Every client should be treated different. If you think there is a boxed solution for all clients (even clients in the same industry/vertical), please stop reading this and close up shop. Better yet, continue what you’ve been doing, it will be nice competing against you strategically in the marketplace.
Now that weeded out the marketers who don’t want to succeed we can begin discussing verticals and why you need to think vertically. A vertical is basically a nice buzz word for an industry. In PPC, two of the larger verticals are travel and dating. Each vertical has its own characteristics, target demographics, and metrics. The dating vertical for example, has a few top companies, competition is very aggressive (especially during the biggest months, Jan & Feb), and tends to cater to people roughly between 25-45. Knowing just these few things can help you formulate and implement an effective strategy for your client.
By combining information provided by the client, information from the engines, and your own research/experience, you should be able to know how large the campaign can be, how aggressively you can compete in the vertical, the type of creatives that will best speak to the target audience, and even the best time to launch the campaign or promotion. Without knowledge of the vertical and where your client fits within their industry you can run into problems such as the wrong performance expectations, a bad user experience, the wrong selection of keywords, and a host of other difficulties that could be avoided by asking the right questions and conducting research.
You can get started learning about different verticals by reading different white papers, comScore reports, industry news, etc. etc. Once you have the basic information on a vertical, you can start threading together new information and statistics to get a clearer picture of what steps need to be taken to be successful in each vertical for each specific client. Once you become and expert in a vertical, you will know the results and affects of your actions before even making them.
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