Pay Per Click / Online Ads

June 10, 2009

Rank Top Inbound Marketing Tactics by Trust - SEM Synergy Extras

It wasn't long ago that the outbound marketing methods were a marketer's only option. Traditional push marketing involves getting your message in front of your target audience, whether or not they're looking for it. TV ads, print ads and cold calling are all examples of outbound/push marketing. These days marketers have an advantageous new weapon in their arsenal. Inbound marketing, or pull marketing, prompts a potential customer to come to the business. When a consumer locates a business Web site through a search engine, that's an example of successful inbound marketing.

Today's episode of SEM Synergy focuses on inbound marketing -- the psychology behind it, various channels, and available tools. Larry Kim, founder and vice president of product development at WordStream, was my guest, sharing his thoughts on the power of inbound marketing and some useful inbound marketing tips. For example, he recommends creating a cycle in which SEO results continually inform PPC efforts, and PPC results are used to tune SEO efforts. SEO and PPC are two marketing tactics that fall squarely into the inbound marketing category, but they aren't the only ones.

The Web has helped spawn numerous inbound marketing methods, each with its own use, reach and trust level. Trust is an important consideration when it comes to inbound marketing efforts. In inbound marketing, a marketer depends on an individual being moved to seek the business out,

Photo by papalars via Creative Commons
and the person will have to trust the resource that pointed them to your business in the first place.

In order to help marketers identify the most trusted forms of inbound marketing, I thought it would be useful to conduct a quick poll that rates the trust factor of various inbound marketing techniques. With input from a few experienced marketers, the results of this poll should help us spot which inbound marketing tactics are most relied upon by consumers. Trust is rated on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being the most trustworthy and 7 being the least trustworthy.

How do you rate the trustworthiness of the following inbound marketing tactics?

Word of Mouth

Social Media

Organic Search

Paid Search Ads

Viral Videos

Downloadable E-books & White Papers

Subscription-based Blogs, Feeds & RSS

Webinars

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 06/10/09 at 3:52 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Blogging, New Media, Online Video / Video SEO, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, Search Engine Optimization

April 29, 2009

Internet Marketing Trends - SEM Synergy Extras

In an industry that's as keen on data as ours, there are always reports being released about the state of the trends of the surveys, if you know what I mean. Not to knock data or anything -- I realize as well as the next blogger that attention to numbers is no passing fad. But sometimes it's difficult to keep up with the figures. Sometimes more than one conclusion can be drawn from the same set of data. And more often than not, the data is different from one day to the next. Today on SEM Synergy, our weekly WebmasterRadio podcast, we tackled some online marketing trends -- namely, those in search advertising, social network advertising and consumer behavior.

On the show we took a look at an Efficient Frontier report on search engine marketing performance over the last quarter. The conclusion was that, while ad spend was down, there had been a rise in return on investment. Bruce outlined his argument against the organization's findings, and I'd encourage you to listen to the episode to get his thoughts on what he considers to be flawed logic.

Of course, search marketing firm Efficient Frontier was not alone in releasing a study over the last month. Here are a few more white paper reports that may be worth dissection and consideration.

Paid Search During the First Quarter

SearchIgnite, an SEO reporting solution, researched paid search performance in the first quarter. The following are the highlights of their findings:

Overall, search ad spend was down two percent year over year. However, paid search spend made a significant rebound in March with an 11 percent increase over last year. In contrast, January recorded a 14 percent decline when compared to search ad spend last year.
The average time between clicking on an ad and making a conversion grew more than 23 percent in the first quarter when compared to last year. The number of times a user clicked on an add also increased 28 percent year over year.
The analysis concluded that consumers are still buying but are doing more research and comparison shopping before making a purchase. Meanwhile, advertisers are showing signs of cautious confidence in the paid search space.

SEMPO Annual State of Search Survey

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization released its annual State of the Market Survey, reporting its findings for last year. A full report is available for SEMPO members and a summary report (pdf) is available for everyone else. The findings covered a range of topics, including behavioral targeting, local search, video search, mobile search and social media:

Of those surveyed, 75 percent said they would pay more for clicks targeted to their specific market or within a certain demographic. They are also willing to pay more for demographic and behavioral targeting.
Of marketers who are engaged in branding through social media channels, more than 80 percent use Facebook. More than two-thirds of the group report using Digg for brand marketing, followed by Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Technorati.
More than 60 percent of marketers reported a willingness to pay more for local targeting, versus 40 percent last year. Mobile search and video search are gaining ground, with 48 percent expressing interest in contextually targeted mobile ads and 54 percent interested in contextually targeted video ads.

Consumer Behavior Report

Comparison shopping company PriceGrabber teamed with market research firm Market Reporter to survey U.S. consumers' online shopping behavior (pdf). Generally, the study indicates that consumers are steadily increasing their shopping budgets and are spending more time online:

Compared to last year, 94 percent of online shoppers are spending more or equal time comparing prices. 93 percent of online shoppers are spending more or equal time shopping. 67 percent of online shoppers are spending more or equal time looking for coupons. And 52 percent of online shoppers are spending more or equal time on social networks.
Consumers are willing to buy big ticket items online, and online merchandising is a driving force. 30 percent of respondents would purchase electronics online, 20 percent would purchase home improvement items, and 12 percent would purchase kitchen items or indoor furniture.
The number of consumers who cut their spending declined from 59 percent last October to 50 percent in March. However, the number of consumers who reported that they are trying to save money regardless of the economy rose from 25 percent in October to 27 percent last month.

Yes, that's a lot of data to go through, but in short, consumers are spending more time online, shopping more than before, clicking on more ads than before and spending more time comparison shopping. Advertisers are increasing their ad spend after an early first quarter drop and are showing a willingness to move into the mobile, video and social advertising spaces.

And speaking of social, I'd like to thank my guest Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook, for coming on the show to talk about Facebook Advertising and the opportunity of social network ads. With attitudes changing and trends moving fast, keep up with the numbers to stay ahead of the curve.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 04/29/09 at 5:26 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in E-commerce, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEM Industry, SEM Synergy, Search Engine Optimization

April 27, 2009

Do You Yahoo?

It appears that Yahoo and Microsoft are still in the grips of a tangled tango, their long talks about a search advertising partnership remain hot and heavy. For more than a year now, the two companies have been in on-again/off-again discussions about a merger, partnership or some other strategic opportunity that would give the duo an edge against Goliath, aka Big G.

The two search platforms have historically struggled in the face of steadily shrinking market share. And in light of the current deliberations, it would seem that leadership on both sides of the table are looking for the windfalls that cooperation might garner. But rather than face the painful breakup of an all-or-nothing deal gone south, this time the couple is taking it slow with talks of partnership rather than marriage proposals.

In MarketingSherpa last week I read a primer on advertising with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. It just so happens that Yahoo's paid search program has a number of perks compared to Google's AdWords program -- not the least of which is a higher average return! A typical comparison for a single advertiser looks something like this.

Investment in Google: 80%
Investment in Yahoo: 15%
Investment in other engines: 5%
Average conversion rate with Yahoo: 3.42%
Average conversion rate with Google: 3.39%
ROAS with Yahoo: 2.85
ROAS with Google: 1.85
Percent of Google-driven online sales: 80%
Percent of Yahoo-driven online sales: 7%

Obviously, Google has a substantial advantage of market share and overall number of eyeballs, which leads many advertisers to ignore the solid ROI that Yahoo can provide. But as Kevin Lee explained during the Advanced B2B session at SES New York this year, "If you're not in Yahoo and Live, you're missing a chunk of your audience."

In the Bruce Clay offices, we see that our own clients are just as set in their ways. After talking to SEM analyst and BCI guest blogger James Kim, I learned that only 20 percent of our PPC clients are advertising in Yahoo. But as abysmal as that sounds, it's in line with the norm.

Why, I asked James, are so many clients missing the opportunity available through Yahoo and other engines? In his opinion it comes down to two things: market share and maneuverability.

"It is too early to say what effect a partnership would have on the advertisers. I think it will really depend on its interface and data reporting for PPC accounts. This is where Yahoo and MSN are seriously lacking right now. Google has made a lot of improvements to their PPC management, while Yahoo and MSFT are still trying to catch up on the basics. Once they collaborate, if they do it right with the right management tools, they may see an increase in advertisers."

Understandably, the day-in-day-out interaction an advertiser has with his PPC management tools can make the difference between a good day and a migraine. Google's intuitive interface is easier to navigate and includes more robust management tools.

