Pay-Per-Click

August 21, 2008

Post-Click Marketing: Converting Search Engine Traffic

Whose idea what it to have just a little snack break instead of lunch? I can't work like this. And by like this I mean covered in chocolate from my delicious ice cream sandwich.

This session the moderator is Anna Maria Virzi (ClickZ) and panelists are Carrie Hill (Blizzard Internet Marketing), Laura Wilson (New England Journal of Medicine), Scott Brinker (ion interactive) and Tom Leung (Google).

Our first speaker is going to be Carrie Hill. She thought she was going to have to bribe us with alcohol to get people to this session instead of SEO secrets. The real secret is knowing that Lisa's over there liveblogging it; it's just like being there!

Qualified traffic is the key to good post-click marketing. Buyers know what they want and that's what they'll search for. Use segments to deliver language and interface on those pages that will appeal to your shoppers. Use your trigger words. Buyer use words they relate to in their queries. If they use a word in their search, you should use those words on your page in order for them to see relevance. It should show up in the SERP and on the page.

Example: Free shipping-- Apple doesn't have free shipping prominently on their page so it's easy to over look. Zappos makes it obvious that they have free shipping.

Make sure that your visitors are landing on the right page. The home page is not right for every query. If they're using a word, give them a page that's relevant to it. Give your traffic the trigger word that they're looking for. If they do land on the home page, let them segment themselves.

Carry the message through the segmented path. IF they travel down the 'free' trigger word path, repeat that message.

Remember each piece of PCM can lead to more revenue from your site. Many pieces work dependent upon each other. Remember that halfway is only halfway but every little bit helps. Use Web site optimizer, do tests, let the users design their experience through self-selection.

Laura Wilson is going to present a case study on how this worked for the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Five Key Ingredients of Their Success:
1. Know what the audience is looking for
2. Engage and Convert visitors with relevant content and offers
3. Give the visitors a reason to come back to the site: Videos, beta site, free weekly audio summary and more.
4. Deepen relationships with the audiences: newsletters and subscriptions, information about updates to the site.
5. Optimize conversions through testing

Tactics:
1. Navigation links with calls to action: both home page navigation and global navigation
2. Offers on Sign In Pages -- offers that are relevant to visitor based on the content they're trying to reach.
3. Free trial upsell on the registration confirmation page -- after registering for the newsletter, they offer them a trial to the online version of the journal.
4. Offer in authentication string message -- offers based on level of access.
5. Targeted emails -- welcome e-mail series and a "new features" e-mails. Free trial member will also be getting an email series with a countdown on time left.
6. Promotions in Weekly NEJM E-mail table of contents.
7. Banner ads throughout the site
8. A/B testing, multiple tests

Scott Brinker is discussing segmenting. That's been the big thing this conference that I've noticed.

Two Takeaways:
1. To increase conversions have more specific landing pages.

A/B testing -- for your respondents, it's still just one page. You need to understand who your respondents ARE. Some might think that one thing is more important than others. What you need is more than one landing page to reach more than one audience.

2. Self-segmentation after the click

Some keywords won't give you intent. Have two step landing pages in those cases: "Dinner" -- do you mean "hamburger" or "pasta". You'll speak differently to small businesses than enterprise level pages. Tailor your second landing page to that self-selected audience.

Don't ask them to do too much work though or they'll bounce.

Figure out which ads attract which segment. Then see how well you're converting those segments.

5 reasons that 2 clicks are better than 1:

1. Easy Engagement - makes it easy for them to move forward
2. Self Identification - we respond to self-identification cues, more accurate than forms, sets expectation
3. More focused content - contextually relevant content sells better
4. Signaling - Investment reflects commitment. "If you target me, you much think I'd be a good fit..."
5. Market research - which ads attract which segments? Which segments convert best? How do prospects think of themselves?

Last to speak is Tom Leung from Google's Website Optimizer

In the old days, you just implemented stuff and hoped for the best. Or you listened to the "HiPPO" the highest paid person in the organization. If you were a little more advanced, you'd do a before and after test but that wasn't that enlightening.

Website Optimizers allows you to test different variations of a page to see which version is most effective at achieving results.

This puts power into the visitors and they'll tell you what they like best. Sites can be a living laboratory.

[He quickly goes through how to do testing with Website Optimizer.]

The only opinions that matter are the opinions of the people who go to your site.

Don't assume, make sure that your revisions aren't going to HURT your site. You have to test with a control. Your interesting idea might not work.

Basic questions:

• Does it look legit?
• Is it intelligible with partial attention?
• Is it simple to convert?

Advanced questions:

• Is it compelling?
• Does it handle top objection elegantly?
• Does it provide all the essential information?

If you're thinking about outsourcing:

• How many experiments have you run?
• Referrals? -- screenshots and contacts
• Can you justify ROI?
• What was the average lift?
• Can they work with your IT department?
• Are they willing to tie their payment to performance? (not required)
• Do they have marketing, proj management?

Ask yourself if it really makes sense to show ads on your landing page. Tell people what you're about.

He likes the Netflix landing page: It's clean, legit, informative and not too complex.

Q&A

How do you get buy in?

Laura: We present data and do projections on what the impact could be.
Carrie: We had to do a little bit of free work to show them how to make the lift. Sometimes one test isn't enough. But once you can show them the difference that a little work does, it's not that hard to convince them to do more.
Scott: It comes down to two things: Make the argument about conversion rate. Also web site optimization is a huge task. Landing page optimization is smaller and easier.
Tom: Agrees with Scott. Don't make it a huge plan, just do the simple A/B test and show them the results and the lift. People find it hard to disagree with more conversions for the same money.

How do you use Website Optimizer on your home page?

Tom: Put the goal tags in multiple places and all those are considered conversion OR they'll do a time on page test and consider that a conversion.

How long should a test run?

Tom: Never shorter than one or two weeks. Have about a 100 conversions per combination.

Is it possible to use optimizer against a segmentation page?

Tom: I've seen people run tests where A is the regular landing page and B is the segmentation page.
Scott: It's hard to answer that without sounding like a sales pitch but yeah, that's what our tools do. It's possible to do even with just a simple test. You can at least take a first step in that direction.

[Skipping an asked and answered question and a very specific question.]

[I don't know what his questions was but he said statistically relevance about ten times. I think it involved math. Tom's answer was all complicated and technical too. I'm sorry, I can't even begin to interpret. HOWEVER: Green = high confidence, Yellow: mid level confidence, Red = low confidence loser]

How do I test on low volume keywords?

Tom: Keep it simple. Just do an A/B test. Also, change your conversion metric. Make it time on page instead, so that you can take that as a leading indicator to conversion.

Scott: There's nothing wrong with A/B testing. It works.

Carrie: Don't get sucked into the idea that a conversion is 'they bought something'. It can be moving to the next step. You're testing a path sometimes.

Tom: I'd agree about the power of A/B testing. At the end of the day, people get the best results from very small tests. Small tests make you focus. Multivariate tests can make you lose your focus.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/21/08 at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

Effective Contextual Search Management

Wow. Okay. It's the morning after SearchBash. Let's pretend to look alive, people. Maybe if we do, we can trick people!

Gregg Stewart is moderating with David Szetela (Clix Marketing), Cynthia Tillo (Adobe Systems), and Jennifer Slegg (JenSense.com). Whoever put an advanced advertising session at 9am on the last day of a four-day show...well, we're going to have some words later. Email me.

David Szetela is going to start us off. He's going to show us how to get clickthrough rates in the double digitals with contextual advertising. He also says that the content network doesn't really suck as bad as we think it does. We'll see about that.

Content advertisers lose money when their ads appear on irrelevant pages and get back clicks, when they don't distract attention from site content, and because search and content should never exist in the same campaign.

Contextual is not search. Readers are not searching for you. It's more like banner or print advertising. The first job of your ad is to distract. You have to get them to notice you.

Keywords in content ad groups play a completely different role than they do in search ad groups. They're not discrete entities. There's no more than 30-50 keywords per content ad group. Match types are irrelevant, as are individual keyword bids. Negative keywords are almost the same.

The most important keyword difference: A content ad group's keywords should describe the kinds of pages where you want your ads to appear. Your keyword list equals the words that appear most frequently on the page. It's not the keywords for your product.

Ad Copy Differences: Your ad needs to stand out because people aren't looking for you. Yell, don't whisper. Be more competitive and test everything. You have to lead people into the sales funnel. Don't assume they're already in there.

Ad Position Differences

• Magic positions for search are 1-3
• Magic positions for content are 1-4
• Below 5, impressions drop dramatically
• Quality Score still counts - but not as much.

Quality Score Differences

Keyword-targeted and placement-targeted text: CTR, Ad Text, Landing Page.
Keyword-targeted non-test: Only CTR
Placement-targeted Non-text: Only CTR
Best Bidding Strategy: Start high, go low.

Overall Advice: Always set up separate content campaigns, test lots of multiple distracting ad types and monitor very closely.

Jennifer mentions that Google has the Google Placement performance report which shows exactly which sites and pages your ads are appearing on. You should review this regularly and then use the Site Exclusion Tool to stop ads from appearing on poorly performing sites.

Use declarative statements. Say crazy things. Distract them. Make them notice your ad.

Cynthia Tillo is next.

When most people think about PDF documents they think about their resume, bank statements, tax forms, etc. Would it be so far-fetched to think that one day the government will try and monetize your tax forms? Maybe not.

When Adobe was thinking about all the great things happening in the ad industry and how they could add value, they immediately thought about how to reach a highly-targeted audience which today consumes tons of PDFs. The last search she did, there are over 256 million PDFs floating out there in the wild. Yowsa.

In December, they launched Ads for Adobe PDF. It's powered through Yahoo's ad network. The ads are displayed in a separate panel next to the content in the PDF itself. It's a way for publishers to generate revenue from their PDF content. They've developed some technology that's really good at understanding what a PDF is about.

The ads are dynamically matched. Every time someone opens that PDF a new set of ads will be dynamically matched to that content, which means all their targeting options can still be applied to the PDF content.

It supports a viral mode of distribution. Today the typical PDF experience is that you download a great PDF and forward it on to family and friends (who forwards PDFs?). Now, you're able to maintain the ads as they go from person to person.

They're also letting publishers embed ad placeholders into the PDF itself. A lot of publishers who come from the traditional world think this is great because they can make it look like a magazine. They can place ads anywhere they want in the PDF. They can control sizing and color.

Top 5 uses for PDF ads: Newsletters, digital versions of magazine or newspapers, e-books, digest and compilations, and archives.

If you ever lack inspiration, Lord Thomas of Fleet wrote "As for editorial content, that's the stuff you separate the ads with." Nice.

Jennifer Slegg is next.

Before you get involved with AdSense, ask yourself what it is you want to monetize? There is some way to monetize nearly all content online but you have to explore your options.

