In March, 2005, the online marketing community site
MarketingProfs tapped
Alan Rimm-Kaufman to write an essay and RFP on “
Choosing A Search Marketing Vendor.” The following RFP accompanies that essay.
Our thanks to I-Prospect for their thoughtful comments.
| Which keyword-based paid search engines do you currently manage for clients? |
| Do you provide your clients with an account manager to provide guidance and strategy on their paid search advertising strategy? |
| Do clients work with the same individual account manager ongoing, or work with a pool of account managers? |
| How many clients does each account manager manage? |
| Do you supply clients with a tool with which they manage their campaigns without the assistance of an account manager? |
| If yes, is this a proprietary tool, or that of a third party? |
| If third party, which third party tool do you supply? |
| Describe the specific type and duration of training provided to account managers to manage client’s paid search campaigns, and how long they are with the company before they manage client accounts. |
| What method do you use to develop search terms, ad copy, and destination URLs? |
| What is the median number of search terms you manage for each client? |
| What is the largest number of search terms you are managing for one client? |
| What is the median monthly search advertising spend of your clients? |
| How many active keyword-based paid search clients do you currently have? |
| What is the monthly search advertising expense of your largest client? |
| What tracking tool do you use to count clicks, cost, and conversions? |
| What changes must clients make to their site to support your tracking platform? |
| How long does it take a typical client to implement these changes? |
| Does your tracking tool support the tracking of conversions? |
| Does your tracking tool support the tracking of sales? |
| Does your tracking tool support the tracking of leads? |
| Does your tracking tool support the tracking of catalog requests? |
| Can you tag inbound traffic to a client’s site to support web analytics packages? |
| If so, which packages? |
| In which languages do you provide keyword-based search marketing services? |
| What tool do you use for bid management? |
| What is the theoretical basis of your bidding approach? |
| Does your bidding tool automatically seek to optimize a client’s success metric? |
| On which success metrics can your tool optimize a paid search campaign? |
| How often do you update bids? |
| Does your bidding tool support time-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonal strategies? |
| Does your bidding tool differentiate non-content from content search ads? |
| How many hours of down-time (both planned and unplanned) has your bid tool experienced during the last year? |
| Do you offer a product or service designed to increase a client’s site conversion ratio? |
| What tool do you use for reporting? |
| Do you have a web interface for reports that clients can access whenever they wish? |
| Can clients request custom reports? |
| Can clients request ad-hoc special analyses? |
| Can you provide raw atomic data to clicks (clicks, visits, sales, items, etc.) on request? |
| Do you report on both actual phrase searched and phrase advertised? |
| Do you reports present results both with and without the client’s brand name? |
| Do your reports present results both with and without content advertising? |
| Do you base reports on actual clicks and cost data as reported by the search engines? |
| Do you reconcile clicks as reported by the search engines with visits received by your clients? |
| How do you detect and respond to fraudulent clicks? |
| Do you reconcile sales reported by your tracking tool with sales reported by the client’s tracking tool? |
| Can you handle batched order data (adding in phone orders, flagging fraudulent orders, etc.)? |
| Can your tracking account for telephone orders driven by search ads? |
| Does your tool support ad copy and destination URL testing? |
| Do you provide local search services? |
| Do you produce and place graphical search ads? |
| Do you provide references from current clients? |
| Do you provide references from former clients? |
| Discuss how your firms stays abreast of current best practices in keyword-based paid search. |
| Discuss your relationship with the major search engines (certifications, API involvement, support level, etc.) as pertains to paid search marketing. |
| What differentiates your firm from your competitors as it relates to keyword-based paid placement search advertising? |
| What is your pricing model for keyword-based paid search marketing services? |
| Please provide specific details on what tasks are provided to clients as part of your paid search marketing service. |
| In 70 characters or fewer, explain why a client should choose your firm for paid search marketing.
|
| How many active paid-inclusion and feed-based clients do you currently have? |
| To which paid search inclusion programs/engines/sites do you submit content for your clients? |
Manual submission | | To which paid inclusion programs/engines/sites do you submit content for your clients manually? |
| How often do you manually submit content for clients? |
Feed generation | | To which paid inclusion programs/engines/sites do you submit content for your clients via feeds? |
| How often do you generate and submit feeds for clients? |
| If you generate feeds, how, and how often, do you optimize feeds? |
| Do you generate feeds in-house, or do you outsource feed construction? |
| Do you submit feeds through a third party, or do you have a direct relationship with the engines accepting these feeds? |
| To which engines do you submit directly? |
| What tracking tool do you use to count clicks, cost, and conversions? |
| What changes must clients make to their site to support your tracking? |
| How long does it take a typical client to implement these changes? |
| How do you detect and respond to fraudulent clicks? |
| Does your tool support testing? If so, discuss. |
| How do you optimize feeds? |
| Does your optimization method seek to optimize a client success metric? If so, which metrics are supported? |
| Do you offer a product or service designed to increase a client’s site conversion ratio? |
| Do you provide references from current clients? |
| Do you provide references from former clients? |
| What is the median number of paid inclusion ads you manage for each client? |
| What is the largest number of paid inclusion ads you manage for one client? |
| What is the median monthly search paid inclusion and feed-based search marketing spend of your clients? |
| How many active keyword-based paid search clients do you currently have? |
| What is the monthly search advertising expense of your largest client? |
| Discuss how your firm stays abreast of current best practices in feed-based search. |
| Discuss your relationship with the major paid inclusion and feed-based engines (certifications, APIs, support level, etc.). |
| What is your pricing model for paid-inclusion and feed-based marketing services? |
| Please provide specific details on what tasks are provided to clients as part of your paid inclusion marketing service. |
| Describe the objectives of a typical organic search marketing project for your firm. |
| Describe the scope of a typical organic search marketing project for your firm. |
| Describe the duration of a typical organic search marketing project for your firm. |
| How many organic search marketing clients do you currently have? |
| Stand-alone advice: Can clients hire your firm to assess their site and provide recommendations for improving their organic search results (without your firm necessarily implementing those recommendations)? |
| Stand-alone training: Can clients hire your firm to train their staff on improving their organic search results (without your firm necessarily implementing those recommendations)? |
| Advice and implementation: Can clients hire your firm to assess their site and implement changes to improve their organic search results? |
| What is a one-word keyword for which you have obtained a high ranking on Google for one of your clients? |
| What ranking does it have and among how many competing pages? |
| Do you develop terms lists for clients? |
| Do you host pages for clients? |
| Do you build new pages for clients that are placed on the client’s site? |
| Do you revise existing client pages? |
| Do you write content for clients? If so, discuss. |
| Do you obtain inbound links for clients? If so, discuss. |
| Do you offer programming services for clients? If so, discuss services provided and platforms supported. |
| Do you offer submission services for clients? |
| Do you provide ongoing tracking and reporting for clients? |
| What changes must clients make to their site to support your tracking? |
| How long does it take a typical client to implement these changes? |
| Is your tracking based on client log analysis? |
| Can you track incremental sales or conversions resulting from organic optimization efforts? |
| How many months does it take for your typical client to see sales or conversion increases? |
| Do you offer a product or service designed to increase a client’s site conversion ratio? |
| Discuss how your firm stays abreast of current best practices in organic search optimization. |
| List search engine optimization tactics which your firm considers unethical and refuses to use. |
| Do you provide references from current clients? |
| Do you provide references from former clients? |
| What differentiates your firm from your competitors as it relates to organic search optimization? |
| What is your pricing model for organic search marketing services? |
| Please provide specific details on what tasks are provided to clients as part of your organic SEO service. |