As for the two areas Yahoo and Microsoft have to get right before they get anywhere, the companies will gain great strides in market share if they combine forces. A partnership might also result in the power players of each team coming together to design better management tools. With both market share and management tools wrapped up, we could be witnessing the debut of the next Silicon Valley power couple. They've already got the silly contracted name and everything.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 04/27/09 at 5:15 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Google, Live Search, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEM Industry, Search Engines, Yahoo

March 26, 2009

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Black Hat PPC Tactics

It's time for my final session at SES New York and the words "black hat" are in the title. I'm thinking there's some more juice to squeeze out of the conference before the doors close, and I'm here to drink it up. Lisa Barone is across the aisle from me. What are the chances she'll be offering up some editorial as part of her coverage? I'd recommend her Outspoken Media post as a companion piece to my reporting.

Our moderator Richard Zwicky, founder and CEO of Enquisite, is introducing the session. There has always been interest in black hat SEO but the crazy things that happen in PPC are rarely discussed. Our speakers are: Jamie Smith, CEO of Engine Ready (who I interviewed before the conference -- check it out); Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit; David Szetela, CEO of Clix Marketing; and Bill Leake, president and CEO of Apogee Search.

Bill is first. He says that there are more people who are willing to talk to you from Google on the paid search side than the organic. He counsels you to work with your Google reps because they will likely help you since this is where their money comes from. And instead of white hat/black hat he'll be talking about low risk/high risk.

Some folks think that SpyFu is black hat. While the volumes are off, the ability to make comparisons is usually accurate. There's a debate over what is black hat in PPC but he doesn't think SpyFu is it.

Owning more shelf-space

Doesn't Google have a strong policy against double serving and don't they enforce it? A few years ago you'd get emails showing that offending accounts were narrowed down to one or completely blocked from AdWords. They changed it in January to say that the way to get an exception for double serving is if the pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax). From an affiliate/lead generation perspective, this opens the door.

Triple serving can be seen on SERPs as well. So, work with your friends at Google to have them happily take your money so that you have a disproportionate amount of shelf space. Agencies are good at covering your tracks in this practice, which he considers grey and not black.

If you don't like it because it's happening to you, use the Contact Us link from within AdWords. This usually gets the bad ads removed for a day or so. It's kind of like whack-a-mole.

Messing with the competition

If you're running ads you think the competition might not appreciate, geo-target OUTSIDE of their geo or exclude their IP address. This works for affiliates too. It's easy to exclude IP addresses for the brand keywords.

How about trademarks?

What if your manufacturers can't finish giving forms back to Google to make Google happy that you can use their marks in ad copy? That's where dynamic keyword insertion comes in. DKI circumvents the approval process and can also help those that don't have authorization to sell the product.

Here's just down and dirty nasty competitive practices. Have your competitors ever had bad press? Would you be doing a civic duty to help that information get and stay out there?

Or what about messing with their positive reputation management campaigns? For instance, if site one is using marketwatch.com/article, you can try to trump their ad with a better quality score and a higher bid for marketwatch.com/yourarticle.

Black hat PPC for the conscientious is the next presentation by David. He's going to cover what is white, black and gray. He'll share his favorite gray hat techniques and he'll share the ones he thinks are black and should be avoided.

White: Everybody does it
White: Clever things I discover
Gray: Might get you wrist-slapped but not de-listed
Black: Will definitely get you de-listed

Gray Hat Trick 1

He published this in his SEW column and says that it's possible to publish more symbols than Google gives you access to. It's tough for Google to police because of non-English ads. He says PPC Hero is the best blog on PPC. They had an article on how to get trademark and copyright symbols in an ad through copy/paste. Then bgTheory followed up with a method for inserting those symbols with keys. His company hasn't done extensive testing with the special symbols use by some clients have seen good results from using them. Sometime using symbols can save you extra characters.

Symbol guidelines:

Use only one per line
A few may not work (like #)
Test lots of variations (and these guidelines)
Use AdWords Editor to create ads because you may be able to get more through

Gray Hat Trick 2

There are some tactics that don't get noticed right away. When you do get the disapproval notice, change the ad.

Capitalize words every now and then. Try "FREE". They've gone months without Google saying anything about it.
Superlatives: "Top", "leading" and even "best"
Hyphenated trademark terms: Ep-son, S e i k o
Trademarks in ad copy via DKI: Could be on the cusp of the illegal
Pay close attention to catch disapprovals

Way Black Tactics

Violating rules via day-parting -- for example, only when Mountain View is asleep
Geo-targeting where competitors won't see trademark violations or IP exclusion
Shell companies and different accounts

He says, "I'm glad you guys are laughing; it's clear that you probably won't be doing these black hat things."

Kevin is at the podium next. He says that unless you are an affiliate and willing to piss people off, forget black hat PPC. Grey hat PPC is okay. There are loopholes, ambiguous policies and under the radar competitive stuff that falls into gray.

Loopholes:

DKI and broad match
Domain names (particularly misspellings) through a broad match
Layer-style popups (that accomplish much of the same things)

Ambiguous policies:

Geo
Time of day
Cookie and ISP custom serving -- not really gray hat, it's good marketing
HTTP referrer

Landing page personalization is likely to increase conversion rates.

Under the competitive radar:

Want to grab some of your competition's traffic?

Geo-segmentation
Day parting
Day of week
Retargeting (through display -- a new development in some engines)
Synched buying based on media expenditures: Monitor heavy areas of home page takeovers. A spike in search can be utilized.

Stay educated on best practices. Pick the right partners for technology strategy. Be willing to take the occasional slap on the wrist. Never stop testing and never stop monitoring.

Jamie Smith is going to close us off strong. He's going to cover how to gain a competitive edge using secret strategies; the importance of planning and strategy organization; using visitor behavior for conversion inspiration; and the X-factor, what your Web analytics don't tell you.

Be aware of direct competitors. How do you win the battle against the people you don't know? Operation camouflage is a tactic to keep your best performing ads private and hidden from competition and click fraud. When you find winning ad strategy, you can block them from seeing that ad you can win the battle.

Operation camouflage:

Find the location of your top three to five competitors.
Set up geo-targeted campaigns for their locations.
Lower your bids in those locations.

Problem with this exist if your competition is located in a major city or if you're a local business or using an agency.

So, they changed the strategy a bit by doing IP exclusion. This is the best strategy for operation camouflage. To find the IP address look at multiple clicks with no action. You can also send the competition an email asking about pricing or something exciting that they will respond to. In the reply you can identify their IP address. Win this battle before they do this to you.

Strategy organization:

Visibility --> Creative --> Continuity (keyword and ad creative, creative and conversion)

How to keep the in-laws from visiting:

Impressions: Why pay for visitors you don't want?
Evolution of match type (exact vs. negative keywords): Sometimes the broad match with negative keywords outperforms the exact match.
Geo-targeting and day parting.

Ad Creative Tips

The art of writing compelling ads:

Take a look at organic rankings. Those have been proven as click-worthy.
Click through rate is not the only measurement. Take into account the data sample. If it's insignificant (less than 100) it could lead you to wrong conclusions.

Continuity and conversion:

When you're shopping in the mall and you think from the outside it's a toy store and it's actually a liquor store, you'll walk right out.

X Factor: What Your Web Analytics Won't Tell You!

Web site conversion rate vs. call in conversion rate
Which ad group and keywords are making my phone ring?
Which keywords are driving assist conversion?
Test poor performing keywords for call ins before you get rid of them. It may be driving call ins even though there aren't Web conversions.

Call analytics work by serving different phone numbers when someone comes from an ad. Over 10 percent of their 16,500 sales in Q4 2008 had an assist keyword. A lot of the time the conversion comes after someone has searched many times with different queries.

Q&A

What tools can you use to track assists?

Maestro and Enquisite are both mentioned.

Jamie: Sort by IP address.

Kevin: Cookies can track with HTTP referrers filtered or not.

I have a competitor that is doing double and triple serving. I don't want to report them but is there anything I can do?

Kevin: Google wants to see different user experiences -- pricing is only one of those options. But it's a moving line that can vary depending on who is reviewing the ad.

Jamie: While double serving sounds good, it could result in higher cost per acquisition.

Kevin: If you're going to do that, do it a controlled environment, like an agency, not the wild affiliate space.

Bill: This hurts you the most with your brand. Multiple sites can perform very well. The key is to avoid complaints from an end user that thinks they've been hoodwinked. The end user, not the advertiser, is Google's main concern. Another point that multiple results help with is the ability to serve different landing pages to different personas.