Know the instances where you shouldn't monetize. Those include:

• Business site selling products: Why send them elsewhere?
• Business site selling services: Is that consultant, accountant or lawyer wanting me as a client or do they hope I click and go away?
• Any site with content against AdSense policies: Drugs, hacking, hard alcohol, gambling, adult content, designer imitations, weapons, webmaster guideline violations

Are You Leaving Money On The Table

People are too haphazard with how they monetize, and as a result leave money on the table. Ask yourself why did you choose the ad network, why did you put the ad where you did, why did you choose the color scheme, did you consider user experience?

Beyond just your AdSense ad units, think about image ads, video ads, affiliate ads, cost per action, cost per thousand, AdSense for search/mobile/feeds, and other contextual companies,

If you aren't testing, you are losing revenue.

The AdSense Testing Cheat Sheet:

• Placement
• Proximity
• Size selection
• Ad unit colors and borders
• Keywords
• URL filters
• Geotargeting

Are you filtering out your revenue? Be aware that your ad blocking filter list will cost you revenue. Use the filter to block ads that are from competitors, are grossly mis-targeted and for advertising that's inappropriate for your audience. Filtering won't enable higher value ads to appear.

Ad heaviness turns off users. Don't select three identical ads for the same page. Don't make users scroll three times to get to the content. Don't make your visors feel they are only good for clicking an ad.

Don't select ads just because they pay more CPA. You want your CPA ad to be extremely targeted.

Last Minute Takeaways

Always do A/B Testing
Experiment with different placements, colors, sizes, styles.
Consider impact of being too ad heavy
Look beyond traditional AdSense text ads and experiment with other formats.

A lot of people think AdSense is the best for everyone. But if you rely too heavily and AdSense bans you or things change, it can have a major impact. Choose what you think is the best and make sure you have a backup plan if something happens.

Some great advice there from Jennifer and the rest of the panel!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/21/08 at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2008

Searcher Behavior Research Updates

And we're back from the fastest lunch I've ever eaten. Where does the time go? Moderating this session is Bill Muller (iProspect) and our panelists are John Marshall (Market Motive), Pavan Lee (Microsoft), Dr. Larry Cornett (Yahoo! Search) and Bill Barnes (Enquiro Search). I have to confess I just love the research sessions. Hard data just makes my little heart sing. Come on. You can't tell me you aren't excited about this one too.

I know you are because Bill is telling us about how every year this session totally fills the room it's in. Why? Because if you know more about the way searchers behave, you're going to be a better marketer.

John Marshall starts us off.

The interesting thing about search behavior is that it's not that difficult to get good data. The question is on Monday morning, do you understand search behavior? Most people turn to the keywords report in your analytics tool. That's a reasonable place to start but it's an extremely narrow view of the activity on the Web. You're only look at the keywords that brought people to your site. You only see the search results that brought people to your site. You're running into sample bias.

How can we really see the intent of people, not just the people who made it to your Web site. You don't want the whole forest view. You're probably not going to get the whole forest view anyway unless you have a Hitwise account or something. What you can look at is the single tree of your site.

The trick is to use the site search on your Web site. If you don't have site search, implement it. Even if it doesn't work, it's a great source of user intent. Search engine keywords only give you the people who came to your site. Site search gives you the intent of your users, conversion rate information. A lot of people ignore this data because it's free. Free data is often ignored. If you pay for something, you value it more.

Things that can go wrong:

• Mixed Case -- Google Analytics doesn't automatically change case for you so your data gets scattered across case. You need to convert it.
• Multiple results pages -- Some site search pages for 'no results found' don't get tracked by analytics. Make sure all the pages contain your analytics tracking.
• Usual JavaScript breakage
• Injected terms -- Most Web sites that have site search, they use it as a cheap landing page creation system. You have to filter that out of your data if you're doing that because it's not real data. No one is typing it in.

By using site search you're answering the question: what's the true intent of the users when they're on the site.

Site search data cannot replace competitive analysis but it's the cheapest way to get good data fast.

Pavan Lee is up next. She's from Shanghai.

Background from the New York SES: They've discovered that search listings have a branded value. Paid search listings have a stronger branding impact than organic search. There is a positive branding effect for both. They're trying to measure the brand lift.

They studied five brands in five spaces.

Methodology: Eyetracking and post-search survey.

Key findings: Search display and content ads are effective for branding stand alone but more effective together.

They asked "did you remember seeing an ad" 21% lift content 30% display. 38% both.

I can't see her slides at all.

In all cases with all questions, including lift in purchase intent, there was a brand lift and it was stronger for paired ads.

On the eye tracking side, search is still the most effective tool in attracting attention. There's a roll over impact on a multi-channel exposure. If you see search and display or search and content or search and display and content, it's more effective than just seeing any one of those.

Key takeaway: The power of three. There's a synergistic branding impact across content, display and search ads.

None of this data is public information.

Larry Cornett steps up to the podium.

His talk will build on John's presentation in a lot of ways.

Users do a lot before and after they're on the search page. He's going to talk about that, about the research they're doing, how users experience search, a little about crafting search and how they get from 'to do' to 'done'.

The reality is that the search page is just a tiny slice of online activity. Before the search, the user somehow comes to need to do a search. After the search, they want to go somewhere. They're going somewhere because they want to fulfill a task. The task is not getting to best buy. It's getting an iPhone. You need to know what happens after and how it all links back. How do you support them through the whole lifecycle of what they're trying to accomplish.

There is no single methodology that gives you the whole picture. Some ways that Yahoo does testing are:

• Search editorial
• Bucket testing
• Metrics & Analysis
• Search Science
• Focus Groups and surveys
• Eye-tracking research
• Ethnographic studies

How users experience search

• Starting context (what have they seen and experience before they query)
• Quick Scanning (one to three seconds)
• Information Scent
• Matching intent
• Quick Decisions
• Looking for answers (not a homework exercise. "Don't make me work")
• Feeling safe

They try to help crafting searches with 'search assist' (suggested searches). For most people search is hard. They're not experts.

Focus on the ultimate goal. They're looking to do something, they're wanting an answer. Yahoo SearchMonkey is an attempt at giving them that answer. It gives the user more information about what's behind the link and what's important to know.

What does this mean for marketers?

• Before the SERP
  • Starting context
  • The "Real task"
• On the SERP
  • Intent and information scent
  • Searchmonkey
• After the SERP
  • Fulfilling expectations
  • Being their "answer" and living up to the promise of the search result.

We thought that the reason people were having trouble with search was that it was an artificial session. But field studies showed us that the users were really having trouble formulating queries so we really tried to implement something that would help them.

Bill Barnes is the last to speak.

Their research is grounded in their search marketing and grew out of that.

Why is the first listing seen so important
Why do we scan in groups of 3 or 4
Why branding is important

[Standard heat map image, you've seen it a million times.]

They did experiments with the top SPONSORED listing and played around with really great ad copy versus just 'okay' ad copy.

When they did a survey they didn't ask about the listing, they asked about the search engine and if they'd use it again. The only difference was the ad copy but there was a huge lift in trust in the engine with the great copy.

Working memory: It's what comes to mind with recall. For some reason, we're hardwired to think in threes or fours.

[Oh no, my battery is dying]

There's a 16 percent increase in brand association when brand is the Top Sponsored and Top Organic Results. On an unbranded query. The really interesting thing is that the recognition of OTHER brands drops away at the same time.

There's an 8 percent lift in brand purchase. If you're not there, you lose 16 percent brand lift.

Even for branded queries, you get a brand lift if you appear. Should you buy your branded terms? Yes.

Eyetracking finding: Brand fixation only occurs in the TITLE and the URL not in the description.

If you're a familiar brand to the searcher, they will often skip the sponsored listings at the top. If you're buying the top sponsored, write your copy for a NEW user.

If you have brand A and brand B in sponsored with Brand A in top organic, brand A gets a HUGE lift.

Key Findings:

• INTENT is the most important thing
• Organic and sponsored combined give the biggest brand lift.
• Be aware of who else is on the serp
• Write your ad copy to new clients.
• Don't assume your brand will be in the consideration set. If you're not on the page, you're forgotten.

Q&A

The first question is does offline affect offline. The answer is yes, though the panelists don't say that. Go read the Re Search Online, Purchase Offline session from yesterday.

Why do search views get longer?

Pavan thinks it's because searchers are looking for something in particular whereas display and content ads are push forms of advertising.

Do they really only spend 1-3 seconds and how often do they click?

Larry: It's on average. In some cases, for navigational queries, that's less than a second. It might be longer at home but yeah, it's amazingly fast.

Bill: Females look longer and shop around, males just go straight to results. There's a free paper available.

Pavan: Search intentions lead to searcher behavior. Fact based search stays organic. Commercial searches tend to be more broad. It also varies by culture. Chinese spend twice as long as Americans.

John mentions that his contention is that the site search queries are the same queries that are being typed into the search engines but they're just not getting to your site.

Is the suggested search condensing the search queries?

Larry: Yes. People are moving to longer queries and that search assist does jump them to the queries that will get them to the answer faster.

Are there differences in lift by categories?

Pavan: Yes there is a difference in lift across different verticals but in all cases it does result in lift.

[Long set up about pretending to be a confused searcher and poor SERPS] What can be done to help confused searchers?

Larry: Search assist is just one way. It works mostly for shorter queries?

Does the golden triangle change with non-roman character sets?

Pavan: In Chinese, the scanning pattern is very different. It's a rectangle. You have to look at everything to put together meaning.

Would you suggest not trying to dominate the organic?

Bill: No, never. Always optimize.

What plays into search assist? How does it affect PPC?

Larry: Nothing is paid in those.

John: The hidden message there is: No you can't spam the suggestions.

John says that the other thing site search is good for is manifesting usability problems and for doing competitive intelligence.

If you rank 1 on a non branded term, should you also be number one in paid search as well?

Bill: That's exactly what our research showed. That said, always test and retest and see if the ROI is worth it. Clicks went 50/50 on paid and organic, so make sure that you're testing and monitoring.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/20/08 at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2008

Re Search Online, Purchase Offline

I don't know what's up with the panel name. Do they know research is all one word? Maybe I'll take it up with moderator Kevin Ryan after the panel. Speakers this time around are Michelle Stern (iProspect), Dan Quinn (Research in Motion) and Ken Robbins (Response Mine Interactive). Kevin's got a snazzy pink shirt on. I know it's this color (no pun intended) commentary that the readers are really looking for in a liveblog.

Kevin reminds us that this session is all that stands between us and the Google Dance. Yes, do let's hurry through this.

Michelle Stern is our first speaker. We're going on a walk. Yay! Oh, down memory lane. Got it. We're reliving pin the tail on the donkey. She's saying that's how most marketers do their bidding. They spend too much or not enough on keywords. They pick things because of 'gut instinct' or because the CEO wants that. They're just taking shots in the dark and they don't have any idea what's going to convert.

Case study! World Travel Holdings. Their objective is to generate cruise reservations either online or over the phone. 90 percent of their reservations come over the phone and the average revenue is greater over the phone than over the Web. They didn't know what they were leaving on the table though because they didn't have a phone tracking system. [I really like her. She speaks nice and slowly. Very easy to follow. A++]

They have online tracking and know those steps all the way from search through purchase and confirmation. They can then tie conversions back to keywords.

