Search Marketing “In-A-Box” Made Possible By Yield Software

Last month’s SF New Tech event produced some good applications that have some real applicability to businesses. I’ve dabbled in online advertising and have worked with folks at Yahoo Search Marketing and other third-party vendors and also tried my hand at putting together keywords and text ads in Google AdWords, but a couple of issues that I’ve been confronted with have been:

  • How can I manage my keyword bids across various search engine networks?
  • Is there a way to discover possible keywords to use rather than guessing what may or may not be useful?
  • I’d like someone to tell me how I can improve my search engine presence.

Apparently someone else has that problem too because they created a solution that supposedly makes it easy for advertisers to engage in search engine marketing. So what is this solution? It’s Yield Software and their motto is “Web marketing made easy“. 

I saw their CEO & Founder Matt Malden give a demonstration of its capabilities at SF New Tech and think it holds some possibilities. Basically, if you are interested in setting up a search campaign and want to centralize everything, then Yield Software will be able to handle it for you…every step of the way. You can have their software analyze your landing page to find out how best to optimize it for search engines. Then you can choose what keywords you think are best to get traffic – not just for one search engine but for at least three: Google, MSN and Yahoo. Yield Software’s solution will also allow you to create your own text ads right there instead of going to each individual search engine. Basically, it’s search marketing “in-a-box”.

However, a bit of a downside is the price. They have a scaling pricing structure, but for more heavy-duty work, you’d have to contact them to “request a quote”. For $129/month, you’re allowed to manage up to 1,000 keywords, up to $2,500 in ad buys, and analyze a maximum of 5 landing pages. Seems pretty straightforward for a basic search engine campaign if you’re not relying heavily on SEM strategy, but if it’s part of your daily routine, then be prepared to cough up a little bit more money per month just to make sure you’re not getting cut off. But let’s not forget that’s just the “administrative” fees that you pay to Yield Software. You still have to shell out some cash to pay for the actual keywords. Multiply that by the duration of your campaign and it may be less appealing to go this route. But then again, the monthly fee isn’t per campaign so you could execute multiple initiatives during that month. Best to run through a cost-benefit analysis.

So what do you think? Are you ready to jump in and test it out yourself? Unfortunately there’s no demo mode available on this website so you can’t check out the admin panel or experience it for yourself without buying into it. It seems, however, that you’d need to go through a workaround of sorts. Just sign up for the standard plan which gives you a 30 day free trial. If you test it out and don’t like it, I guess you can cancel it (haven’t gotten confirmation from Matt Malden about this yet). 

Yield Software’s purpose is pretty sound and many people are probably looking for that “all-in-one” dashboard that will let you effectively manage your own search marketing. The keywords that are generated from Yield Software’s analysis can possibly be used for both SEO and SEM campaigns and would offer you a distinct perspective on keywords that you may not have thought about using to attract traffic to your landing pages. As Matt Malden told me, Yield Software is in the business to help offer suggestions. While customers may think they know what works to drive traffic to their site, Yield Software will be sure to give them proof on what works.

2 responses to “Search Marketing “In-A-Box” Made Possible By Yield Software”

  1. Derek Gordon Avatar

    Thanks for the post — all of us at Yield really appreciate it! Just to respond to your question about the 30-day trial: yes, you can cancel at any time with no obligation. We do ask for your credit card when signing up for the trial so if you decide to continue, that happens automatically and we don't lose your data, etc. Ours is a monthly subscription with no upfront contract or other commitments, so you can choose to unsubscribe at any time (though we do bill for a full month in advance, so cancellations after the 30-day trial take effect at the close of the month in which the cancellation is initiated.) To try the 30-day trial, folks can go to http://www.yieldsoftware.com/offer.

  2. Derek Gordon Avatar

    Thanks for the post — all of us at Yield really appreciate it! Just to respond to your question about the 30-day trial: yes, you can cancel at any time with no obligation. We do ask for your credit card when signing up for the trial so if you decide to continue, that happens automatically and we don't lose your data, etc. Ours is a monthly subscription with no upfront contract or other commitments, so you can choose to unsubscribe at any time (though we do bill for a full month in advance, so cancellations after the 30-day trial take effect at the close of the month in which the cancellation is initiated.) To try the 30-day trial, folks can go to http://www.yieldsoftware.com/offer.

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