My clients are hesitant to get more than one 800 number.

David: Here's a well-kept secret. Every AdWords advertiser has free call tracking. It's associated with audio ads. You can secure an unlimited number of toll free numbers and associate them one-to-one with keywords, ad groups, and so on. This won't be available much longer. When they tested phone numbers in ads, clicks went down but calls went up. In display ads click through went up and they got more calls. Intuition would say that the number makes the ad seem more reputable.

Kevin wants David to test 800 vs. 877 numbers. Bill thinks it might be because the people who are calling skew older and the older group may not realize that 877 is free.

Jamie: Local numbers outperformed 800 numbers for a local merchant in a test against 800, 866, 877 and 888 numbers.

My competitor uses false advertising and Google doesn't do anything about it.

Bill: Is there a published source that would back up what you're saying? There are a lot of things you can do to publicize someone's false statement. A credible third-party study can be shared on AdWords -- "learn the truth about" ads. Google doesn't want to be in the position of policing truth.

Buying trademark terms seems to be growing as an issue as more people start policing their trademarks.

Kevin: Google's policy may be more lax because they're more searcher-focused. The pure consumer advocates will make the argument for consumer choice. At the same time it is driving up the bid landscape.

My competitor bids on trademarks but also uses it in ad copy.

David: You should be able to shut them down through the proper channels; it takes filling out forms and some time.

Bill: It's the best case for a scary legal letter. It's very settled case law.

Kevin: He studied the brand of the client, the brand of the competitor and generic terms. The clients brand performed best but the competitor brand was second best by a wide margin.

We need to scale up our PPC in the millions this year. We have an agency doing an okay job. My boss wants to set up affiliates or black hat PPC guys. Where do we find them?

Kevin: Why? You won't be able to regulate those people. If they share the same shopping cart, you're going to have a huge nightmare on your hands. It needs to be a common environment where there's no internal competition. Caution your boss.

You mentioned DKI as a way of getting around trademark. I've tried DKI and been shut down that way as well. Does this have to do with the fact that my account was started by someone who violated trademark laws a lot?

Bill: That's a good assumption. If you're going to try out creative tactics, try it on another account. Use a different street address and credit card if you can.

Kevin: It wouldn't surprise him if there is special code used by Google to manage special cases that are on their radar. Given the level of trademark enforcement that some companies engage in, it wouldn't surprise him.

Bill: Some tactics are trying to fool the Quality Score algorithm with SEO-like tactics. There are people that are masking affiliate links with certain programs. Another potential black hat PPC technique is that there are a certain number of impressions that you need to get before you're given a Quality Score and minimum bid. That leaves you room to test.

If you utilize geo-targeting and IP blocking, if they are reasonably savvy, wouldn't they be able to see what you're doing?

Bill: There are a lot of ways to search outside of your IP address, so if they're savvy than there's a good chance of that.

David: He thinks that a lot of advertisers feel they don't have the time to look into that.

Is there a way to do that as an alternate to cloaking to improve your quality score?

Kevin: The portion of the Quality Score that's attributable to landing page analysis is fairly small when compared to other factors. They already do personalization like routing based on different parameters. This is done for the benefit of the consumer instead of the value of the Quality Score.

Bill: There are a few landing page elements that set off alarm bells to Google. A number of affiliate links is one of those things. There are ways to confuse the spider to they don't really notice and wander away.

And that wraps up the final day of SES New York. See you back on the West Coast!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 1:53 PM | Comments (7)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009

March 25, 2009

Advanced B2B

This session's moderator is Rebecca Lieb, VP of U.S. operations for Econsultancy. Our speakers are: Scott Brinker, president and CTO of ion interactive; Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit; Ian Harris, CEO of Search Laboratory Ltd; and Adam S. Goldberg, chief innovation officer of ClearSaleing.

Scott Brinker is up first. He specializes in post-click marketing -- landing pages and conversion paths, everything after the click.

4 Reasons Why Segmentation Matters

Complex offerings, many value propositions.
Multiple people involved in the sales process.
Long sales cycles with multiple stages.
Wide disparity between best and worst customers.

Segmentation granularity as a strategy: It's becoming easier to increase the granularity of interactions between specific people. Segmentation can happen through keywords and ad creatives; landing page behavioral choices; IP address profiling; forms on the landing page or the site; site-wide behavioral analysis. The first two are self-selected and incentivized. The others might be transparent, but not likely incentivized.

When you're segmenting by keywords, you shouldn't just have one landing page, but many landing pages. How many is determined by how many you can manage and deploy cost effectively and still generate ROI. Clients that go from generic landing pages to specific landing pages can see a four time growth in conversion rates.

A landing page that's a form including a drop down menu is a poor example. The form is actually the conversion, so you shouldn't have that up front. Instead they changed it to a landing page that had a targeted message that made it clear what they were getting when they filled out the form. They also streamlined the form.

Landing pages can have more than one page.

They can have a conversion path type structure with segmentation choices on the page they land on. If you're audience is businesses, there could be big differences between small- and medium-size businesses and enterprise businesses. Sharing the same message to both audiences waters the message down or, worse, turns off one of the audience groups. When given the choice to segment which group they were in, 65 percent of users chose their group and they saw a 14 percent conversion rate. This way you can figure out which segments convert best.

How many pages can you have in a landing page?

It depends on what you're talking about. You may need fewer pages for users that are already customers and more pages to educate people who are unfamiliar with your business. You get a lot of data this way as well.

He's got a book called "Honest Seduction" that has a lot more in-depth info.

Kevin Lee is up next and he's focusing on ads. He asks how many are running Google AdWords -- almost everyone. A few more hands drop when he asks if they are using Yahoo. Only a few are left up when he asks about Live. He thinks that if you're not in Yahoo and Live you're missing a chunk of your audience.

B2B search challenges

Difficult to pre-select B2B clickers
No single decision maker
Offline conversions
Long lead time and lagged conversions
Keywords are often not B2B specific
Huge range in lead quality and lifetime value

Which searchers want to buy? You have the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy doesn't walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you going to take it? (paraphrased from Glengarry Glen Ross)

Media auctions can be painful -- the winner's curse. Success requires figuring out how to either: a) be the brilliant marketer or b) challenge the irrational bidder. Which is your competition?

Post-click activities might be included in your list of success metrics at different values. Lead forms/white paper requests/newsletter registrations; visits to the "contact us" page; phone calls (tracking at the keyword level). Targeting landing pages dynamically based on IP address or reverse DNS can help deal with B2B uncertainty.

When the keyword alone doesn't work, the other predictors are:

Search engine
Daypart
Day of the week
Geography
IP address and ISP (not targetable in search)

Each is an additional segment you can analyze to cherry-pick the best audience. Each segment with the possibility to drive scale should be considered for separate bidding and targeting.

March 24, 2009

Survival of the Fittest 2.0

Let's start with the line-up. Sara Holoubek, a consultant, columnist and member of the SEMPO Board of Directors is moderating. Speaking is: Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board member and co-founder of Future Now, Inc.; Jason Ciment, co-founder of LaDezign.com; Bob Myhal, president of MuscleMaster; and Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit.

This session is part of the Search and the Fear Economy track. The alternate title is "Hanging In There". Sara kicks things off with the speakers telling the audience what they were doing in 1999 -- when the bubble burst. Bryan was focusing on conversions, but no one was paying attention. Jason says that his conversions weren't great back then. Bob says that he was doing everything from building the site to packing the boxes for shipping. Kevin says he was in the process of transitioning from a notorious cloaking SEO shop to paid search and paid inclusion.

Sara says that they're going to take a broad approach to how they survived back then and how it applies now.

Bryan jumps in and says that in 2000 he went to a tech convention and met a guy who had been through many ups and downs, but in the biotech industry. He says that during the depression, people who put the pedal to the metal in hard times really see their competitors fall by the wayside. Bob agrees and says he's seen this now and saw it in 1999. He says his company never had the luxury of funding, but that made them face the challenge with toughness. One of the things he was able to do then and now was acquire competitors for short money. They have grown at an average of 70 percent then and now in about two years.

Jason says that when he started MagMall there were competitors that were blowing lots of money -- companies were overspending with plans to make it up in lifetime value. Instead you should be showing results very quickly, not in a year or two. Kevin says the business eco-system is always Darwinian -- survival of the fittest. He's restructured Didit 10 times in the last 13 years. He's constantly thinking of new avenues and what's going to be strong at the end of the year. Every time you transform your company, your competitive set changes too. Jason says that the defining characteristic that separates your company from competitors is customer service.

