Interesting question on Linked In today that I posted an answer to.  I thought I'd post the question and my response here.  I'd be interested in your take.

The Question:  What is the ideal structure to manage search engine bids (SEM: paid placement) for large companies.  Posted by Pascal Coulier of HP.

My Answer:

Hello Pascal,

Here are some of my thoughts, much of which you may have already considered or executed, so bear with me if I cover anything you're already aware of.

Campaigns: Focus them on target market group or specific objectives, so in your case, this could be Individual, SMB, Enterprise, etc. Campaigns could also be focused on product groups such as photo printers, all in ones, laser, tablet/notebooks, digital cameras, ink/toner, or specific objectives like customer retention, loyalty, remarketing, upsell, etc.

I like to create separate ad groups for each campaign, and I focus those ad groups on categories of keywords with a small number of very focused keywords in each group. This allows me to create laser focused ad copy, to utilize those keywords in the copy, and then most importantly, to craft a landing page for each ad group, thereby removing the risk of degrading the relevancy by using landing pages across different categories of keywords. I want to present ads, copy, links and offers that are as specific to the search term as I can.

Probably one of the bigger challenges you may face in an organization the size of HP is going to be keyword selection and avoiding competition with your own folks on the other side of the world! It's going to take a very focused effort to analyze which keywords are driving specific types of traffic to your sites, and how that traffic is converting. For example, are searches on HP notebooks driving traffic from the SMB market or enterprise customers? How those leads are captured, cultivated through the sales process and closed is going to give you some of those answers. You may learn that 'HP notebooks' is a term that drives SMB customers while Enterprise customers use different terms. This is important knowledge to gain and it will help you in creating a system worldwide so that all SEM efforts can be coordinated to a degree.

There's a link below with case studies, and one of them includes HP!

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