For phone tracking the first steps are the same: Search, PPC ad, Cookie, User directed to the site.

Then the steps change. User calls and books. User is sent a confirmation email. User clicks on the email and gets sent to a confirmation page and now they have the link back to the original search and keyword.

Why use this approach and what's the benefit?

• Can use the existing 800 number
• Minimal human error and nothing that wasn't already there before.
• Ability to track revenue to the keyword.

The email confirmation gives the user benefit because they have a chance to confirm that what they ordered over the phone is correct. They're motivated to click the confirmation button.

[Shows a sample email. Confirm button is at the bottom]

When they started, they only had a 50 percent click through rate on the emails. They made some changes and got it up to 80 percent.

[Shows the revised email. Confirm button is higher up]

*To increase motivation to click, you could offer an incentive.

After enabling the phone tracking system, they increased ROI by sixteen percent.

Key Considerations

• Evaluate the sources of offline leads or sales
• Build upon your current business process [WTH already had an email confirmation]
• Know your prospects or consumers behavior
• Leverage technology
• Data analysis -- you have to use the data. Do segmentation.
  • Positive ROI keywords
  • Negative ROI keywords
  • Uncategorized keywords -- not enough data to decide.

Test your positive ROI keywords. Play with the position on the page, the ad copy. Resist the instinct to lower the bid. Take advantage of opportunities present. If conversion is low, test landing page options.

Considerations for uncategorized keywords:

• Conversion rate
• Number of clicks (accumulate at least 100)
• Number of conversions (have at least two conversions)

The idea is to find your hidden gems. Move them into more prominent positions to test their viability and then categorize them positive or negative.

Kevin asks about buy in from clients on that. She says it depends on their business model and capabilities. It's just a handful who have adopted it. It's not a tough sell if the resources are there.

Dan Quinn from BBGeeks' favorite company steps up. He says we're allowed to keep our Blackberries on. They don't consider it rude to type away at lunches and meetings.

All of the panelists have Blackberries. Curve, Pearl, Curve and his undisclosed one (He says he can't tell us what it is. Dude, is it the Bold? I want!)

They're in 140 countries. They really only sell accessories online, the main hardware sells are offline. They have the hardware and software side. He has to justify an ever growing advertising budget when the majority of sales happen offline.

Search works best of leveraged across media. They have a centralized search team so that they can look at all the different stakeholders from corporate marketing to advertising to the Web team.

There's a funnel to conversion. Awareness to Interest to Consider to Purchase. There are times when you want to support the partners in some parts of the funnel, particularly broad match when it's about awareness and education. They don't measure success only as a dollar amount. They consider it important to educate people and reduce churn and return rate. That's incremental dollars and changing the brand perception does too. It's not only about direct conversion.

In order to increase conversion they encourage participation through co-funding. They're probably not going to sell a Curve directly but they can drive partner sales.

A few thoughts:

• Ensure that you're harvesting insights from search
• Understand buying behavior by audience
• Communicate the "Voice of the Customer" internally
• Work with your partners and resellers whenever possible

Kevin asks how RIM handles channel conflicts, like the differences between providers. He bashes Verizon a little again. Hee.

Dan says they really just manage budget allocations to try to control partners from bidding on keywords that they don't have a right to. But that there's not really any good way to ensure it.

Ken Robbins steps up. He's an agency guy who handles a lot of retailers with call centers and brick and mortar stores.

He's here to say definitively that online marketing drives offline spend.

Case study! Rooms to Go. 150 showrooms in 9 states the #1 National Furniture Retailer. They do a lot of financing. They have three Web sites: Roomstogo.com Roomstogokids.com and CindyCrawfordHome.com

Google came to them and said they wanted to try content match with them.

Challenges:

• Furniture - expensive, considered purchase, highly tactile
• Financing - Hard to execute online
• Doubts about Web to store effectiveness
• Want more store sales - for the upsell.

Their objective: Use controlled online media test to driven in-store sales.

Execution:

• Isolated markets - they picked 4
• Cut out the noise - no real world media spend during the test and optimized for the area
• Tracked closely - used market-specific coupons
  • Manager, salespeople training (no cheating, had to be a clean test)
  • Established definite time period
• Creative - coupons, landers conformed to market
• Media - Saturated the Web using all Google tactics

They used paid search, banners for local and vertical interests, local business ads,

Results:

• Markedly higher sales
• 86 percent campaign sales at RETAIL STORES
• Overall ROAS $7.50
• 20 percent higher Average Order Value in-store for coupon holder

What next:

• Strategy rolled out annually
• Bar-code system instituted (Keyword level tracking that's onetime use only)
• Significantly beating $7.50 ROAS new
• New learning - NON-BRAND KEYWORDS DELIVER 48 PERCENT OF OFFLINE SALES

Measurement and Attribution:
1. Direct Attribution - trackable coupons, unique offers
2. Incremental sales attribution - isolate markets, isolate product, measure lift over mean
3. Consumer engagement - store locator, page views, bouncing, site time, product views
4. Consumer intent, post-purchase surveys (Weakest way, very inaccurate.)
5. Don't worry about it. Support all ad initiatives with online components.

The key is to agree on a methodology and priorities first, then coordinate execution.

Does offline drive online? Of course. No one wanted a Foreman grill before the commercials. Real world media drives searches.

Big Mistakes:

1. Consumers can't find your promotions on you Web site (match real world offers online)
2. Call center use is discouraged (burying the 800 number)
3. Stores or Online DC is out of stock
4. Promotional campaign metrics not separated
5. (and more)

Better Practices:

1. Consistent messaging
2. Campaign one the same schedule
3. Coordinate with your stores, managers, call center
4. Universal pricing
5. If attribution is important - isolate variables (market, noise)
6. If attribution is problematic, use engagement metrics
7. Get vendors to assign co-op $ to Web Promotions
8. When driving to store, use campaign landers (better messages and CTA)

Someone asks if they track the lag and yes, they do. They also keep them very timed. They get instant response because it's timed.

Kevin asks about response rates and volume from the Google local ads. The Search ads converted the best but all the rest of the things they were doing got much better in aggregate. The text did the best.

Q&A

Does the email tracking work across platforms? [It should, yes.] Can you elaborate on the method about how the cookies interact between the confirmation email and the tracking code?

Michelle: You can link them up in Omniture.

Did you continue to black out the Real World media efforts?

Ken: I actually don't know the answer. I believe that it's a 360 degree campaign now.

[Kevin's little between question rambles are great. Hee]

Good tools to track phone calls that can be tied back to analytics? Are there any other ways to track than 800 #s?

Ken: Yes, there are vendors out there who can deploy thousands of 800 numbers linked to keywords. It's gets a little unwieldy. [And audience member uses Call Source but says that small business don't like masking their number]

Has anyone used something like Web IQ or Keynote or something like that to track online to offline for surveys with clickpath analysis?

Dan: Done a bit and it was tracked back to the campaign level. They were mostly tracking profiling. Directionally it works but it depends on your objectives.

Kevin wants to know if it's effective and worth it to add the layer. Dan says yes.

Client with lots of store locator visits: How do you get the client to understand that it's important and how do you track those visitors to the store?

Ken: [refers him to Measurement and Attribution section of the presentation. In a nice way.] The most successful thing I've found when trying to break through to the execs is to show them what other people are doing and how effective it is.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/19/08 at 5:16 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2008

Search Around the World: UK & Europe

I have wandering back into the light and now my favorite panel is here! I'm going to dedicate this recap to our awesome BC Europe team because they, like the panelists, have awesome accents (and wicked SEO skills).

Moderating the panel of awesome is Jonathan Mendez (RAMP Digital). Our speakers are David Radicke (Radicke eCommerce), Anders Hjorth (Relevant Traffic Europe), Marie Dumesnil (Viking River Cruises) and Mike Grehan (Acronym Media).

Jonathan gets us started with the interesting note that, on a percentage basis people search more online outside the US than in the US.

David Radicke is up first to talk about the German market. He's from Berlin. Google has a total monopoly in Germany; it's 90 percent google then Yahoo, MSN, Google through T-Online, Web.de and AOL. Germany is the second or third largest market in Europe. His own client Google Analytics metrics show that Google has 96.66 percent of traffic. Omniture shows the same: less than three percent of searches from other engines.

Why does Google dominate?

• Google search was really good when it entered the market
• The biggest ISPs/portal never had their own search engines.
• The early very good German Search engines failed, were acquired or folded during the Dotcom crash.
• MSN and Yahoo never gained a foothold.

The Adsense/Adwords is even worse. Yahoo and MSN never had an AdSesnse program for publishers outside of search, MSH STILL doesn't haven't their own sponsored links.

The only competition for AdSense is Vibrant IntelliTxt
Yahoo has some bad portal distribution.

What can be done? Nothing at the moment. Does it matter? Not really. It's easier for SEMs to optimize for.

The downside of course is that the market might turn against Google and the index is probably the most spammed because there's no other options.

Social media: Local companies are very strong, much stronger than the US companies like Facebook and myspace, etc. Facebook just launched in Germany a little while ago.

Meinvs, studiVZ, Yigg--all important social media sites.

There's a lot of local search competition but there's no real program for businesses on the Google Maps.

Book search is doing well. [Oh my god, he talks fast.]

Price comparison isn't good and is full of spam, Google Checkout doesn't exist. Germans don't like it or use it.
News is hosted and paid for by Google.

He doesn't see the Google dominance lessening at all and thinks it will build elsewhere too. Social media will also continue to grow.

Jonathan thinks that international marketing is much easier than US marketing.

Anders Hjorth steps up to talk about Europe more broadly.

Languages: Many many languages and several character sets: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic

You'll want to get his slides because I can't copy all the information he's going through. He does note that though Irish is the national language in Ireland, you'll probably want to focus on English marketing unless you're targeting a very niche market. Belgians should be marketed to in French and in Dutch, not just one or the other.

He has SO much information on his slides.

Google is dominant everywhere. Yahoo is losing marketshare most places and Live is gaining. Ask, Miva, Mirago are all minor players.

In every case, most of your budget should go to Google. In Norway there's a local engine that deserves attention too.

Local search engines, mostly backfilled by Google, are important. Altavista is still alive in Europe.

France: 60 million people, 25 million online (94 percent broadband).

People search: 30 percent of searches are people related. (Spock.com) Social Networks: Ryze, LinkedIn, Xing (DE) Viadeo (FR)

Digg and Yigg are popular. Scoopeo is local to France. Kudos in Norway (?)

Challenges of international: user constraints [browsers, currency], language preferences [know which language is appropriate], cultural dimensions [ex: Spanish is used in many countries but there's cultural impact on how it's used].

Do your keyword research in the language, don't translate to the language. You need to focus on cultural aspects. Get experts in each country on your team, both for PPC and for SEO. To succeed: Local teams, local keywords, local structure.

I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to see all his slides.

Marie Dumesnil is up next to talk to about the French market.

Her numbers are a little higher than Anders for internet penetration. 54.2 percent of households have Internet acces. 38 percent of media consumption was web-based, more than TV (35%). Google has 91 percent dominance.