Bob says that as online marketers we spend a lot of our time trolling for new customers, but the most valuable source of revenue is existing customers. He's gotten more innovative with ways of reaching out to existing customers. Mine the data to establish good relationships. Bryan agrees and says that real success comes from constant execution -- don't set it and leave it. Continually measure and prove.

Sara says that along with the cautious consumer, the economy is hurt by the broken credit system. Jason says that his funding was always "in the mail." The strategy that worked was always communicating with clients and targeting niches. Dominating a niche is great because social networking allows happy customers to promote your services.

Sara recognizes that she's hearing a lot of business basics. Has anything changed radically? Bryan says the fundamentals don't change. But look at basketball in the '70s and now. The dunk has come a long way and is a bigger part of the game, but it was always there. New tools have come out and new uses to use old tools have emerged. Now there's almost too much data and people almost don't know how to act on it. But it will be interesting to see if companies will invest resources into using new tools.

Kevin says the biggest shift has been speed. The fundamentals are the same but everything has to be done quicker. Bob says that the numbers have changed because more marketing budgets are going online and they are more ruthless in cutting poorly performing channels. Jason says there are now new ways of listening to customers, such as Twitter. Bryan asks how many people have an active program for measuring conversions month after month. A handful raises their hands. If you're not doing it, you need a smack to your head. Tweaking should happen constantly.

Q&A

Are you incorporating competitors into your site or as separate sites?

Bob: They are run separately. We determined early on that site A may not appeal to one segment and site B might not appeal to another. It creates challenges and when he dreams at night, he dreams of one site, but he doesn't see it as an immediate reality. The Web is so diffuse and there are so many things going on that you really need to target.

Sara: Were they coming to you or were you going to them?

Bob: It was half and half. When word got out we were in acquisition mode, we got some interested parties reaching out to us.

How do you use blogs and how does it help your bottom line over all?

Bryan: He built a business out of content back during the first wave. It snowballed into writing for ClickZ, several books, etc. Content writing has built a multi-million dollar business. The hard part is that people still have to catch up with how content dissemination has shifted.

Kevin: If you're going to have a content-rich strategy, know why you're doing it. Verbal diarrhea is not usually useful. Make sure there's a strategy behind your content, especially if you're not a publisher. It's all a means to an end.

Do you ever have problems with running multiple sites?

Bob: There is cross-over between sites. Some customers are familiar with the fact that a few sites are done by the same company. It mostly comes down to price shopping. Early on they were able to have the best content, but eventually everyone got on the content boat and the competition was too great. Instead they had to rely on offering the best products.

Does a content-rich strategy work for an e-commerce store, considering the competition and the difficulty of tracking ROI?

Bob: It hasn't worked for us the way it used to. The Web became so efficient at people finding the right price that it became difficult for them to spend a lot of their time focused on generating content -- and it was very difficult to track. Now they focus on bringing in people ready to buy, people who aren't researching.

Since Google is still trying to reward good content, but you want good customers, is there a disconnect between what the search engine thinks is important and what the customer really wants?

Kevin: AdWords has become the last good location for marketers targeting the ready-to-buy market.

Jason: TALLA -- target customers within a niche; be authoritative; leverage users; leverage affiliates.

Do you use product reviews and is affiliate marketing helping drive sales?

Bob: Product reviews have grown in importance. Affiliates are great sources for casting a broader net and bringing people in. But affiliate marketing has substantial negatives (especially for ROI).

Jason: Affiliates can focus on different segments of universal search and improve your visibility.

Can you follow up on your comment about the negatives of affiliates?

Bob: There's clearly a sense of competition where you're competing against your affiliates for sales. The other tricky thing is to get a true ROI, do you just count the last click? Who gets credit when a user finds you on an affiliate and goes to Google and clicks on your ad?

That's all of the Q&A I'm going to cover. Time for lunch!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization

Entrepreneurs and C-Suite Executives: A Fast-Track to Search Marketing Fluency

Next I'm hitting up the Search & the C-Level Executive track with an intro by Bryan Eisenberg, SES advisory board member and co-founder of Future Now, Inc. Amanda Watlington, owner of Searching for Profit, is giving the sole presentation.

Bryan says that when he was asked to introduce this track he was excited because Amanda is the author of the first version of "Call to Action" and is someone with great depth of knowledge in the field. Amanda asks who is at their first SES conference. She says one of the problems with the conference format is that sessions are a dive into a micro topic. You walk away and don't know how to put all the pieces together. This session is going to help you put it all together from a macro view.

We're living in amazing times for marketing. We're going to look at:

A quick cup of alphabet soup
The economics of search in 2009
Search and the marketing mix
C-level role in managing search
Getting the KPIs right
10 challenges to take with you

A Quick Cup of Alphabet Soup

SEO = Search Engine Optimization
- Content and site design enhancement to achieve relevant rankings on SERPs = search result pages.
- Results are variously called: natural, organic, free
SEM = Search Engine Marketing, also used to refer to the entire industry

SEO is a long term effort with long term results.

KWs = keywords, the drivers of success
CMS = Content management system, a search-unfriendly CMS is often a constraint on SEO success
ROI = Return on investment, a typical macro-measure

SEM is short term efforts, often referred to as "campaigns".

KW = also the drivers of success; lists are long (vs. short in SEO)
ROAS = Return on advertising spend, a typical measure
ROI = Both at a campaign and even keyword level

The Economics of Search

Spending on search accounts for half of all dollars spent on online marketing. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
$13.4B search spend for 2008, $11.9B (88%) was on paid placements. This is less than the original projection ($15.7B) made in January 2008 due to the recession. (Source: SEMPO survey)
$26.1B expected size of industry in 2011. (Source: SEMPO survey)
Inclusion of social media in search is expanding the footprint of search and the overall dollars spent.
Even Google is anticipating declining revenues.

Search Continues to Grow

Search is expected to grow 8-10% even in the current down economy.
Search is poaching budget from:
- Other online efforts, as in 2000 bubble burst
- Offline, particularly print
- Television: the economics are very tempting

Effects of the Slowing Economy

	Less buying, less searching, more browsing, lower ROI -->
Slowing economy -->	Reduced ad budgets reduce CPC competition -->	Search
	Big spending sectors in trouble (auto, retail) -->

Universal Search Changed Everything

When she first started in search (1995), all you had to worry about was the page for a slew of engines. In 2007 there was a major change in how the model worked.

Google announced its universal search model on May 16, 2007.
Yahoo followed soon afterward with blended search.
Images, news, video and local info are now being delivered in one easy-to-use increasingly personalized interface.

Now to get on the page you have to add to the clutter.

Search Now Looks Beyond the Site

The top result for a "coldplay" search is a news story, then the official site with site links. Then there's a Wikipedia result. Then videos, social networking sites, multimedia sites then blogs. Video is the current darling of search. Eye tracking has shown that eyes go to the images on the SERP. Every part of multimedia can be optimized. Search is not just your Web site. You can control blogs, video, the news, some social sites, images, articles and site content.

How Has This Changed the Management of Search Marketing?

Context: Before Universal Search

SEO was assigned to a specialist with a narrow set of expectations and tasks all framed similarly around visibility for the target site in search engines and directories.
SEO was a (difficult) collaboration of the webmaster, IT and marketing/content stakeholders.
SEO agencies were tasked with achieving search engine rankings and traffic.

Context: Today with Universal Search

SEO must be the visibility manager, the digital asset performance optimizer, not a soloist.
Video, images, news, products, maps, local search and mobile search go beyond the role and skills of most traditional SEOs and many traditional search agencies.
The demands of optimizing for Universal search create a need for boundary spanning:
- Video: Which department has a videographer and editing suite?
- News: Responsibility of SEO/marketing/PR?
- Local listings: marketing?
- Images: Who owns them -- product, merchandising or content team?

Skill Sets: Require New Collaborations

SEO manager must interface with the PR team, videographers, and product/content specialists (all who may not know SEO)
With co-content creators, search must develop protocols for optimization of various new types of content.
Search must create new checklists and procedures to ensure that other collaborators' efforts work in sync.
SEO must be collaborator and boundary0spanner.
- Must have sponsorship at the highest level to accomplish results.
- Must be prepared to function as a manager, not just an implementer.

Organizational challenges -- whether in-house or agency -- stay the same.

Search and the Marketing Mix

Search is a synergistic connector
- 5 minutes after a TV spot airs, there is an increase in searches for that product or brand on the Web.
- Display advertising influences conversion on natural search.

