SEM Game: Revolutionize your AdWords accounts

In Digital Menta we don’t like to stop. Our greatest enemy is called routine and so we are continually innovating and looking for new ways and methods to do our job better. The last idea we’ve had is called SEM game and we promise you that after reading this post you’re going to want to try it with your team. Are you ready?

What is a SEM game?

It is a team activity that develops internally in the company and aims to transfer knowledge ABOUT SEM among players: the Account managers. They yield a limited time one of their accounts to another player, who evaluates it in detail and offers recommendations for the campaigns, also detecting new opportunities and weaknesses in the operational practice.

The game is based on constructive critique and also encourages the “Out of the Box” thinking: it promotes the contribution of different ideas, regardless of the real possibilities of carrying them out once the game is finished.

For Account managers it is often difficult to get abstracted in your routine and have a broad view of the possibilities that an account offers: new products that can be used, techniques, methodologies, creativity, etc. The operation occupies most of the time and the strategic thinking arises only occasionally, when analysing the opportunities of expansion. The results of the game will help us to have a more proactive attitude towards the client, planteándole improvements and making proposals before the time comes.

 What is the usefulness of a SEM game?

The accomplishment of a game of these characteristics is done with a clear objective, the same one with which one works in all the agencies of Adwords. This is none other than to increase the performance of your customers’ accounts. Now, in addition to this objective, what else is a SEM Game for?

On an individual level and for each of the company’s ACCOUNT managers, the SEM game is used to:

• Work on the analytical vision.
• Understand different ways of working.
• Learn or refresh optimisation techniques.
• Get new ideas to apply to accounts.
• Encourage creativity.

At the corporate level, the realisation of a SEM game can also be very useful to the company. The game helps:

• Improve communication between your workers.
• Expand the knowledge flow.
• Encourage empowerment.

Why should you already try a SEM game?

• Collaboration and Communication: These are the keys to success in PPC (or any type of marketing activity). To be among the members of the team and to bring new ideas. The variety and experimentation are the basis of the good functioning of the PPC campaigns of our clients and the application of the SEM game in our accounts comes to reinforce this idea.
• Look beyond: The daily work of optimising PPC accounts may leave lack of time for strategic reflection in the long term or delay the process of detecting new opportunities for account development. Most of the time, the creativity of the Account managers is constrained by the daily activities of optimisation.

Do you know what activities add more value to PPC optimisation? Those produced through testing – A new ad copy, for example, can improve the level of account quality And decrease CPCs. Account Managers understand this – through the SEM game they come to share ideas with people from the industry, who are results-oriented. They know the latest developments in the search market and have the competitive knowledge to apply it to an account.

Another interesting thing about the application of the SEM game is that there are a lot of techniques to handle Adwords campaigns and, how many of our accounts are inherited from other Account managers, we already know different ways of working, which extends the Understanding of the strategies of others and brings new ideas. In addition, as each of us has previous experience with different industries, we already know the competition and the most appropriate strategies to apply to our clients, which helps us to gain competitive advantage.

A proactive mindset is actually the most important trait for success in the field of online marketing, which is constantly changing.

How is the SEM game developed?

The SEM Game is divided into three phases:

• Previous phase: in which we choose what account we will share with our companions and we communicate it to the director of the game along with a few descriptive guidelines so that the partner to which it is assigned our account can understand it more easily and have the data we consider most important; As can be the goal of CPA, the red lines that the client marks and everything that we consider relevant and that cannot be extracted directly from the analysis of the account.
• Game phase: We receive the assigned account and we get to work to give with key points that can make them improve their performance. First we should look at the guidelines that we have shared to go into analysing the account. Depending on the complexity of the account, its size and the time we have; This analysis may be deeper or more superficial, or it may be focused on the entire account or campaigns that have the greatest impact on the account or a greater margin for improvement.
  After this analysis we have to outline some “tips” or tips that can help the account manager with the achievement of his objectives.
• Conclusion phase: It is carried out jointly, so that all participants can listen to the conclusions of all the participants and thus be able to take advantage of all the advice, even if they have not been made on their accounts, because also they can be useful to you. They can also intervene to enrich the contributions of their companions. In this last phase of the game, one by one each of the participants will explain to their companions what improvements or optimisations they have seen that are possible to implement in the analysed account.

