Fantasy sports continue to attract more interest each year. The concept of assembling a dream team of elite players, watching them outperform and raking in the profits is very appealing and addictive to many.

Since there are never enough sport analogies in the business world, let’s apply these fantasy team concepts to SEM. If you were to assemble your own SEM fantasy team, what would it look like?

The Fantasy SEM Team Roster. You can’t play any sport without a full team. What does a full team for SEM include? You need team members to both attract visitors to your website and then convert them once they get to your site.

Here’s what your starting lineup should include:

The Offense: Get them to your site.

Paid Search Keywords. Star keywords are short tail enough to get great volume and make a competitive stand, but yet specific enough to get you real results. You’ll need to think in terms of the search refinement path and the buying cycle so that you have all the necessary assist impressions and clicks as well as those that actually convert. The dream team keywords often come with a steeper price tag, but frequently contribute far superior rewards.

Paid Search Ad Copy Unique Offer Descriptors. These are the snippets in your ad that make your ad stand out from the competition. These grab searchers and say “hey- look at me and this amazing thing I have.” You’ll need a couple of different ones so you aren’t always showing the same line to searchers as they head down the search path.

Paid Search Ad Copy Calls to Action. These ad copy snippets motivate searchers to click and act. Create a sense of urgency and be specific about what they can expect and what you want them to do.

SEO Keywords. These are the keyword searches that would enable you to crush your competition on the natural search side. It’s important for these keywords to have great chemistry with the paid search keywords. When you’ve got a presence in both the paid and natural results on a page, your click-through rate will skyrocket.

SEO Link Bait. Your link bait can come in many different forms – original and valuable content is key here. It’s especially important for your link bait to play well with your SEO keywords, to give your rank the boost it needs.

The Defense: Stop visitors from leaving your site before converting.

Website Smack Talkers. No fantasy team would be complete without some smack. Highlight your benefits over the competition on your web pages. Make it as easy as possible for searchers to understand how you line up and what you have to offer that’s unique and better.

Website Credibility Givers. Showing awards and including reviews are good ways to make yourself shine and provide credibility.
Website Calls to Action. Without a score, even if you play great, it just doesn’t pay off. This is one of the spots where you can even use a player to play both offense and defense. If you have a call to action that’s working in your paid search ads or website, don’t be afraid to use the same one in both locations.

Remarekting ads. Rebounding is always important. If someone gets away from your site without converting, get back out there and try to lure them back in. Don’t give up because you didn’t make a score on your first try.

Fantasy SEM Tips for Success:

Here are a few tips for assembling and managing a winning Fantasy SEM Team:

Create Team Chemistry. Not only do they have to be great stars themselves, but it’s important that the members of your team have good chemistry between them and be on the same page. Consistent keywords, while providing broad coverage and consistent messaging without being repetitive to death are important. Your team members should create a cohesive tightly woven message.

Foster Team Competition. Even star performers can get a bit lazy if there isn’t some competition continually pushing them to do their best. Always have a set of backup players practicing every day and giving your stars a run for their money.

Reward Consistent Performance. Nothing is more frustrating than a great click here and there, but otherwise dismal performance. This is your dream team, not the minor leagues, if a piece of your team can’t perform consistently it should take the bench.

Keep Scouting. Don’t miss out on a hot new keyword, rising pain point or new critical feature. You need to continually keep tabs on the market place to make sure you spot and incorporate sleepers into your team to stay on top.

Monitor Competition. Keep an eye on all of your competitor’s moves. Do they have new messaging? Are they showing up for new keywords? Have they retired anything that wasn’t working? Are they copying any of your techniques? Always stay a step ahead and stay unique. Never be caught off guard.

Be Prepared for Challenges. As with any stars, your fantasy SEM team will likely have high drama associated with them. They will be in high demand, people will try to steal them from you, copy their techniques, etc. They also don’t come with ease, don’t come for free and don’t stay unless they are continually nurtured.

Become Addicted to Stats. As with any fantasy league, watching your star performers work in action is half the fun. Luckily reporting is easily available for much of SEM, so you can kick back on the couch, crack open a cold one and watch you fantasy SEM team work wonders – getting clicks, having visitors spend quality time on your site and bringing in “the Quan.”