To achieve maximum power, the goals must be clearly articulated. Budgets must reflect the revenue impact. Set aside a portion of the marketing budget for new, experimental endeavors. Develop marketing results attribution models now, if they are not already in place, to clarify which marketing efforts should get the credit. Make sure there are appropriate metrics for measuring all channels.

KPIs

Use data from search-driven marketing efforts to create models for consumer behavior for your business.
Challenge Web analysts to bring in and integrate multi-stream data.
Avoid dashboard blindness -- send divers deep while navigating from the top level.

She has two role and responsibility decision models. I can't get them both down but she'll be making these slides available and I may just swipe it then. Check back later!

Using a decision-making model for search begs clarification of how things really work in the organization. With everybody on board, a decision model will keep things working forward and avoid friction.

Leverage the power of social media.
Improve the performance of paid search through testing of landing pages.
Focus on improvements to conversion that will increase revenue.

10 Challenges

If you were unable to afford to buy or had to cut PPC ad spend by X% after a certain date, what would happen to our online presence, sales, branding, etc.?
How should you measure the effectiveness of a PPC campaign? Organic search?
What in the org/Web site is limiting search performance?
What skills or training do you need to do your job more effectively given the changing nature of search?
What's the impact of offline advertising on online results?
What percent of overall ad/marketing budget does the online presence warrant?
What must you do to improve the effectiveness of search relative to conversion?
What is the expected conversion rate for the site, how is it measured and how does it compare to the rest of your industry?
Who is not included in the current search marketing team?
What can you do as a manager?

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization

March 18, 2009

Six Questions with Jamie Smith

We're back with another Q&A in advance of SES New York. Next up is Jamie Smith, CEO of Engine Ready. Jamie is set to speak at the advanced PPC track session Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Black Hat PPC Tactics. Will this interview be taking us to the dark side? Time for an adventure!

1. I'm guessing this session is gonna be one packed house. Let's start with a definition. How do you define black hat PPC tactics? Are the tactics you'll be sharing explicitly frowned upon by search engines?

In terms of the definition, I think Black Hat was a little extreme for the session title, but we will be talking about advanced strategies very few people are aware of that you can implement and more importantly strategies your competitors may use against you. In terms of the "Black Hat" aspect, this is much different than SEO because in paid search the rules are much more clear. Well, the rules were clear when it was Overture and the top bid was #1 and the bid prices were disclosed. Now, with Quality Score everything is becoming much more similar to SEO because we are all trying to determine the "algorithm" or most important factor that drives the Quality Score. This session should reveal some real secrets to implement that can help you stay ahead of all the changes the engines are making and more importantly, stay ahead of your competition.

2. Are you really going to be giving away black hat techniques or do you see them as being more on the grey side? This may be asking too much, but can you give us an example or a flavor for the kinds of tactics you'll be sharing?

I don't want to ruin the session, but the strategies Engine Ready uses are always above board and within the rules. We just come across small glitches or settings that can be adjusted to give you an advantage against your competitors or an advantage against the search engines to improve your ad creative or pay less per click :)

3. There's a lot of talk in the industry about black hat techniques being okay for testing but bad for actually implementing with a client site. Are the tactics you'll be sharing during this session ones that you'd use for a client?

Yes, the techniques I will be discussing have been used on clients account and can be used on your accounts. We encourage all clients to dedicate at least 5%-10% of their budget to testing as these strategies may not work for everyone. It is always recommended to draw your own conclusions to determine the results of each strategy.

4. Do you see the increasingly competitive PPC environment as requiring more stealthy tactics? Do you detect more interest in the SEM industry to learn tactics "beyond the normally documented limits generally discussed" (quoted from the session description)?

ABSOLUTELY! If you are not innovating and pushing your PPC strategies to the limit, you will quickly fall behind and results will begin to suffer.

5. It may be too early to see any trends, but have you been adjusting your clients' PPC strategy at all due to the recession? How do the "black hat" (read: outside-the-box) PPC tactics like those you'll be sharing put search marketers at an advantage?

I view the recession's impact on PPC tactics to be much less disruptive than other marketing initiatives. Successful marketing entails major market research, understanding your target market, and devising a strategy to get in front of that audience and PUSH your message on them. Search marketing is still one of the only PULL marketing strategies where someone has to request information / pre-qualify themselves and all you have to do is PULL them to your site. This is why search marketing is so effective and the best part, if you don't pull them in, you don't pay for anything. I'm not saying the recession is not having an impact on search marketing, but the strategies we will be discussing allow you to be more efficient and get a little more out of each dollar spent.

6. You can bet I'll be at the Black Hat PPC Tactics session. Are there any sessions you don't plan to miss? Where can people catch up with you at the conference?

I'm looking forward to the Advanced PPC strategies session to see if there is anything new Engine Ready hasn't tried.

People can catch up with me, or Engine Ready's noted Author and Vice President Brian Lewis at the Engine Ready Booth # 310. I'll be doing an interview talking about search behavior and our new free landing page analysis tool ConversionCritic (www.conversioncritic.com) at the WebmasterRadio booth on Wednesday at 11:30.

I encourage you to also stop by our booth ... we'll be running attendee's landing pages through ConversionCritic to pinpoint exactly what modifications can be made to improve their conversion rates.

I guess we'll have to check out the presentations to see just how "black hat" the session really is. Either way, it will certainly get some attention! Check out the blog next week for my liveblog coverage of the show, including Black Hat PPC Tactics. Thanks for stopping by the blog, Jamie!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/18/09 at 8:54 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Interview, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009

March 17, 2009

Six Questions with Mike Mothner

With Search Engine Strategies New York hitting the Big Apple next week, it's time for our series of Q&As with conference speakers. Up first is Mike Mothner, founder and CEO of Wpromote. Mike will be speaking at the advertising track session 8 Things You Aren't Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results. Let's see if I can get any secrets out of him, shall we?

1. Wpromote offers services covering just about every aspect of Internet marketing -- PPC management, SEO, design, viral campaigns, and more. Are you seeing more incoming clients looking for a full range of services or do they come in looking for one thing?

Good question. Most new clients come to us aware that they are deficient in a particular area. They quickly, however, learn that PPC, SEO and landing page design, for example, are not autonomous beasts. Our approach is holistic; PPC data can help guide SEO goals, and understanding why users convert on a landing page can help hone the PPC campaigns driving traffic to them. When clients begin to embrace this worldview, we work with them on a broad scope of services.

2. This workshop is going to blend PPC, SEO, landing page optimization and social media concepts. I know that a well-rounded marketing campaign gets the best results. What do you think is the bare minimum for an integrated online marketing campaign?

The bare minimum? Well, I believe that if a website speaks well to its audience -- in other words, is able to convert visitors to leads or sales -- and there is a regular flow of traffic to that site thru a blend of organic rankings and paid traffic, I believe that could constitute a solid integrated online marketing campaign.

3. The session description says this is the "one session that you can't afford to miss". In my experience, SES shows usually have lots of great sessions. How does your workshop stand out?

To me, a good session is one that keeps me interested, informed and entertained. A great session, however, is one that leaves me with something truly actionable to improve an aspect of my online marketing. We're going to try to deliver the latter. If you get back to work after the conference with one good idea to implement, then we succeeded.

4. Time for a teaser! Wpromote will be sharing eight things that SEMs may not be doing. Can you let us in on one of them? What actionable suggestion would you make to avoid this mistake?

Sure, I'll share one: ATE. Always Test Everything. We are obsessive about testing, and any good SEM should be as well! Take the very name of our session: "8 Things You Aren't Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results". We started with about 6 possible session titles, tested them as Google AdWords ads to the query "search engine marketing", and chose for our session the title with the highest click-thru rate.

It is easy for over-worked SEMs to fall into the trap of "if it ain't broke..." Well, it's always "broke", but we will talk about some ideas of easy tests to run that can have some surprisingly big results.

5. Why do you think search marketers are overlooking these eight things? Are they lapses of common sense or were they uncovered through years of experience and digging?

A little bit of both. A few are simply innovations that we developed over the years and want to share. Others are concepts that every search marketer knows, but aren't practicing as well as they should be. I wouldn't call them lapses of common sense necessarily -- there's a lot to remember -- but either way nothing some gentle prodding can't fix!

6. Are there any other sessions or events happening that you don't want to miss? Where can attendees track you down during the conference?