Many of the most visited sites are French specific Web sites (Orange, Free, PagesJaune, Coupains d'Avant.fr). 2008, French businesses planned to invest 29 percent of ht eir resources in search marketing (22% in 2007)

French searchers are looking for entertainment more than the US markets. YouTube, jeux (games) and meteo (weather) top the list of search terms.

Seasonality differs between countries. Travel is different (they have five weeks of paid vacation). Social networks are booming and the traffic is huge compared to the US. Skyrock is the big one, then copaindavant (which is like Classmates.com for France).

How does the French language impact your search results? "Coupe" (as in the car) in US is "Coupe" with an accent over the E that I don't know how to do. (whoops). If you leave off the accent, you're searching for haircuts.

Mike Grehan is wielding some kind of wooden stick. He's going to explain. It's a story that starts in Canada. And it involves a grizzly bear. Um. Mike, you're scaring me.

Clearly this is going to be a very SERIOUS presentations. Mike's next statement: "Most English people live in a castle. This one's mine."

The average UK family: the father is a chimneysweep with a weird cockney/Australian accent. [Image of Mary Poppins cast]

Search Engine Optimisation: With an S
Behavioural: add in the odd U where it doesn't belong

More seriously: It's still all Google in the UK. 82 percent market share

e-consultancy does a survey every year:

The most common PPC services

1. Keyword Research
2. Landing page optimization
3. ROI tracking and analysis
4. Competitor research

The organic side:

1. Keyword research
2. Competitor research
3. Landing page development )Tie)
4. Copywriting (tie)

How much do UK firms spend on search?

9 percent are spending more than 1 million pounds annually on paid search
One in six spend more than 50,000 pounds in search.

Mike, why do you have entire paragraphs on your slides?

[In the Czech republic, Google doesn't dominate]

In the UK, Microsoft Adcenter converts better than Google in Paid search. It wasn't a small study, either. (Apparently.)

Q&A

Do the other German speaking countries (like Austria and Switzerland) go by the same rules?

They're small markets, very small. Austria bundles with Germany, Switzerland has more languages so it's a little more complex but both are very small and you have to be very local with them.

Do I need to host in the country or is Google Webmaster Tools good enough?

David: Get the .de domain. Don't just rely on the Webmaster Tools. You need to capture the .de domain anyway because otherwise someone will poach your domain. I think the hosting isn't as important as the top level domain.
Mike: In the perfect world, you need to host in the country you're working in. But it's not a perfect world and you have to do a work around.
Anders: I think the TLD is the most important. If you have a .com you'll be okay, then the IP address that local, that would help but get the local TLD.

Searcher behavior: We find that German visitors convert less? Are French users younger (as implied by the entertainment searches?)

David: Germans don't use credit card much, so that will lower conversion rates, but even in Germany it's lower conversion rates. They spend a lot of time researching.
Marie: I think it's cultural mostly. They have time to look for entertainment comment online.
Anders: I don't think it has to do with age.
Jonathan: In the US it's not kids searching for games. It's people at work.

What kind of measures do you see Google taking to continue their growth?

David: Google doesn't have to do much to keep dominance and grow. They don't even have to be good. Yahoo and Microsoft are destroying themselves. Googlemail is hugely successful, they just have to be there and they grow by their own sheer size. There's nothing to stop them really.

How do you explain the 3-6 month ramp up time in SEO? Is there a PPC disadvantage with the weakness of the dollar?

Mike: Show them missed opportunity. Show them what they could have made. You can get conversion data from e-consultancy and Microsoft.
David: If I'm using Euros to advertise in the US it doesn't matter because you still have to convert the dollars back to Euros. It all equals out.
Ander: We generally recommend that you look at it as investing. With the weak dollar, you want to invest in the US. In US companies, I would suggest reducing Euro spend. Don't try to push people who aren't ready. If you have to go into a company, go in and find a local shopping engine and try to fulfill all of their criteria to get indexed in those engines. That's a good test drive. The second question on conversion: it's a complex thing and measuring it is even more complex. Germans are very strict in the rules and, they'll do the search at work but they won't do the transaction online, so we'll send them an email so they can complete it at home.

What's the most bang for our (well-SEOed for the US) site's buck? [B2B]

David: Put it on the landing page that you can ship worldwide and make it clear that it's easy. Maybe have a German bank account so they can transfer the money. Have a German phone number where people can call. Take away the road blocks more than going out and creating a new site. It's not a language problem B2B.
Mike: I think having a .co.uk site will get you a better ranking. Concentrate your link building around .co.uk sites.

Is duplicate content a problem across languages?

Anders: mostly a Google problem. In the past there would be a conflict between a Canadian French site and a French French site. Webmaster Tools helps that too.
David: I wouldn't advise having two Web sites for the same country. [ie, country.domain as well as domain.coTLD]

[Travel industry question]

Mostly the answers are very specific but David mentions that Germans in particular are very hesitant about giving their information online. Also that Europeans like to book packages instead of each piece separate.

Does the .co.uk domain name convert better than .com?

Mike: No, it doesn't make that much of a difference. I think people pay more attention to the headline.
David: If it's a brand name with a .com in it, you should STILL buy the local TLD. Even eBay.com, people will look for eBay.de.
Anders: People add the country to their searches so, yeah, it might have an impact.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/18/08 at 4:04 PM | Comments (0)

Keynote: How Much Search is Enough?

Can I tell you how much I appreciate not having to do a keynote first thing in the morning? So much. Instead of an 8 am call for blogging, we're sitting down for our opening keynote after lunch, which means I'm actually awake for once.

I'm going to need to be alert to keep up with Robert Murray (iProspect), Aaron Goldman (Resolution Media), Steven Kaufman (Digitas) and Bob Tripathi (Discover Financial Services). Kevin Ryan (SES) and Anne Kennedy (Beyond Ink) moderate this roundtable.

Why is it so dark in here?

Kevin first announces some winners for the SES Awards. Congrats to the winners!

The panelists introduce themselves. From left to right: Aaron Goldman, Steven Kaufman, Robert Murray and Bob Tripathi. I say this not for you, but for me. Inevitably I will screw up who is who.

Kevin: what's the best plan? How are you integrating digital strategies? I hear that people say they are doing it but the clients say that they aren't. What's the marketing metrics and mix?

Bob: What I really see is that TV is still dominant but search and online is in there at 12 percent. It's grown 100 percent. [Goes through an example of an intregated ad campaign] Ad creative supporting TV, Brand building ads, Landing pages supporting a TV ad, a microsite supporting the TV spot.

Kevin: Is that pretty consistent with how the campaigns come together?

Robert: I think this is a good example. We just did a study and less than half of marketers are integrating search with other campaigns so this is bleeding edge stuff.

Kevin: How do you stay on budget?

Steven I think it varies by braind by lclient byu the digital nature of the campaign. Google is getting aggressive about pushing youtube, about getting people to upload their TV creatives. The brands are getting savvy that their content is going to live in a lot more places than just on TV.

Ultimately search is where people go to find things.

Aaron: I think one of the things that we need to recognize is that paid search is different than natural search. The budget for natural search isn't usually marketing money. It's IT money, Web site development money. We're starting to see that budget come from creative side now.

Kevin: What sort of things?

Aaron: One of our clients is Gatorade. They built a microsite to support their current ad initiative. We were in there even before the wire frame stage to get them to be more search friendly. We tried, unsuccessfully, to coach them out of Flash. Two years ago, no one was thinking search that early in the design process. On the Internet, your shelf life is indefinite.

Kevin: What do you attribute the changes to? Is it just awareness of search?

Robert: I would say the efficiency of search is really the factor. People are noticing how it returns value.

Bob: It used to be a hard sell because why would they take the money out of TV? But now they're seeing it's a much better channel.

Aaron: I think a lot of it is education. Shows like this that are teaching CEOs and CMOs that it's worth it.

Kevin: Where is the money coming from? Where does holistic start?

Anne: Where it starts is by using measurement. Search is the one medium that's truly accountable and trackable. What I'm wondering is when you're looking around companies and agencies, is it being used and can it be used better?

Robert: He has a client who is very advanced. What they will do is see how they can do the direct capture stuff first and then work on demand generation stuff. They actually budget for the media cost in the long term. Costs are going up and you have forecast for it.

Steven: Same sort of thing, there's the demand side of the business and the branding/generation side of the business and there's opportunities in both. Google needs to work on selling on a CPM basis for the branding side.

Aaron: We're starting to use search to justify traditional media budgets. We're matching up query volume to TV broadcast. When something goes national we can see the search spike and that way we're able to show the value in TV advertising. That accountability wasn't there before.

Kevin: I want to go back to the search needing to do better of selling branding. Yahoo has searchlight awards. They launched campaigns specifically to spend money and hoped people wouldn't click on the ads.

Steven: If you search for Special K on Yahoo, there's a special branded ad. That's what I mean by Google needs to do a better job. It needs to be more than 70 characters to say what you want.

Aaron: Even text only there's studies from GYM that show that visitors do end up with a brand lift just from viewing text. We need to do a better job of capitalizing on that and the engines need to advertise that to the agencies more.

Robert: People assume that the brands that show up high in the results are the brands that are top in their field.

Steven: It's a problem because what we want is the branding not the clicks.

[Kevin takes a second to ask about how lunch was and the silence is telling... and now onto more discussion]

Robert: The most advanced marketers are the ones who invest the incremental dollar provided they can prove ROI metrics. The thing that may drive proportional spend depends on where your market is in its life spend. If you're in a growing category, you're going to see a different lift than one that you've been doing a while.

Anne: there was a study that came out in June that baby boomers aren't really interested in doing business online as a whole, if they see a web site mentioned in regular press some extraordinary number like 90 percent will visit the site and seventy five percent will convert.

Robert: We did a very similar study, two thirds went to do the search and 37 percent actually purchased from that brand.

Steven: You can't make people search more by spending more on search but you can make them search more by spending more on other media.

Aaron: Digital marketing doesn't work like traditional marketing, it's not run it at the beginning of the year and take focus groups at the end. People are getting more flexible, making changes after a couple months, seeing what works and moving dollars around.

Robert: One thing I'd add is that clients should have separate testing budgets as well so you're not interrupting the core campaign.

Steven: You're not necessarily going to take money out of TV to search. Brand building through TV really still works.

Kevin: What about resources on the agency side? It seems like they're still morbidly obese with staff on staff on staff and then you go to the online side and it's seven guys versus what 200 people do on the traditional side. There was an agency that laid off 200 traditional people and hired 20 online guys. Are we seeing agencies becoming leaner?

Steven: We're seeing them becoming leaner because they have to. They're becoming more accountable for spend and clients are asking for more for less.

Aaron: We're seeing the larger guys diffuse their online teams into the rest of the teams. There's not an online team anymore.

Kevin: Are they /really/ coming together? Or are they just saying they are?

Aaron: They're really doing it. We're making progress.

Kevin: They think they're better than us. Traditional people really do. [Kevin rants a little. Hee.]

Steven: I think they're getting better. The TV guides can now say look TV good, search shows TV good. So they're embracing it a little more.

