MSN/bCentral Keywords listings for small businesses

From: Ali Partovi <alip_at_microsoft.com>
Date: Tue 23 May 2000 19:18:33 -0700

Hello everyone,

First, as a long-time subscriber (almost four years!) I
want to thank Donna for doing such a great job
moderating this list.

I am the Microsoft senior product manager for the
MSN/bCentral Keywords program. This service is an
introductory trial to help businesses buy keyword
listings on the MSN Search sidebar via an automated,
credit-card-based online sales interface. Our goal is
to provide small businesses a cost-effective means to
purchase keyword advertising on one of the world's
largest search engines.

Our trial has been underway in beta for 2-3 months. For
anybody unfamiliar with the program, visit:

   http://keywords.bcentral.com)

In the three months since we started the trial, we've
read a tremendous number of customer inquiries. We've
made some big changes in response, and I wanted to
share these with you:

1. Reduced listing prices = more traffic for your money

  Our pricing for the keyword listings is based on a
  bidding system that helps set a "fair market price"
  per listing. In response to customer demand, we've
  dramatically reduced the minimum price for an opening
  bid, and we've reset all the existing bids to the new
  minimum. These moves make the ad space significantly
  more cost-effective.

2. 50% of your money back in FREE credit

  As a "thank you" to advertisers who signed up during
  the beta trial (before the price change), we've given
  every customer back 50% of the money they spent, as
  BONUS CREDIT in their Keywords account.

3. Easier to use

  We've made a whole bunch of other changes that make
  our system easier to use, to save time for advertisers.
  We still have lots of work ahead of us in this area,
  and we're letting customer feedback guide us.

Different advertisers will get different results,
because our bidding system is based on CPM, not
cost-per-click. Our pricing puts the burden on the you
to select highly relevant search keywords, and to
compose a title & description that will get the most
clicks. Some advertisers are more successful at this
than others. However, the changes we've made will
improve results for all advertisers across the board.

We are committed to providing an affordable way for
small businesses to purchase keyword advertising on
MSN.

Please check out the program at
http://keywords.bcentral.com. If you have questions,
feel free to contact me. If you're using the service
and need help with your account, contact our customer
service: mailto:keywords_at_bcentral.com. I read every
customer support inquiry, but I don't have time to
reply personally.

Sincerely,

Ali Partovi - alip_at_microsoft.com
Senior Product Manager, Microsoft bCentral
Founding Partner, LinkExchange





Received on Tue May 23 2000 - 21:18:33 CDT