I am really excited these days about non-traditional online media: sessions about opportunities in social networks, communications tools (ala Twitter) and video I would certainly not want to miss.

I will be wandering sessions and spending lots of time at our booth (112) and of course everyone should join our session Wednesday at 4pm Wednesday.

You can email me (mike@wpromote.com) or Twitter me (@mothner) if you'd like to meet up at the conference!

Want to know what Mike's seven other secrets are? Then register for SES New York. (Don't forget to sign up for Bruce Clay's SEO workshop on Friday!) While you're at it, grab your ticket to the IM Charity Party on Monday night; it's $50 and all proceeds go to charity. And stay tuned for more speaker sneak previews here on the blog. Thanks for kicking it off right, Mike!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/17/09 at 4:08 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Interview, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES New York 2009

March 12, 2009

Google's Interest-Based Ads Prompt Fear & Worry

Yesterday Google announced that "interest-based" advertising is being launched in beta for AdSense and on YouTube. While some advertisers might be drooling over the opportunity to improve ad targeting based on user intent, there's been plenty of backlash from privacy advocates. A history of blogosphere events following Google's announcement can be found on this week's issue of Who's Blogging What?

On the Google Public Policy Blog, the search engine anticipated privacy concerns:

"Providing such advertising has proven to be a challenging policy issue for advertisers, publishers, internet companies and regulators over the last decade. On the one hand, well-tailored ads benefit consumers, advertisers, and publishers alike. On the other hand, the industry has long struggled with how to deliver relevant ads while respecting users' privacy."

The post goes on to outline features that will allow users to opt out of personalized advertising. However, problems with the flawed and overly complex cookie-based technology have been described by webmaster and SEO John Andrews.

Today search marketer Michael Gray was vocal about his concerns over Google's interest-based ads on Twitter. He theorized that announcements by Google regarding Google Voice and Google Friend Connect were intended to be well-timed distractions.

In response to Aaron Wall's post on SEOBook, veteran search marketer Bob Massa lamented the apparent apathy of the search engine optimization community. Viewing Google's use of private data as an abuse of power and a concern for individual rights, Bob called on Internet marketers to raise the issue and create awareness.

So let your voice be heard. What do you think of interest-based search?

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/12/09 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, Personalized Search, SEM Industry

February 11, 2009

Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing

Good morning and welcome to Search... er, wait, no. This isn't the SearchWiki panel. Hold on tight everyone because we've taken a sudden course change for Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing with panelists Jeremy Crane, TNS Compete, Dan Darnell, Optimost, Interwoven, Inc, Sandra Niehaus, Closed Loop Marketing, and moderator Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro.

If you're interested in the originally scheduled panel Google's SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results, head over to OutspokenMedia where Lisa will be blogging up a storm. It's going to be a very well covered session so I decided to give some love to the PPC track.

Gord says that bad landing pages are where good leads go to die. It's important to make sure that you understand your visitors' intent so that they can land on the page that's targeted to them.

Jeremy Crane is up first and he's going to teach us how to find that elusive low-hanging fruit. He's going to be using examples from display campaigns but the lessons should be similar enough for search.

Example: AT&T

He starts with two AT&T campaigns, very similar in look and feel. The campaign for the Family Plan got more than twice as many clicks as the Free Phone campaign. However, the number of conversions for the Free Phone campaign was greater than the Family Plan. What's the deal? The landing page for the Family Plan just sent visitors to a generic page within the site. The Free Phone page was specific, gave three options with a "post-click" experience that was targeted to conversion.

The traditional flow is: Stimulus -> Exposure -> Response.

However the reality is that there are multiple stimulus, exposure, and response steps. Online you can measure each of these steps. First from the advertising, then the landing page, then into the conversion funnel. Most people skip optimizing the landing page.

Improving performance from the bottom quartile to average or best-in-class translates into a 2-6 time improvement in conversion. Assuming no added spend, increases in conversion are direct increases in ROI.

Not all landing pages drive equal amounts of traffic to online tools. Looking at "build a drive" tools on car sites is a good indicator of intent to buy. In comparing four makers who lost? Toyota had the weakest showing. Why?

Their landing page gives you exactly one thing to do: find a dealer. You can't build and configure right from their landing page. It's on a different domain (buyatoyota.com) which was confusing for users. Not a good experience.

Example: Credit Card Applications

Chase and Citi gave calls to action right up front. "Apply now" links were on the landing page. They had 33 percent and 68 percent conversions as opposed to AmEx and Capital One's 2 percent conversion rate.

How do you go from best in class to uber best in class? Look at your competitors, take their ideas, incorporate them into your landing pages and test them against your own. See if you can get a lift. Even if you don't get a lift, you'll learn what doesn't work. However, the rules change every 6-12 months so you need to be testing continually.

Gord points out that you also need to focus on how invested the customer is in the goal. The less invested, the more on point you need to be.

Dan Darnell follows and introduces Optimost (now part of Interwoven as of 2007) Dan points out that you can't just test your landing pages, you need to test everywhere -- landing, registration, shopping carts, everything -- headlines, copy, offers, pricing, for everyone -- new, repeat, weekend traffic, email responders, etc.

A visitor makes many mini-decisions on a landing page, not just one. It's not just the form or the image or the header. It's all of those things, each tiny decision drives the action. This is where multivariate testing comes in so that you can test many different elements all at the same time. Don't just pick one in a meeting. Test them out and decide based on what the users respond to.

Example: Qwest

During a 6-week experiment, their KPI was unique click-through rate. The parameters were 4 variable areas, 19 values across areas and 12,986 possible creative permutations. They were looking at the header, the copy, the offer and the image.

Changing the header copy slightly didn't make much of a difference so they could use any of them and it wouldn't make an impact.

Reducing the amount of copy had a positive impact, particularly in taking away extra links so that people couldn't get distracted by other tasks. Less is more.

Changing the offer from "check availability" to "continue" had a negative impact. It wasn't the right message for the page. Adding a bright red arrow (on an otherwise green and white page) had a positive impact -- red means pay attention to me. It helps people focus where you want them to look.

Three changes in images: Two had no impact, one has a slight negative impact. Pick your battles. If it's not that important, don't worry about.

All the changes in the end increased the conversion 28.4 percent.

Example: WebEx

They tested the nav bar. Removing it and it had a slight negative impact. A quote added to the side also had a slight negative impact.

However, combined they had a positive impact. This is why you need to test elements in interaction.

Changing the button from "start now" to "continue: was better in this case. You need to align your expectations. If the visitor thinks he should be finished, "continue" won't work.

Removing privacy language actually reduced response. "Your privacy is assured" can add in doubt if they already know your brand. If they don't know your brand, then the opposite can happen.

Overall the changes led to a 63.65 percent increase in conversions.

Continuously test. Don't test in isolation. Be adventurous and always look for ways to improve.

Sandra Niehaus wraps it up for us by diving into tracking phone calls.

Example: ifbyphone (a "telephone building block company")

It was not a pretty picture when they started. [Accompanied by an image of an overweight man in swim trunk -- not, in fact, pretty]

The problems:

They had trouble attributing calls to a marketing source, complex offering, wide variety of audiences.
They weren't happy with the previous company that had managed their PPC campaign.
The campaign didn't have specialized landing page.

They wanted to increase the quantity and quality of:

Phone calls
Click to call
Online conversions (distant third)

They had to get the right audience first. Then they did a landing page redesign using A/B testing to prove that they could in fact make a difference. Then they did multivariate testing based on the winner of the A/B test.

Step one: Audit your PPC -- are you attracting the audience you want?

Problem: They were relying too much on broad match instead of the terms that they'd chosen. "Call tracking" permutated to "cell phone tracker" and "gps phone tracker". "ACD" permutated to "AC/DC", which was really not the right audience and message. Fixing the PPC campaign reduced spend and increased qualified leads.

Step two: Landing page testing

Problem: There was way too much happening on the page. Two different phone numbers on the page made it hard to track attribution. There was no clear value proposition. It was a very, very long page with a call to action below the fold.

They redesigned to a simpler design with a clearer value proposition, an obvious call to action and one contact number instead of many. The page was still long but it was more obviously grouped. The call to action was repeated so that you never lost it as you scrolled.

Result: They increased the average call time from 4.75 minutes to 9 minutes which convinced the board.

Step three: Multivariate testing

Element A: Heading with value proposition
Element B: Call to action with big changes
Element C: Added another value proposition

Results over all were 3x improvement in call volume and 2.3x in lead quality with no increased spend.

The biggest jump was getting the right audience. Second was the A/B test, then the multivariate testing.