Robert: 8 years ago it was an education process but nowadays people are really starting to get into SEO and understand how important it is and understanding the longer term yield.

Kevin: Is that the blended search integration? Is it less ads? What's fueling that interest?

Robert: I would say the driver is the increasing cost of all other media. 6 out of ten people are going to click the organic, that's a big driver. And yes, blended is changing click through rates.

Bob: I think people are realizing the organic side goes much further.

Takeaways?

Steven: Tip one: Recognize the outcome that you're hoping to achieve and measure everything that you're doing.

Robert: Recognize the difference between demand capture and demand generation, know your customer's lifetime value and build in a test budget.

Bob: Educate your organizations. Maximize your spend, and figure out how you can take it further on the web

Aaron: Be open and be fluid with your budget allocation. Don't just stick it one place and leave it there. From the consumer standpoint it's all fluid so you have to mirror that with your budgets too.

Kevin: For a lot of people search is the only advertising they do. They don't have money for TV, they don't have money for the rest of this.

Q&A

My companies don't have any marketing budget, they just brought me on and they don't understand ANY of the marketing side. What's my best way to educate them?

Steven: Find a new client. [Hee!] It doesn't have to be that complex. Google makes it simple. Start small, keep it simple, show them results from other clients. Don't overcomplicate it.

Kevin: Eat the cake one piece at time.

Robert: You don't have to start big, just start. SEMPO has a lot of great resources. But you have to start somewhere. Start small and build.

Kevin: What are the some of things that you can do to start small and get small victories?

Robert: You have to start with Google I would say. PPC is good to start with. SEO is not going to yield short term results, put it on the back burner for now.

Who is going to control the display ads budget?

Steven: ON the content side it's probably mistakenly viewed as PPC and held to the same standard. It can't do that. The traditional agencies aren't going to understand that and the digital agencies are going to have the advantage.

Robert: Google and Yahoos are going to provide tools for that and that's going to put the people in this room into the drivers seat on those campaigns.

If the Yahoo/Google deal goes through, what effect will it have?

Panelists: [silence reigns]

Kevin: They're screwed, thanks for coming everybody!

Aaron: I think there are two schools of thought: They're going to be more open and more transparent. And they're going to have more scale. All the individual segments are going to be more

Kevin: Okay, just answer yes or no. Hypothetically: Do you still have a search agency when all your traffic is coming from 90 percent of one engine?

Steven: No.

Kevin: Thanks everybody!

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/18/08 at 2:33 PM | Comments (0)

More Customers, Fewer Costs: Why Marketing to the Long Tail Makes Sense

Day one, session one. I've had a giant iced mocha (yay, caffeine!) and a bagel. I'm ready to go.

Also ready to go are our speakers Mary Bowling (SEO Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc), Brock Purpura (Etology), Aaron Shear (Boost Search Marketing) and Stephan Spencer (Net Concepts). Moderator David Szetela (Clix Marketing) gets us started.

David gives us a little history of the long tail and references the original article by Chris Anderson of Wired. You can do a search for it if you need the run down on what it is.

He encourages everyone to take notes and ask tough questions. Check, David.

Mary Bowling is up first. She's going to be talking about the long tail of local search. Any search made with tintention of finding something in a specific geographic location. Seeking information online with the intenion of completing the transaction offline.

30-40% of searches have local intent. Search engines are committed to interpreting local queries and delivering results.

How does the long tail figure in? Your big term might be "Denver Plumber" but long tail would be 'broken pipe', leaky faucet, toilet repair, etc.

Could also be nearby towns, brand names, etc. It's all long tail and the combinations of it are longer tail still. Long tail traffic is relatively cheap to buy (PPC) and fairly easy to rank for organically (SEO) because they're less competitive. Long tail traffic adds up though and that makes it attractive.

Group terms properly for the best quality scores when you're doing PPC for long tail terms.

Optimization is relatively easy. Create a new page and link to it with the term you're wanting to rank for. (Basically, optimize a page specifically for your long tail term. Putting in with a related category will support it as well.)

For some clients, they see that 47 percent of organic traffic comes from very long tail terms. It's a targeted term and so the conversation is higher when the visitor is sent to the right landing page.

Conversion on short tail terms: less than half a percent. On long tail terms, eighteen percent.

Tip: Use blogs to harvest long tail traffic. Quick and easy to do, blogs get spidered quickly.

Use local tail terms in local business listings. Use long tail terms in your listings in Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, etc. Google has recently added attributes to their local listings and you can really populate it with long tail terms that will help.

(Mary's fast!)

Brock Purpura is up next. He's talking about marketing to the long tail from an ad network perspective. Etology started in 2005. They're a self-service ad network. They serve over a billion ads a day over a network of 20,000 Web sites.

Dynamics of the long tail

The long tail exists under the Tier 2 Web sites--basically all the rest of the Internet outside of the search engines and the Alexa 1-5000 sites. The long tail is the medium to small Web sites with CPM that's very low, often using Google AdSense to monetize.

[Imagine that there's a long tail graphic here]
What's the opportunity?

They ran an experiment on Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 Web sites. Same campaign across all three. They discovered that all the conversion rates were the same but the lower tiers were getting those conversions at a lower CPM.

They're still working on how to target the long tail. The opportunity is there because of it.

How can you leverage the opportunity?

• Build your own "Micro Vertical Network"
  • This should be overall goal
  • Human Targeting drives selection
  • Look for 10+ long tail Web sites then add to it

• Test small, then lock in big
  • Use time based flat rates
  • Start with a week long test
  • If it hits your metrics, then lock in Month, 6 Months, etc.

• Use new, custom ad sizes - be creative
  • Don't compete against Google
  • Position as extra revenue for publisher
  • Small Flash ads, links, JavaScript ads

• Build up relationships and trust
  • Prepay
  • Get publisher to reference you

Aaron Shear is up next to talk about the long tail from the eCommerce side. He's from the shopping engine side of things. He says that makes him jaded. E-commerce sites haven't embraced search engine optimization yet and it's really quite sad. He defines head terms (printers) fat tail (wide format color laser printer), long tail (something very specific to a type of printer)

Most site see the largest traffic AND the largest abandonment in the Head terms because it's not targeted enough yet. Just [printers] is too broad to deliver the right results. The fat tail is a little better high traffic, lower bounce, not really high conversion. The long tail brings low traffic, low bounce and very high conversion.

The common problems with the tail.

Overly descriptive product names:
Think carefully about what people will be looking for. Too long and the shopping engines aren't going to return the right response. You can use a shorter name or come up with multiple titles for the product (um, what?). Page titles should be precise and what the user is searching for.

Related keywords -- product pages
Related searches -- category pages, product pages, content pages, reviews and guides

Where do you get these terms? Log files, PPC terms.

How many terms should be on a page? At least 5 permutations per product up to 20 at a top level. 5-20 per category and 5-10 per attribute or facet.

Expose the words close the top of the site. Make sure that the links to the words are repeated on appropriate pages throughout the site.

Consider using a comparison shopping engine to supplement your traffic
Shopping engines are highly tuned to drive the tail and see upwards of 99 percent of their inbound traffic from the tail.

Your affiliates are great sources of information. Look at what they're doing and learn from them. Look at how they're naming their pages and how they're getting traffic.

Strictly from and SEO view, over 90% of your traffic should be from long tail terms. Otherwise you're leaving money on the table.

Stephan Spencer wraps up the session, just as my wrists start to hurt for the first time. He says we're not going to keep up. Curse you, Stephan. You can get the powerpoint from http://www.Netconcepts.com/learn/long-tail.ppt

The long tail focuses on unbranded search markets, leverage your Web site scale & authority and rely on users to create content for you.

He just went through four slides in about 10 seconds. Oh god.

For large dynamic sites, they saw 100 search terms for every unique page.

Most merchants have 80 percent of their pages driving NO search traffic. Most don't even know this or why it's a problem (and most analytics programs won't tell them this either). That's a sign that they're not capitalizing on the long tail. Measure which pages exist but aren't pulling their weight. Non-performing pages are opportunities.

Phrases per page: reflects on page keywords. More pages, more long tail.

User generated content--turn JavaScript into text content and use the searcher's own words to bring in more long tail terms.

Visitors per phrase: reflects your brand's strength

Iterative testing and measurement:

• Experiment with your SEO
• Only utilize the strategies/tactics that follow if you can test and measure the effects
• You can't just quantify effects on sales alone
• Incorporate new KPIs to in order to view the whole channel more holistically (vs just looking at rankings on the top 100 keywords)

Thin Slicing:

• Make quick decisions, don't overthink.
• Only really works if you're an expert.
• Hand optimize titles across the tail. Just five or ten seconds per page. (They have plug ins for wordpress to help that)

Shorter URLs get more clicks. Put good keywords in the URLs but keep it short.

Anchor text is critical. Optimize pagination. Pagination kills your SEO. Reduce number of pages to improve crawlability and indexation. Consider disallowing "View all" links and forcing spiders through sub-category pages.

And we're done. So fast. I don't have fingers anymore. (other coverage: SER, AimClear and...someone I missed.)

Q&A

Is Tier 3 traffic worth it for number of conversions?

Brock: The volume wasn't the same, of course.

For Stephan: What three things would you tell us to do?

Stephan: Tagging is very very powerful. You can tag it yourself or use mechanical turk for scale. Create "combo" tags that tag brand names, news, etc and then you can group those pages into combinations "apple news" "apple iphone news" etc. Three tags, grouped into one page.

How do you organize your tags and develop a taxonomy
Stephan: you can leverage your consumers, using internal search data (external search data isn't as good as because it's a self fulfilling prophecy--you're getting traffic because you already rank for those terms.) Again, you can outsource to Amazon's mechanical turk. (Mechanical turk is similar to Google Image Labeler.) The devil's in the details in terms of organizing it but you start with raw data and start to sort and test it.

How much time do I spent on long tail vs other things?

Aaron: I'm biased so 100 percent.
Stephan: Depends on your site, 5000 SKUs would be less than a 500,000 SKU Web site. I'd spend a lot of time. Focus on title and URL optimization because it's going to make your whole site rock.
Mary: Take care of your major optimization first and gather your long tail terms as you go then focus on those and work through them.
Brock: Long tail terms are definitely valuable but it's all about automation. We're working on a new technology to help automation. (Aaron: With the logs, you're going to really be looking at what the users are doing.)
David: From the PPC side, you're going to have several fat tail terms but many many more long tail terms.
Stephan: You don't want the same tag cloud site wide. There should be distinct categories. Start with news, that page would then have apple news on it, the apple news page would have apple iphone news, etc. (AN: Siloing!)

Question about keywords in URLs

Stephen: You need to do a lot of testing to see what keywords would work where in a URL. Tracking parameters are death to SEO. If you have multiple URLs that lead to the same content, that's a duplicate content issue. Use hash to do your tracking parameters because the spiders will ignore that. [AN: Really?]
Aaron: When you're dealing with scale, you're going to run into duplicate URLs. Take the next word from the Description in that case.

How do you get the little local guys to understand the value?