Don’t Let Gut & Emotions Rule. There are going to be some offers and some keywords that in your gut you really want to be star performers, but when you look at the data, they just won’t be. Don’t let your emotions take over and put your non-performers on the bench.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize. It’s not free to play and the stakes are high, so you better stay focused on winning. Keep focused on how you are performing against your goals and in comparison to your competition. You might decide that second or third prize has enough cash for you, but you’ll need to monitor where you are in line, not that one of your competitors goes out and adds in some new messaging or keywords that crushes you.

Keep a Consistent Strategy. There is a lot of hype around SEM and people with new strategies and schemes every day. It’s important to tune out the noise and stick with your strategy until you are sure (based on the facts) that it needs tweaking.

Staying focused on an elite fantasy SEM team, can be a great strategy for achieving these 3 main SEM goals:

1. Make a name for yourself
2. Crush your competition
3. Make money

And there’s nothing wrong with those outcomes, right?  So assemble your team and take your league by storm today!

I like search engines – they quickly find what I am looking for and don’t talk back.  I can visit them when I like, ask about as many search terms as I want and the search engine responds in a speedy fashion with more information than I could ever find the time to read.

Because the search engine is such a trusty sidekick, we quickly forgive it when there is the occasional irrelevant result.  We have become so accustomed to irrelevant results spattered about, that our eyes are actually trained to quickly glaze over anything that doesn’t exactly match.  Search engines even help us with this by bolding the results that parrot our requests.  Even if we accidentally click on an irrelevant link, we can immediately bounce back to the search engine after realizing our mistake.

Since searchers have become such expert results cruisers, can a PPC ad that is not directly offering what you are looking for persuade you not only to click, but to actually consider an alternative? We continually see advertisers trying to stretch the limits here, so let’s analyze some examples.

Let’s say you are hungry for dinner and have decided on pizza.  You do a search for pizza in your town and Google includes an ad for Thai food.  You are not at all likely to click on that ad or even read it.  The Thai ad will get the “irrelevant” glaze-over.

Some advertisers argue that you could all of a sudden say, “Yeah, I’ll have Thai instead!”  But the likelihood is so low that it’s not worth it.  Too much of this “stretch” advertising can actually hurt you: garnering lots of impressions and no clicks can quickly damage your quality score. (And you don’t want a bad quality score!)

However, there are situations where “stretch” advertising is necessary.  Two typical examples are:  1) a new type of product or offering; and, 2) out-maneuvering your competitors.

These are a smaller stretch, but require careful crafting in order to avoid the “irrelevant” glaze-over as the ad will not be what the searcher thinks he is looking for.  Here are some tips for successful “stretch” advertising:

Do not use a “generic” ad. We all have them – an ad that includes your brand, its key benefits and a call to action.  This ad is guaranteed to get the glaze-over.  Instead:

First, your ad must be specific to the search term and very catchy.  Feed on your competitor’s weakness; use the keywords in your ad to get yourself bolded; ask questions that prompt further reading.

Second, once you’ve avoided the glaze-over, your ad needs to justify a click.  Why are you better?  What reward awaits the searcher that clicks on your ad?  Very strong draws are required here – much stronger than your typical call to action.

Do not use a “generic” landing page. Using your home page as your landing page is always a bad idea and in this case, it’s absolute death.  Your landing page is your only chance to seal the deal and persuade the searcher you are worth a try.  Think about where the user is coming from and clearly articulate your benefit in those terms.    Keeping with the theme of your ad a big catchy headline, short bullets and “offer completion steps” on the same page are good starting points.

Include some form of reward or guarantee in your offer.  You are asking someone to divert from their original intention, so incentivize them.  Do they get something for free?  Receive a discount?  Get some form of guarantee?  Why should they bother?

Make yourself sticky. Some of us (present company excluded) are a bit stubborn.  So even though the searcher might not change their mind on the spot, provide an easily memorable way for them to come back and find you.  Try a catchy brand name or URL and make sure you rank #1 in the natural search results for your persuasion taglines.

Just to reiterate, you should only use such tactics when absolutely necessary, and where you think you have a real chance at success. If you’re not careful, your quality score may take a fatal hit.