Gord jumps in to say you need to figure out what to test and suggests talking to your customers.

Q&A

How did you guys decide what to test?

Jeremy: He says his company is all about looking at your competitors and discovering how to capitalize on your competitors. It's complementary to what Dan and Sandra do. We all have great ideas and lots of other people have great ideas too so it's about capitalizing on it.

Dan: He agrees and says that it's also about not throwing out ideas during the process, in meetings and such. Look at non-traditional sources. Qwest looked at Amazon for lessons.

Sandra: She suggests reading market research from Enquiro, MarketingSherpa, etc. Learn the elements that have the most impact. Usually it's the most basic stuff. Understand basic user behavior.

Gord: The bane of the eyetracking studies he does is that now he automatically does heat maps. Hee.

A/B versus Multivariate: where do they fit in?

Sandra: She likes to start there when the pages are horrible and the client is new or inexperienced with testing. She says she want to move people up to the next level using a complete redesign.

Dan: Concept testing is good with A/B testing. "Big idea" testing includes what wild and crazy ideas can we try?

Jeremy: Start simple and get more complicated.

When you're looking at tools to get into the testing cycle, what do you use?

Sandra: It depends on budget and familiarity with the tools. Sometimes the easiest way is to use paid search ads to test different creatives which then can be easeed into testing pages.

Dan: Sometimes the platform isn't a good fit. If you're just getting started, look at Google, look at some of the other folks. There are a number of different solutions at a number of different price points.

Jeremy: There are products and services that allow you to look at that competitive market. His tool is something you use once you're comfortable with optimization products and you use it in tandem with those.

What kind of budgets do you need for testing?

Jeremy: In terms of competitive analysis, it can range from $10k to $100k for ongoing client engagement. It's on the higher side for his services.

Dan: He thinks you need to look at this in terms of the value that you're losing. He can tell you what it costs to work with his company but you need to look at it in relative terms. From a few thousand per month to $30k per month depending on what you want to do. Put it in perspective of the value that you're losing.

Sandra: Do not look only at the immediate customer loss but also at the lifetime value of the customer. She comes from landing page design services, using Google mostly but sometimes others. The budget is usually about $10k. Don't skimp on the design of the landing page. The skill of the designer has a lot to do with your ultimate success. They will just naturally produce a better result for you.

Jeremy: Just to add in, these are big impacts to the bottom line. This is very much low hanging fruit.

Do you do segmentation?

Jeremy: Yes, he says he can do behavioral segmentation. That's actually fairly common. Are you converting with and reaching the right people?

Dan: It's definitely about the best page for that site visitor, not just the best page period. He definitely looks at behavior, demographics, etc., and uses that to figure out who responded to what.

Sandra: It is also a consideration for them. It's very important to be targeted.

How do you segment during a test? How much traffic do you send to test?

Dan: That depends on how much traffic you have. It needs to be enough.

Jeremy: That's why his company looks at the competitive research to see what works for someone else without risking his client's own revenue.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 02/11/09 at 1:19 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SMX West 2009

December 30, 2008

Best of Search Conferences 2008: Day 3

Welcome to the final day of the Best of Search Conferences 2008! How's everyone feeling? It is New Year's Eve, ya know. And you totally deserve tonight's champagne after all the hard learnin' we just put you through. If you skipped out on the first two days, well, it's not too late to catch up.

Like any good conference host, I'm going to start off the day with a bit of housekeeping. At Bruce Clay, Inc. we're celebrating the last day of 2008 not only with the finale of our Best of Search Con but also with a special episode of SEM Synergy. Tune in today to WebmasterRadio.fm at 3 p.m. Eastern to hear guest Barry Schwartz give listeners an industry insider's take on 2008. Barry has been reporting on the industry for, like, forever in search years and offers an insightful look at trends and developments in the last year.

Also on SEM Synergy, Bruce gives us a preview of his predictions for the coming year (a taste of which you saw at PubCon), with more details coming in the January issue of the SEO Newsletter. And finally, Bruce Clay, Inc. is proud to announce that in 2009 we will be offering three SEOToolSet Training courses in New York!

Alright, thanks for sticking with me. Now, on with the show!

Keynotes

The Coca-Cola Marketing Metrics Journey, Part 2 - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Speaker: Tim Goudie

Even the world's biggest brands, like Coke, see ups and downs in the online marketplace. The important thing is to keep learning and evolving as you go.
Data can be political, but giving everyone access to the data creates clarity and transparency in an organization. As good of a tool data is, it means nothing without the right analysis.
Coca-Cola created a framework to continually measure brand health, brand advocacy, volume, media value, and marketing productivity. Make sure your metrics get at the fundamental objective of the business.

Keynote - Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Speaker: Bill Tancer

Search queries are a window into human interests and can tell you more about an individual than they might tell you themselves. For instance, the fears most reported by those polled do not match the fears most searched for in a sample of 25 million Internet users.
Intent is a factor that needs to be considered when making predictions based on searcher behavior. Tancer predicted third-place finalist Stacey Keibler would win Dancing with the Stars based on spiking searchers for the model's name. The problem was that searchers looking for images of Keibler were likely not voting for the contestant on the show.
Follow the early adopters -- Young Digerati, Money & Brains and the Bohemian Mix -- for emerging trends.

All About Analytics

Top Takeaways:

The process of analytics is to gather a report, analyze the data, optimize the content, and measure the change. You must have clearly defined goals beforehand otherwise measurements are useless.
Create a document like Lippay's "grid". Include keywords, number of searches, conversion metrics ($ per PV, LTV, etc.), PPC data, paid inclusion (PI), algo, and search engine CTR by position. With this you can balance SEO, PPC and PI, find SEO referral gaps, find SEO content opportunities, and make traffic and value projections.
On-site search can act as a productive data point. Searchers actively engaged in your site offer more data which leads to more opportunities for success.
Segmentation is an essential part of analyzing your traffic. People aren't moving through your site with the same motive and you should be able to track that.
The 3 Cs of Analytics are context, comparison, and contrast. Key main performance indicators (KPIs) are the time spent on the site, pages viewed, conversion rate, and cost and revenue of the visitor.
Act on analytics data by improving keyword list efficiency and breaking out the best terms for SEO vs. PPC.

Analytics Every SEO Needs to Know - SMX Advanced, June 2-3
Moderator: Rand Fishkin; Panelists: Brian Klais, Laura Lippay, Jonah Stein, and Richard Zwicky

On-Site Search as a Crystal Ball - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Panelists: Daniel Shields and Phil Gibson

Identify, Analyze, Act - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Chris Boggs; Panelists: Craig Danuloff, Brian Cosgrove, Heather Dougherty, Michael Stebbins, and Brett Crosby

Actionable Organic Search Analytics - eMetrics San Francisco, May 4-7
Moderator: Mike; Panelists: Matt Bailey and Diane Hoag

Legal Considerations

Top Takeaways:

Trademark policies in the U.S. are different for each search engine. Google allows bidding on trademarks but does not allow the trademark to be used in the ad copy. Outside of the U.S. Google does not allow advertisers to bid on trademarks.
The Communications Decency Act says that online authors and not publishers are liable for whatever they write. The law was meant to encourage publication and keep things from turning too defamatory online.
Google is nearing a monopoly on search advertising market share. A monopoly is not illegal; the problem arises when a company tries to exploit its power to discourage competition.
Have a contract with your consultants and clients specifying who owns what. Protect your property with management options if your consultant has access to any of your accounts.
Behaviorally targeted ads raise the question of data ownership. The data is owned by the pary the consumer knowingly and willingly gave the data. Sharing of data requires opt-in consumer permission.

Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search (February) - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Clarke Walton, Sarah Bird, and Eric Goldman

Trademark Issues: What SEMs Should Know - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Mark Rosenberg, April Wurster, and Eric Goldman

Googleopoly - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: James Grimmelmann, Shelly Palmer, Kevin Ryan, and Jimmy Wales

Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search (October) - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Jeffrey Rohrs; Panelists: Mark Rosenberg, Jonathan Hochman, Roy Shkedi, and Deborah Wilcox

Advanced SEO

Top Takeaways:

Link building tools include Link Harvester, Hub Finder, the Langreiter Tool, Search Status Tool, Google Alerts, and the Utility Linking Tool.
The next generation link building strategies are link bait, article writing and content targeting.
Mine your existing backlinks for opportunities to improve the anchor text. Start building a relationship with the site manager/owner.
While it is irresponsible to use black hat SEO techniques on clients, the ethical nature of techniques often comes down to intent (for example, cloaking).
Paid links aren't evil -- they're advertising. The Web is made for commerce. The line is drawn when the intent of buying links is to increase ranking factors.