Mary: Your best friends are the yellow pages guys who are telling them that they need to be online. You have to do a lot of the work for them and do it in little pieces and give them back results. You can't ask for $10000 up front, you need to say 'give me half of your yellow pages budget and I'll show you results'. Radio and print don't have trackable results. Online does, and you can leverage that to show value.

How do you consult a big company competing against the niche sites?

Aaron: the little sites are usually pretty easy to overtake. Get the social media attention on them or move your niche pages closer to the home page.
Stephan: Increase your entire site's reputation in the engines. A rising tide lifts all ships, kind of thing. Increase your PageRank (the real stuff, not the green toolbar pixie dust). Identify good sites to go after and get links from. One link can do a huge amount of good.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/18/08 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2008

Congress To Regulate Online Ads; Tomorrow SEO?

I don't know about you but I'm getting totally sucked in to Congress' recent interest in Web privacy. In case you haven't been following, on August 1, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters ordering 33 cable and Internet companies, including some of your favorite search engines, to explain their privacy standards and what information they're collecting from users for monitoring purposes.

And now that the results are coming in, we're all gathered around in fear waiting for someone to come and pick poor Congress off the floor. I think its head just exploded. IT seems online advertising isn't made up of as many unicorns, bunnies and rainbows as Congress initially thought.

Seriously, Congress seems just a bit too surprised with the information being reported, deciding that it's time for some rules and regulations to be applied to Web advertising. Edward J. Markey went as far as to say he would like to introduce an online-privacy Bill of Rights some time next year that would require companies to include an opt-in tracking policy that explained what information they were collecting and how it would be used.

Amen and hallelujah!

So what is Congress all worked up about?

Well, they didn't seem to like that companies like broadband providers Cable One and Knowlogy admitted to using deep-packet inspection in trials without first informing users. They also didn't seem to be aware that the reasoning behind Google's DoubleClick acquisition was so that they could track users with the hopes of serving better ads. Methinks Congress should start reading Search Engine Land, with a dash of our Friday Recaps.

In Google's letter to Congress, they admitted that had been doing some testing with DoubleClick recently, knowing that Congress likely read Google's recent blog post touting that they can see the number of people who have seen an ad campaign and how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. However, they tried to clean off their halo by being adamant that they do NOT use deep-packet inspection like some of those other bad companies do.

Well, of course you don't Google. You don't have to because you already know more about Web users than anyone else in the world. You're the biggest search engine on the Web, getting information from Google Analytics, AdSense, and a host of other services. You don't get an (edible) cookie when you have that entire data treasure chest to work from.

I'm glad to see Congress getting more involved with online advertising practices, maybe it'll wake companies up that at least some body of law is watching. If you're going to use behavioral targeting, make sure you're upfront about it and that you make it easy for users to opt-out if they don't want it. When companies don't do that and make it difficult for consumers to know what information is being tracked, it sours everything. Interestingly, according to the Washington Post article, some small businesses claim that if Congress institutes a law making opt-in a requirement for targeting it will hurt their ability to learn about their customers. Please, people! Find another way than being deceitful. That argument sounds nothing more than a child angry that his father is taking away toys he shouldn't have been playing with in the first place.

As interesting as it is to watch Congress get up in Google's face, I think the reason I'm so enthralled in this whole fight is because I'm looking bigger. It's an excellent example of what happens when an industry doesn't set standards for itself and goes unregulated for too long. In case you didn't get the memo, search engine optimization is also a form of online advertising. We're looking at our future here. You can fight that SEO doesn't need standards and that you don't want someone telling you how to optimize a Web site, but it's coming. SEO is advertising and advertising needs to be regulated, just like Google and the others are finding out now. If we're not proactive about outlining what we do, it's not going to be long before Congress comes knocking and does the same thing to us that they're doing to Google. Enjoy your wild west of spamming now.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/12/08 at 2:37 PM | Comments (5)

July 9, 2008

SEO Headlines

Google's New Keyword Research Tool

Our PPC guru Nick Guastella was all aflutter this morning over the news that Google has added search counts to its keyword research tool, thereby turning on another light for SEOs and search marketers. According to Google:

When you use the Keyword Tool to search for relevant keywords to include in your keyword list, you'll be able to see the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network. These approximate numbers are intended to provide better insight into keywords' monthly and average search volumes than previously provided by the tool.

The new data will help search marketers with keyword choices, spotting trends, budget planning and will help them outline their account structure. I supposed props go to Google for being so aggressive about pushing out new tools to give search marketers more data, more numbers and more insight into optimizing their campaigns. I'm going to do my best to avoid the conspiracy theories and be excited about the new data. Nick seemed to be.

For more details, Google has an extensive guide to its Keyword Tool. I don't think many are still mourning the loss of Overturn's keyword research tool.

But Srsly, WTH is Lively?

Yesterday afternoon word started to spread about Google's new virtual world nicknamed Lively. It's a browser-based virtual environment that will tie in to social networks like Facebook, OpenSocial, and MySpace. Okay. The whole think smells of Orkut. It's just another social networking attempt that Google's audience never asked for, doesn't want, and will likely never use (or at least not here in the States). I'm not impressed; in fact, I'm confused as to why they even bothered.

It feels like not even Google knows what it wants to do here. As GigaOm notes, in a recent Virtual World News article Google's Head of 3D Operations (I love that a 3D division even exists) Mel Guymon makes it sound like they're only in the virtual space because it seems like that's the place to be. That's a great way to induce Product Fail. The obvious assumption would be that Google developed Lively as a way to (in time) get users to generate content that they can then place ads on. Lively has integration with Google products like YouTube and Picasa so that may be another way to generate more clicks and ads, but that's not nearly enough to make it exciting.

It seems that if you're going to release something like this, it darn well better be superior to its nearest competitor. In this case, though the missions are different, that's Second Life. And Lively's not even on the same wavelength as SL. People in virtual worlds demand complete control of their surroundings and freedom to explore. Lively fails to offer that. So where's the incentive to switch? There isn't one.

Google, I know you're all excited about another chance at monetizing something, but next time try and do a better job of masking it behind something that's maybe useful.

adCenter Makes Impressive Strides Against Y!SM

Barry reports on the buzz that Microsoft's adCenter seems to be on the rise much to Yahoo's dismay, with advertisers reporting more spend on adCenter than with Yahoo Search Marketing. Over at Search Engine Watch one member noted that adCenter as outperformed Yahoo in both conversions and CPL over the last month. At Sphinn, Kate Morris argues the same. Barry says the "tide is turning". Is he right?

I certainly hope so. I'm not a fan of much of what Microsoft puts out there, but adCenter has long been touted as the superior platform despite its pea-sized traffic. Maybe with search marketers starting to see rewards, they'll be more likely to increase their spend over there. But if they do, it doesn't curb adCenter's major hurdle - the fact that the audience isn't there. And the audience isn't there because the Live search engine is....nowhere near where it should be. Maybe the folks in Redmond could stop bullying Yahoo and get on that. They just may have something here.

Fun Finds

I'm a huge fan of Patrick Winfield's recent article The 10 Best Ways to Find the Perfect Image for Your Blog Post. Some seriously good stuff in there.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 07/ 9/08 at 4:29 PM | Comments (2)

June 30, 2008

Weekend Update

SEO Newsletter Hitting Inboxes Today!

It's the last day of the month which means two very important things: Payday and SEO Newsletter day. Huzzah!

Today's edition of the SEO Newsletter features expanded commentary on two subjects we've previously written about as blog posts. First, Virginia Nussey will tell you everything you've ever needed to know about implementing 301 redirects to clear up any confusion/questions/concerns not addressed in our How to Properly Implement a 301 Redirect post from last year.

From there, I'll take you through an in depth review of our favorite jeans retailer Joe's Jeans and highlight several SEO recommendations that we feel would help them improve the spiderablity of their Web site. You may remember, we first introduced you to Joe's Jeans early last week. Now we're taking a deeper look and taking off the kid gloves!

All that and more will be hitting you later in the day, so if you're not subscribed, subscribe now! And if you're not satisfied with today's pay check, let me also take this time to direct you to Bruce Clay, Inc.'s employment page. ;)

Google Uses Log Data, Cookies To Improve Results

Matt Cutts issued a posted on the Official Google Blog late Friday afternoon explaining how Google uses data to fight webspam, and boy, were eyebrows raised. In his post, Matt wrote that Google uses log data such as IP address and cookie information to "make it possible to create and use metrics that measure the different aspects of [its] search quality (such as index size and coverage, results "freshness," and spam)." I took the statement as Google making good on their promise to be transparent and possibly to ease European Union concerns, however, some aren't so convinced.

Dave Naylor jumped into the mix questioning why this information is being released now before immediately spouting off ways users can spam the index using the tidbit revealed by Google. Way to go, Dave. Let's take shots at Google for being secretive and then immediately publicize ways to abuse the system once they hand over the smallest morsel of information. No good deed.

I'm not so freaked out by Google using this information (mostly because we all assumed they did anyway, right?), but if you want to get yourself worked up, super Mozzer Danny Dover had a stellar post last week about the evil side of Google. You may want to give it a read.

Performics Gets Re-branded as the Google Affiliate Network

Because just one Google controversy wasn't enough, we also got word that Google has decided to re-brand Performics as the Google Affiliate Network, officially making them the most evil company in the entire world. Or something. I think that's what it said on TechMeme.

The Google Affiliate Network will work like all others in its class and pay publishers for each lead they bring in. The affiliate network is still being hosted by ConnectCommerce.com, but it won't be long until it's fully integrated within Google AdSense. Target, Kohls, Citibank, Circuit City, Bank of America and Barnes & Noble are all listed as existing advertisers.

Is there anything left in the ad space for Google to conquer or do they officially have it all?

Fun Finds

Louis Gray grabs my interest with On The Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying. A mighty interesting read. Maybe you should go Google Trends yourself.

Tamar's talking about Twitter and Plurk and says they're not even in the same league. That said, which team are you on: Twitter or Plurk? So far we're Twitter here in the office.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/30/08 at 4:51 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2008

All Your Ads Belong To The Goog

Barry Schwartz says if you thought Google Trends for Websites was scary, meet Google Ad Planner. Beta testers can enter in demographic information and sites associated with their audience and Google will spit out a list of other sites their audience is likely to visit. Barry says he was able to find information like unique visitors, their income, gender, behavior, page views, category information, and lots more spy stuff. Right now the tool is in beta, so in order to play you'll have to request an invite.

The purpose of Google Ad Planner is obviously to help publishers find sites they want to place ads on by giving them more information about the publisher site. I get that, but good Lord is that a lot of information to be handing out. I wonder if this will send Google Analytics numbers through the roof, as well, as that's where they're getting their information, right? Knowing that Google pulls this info, if you're a publisher looking to find advertisers, you'd start using Google Analytics so they could get your information and make you look attractive, wouldn't you? I would. I'm not sure how I'd feel about this as an advertiser though. Would you trust the person who's selling you ads to also tell you where to put them?

Interestingly, Arthur Freydin gave readers an in depth walkthrough of Google Ad Planner and noted that it isn't yet integrated with AdWords. I wonder how long that will take to add on. Seems like a natural progression, for sure.