So was the SEM game in Digital Menta

After sharing the accounts to analyse and share with our colleagues the peculiarities of these, we looked in the calendar one afternoon that all of us had relatively free. It takes time for analysis and subsequent discussion.

The agreed afternoon we put each one hands to work; For almost more than an hour we analysed the account we had been assigned, looking for opportunities for improvement and writing down every detail we saw in order to discuss it later with the account Manager.

Then we gathered the whole team together to put our work in common. It was a great experience because, in addition to receiving great optimisation tips, we were given the opportunity to get to know in greater detail particularities of our peers ‘ accounts.

The SEM game helped us to have a new perspective on the accounts we managed, and the next day the suggested actions were already being applied in the accounts. In some cases it also helped to make new proposals to customers, or to save proposals that can be used later in the accounts.

It helped us to put our analytical capacity into practice, and we saw the differences in the way in which each one performs this study: some at a more generic level, others more detailed or even numerical. All this will also help us to face the next game with more knowledge about how to do the study of the accounts.

Advantages and disadvantages of the SEM Game

Advantages of the SEM game:

•  Improvement Tips for our accounts: The main personal advantage for each of us to participate in the SEM game is that we get a series of improvements in the form of constructive criticism that so far had not occurred to us and that they are very likely to generate a positive impact on our campaigns if they are applied.
•  New ideas when analysing our peers’ accounts: Analysing our peers’ accounts is not only done to suggest improvements. We must take advantage of the study of them to “steal” ideas. We have to be able to get ideas that can be useful to us. Surely there is some trick that we do not know and that can be applicable to our campaigns. A little spy job!
• Understanding the particularities of our colleagues’ accounts: When we pool ideas or improvements for the accounts of others, I am sure that some of them had already occurred to them but had not been able to implement it for certain reasons. “The customer doesn’t want to do campaign in Shopping because they can’t compete on prices”, “We’ve already tried to try this strategy but…”. We will learn a lot about the casuistic of each client after the Game.
• To know the situation of other accounts of the agency: Finally, we will be able to have a global vision of the situation of the rest of accounts and to know how each client is evolving, besides knowing how it has been achieved, for example, the improvement of the cost by Acquisition or increase in the number of conversions.

 Disadvantages of the SEM game:

• Very generic view because of the lack of time: one of the drawbacks of the game is that you do not have all the time that would be necessary to carry out a thorough analysis of each account. Therefore, it is difficult to delve properly into the campaigns to make a thorough diagnosis.
•  Improvements that it is not possible to apply: As we said before, one of the advantages of the game is to be able to understand the peculiarities of each one of the accounts of our companions. However, another disadvantage that we find in the game and that is closely related to the above is that sometimes the improvements that are proposed are not executable given the particular situation of each client; due to budget constraints, technical problems, etc.

Advantages and disadvantages of the SEM game

What have we learned by participating in a SEM game?

Thanks to the game, each of us has obtained many tips, ideas and improvements to optimize our accounts in a way different from the one we are doing so far. The most important thing is that we have been suggested to implement actions that we had not so far thought of individually. Therefore, a synergy has been created, the result of the analytical work of our colleagues and the joint implementation with the whole team.

So, from our point of view, the most valuable thing that we have learned through this game is that from time to times we must contribute to our accounts new points of view as they allow us to see errors or opportunities that escape to the perspective of only one person, accustomed to seeing the same account day after day. We have to take advantage of the closeness with our co-workers, from time to time, not only when we feel stuck with an account, ask them to contribute their vision and give us some idea.

SEM Game Conclusion

The result of the SEM game is materialised in a document with ideas that account managers can carry out in their accounts. Logically, some of them will not be applicable for reasons that transcend the players: because the client does not allow it, because it requires more investment, because there is not available the necessary tools, etc.

 The obtained ideas are often focused on innovation, through the use of new SEM products, and less in the detail of bids, advertisements or more specific topics. This will depend on the time constraints we have to develop the game, at what level players can analyze the accounts.

The dynamics also help to find new opportunities in training, so that players can consider the need to make new courses or invest more time in acquiring knowledge in areas where they feel more insecure.

 All Account managers maintain a positive attitude during the game, and the debate when it comes to drawing conclusions is open, so that everyone participates and makes suggestions.

We hope that after knowing the SEM game you are eager to present it to your team and try it with your accounts. Renew or Lose! Let’s Play?