has become more and more important to make sure the work you do is profitable. That is not to say that your work should not always be profitable but I believe in times of prosperity it easy to get sloppy and lose focus on doing the right work that adds the most value to your customer. In Paid Search it is easy to get lost in a sea of keywords and ad creatives making the focus on what matters and what adds value hard to understand. This is where being more process oriented in your work rather than focusing on results can lead to better value-added implementation. The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) process developed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming* provides a frame-work for such value-added work to be completed by following simple, repetitive standardized work. Developing standardized processes for Paid Search ensures quality is built into your campaign designs. Customer satisfaction should increase as a result. Better Paid Search processes also will reduce the time and costs associated with your work. Becoming more process oriented, in economic crisis or prosperity, makes you and your organization more effective and efficient and ultimately more profitable.

Following the PDCA process I’ve listed some guidelines as to how each step applies to a new or existing Paid Search initiative. The guideline is not exhaustive and it is not enough just follow the guideline and assume you are going to be profitable. It is critical for you to standardize each step of the process so it is easy to repeat.


PLAN

Planning is the most critical step in the Paid Search process – when done correctly everything else will fall into place. Planning includes:
Review of Client Website and Offerings
Assessment of PPC Accounts
Assessment of Analytics Implementation
Client Goals and Past performance
Competitive Analysis
Campaign Structure and Design
Keyword Research
Landing Page Development
Ad Creative Development
Budgeting


DO

Once the plan is communicated and agreed to it is time for implementation. Implementation can be broken down into two main areas – PPC Campaign Build and Analytics.

PPC Campaign Build includes:
Campaign Settings
Budgeting
Ad groups
Keywords
Ad creatives
Landing pages
Destination URL tagging
SiteLinks, ProductLinks, etc.

Analytics Implementation includes:
Java script development
Site tagging for analytics packages like VisiStat or Google Analytics
Audit site tagging
Verify conversions are tracking properly
Set up a method for reporting (if this includes using a PPC Platform like Acquisio, additional steps will be needed to import campaigns into third party tools.)


CHECK

Now that you have launched your Paid Search campaigns and allowed then some time to run, it is now time to check the progress.

Monitoring & reporting on progress includes:
Review keyword activity for conversions and Quality Score
Search query mining for new keywords and negative keywords
Review text or display ads for conversion performance
Identify patterns in data for new targeting options
Review audience and demographics performance
Weekly Dashboard review
Monthly Dashboard review & analysis


ACT

Evaluation of the first three steps should provide insight in to ongoing continuous process improvement.

Actionable insights on where and what to do next to improve performance include:
Campaign and ad group targeting
Keyword performance and bid management
Keyword and Search Query expansion
Ad creative performance and future testing
Landing page testing


Again, this is a general guideline to follow. Using the PDCA process alone is not enough to keep quality, customer satisfaction, time, costs and profitability in its most effective and efficient state but it will give you a solid foundation to build from. By following the PDCA process you need to standardize the steps in each part of the process in order to tie those steps back to the amount of time and cost it takes to complete each step. Standardizing the processes allows you to make certain that you are using the most efficient way to complete the various tasks in the fewest amount of steps. Time, they say, is money. And lastly, you need to make sure you are not only following the standardization of the processes, but that you are also choosing to do the right type of work that adds value and meets or exceeds customer satisfaction and expectations.

*Deming’s PDCA (The Deming Cycle) was initially developed by Walter A. Shewhart. In his later years Deming updated PDCA to PDSA replacing the ‘check’ phase with ‘study’ since he felt that ‘check’ emphasized inspection rather than analysis…

Related Articles

American Society for Quality (ASQ) – Plan Do Check Act

Training for Endurance in Lean (with PDCA)