It's scary to see Google take complete control over the advertising world like this. Now, not only are they selling you ads, giving you tools to see how those ads convert and make them better, now they're telling you where to put them. I know; why don't you just hand Google your advertising budget and let them use it however they'd like. Oh wait. You're doing that now. Carry on then.

I know I said this last week, but it's a little scary to watch Google jump into this space. And poor ComScore and Nielsen? With Google Ad Planner they should just plan their permanent trips to the Caribbean now. Maybe you can get a deal if you book six months in advance? They're pretty much dead in the water. They can't compete with the amount of information Google has on its prisoners er, customers. No one can.

Barry has lots of screenshots of the new program over at Search Engine Roundtable. Head over there to check them out and then tell us what you think.

You'll also find some startling commentary by Brett Tabke in the WebmasterWorld thread on the topic. It's scary when you consider how many sources Google has for collecting your data, how much they know about you, and what they could possibly do with all that information.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/25/08 at 11:15 AM | Comments (3)

June 4, 2008

Amazing New PPC Tactics

Moderator Matt Van Wagner says that at this session you'll probably see a few things you've never seen before. Our speakers are Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, CourseAdvisor; Stanislas Di Vittorio, Founder, eSearchVision; Siddarth Shah, Senior Bsiness Analyst, Efficient Frontier; David Szetela, Owner and CEO, Clix Marketing; and Natala Menezes, Product Manager, User Experience and New Product Development, Microsoft

Addie Conner is presenting on account and campaign structure theory. She says that every business is different, so these are just considerations for you. She asks the audience who runs multiple accounts. Multiple accounts give you an account quality score, keyword quality score and ad text quality score. Considerations for making such an account structure include quality score, organization, keyword types (relevancy, head vs. tail), and execution strategy.

The keyword type is another consideration, like relevancy and whether it is a head or long tail. For your launch and expansion strategy, ask yourself:

• Do you plan to expand?
• How are you expanding?
• What types of keywords will you run on? (Behavioral, long tail, etc.)

Engines care about:

• Relevancy
• Traffic
• Click through rate

Consider your account quality score at launch. If planning on going for longer tail or behavioral, launch with most-relevant terms, higher traffic-terms to first build relevancy and add less-relevant terms later or break out account structure by keyword types so as not to "taint" your most relevant keywords. Bid high to start to garner strong CTRs and establish keywords. When building the account and campaign structures, keep expansion strategy in mind.

Campaign structure considerations are your engine, the tools, and the business.

Regarding the engine, you have inter-campaign considerations:

• Geotargeting
• Intra-day parting and day parting
• Campaign level budget
• Content vs. search
• Engine vs. manual or third option
• Party optimization

For tool considerations, ask yourself:

• Can the tool bid match types separately?
• Does it have clustering tools for long tail bidding?
• Does the clustering/optimization depend on the account structure?
• Can it cluster across ad groups?
• Does it attempt to build bid to position and bid to traffic models?
• Can it optimize to different goals within a campaign or account?
• Can you exclude certain keywords, ad groups or campaigns from using the tool?

Business considerations include:

• Levers (ie: inventory, caps, quotas, geos)
• Reporting
• Budgeting control
• Conversion volume

Stan Di Vittorio is going to talk about leveraging the power of APIs for SEM. All SEM campaigns have long tails. When looking at long tail you want to maximize the ad effectiveness, don't use dynamic keyword insertion. Instead, have targeted, relevant ads that will get a higher quality score; however, it is much more granular.

As for conversion rates, don't send users to your home page. Instead send them to the page with the product. It requires a very detailed URL, and again, a granular campaign which requires detailed product info.

The answer to creating this campaign is using an API - an interface used to access an application or a service from a program, like Google AdWords. Using an API allows you to do bidding, editorial, and reporting.

Pros of using APIs:

• Make granular changes to a campaign on a mass scale
• Make real-time changes
• Automate optimization
• Intgrate with other data feeds and manage your data flow

Cons of using APIs:

• You have to build it and maintain it
• It costs a lot of money

When leveraging APIs:

• Keep a product listing up-to-date. Add new products and remove obsolete or unavailable products.
• Keep prices up to date. Change creative as needed.
• Make ad pressure dependent on existing inventory.

Natala Menezes works at Microsoft adCenter and says the core values at the company are quality, transparency and efficiency. She'll be talking about keywords and bulk tools.

Keyword lists are hard to develop and there's not a lot of easily available data on keywords. Marketers need data and an Excel add-in (Beta) will give absolute numbers (data directly from Live Search query logs and adCenter impressions), demographic data, and portable data. Download the add-in for Excel 2007 at http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter.addin

Managing keywords is messy. Uploading keywords and ads takes a lot of time. It's not easy to copy and paste, and sometimes you want to change a lot of little things all at once. Yesterday, Microsoft announced the Beta release of adCenter Desktop. Register for the pilot at http://advertising.microsoft.com/adcenter.beta-pilot-signup. It allows:

• quick import
• bulk edits and research
• notifications
• and more (including better navigation, quick interface, creation wizard, keyword research)

Siddarth Shah will discuss managing risk in PPC. He defines risk as a state of uncertainty where some of the possibilities involve an undesirable outcome. He'll talk about understanding, analyzing and what to do about risk.

A histogram is a graphical version of a table that shows what proportion of cases fall into each of several categories, or bins. Make a histogram by taking your keyword data and loading the Analysis ToolPak in Excel. Categorize the revenue into bins. With a head term histogram, you typically use the top 10 keywords by spend. Keyword distribution is similar to a bell curve and you can see that keywords perform like large cap stock. You can see if something is going wrong and focus your expectations. With a tail term histogram you use low spend keywords, there is no obvious distribution pattern and it performs like a small mirror stock.

He's using a tree map to visually show how much each keyword is being given in the budget. It's a rectangle broken down into smaller rectangles that are proportionate to the percent of spend they are getting. He says that you can make such a map with an Excel add-in. For more on histograms go to http://blog.efrontier.com/

Dave Szetela is talking about best practices for content campaigns, or in his words, Content Advertising Really Doesn't Suck.

Why content advertisers lose money:

• Ads appear on irrelevant pages and get bad clicks
• Keywords must identify target sites, not advertised products/services
• The ideal ad group contains 20 or so one- and two-word keywords

Building great content keyword lists:

• Use words/phrases that appear most frequently on the target sites' pages
• Use negative keywords to block ads from appearing on irrelevant pages
• The process David uses:
  • Use the AdWords placement tool to find ten or so sites within your target categories.
  • Load the home pages of the first 10 sites displayed, and so a quick copy-and-paste to copy all the words on the page to a text document.
  • Do a Google search on a couple terms that frequently appear on target sites and add those to the text document.
  • Save the text file and load it into Textranz to produce a list of the most commonly occurring one- and two-word combos.
  • Create a short list of the most frequently-occurring words.
  • Include negative keywords to block ads from appearing on irrelevant pages.

Would you recommend putting brand terms and non-terms in different accounts?

Addie says to just keep them in their own ad group.

Any thoughts about the Google content network?

David says that he's got some posts on his blog about that.

Would Microsoft consider making tools available across all engines?

Natala says that she'd love to see more APIs available across engines. The obstacle is getting access from other engines. They do support data portability, however.

Where can we get the tree map Excel add-in?

Siddarth says to search for "tree mapper excel add in" to get the Microsoft Research tool. Natala asks if the audience would like to see that kind of thing available through adCenter, and some people nod their heads.

How much do you use Google's placement performance report?

David says he uses it quite a bit because occasionally ads are not run well and they have to exclude ads from the places they are showing up but don't really belong.

How does one determine optimal bids for long tail keywords that are lacking in historical data?

He says the issue with not having enough stats is how do you aggregate enough data to get an estimate of what to pay. One condition is how long you're willing to wait. Another is a proxy indicator, and you can cluster enough keywords together to believe that the representation is accurate. The tricky issue is how to cluster. It depends on the campaign and product. Addie says that one thing to do when looking at clustering is to identify patterns across keywords. She says that the length of keywords will show clear patterns and you can borrow that info for other keywords that are alike. Sid looks at the number of clicks it takes to convert. He says that not all tail terms are created equal - look at the bid position. Allow low bid terms to get higher bids - give them a chance. High-bid, high-position keywords are risky and are the worst type of tail term.

How long do you think you should maintain high bids at the outset of your campaign in order to help your quality score?

Addie says that some variables to consider are ad frequency and syndication. She says it takes about two weeks to get fully syndicated across the network, so the length of time to maintain high bids depends on the client because time is needed to collect data.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 06/ 4/08 at 4:41 PM | Comments (3)

What You Should Be Measuring -- But Aren't

Time for some more paid search! Chris Sherman is moderating with speakers Akin Arikan (Unica Corporation), Christine Churchill (KeyRelevance), Rich Devine (ZAAZ), and Ryan Gibson (Rimm-Kaufman Group).

No witty banter this time as Chris gets right into things. Christine Churchill is up.

"Sixty-three percent of consumers who conducted online searches for various product categories convert offline" - Google, comScore study March 2006

Many companies push prospects to a phone call or other offline channel because it allows marketers to use the power of voice to convert prospects. This tactic is appropriate for businesses requiring "high tough". It works for B2B and companies with long complicated sales processes, and is common for local service companies.

Methods to Track Offline Conversions

Simple:

• Make an assumption based on their sales
• Anecdotal data: Ask the salesperson or call center people to ask customers how they learned where to buy the item.
• In Store surveys: Surveys ask customers how they found the product.

Intermediate:

• SWAG it from limited pilot tests
• Use a unique phone number in ads from pilot campaign
• Determine an online-offline ratio
• Extrapolate future sales
• Offer coupons or special offer codes
• Unique pricing: Place unique online pricing on a search landing page. If people quote the special rate then you know they started online.

Advanced:

• Customer tagging: Tie the online cookie with the offline customer number or credit card data of offline purchases.
• Use of Unique Phone Numbers: Users from different referrers provided a unique landing page with a unique 800#. The Customer is with a cookie so the phone number is used consistently.
• JavaScript overrides different number based on referrer.
• Phone per campaign
• Track via phone logs
• Pay Per Call - Track calls on separate ad networks

Points to Remember:

Many people do research online and buy offline
Normal online analytics don't count offline conversions
Offline conversions can be considerable depending on your business
Offline conversion information is vital to making informed online marketing decisions.

You need the whole picture to make good business decisions.

Ryan Gibson is up.

Ryan says you have to start off by making some assumptions: That you're managing at least to keyword level-preferably ad level, that the ultimate program goal is to drive profit, and that there's a difference between brand and non-branded terms.

Typical Measurements:

• A/S: Ad Spend to sales
• ROAS: Return on Ad Spend
• ROI: Return on Investment
• CPO/CPA: Cost per Order/Acquisition

You want to look at these metrics on the keyword level and look for real actions happening on the Web site. When you're looking at some of these metrics, the proxies are all based on margins. Typically you see that the folks with the largest margin are going to have the highest spend targets.

