Search Engine Land Guest Writer Is Dissing Bid Management Again

Okay once again Search Engine Land is allowing a guest poster write an article against bid management programs, but at least this time it is not being sponsored by a company offering bid management.

Two months ago I wrote about an article that covered much the same ground. This time there is more detail but again there is a flaw in the logic. While agree that small PPC management may not need such a program, any middle and up sized effort can benefit from using bid management.

The author, Kelly Gillease is the Marketing Director at Viator, an online travel information site, feels that people are pressured in to using the software when it is not needed. Then lays out an agrument that suggests since the programs are reactive as opposed to proactive suggesting that in itself is bad.

What is not mentioned is that the SEM should use the statistics that these programs offer to make the changes, build more keywords, write better creatives and landing pages. Good bid management will include the impact of different ads and landing pages.

The results are what they use to make the decisions, since you can’t know what move to truly make without feedback. Blind changes should not be done “using human’s industry knowledge and experience”. The time saved using the tools is significant as anyone who has done the numerous pivot tables needed to integrate various engines’ results. Time that can be used to make the other changes that a diligent SEM should do.

I realize this is another article written by a guest, but two such articles in two months has to suggest something.

Maybe they should be reading articles such as Ron Jones series on the topic. Small companies get the benefit of using software instead of hiring extra bodies, larger ones just need it to deal with the mass of information.