Managing a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign for a brick-n-mortar store has its advantages and disadvantages. Internet marketing professionals are accustom to studying analytic data, crunching numbers, and optimizing campaigns on conclusive data. But for brick-n-mortar stores, internet marketers are forced to rely on the same subjective data used for TV, radio, and print marketing. A lot of marketing managers focus on impressions and a lot of mangers focus on clicks but most internet marketers know that either of these metrics are easily manipulated by bid, position, ad copy, keyword relevance, etc.
This Costco ad caught my attention recently:

Costco AdWord Ad
Initially, I thought the ad was odd because it was promoting Black Friday (Friday, November 28) and I was viewing the ad on Sunday, December 21. I let this obvious error go because I figured Costco was referring to “all” Fridays before Christmas as Black Friday.
Second, I tried to figure out what triggered the ad. My Gmail account is almost empty (keeping with good GTD principles) but there was a Kohl’s email (you get a Kohl’s email everyday). Either Costco was using a very broad term like “Christmas” or “Sale” or the competitor term “Kohls” but neither term seemed very targeted or relevant. It would have been much wiser for focus on the keyword “Costco” or use keywords relevent to the products in the promotion.
The most asinine aspect of the campaign was the landing page:

Costco Landing Page
Not only was the Google AdWord ad copy out of date, the campaign expired six days ago on December, 15. Costco’s marketing manager or Costco’s SEM firm had forgotten to pull-down the campaign after it had expired and were now just wasting money.