Ryan throws out a really gross looking formula:

A/S = (1 - COGS [cost of goods sold]- Variable Costs)/2
ROAS = 1/(A/S)

That equal typically targets roughly ½ of the margin, so why not use the margin directly?

Why is margin so essential?

There are different margins on different product categories in your marketing mix. Accessories will have a higher margin value than the main product.

Existing Tracking: Data can be passed to your bidding system in addition to the sales of dollars.
Post Sales Data Feed: Nightly process to match up orders to the margins.
The Best: Feeding the margin data on the fly coupled with a nightly process to knock out frauds and cancels.

You still need an understanding of the lifetime value. What other actions are of value on the site: email sign up, request a catalog, other downloads, etc.

Well, that was confusing. Mostly for me. I'm sure the other, smarter people got it.

Up now is Rich Devine. My toes are cold.

Conversions don't tell the whole story. When that's all you're focusing on money is left on the table and you miss the big picture. Not assigning full credit to marketing efforts.

This is related to hot topics like engagement, attribution, keyword stacking, etc.

He talks about building a custom-built performance model that assigns dollar values to key site behaviors in order to understand express the value of your Web channel at large. It's really useful for lead generation. Key site behavior include: locating an online dealer, viewing a product showcase, orders through a call center, etc.

Building a Monetization Model

• Confirm business goals
• Identify and align site goals to business goals
• Establish an accurate, key site metrics
• Id key site behaviors or micro conversions
• Assign value to key site behaviors
• Then...have a beer (or a Sprite).
• Go to town with monetization.

Tips for Building a Monetization Model

Discover and use all available data sources. Stuff like Web analytics, CRM data, financial data, etc. Anything you think that will contribute to the model.

[He's zipping through these slides like he's hungry for a Sprite. My attempt at keeping up = teh fail.]

Prioritization of optimization activities: Conversion is not the primary decision driver. Are you assigning too much value to the converting keywords? Are you undervaluing non conversion keywords?

[Missing. Everything]

Tips on Getting Starting with a Monetization Model: It's a model - don't freak; It's not perfect. It's okay to have a wild ass guess as long as it's a scientific wild ass guess. Be comprehensive in your data sources. Get quantitative and qualitative. Be accurate but don't get too strict.

Akin Arikan is next.

Is paid search happening in a vacuum? What about the blogosphere? Do they impact your search? What about everything else?

Search is not alone. There are online ads, offline ads, direct marketing, social media, and relationship marketing.

Case Study From Covario

They did time sequence testing where online ads that were running in parallel to search were turn off. The results:

• Click through rates when down 363 percent
• Conversion rates when down 33 percent
• Had to pay 16 percent more per click to maintain the same business volume

Do control groups by geographic targeting. This applies to offline as well. If you plaster ads all over the streets of Seattle, do you get a surge in traffic?

Search vs Web 2.0 Participation

He talks about UPS Whiteboard viral campaign. I haven't heard of it but maybe you have. If you're UPS, you own this microsite so you can set a cookie for users that visit to see what they're doing afterwards. For that to work, when they go to coolwhiteboards.com it should redirect them to whiteboards.ups.com.

He brings up an engagement funnel that records how many participated, referred a friend, etc.

What about the power of the blogosphere?

People who heard about a bad shopping experience are less likely than the people who actually had the bad experience to ever set foot in the store. [Most. Awesome. Stat. Evar.]

There is blog monitoring technology that does text mining to get to a sentiment of what's happening. They also do trends to look at chatter and effects.

Relationship Marketing: Mary receives a catalog. Two weeks later she visits the Web site via the search. Did the catalog cause the visit? You can do Matchback. You know who you sent the catalog and if Mary is a registered user on your Web site than you can 'match it back'.

It's time to take off the blinders. Talk to the guys on the online/offline/brand marketing site. We have a lot to learn from each other. It's not just technology.

Question and Answer

What method do you use to find the value of your micro conversions?

Rich: The first thing is to get what you can out of the analytics. Identify 4 or 5 core site behaviors and focus on what your core business objective is.

Christine: Identify what your measurement of success is. She takes the micro conversions as some of those measurements of success. They're going to be different for everyone.

Ryan: Ask if those micro conversions are happening offline. What are they costing you offline? What's the value online? Compare them?

What keyword should get the credit for the sale, the first or the last?

Akin: You want to make specific studies at some point to get a real answer. Set up some control groups. You can't do that at all time. At some point you need to reach a conclusion and then create a rule. The details of what you pick may result on your bus model and case study.

Ryan: They've found that a lot of multiple clicks that occur in paid search happen on the same keyword.

Christine: It's going to vary on who your company is. If you're a big brand you don't show up for [movie], you have a problem. But if you're an independent film maker, a long tail term may be more appropriate.

How would you a handle a sit where clients set conflicting metrics to evaluate success?

Rich: They try and address that before they execute. Sometimes it takes a long time, especially with bigger enterprise client. But before they begin to execute they come to some sort of agreement and make sure that everyone signs off. It helps to relieve a lot of the headache.

Christine: One of the first conversions you want to have with a client is about what they're measurements of success are. You want to set that up upfront. Managing expectations is key. Clients aren't stupid. They may be seeing things from a different viewpoint so keeping the communication open is vital.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/ 4/08 at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

June 3, 2008

Winning From The Start: Getting Ad Copy Right

And suddenly I'm in PPC land and totally bitter about it. I had such a sweet seat on the Organic side and had to give it up. I'm knocking people over to reclaim it later. Huzzah!

Jeffrey K. Rohrs is moderating this morning's panel of speakers that includes Benu Aggarwal (Milestone Internet Marketing), Jason Dorn (Yahoo, Inc.), Mona Elesseily (Page Zero Media), Brian Kaminski (iProspect) and David Szetela (Clix Marketing).

Up first is Jason Dorn.

When it comes to creating compelling ads there are three things to focus on.

1. Ad Group Structure: Poor ad group structure and keyword selection make up about 90 percent of the failed creatives. The keywords have to match what's being said. Don't target the term [mothers day] when your ad is about dog poop removal. The more numerous and dissonant the keywords in a given ad group, the more difficult it will be to write compelling creative or to receive meaningful dialogue.


2. Thinking about your engagement as a dialogue with the searcher: A searcher does a query and asks a question. You have two seconds to make an impression. It is crucial that your creative looks like you spent time and energy creating it. It should be clear, relevant and call out a competitive edge. Most clarity issues stem from carelessness. Even simple errors can cripple your ability to compete. Consider the lawyer who spelled it as "lawer" in his creative. What message does that send?


3. Tactical Stuffs: Be as specific as your searcher about your offer - match the scope of their interest. Only narrow scope to qualify clicks. Make it relevant to their query. Use Alt Text to smooth over areas where including the keyword is not feasible.

Call out a competitive edge. Your competitive edge isn't always what you think it is. Determine what it is by looking at the competition. If everybody is talking about the same "edge", than it's not an edge. A differentiator is only important when it's important to the searcher. What "bonus" is in it for them?

Use all the tools at your disposal to win.

Mona Elesselly is up to look at the agency side. She asks if people are enjoying the Seattle rain. Actually, Mona, yes, yes I am.

Understanding Your Market

Go in the search engines and search for the terms that you're bidding on. Look at the ads actually coming up. You want to differentiate yourself. Do they all have free shipping offers? Play with your wording and see if it makes a difference. Testing is key and you really want to set yourself apart from your competition.

Some tools to use:

• MSN Labs Search Funnel Tool: Allows users to see the terms that were searched before or after a query. If someone looks for "sofa", you may find that after they searched for "furniture", "chair", etc. It tells you what other terms to include in your creatives
• MSN Labs Seasonality Tool: Get a gauge as to when consumers are most tuned in to getting marketing messages.
• SpyFu.com: Find out how much competitors are spending on advertising. The tool provides a lot of information.

Tip 1: Cater Ads to Different Buyer Needs -- Try testing price, information that reassures buyers, and time-sensitive offers.

Tip 2: Ad copy should be appropriate "in feel" to the industry category.

Tip 3: Consider the "buy cycle"

Bonus Section: Multivariate Ad Testing

Multivariate testing tests many variables at one time. She uses A/B testing to get a feel for tone and positioning.

Things to Test:

• URL with www vs URL with no www
• URL with sub domain vs URL with no subdomain
• Headlines
• Offers
• Bug words like "try", "get", etc.

Free MT ad testing tool: www.adcomparator.com

Brian Kaminski is next.

If you think about it, in the world of competitive athletics the difference between winning or losing is a very small margin. Given the overall competitiveness of that landscape, it's not surprising that athletes go so far to get any advantage they can. He's not suggesting that you cross the line, but do take advantage of every opportunity that's out there to make things work for yourself.

Why does it matter?

• Time
• Cost
• Cluttered Marketplace
• Campaign Performance
• Quality Score
• Competitive Advantage

Look at improving avoid the herd mentality. It's like watching a group of small children play soccer. If you keep an eye on the ball, you can see every kid on both teams. You want to look at the big picture. Driving awareness, the conversion funnel, the landing experience, etc, all play a part in your direct goal. Avoid the herd mentality of changing everything.

Things to think about: Testing, integration and understanding your competition.

Testing: Practices makes perfect. Understand WHY people choose you. What is your UVP that resonates with them? Test for desired outcomes. Don't become too concerned with your click through rate. You're there to get conversions. Test your ad copy towards the ultimate conversion.

Integration: Capture the demand generated. Make sure it's consistent with what you're doing in other channels. That doesn't mean using the same exact copy.

Competition: Always keep an eye on your competition. Understand what keywords they're using, what kind of ads they're writing, what they're emphasizing, etc.

Next up is Benu Aggarwal. She's going to show us some case studies.

First she shares her process for ad copywriting:

1. Research: Set up internet strategy. Focused choice of keywords
2. Ad Copy: Custom copy for each engine. A/B testing
3. Ad Set-up: Set-up ad on search engines
4. Manage ROI

They use DSM, do A/B testing, take out all the negative keyword phrases, try different URLs, etc.

Word Quest Orlando - Case Study

When they were setting up campaigns they focused on brand-related keyword groups and terms focused on [Disneyland]. They created ad copy with a unique selling point, included a definite time-sensitive offer and disabled content networks.

They did A/B Testing with or without Display URL. They saw a higher CTR with the display URL.

Broad Match and Negative Keyword Phrases: Included keywords related to resort and destination while setting up keywords. They negated all the keywords related to cheap and any competitor key word phrase.

The initial bid amount was very high to secure high CTR. High CTR, High quality score result in lower CPC eventually.

In the end, they found ad groups to drop (or pause) in order to save money to place elsewhere.

David Szetela will wrap things up for us.

Content ads are different than search ads. Content ads are trying to steal the attention away from the content. Ads need to stand out. Yell, don't whisper. Be more competitive. Test, test, test.

The number one job of content ads is to distract the attention away from the page. You can afford a lot more latitude in your advertisements. They don't have to relate to your keyword lists. Keywords do not and should not describe your product or service.

Content Ads Need To Say

• "This ads for me" - usually via a connection to the site or pages subject matter
• There's a reason for