How large are your campaigns?

[kjripp]

I'm just curious to know from all the in-house SEMs - how many keywords are you currently managing in your PPC campaigns? How much time (per week, in hours) do you currently devote to overall management of your campaigns?

Currently, I manage 3000+ keywords on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Looksmart, plus I do it all manually (no bid management tools) because my company doesn't want to pay for bid management. I spend roughly 20-25 hours a week managing my campaigns.

~Kari

[Mel66]

15,000 KWs, 4 engines (G, Y, MSN, Ask), 40+ hours/week. :)

[kjripp]

Hi Mel,

What segment/industry are you in? Do you use bid management?

[Mel66]

Magazine subscriptions, B to C. We use Atlas for bid management, although it's less helpful in the Quality Score world than it was a few years ago. It does save time in regular bid maintenance, though.

[sportsguy]

Almost zero now - I proved that following the organic path made more sense for our sites. ;)

In the past - 2,000 +, but that was literally years ago - think GoTo.com and you'll get the picture...

[Rajat Garg]

Around 100,000 keywords for 3 SE (Google, Yahoo, MSN).

I was managing it alone until recently (without tools - wonders of working in a startup) but recently managed to get 1 person full time + Omniture search center for bid management. Else, it was not feasible.

[kjripp]

sportsguy - funny you mention goto...I interviewed for a position some months back where I said that my PPC experience goes all the way back to goto, and the interviewer said "wow!".

Rajat - I know what you mean. There is a point where it just can't be done by one person in such large volume. You have to divide your time (meaning, divide your week) between the different platforms, and then you go almost blind looking at keywords and bids on a screen all day. :(

[caugas]

I'm just curious to know from all the in-house SEMs - how many keywords are you currently managing in your PPC campaigns? How much time (per week, in hours) do you currently devote to overall management of your campaigns?

Currently, I manage 3000+ keywords on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Looksmart, plus I do it all manually (no bid management tools) because my company doesn't want to pay for bid management. I spend roughly 20-25 hours a week managing my campaigns.

~Kari

I would like to chime in....

I manage upward to unique 10,000 keywords across all 3 major engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN.....so 30,000 keywords if you triple count :)

I would use more keywords, but it really slows down my interface and navigation within the interfaces.

I do it all manually, mostly because I have not been exposed to a keyword management tool, however, I would love to have it.

I spend up to 15 hours a week on managing these keywords. I would expect like most of you that 10% of your keywords drives 85% of your traffic.

I do however, understand my breakeven cost per click, so I set most 90% of my keywords to my BECPC, and therefore, for the most part my campaigns do come out profitable.

I am in a very niche industry direct sale of uniforms and workwear.

[xoogler]

I manage 5 accounts on G, 26 on Y and one on M appx 1.2M KW's total across all 3. Having used most of the tools out there for bid mgmt, analytics etc... I recommend Efficient Frontier for bid mgmt for many reasons, they are the leader in portfolio mgmt and there is no way people can manually manage even a mid sized account effectively, there are too many variables. you should be MARKETING and that is hard enough as is, creative copy and LPO should be the primary focus of a good search marketer, not being a bid monkey. A good analytics system is required as well, Visual Sciences, Omniture (one and the same now as they merged), Webtrends etc... should be a focus. Imagine 3000 Keywords, assume there are 10 possible bid positions, you are effectively trying to position 10 to the three thousandth power in combinations, too much math! The cost will more than pay for itself over time I assume you.

[kjripp]

...there is no way people can manually manage even a mid sized account effectively, there are too many variables. you should be MARKETING and that is hard enough as is, creative copy and LPO should be the primary focus of a good search marketer, not being a bid monkey.

I agree wholeheartedly - bid work is what I do mostly, and that's about 90% of my time during the week. I hardly have any time to take care of my other marketing tasks - email, social, content management, copywriting - and for a little while I was sales support as well because no one else could do it. So, you can see we operate on a pretty slim staff (I only recently got an assistant).

Unfortunately, unless a bid management system is less than $500 month (and that's stretching it), then it's not in the cards.

Know of anything?

[xoogler]

I agree wholeheartedly - bid work is what I do mostly, and that's about 90% of my time during the week. I hardly have any time to take care of my other marketing tasks - email, social, content management, copywriting - and for a little while I was sales support as well because no one else could do it. So, you can see we operate on a pretty slim staff (I only recently got an assistant).

Unfortunately, unless a bid management system is less than $500 month (and that's stretching it), then it's not in the cards.

Know of anything?
check our efficient frontier express, the fee is around $700/month, well worth it for the lift it will generate. there is a cap of 3500 or so KW's per engine. Another wicked tool to consider is www.clickable.com its solid and very affordable.

[Kevin Heisler]

With SES Chicago coming up, it's a good time to reignite this thread. The questions you're asking are the the most important ones on the Jupiter Research SEM Executive Survey.

Kari, caugas, Rajat, Mel66, sportsguy ... I'll reach out to some more in-house SEMs and ask them to share their thinking. I'm a big fan of robust bid management technology to help marketers manage large, complex campaigns.

Also agree with the need for sophisticated analytics.

I know how tough it is to get technology approved by management. What's the best way to get budget approval? Case studies? Proof of concept? Competitive analysis?

Have you had any success getting buy-in from other divisions? I was at the Oppenheimer digital media conference. Large enterprise SEM was a hot topic.

[Kevin Heisler]

xoogler -- thanks for joining in. Great post. How did you make the decision between Efficient Frontier Express and Clickable.com?

What were some of the key factors? scalability? Portfolio management?