My son Ethan, who has been reading the Harry Potter books, requested “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” movie for Christmas. Like most parents, I typed “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie” into Google. Unlike most parents, I became completely engrossed in critiquing the paid search ads.
The top position paid search result is shown below.
As a digital marketing professional, I would give this ad a ‘B-‘. The title – via a Google trick – repeats back the keywords entered. On the good side, the actual ad text contains ‘Blood Prince DVD’ which does acknowledge my search request. Additionally, the free shipping promotion is useful given no familiarity with www.HotMovieSale.com. I would have given the ad a ‘B+’ if it had described the different formats (i.e. Blue Ray, DVD, Wide Screen) available. An ‘A’ ad would have provided the actual price rather than the filler words “Low Prices”.
Wal-Mart, of course, also advertises for movies. You can view their Google advertisement in response to my search below. I’ll give Wal-Mart’s ad a generous ‘D-’.
Wal-Mart’s first and biggest mistake is that they do not acknowledge my search. Wal-Mart simply tells me it has the “newest movies” and they “cost less”. The wording of the ad makes me suspicious that after clicking on the ad, I will have to search through a million titles to find the ‘Half Blood Prince’ movie I had already requested. On a related note, I would wager that Wal-Mart is paying higher on a per click basis than the www.hotmoviesale.com website due to the poor ad quality. The only reason this ad did not receive an ‘F’ is that if you click on the ad, Wal-Mart does display Half-Blood Prince DVDs to be purchased. Of course, Wal-Mart does this with a search string which is sub-optimal compared with sending the consumer to the direct page.
The take-away for every small and middle-market business is that more times than not the big guys are beatable even in this case where millions of Half-Blood Prince movies will be sold. The take-away for a Fortune 500 CMO is that you’re leaving money on the table if your SEM campaigns resembles Walmart’s.
Posted by Jeff Aliotta