Give It Up - SMX Advanced, June 3-4
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Rand Fishkin, Todd Friesen, Michael Gray, Rob Kerry, Marty Weintraub, and Stephan Spencer

Link Building Fundamentals - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Detlev Johnson; Panelists: Debra Mastaler and Eric Ward

Blow Your Mind: Link Building Techniques - SMX Advanced, June 3-4
Moderator: Greg Boser; Panelists: Jay Young, Stephan Spencer, Roger Montti, and Todd Friesen

Black Hat, White Hat: Playing Dirty with SEO - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Matt Bailey; Panelists: Bruce Clay, David Naylor, Jill Whalen, Greg Boser, and Todd Friesen

Advanced PPC

Top Takeaways:

If you plan to target long tail terms, first bid on the most relevant keywords to build relevancy and then add less-relevant terms later on. This helps to establish a higher Quality Score.
A granular search campaign will show the most targeted, relevant ads and receive a higher Quality Score. Be sure to send users to the most relevant landing page.
When optimizing landing pages, remove banner ads, entry pop-ups and cluttered design.
Use a variety of sources to create your keyword list. Use tools, the Web site, print material and press releases. But when researching potential keywords internally, be cautious of jargon.
Segment your audience through the ads they click on. Think about who they are, how they reached you, and the location they come from.

Amazing New PPC Tactics - SMX Advanced, June 3-4
Moderator: Matt Van Wagner; Panelists: Addie Conner, Stanislas Di Vittorio, Siddarth Shah, David Szetela, and Natala Menezes

Landing Page Testing and Tuning - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Sage Lewis; Panelist: Tim Ash

Advanced Keyword Research Techniques - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss; Panelists: Christine Churchill, Ariel Bardin, and Marty Weintraub

Search 4.0: Search Ads and Behavioral Targeting - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Kelly Gillease, David Kopp, Jonathan Mendez, and Natala Menezes

Happy 2009 everybody!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 12/30/08 at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Analytics, Best Of Search Cons 2008, Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization

December 29, 2008

Best of Search Conferences 2008: Day 1

Close your eyes. You've just entered a conference hall where voices are mingling and people are milling about. A bag of conference swag is perched over your left shoulder and a cup of coffee is clutched in your right hand. You're navigating your way toward the music, following a hunch it will lead you to the main hall. There you know a keynote address will be kicking off what's sure to be a rocking three-day conference. You spy a table of breakfast pastries on the way. Maybe a blueberry muffin would appease your grumbling belly. Or a croissant?

Okay, so we're not really providing any breakfast, lunch or afternoon snacks, but we do hope you're hungry. The Internet and search marketing conferences of 2008 offered a smorgasbord of information built on a foundation of months of preparation and hard work. We at Bruce Clay, Inc. want to thank all the conference organizers and speakers for providing these invaluable learning experiences and look forward to next year's undoubtedly awesome growth.

In the meantime, there's so much to be gleaned from the ghosts of sessions past, so prepare yourself for the first day of the Best of Search Conferences 2008. It starts right now.

Keynotes

Keynote Kickoff Address - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Speaker: Shawn Rorick

There are more marketing channels than ever. Media fragmentation means users are picking where, how and when they consume media.
The "halo media" approach addresses the multi-faceted marketing environment. Create a "circle of presence" around your company by entering all the logical marketing channels. That way you will be where the consumer is when they're looking for your services.
Online media spending is currently going to search, display ads, classifieds, videos, rich media and email. Social media, mobile, widgets, desktop applications and RSS are emerging. Remember that new media tactics are not always applicable.

Keynote Roundtable: Technical and Informational Giants - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Speakers: Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, Tim Westergreen, Robert Scoble, Kirsten Mangers, and Rich LeFurgy

Google is going to be the dominant search engine for years to come. The best competition anyone can give to Google will be available in incremental stages. The term "Google killer" has been used too lightly in the past.
Danny Sullivan didn't think 2008 was the year of mobile and it won't be 2009 either. Mobile search will see gradual growth because smart phone technology is not yet cheap enough.
Internet marketers should continue to look on the horizon. What makes a great search marketer is someone that understands how people look for information. When people start turning toward new ways to search, understand those venues and how to get there but don't get distracted from what you're best at.

Basic/Intermediate Search Engine Optimization

Top Takeaways:

Representatives from Google, Yahoo and Live Search recommend adding unique content (images, reviews, etc.) to a page containing duplicate content (such as a manufacturer's product description) in order to avoid duplicate filtering in SERPs.
If you're working with a very tight budget, look for ways to virally spread your unique, quality content.
Images posted on Flickr can drive traffic as long as the image either captures excellent subject matter or is of excellent quality.
Get creative with link building. Some ideas include hiring a student intern and getting a link from their student account, participating on services like Yahoo Answers, and utilizing your partners and affiliates for links.
Personalized, behavioral, intent-based and blended search have changed the way search engine optimizers can measure success. Rather than focusing on rankings, look at traffic and conversions on the site.

Ask the Search Engines - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Nathan Buggia, Aaron D'Souza, and Sean Suchter

Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives, or SEO on a Shoestring Budget - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Carolyn Shelby; Panelists: Brett Tabke, Marty Weintraub, Jessie Stricchiola, and Gary Kirk

Give It Up: White Hat Edition - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Michael Gray, Kimberly Krause Berg, Kate Morris, Tyler Shears, Stephan Spencer, Rob Kerry, and Shari Thurow

Top Shelf Organic SEO - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Mark Jackson; Panelists: Jill Whalen, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, and Bruce Clay

Basic/Intermediate Pay Per Click

Top Takeaways:

When it comes to finding the best keywords, look at your site, your competitors' sites and trade literature, and remember that brands are often the best performing keywords. Don't forget to filter out negative keywords to help maintain your Quality Score.
Many of the shopping search engines offer paid inclusion programs, and while the clicks may cost more than in the general search engines, the users are usually closer to the conversion stage of the buying cycle.
To protect your paid search advertising budget, define your goals and metrics for success so that you can then prove the return on investment.
Testing is of course important to optimizing your search ad campaign, but while testing, don't manage the campaign as a test. You want to have data based on real-world performance.
Qualified traffic is the key to post-click conversions. Carry the message the visitor was looking for through the segmented path they entered with.

Search Advertising 101 - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Rebecca Lieb; Panelists: Dana Todd and Matt Van Wagner

Defending Your Paid Search Budget Against New Ad Fads - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderators: Jeffrey K. Rohrs and Rob Kerry; Panelists: Brian Combs, Adam Jewell, and Kchitiz Regmi

Ad Testing: Research and Findings - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Panelists: Andrew Goodman, Bill Barnes, and Anton Konikoff

Post-Click Marketing: Converting Search Engine Traffic - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Anna Maria Virzi; Panelists: Carrie Hill, Laura Wilson, Scott Brinker, and Tom Leung

Basic/Intermediate Social Media Marketing

Top Takeaways:

The point of social media marketing is not conversions. Social media is about gaining reach, increasing branding opportunities, generating links and driving traffic.
Top 10 lists, how-to articles, current events, offbeat or extreme stories and images and videos are major categories of linkbait.
Getting a community power user to submit your site's content is an advantage that should not be underestimated.
Micro communities, or niche portals where communities gather, offer high relevance, increased branding opportunities, and the potential to have a loud voice in a small community.
Social search, or search that relies at least somewhat on human involvement (i.e., collaborative harvesters like Digg and collaborative directories like DMOZ), disrupted search as we know it. However, with social search comes new potential and possibilities to increase influence and gain traffic.

Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Brent Csutoras, Jane Copland, and Cameron Olthuis

Social Media Marketing: What Is It and What Is It Good For? - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Pauline Ores; Panelists: Erik Qualman, Brent Csutoras, and Vanina Delobelle

Micro Communities - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelist: Rand Fishkin

Search 4.0: Will the Social Graph Change Search? - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Aditya Agarwal and Sean Lyndersay

Basic/Intermediate Branding

Top Takeaways:

Traditional marketing channels make up less than half of the marketing channels available today. Create a consistent customer experience by providing great customer service through new and old media channels alike.
Proactively protect your brand online; Buy MyBrandSucks.com, buy CEOName.com, register your brand name on social media platforms and quickly respond to negative publicity.
Match your online and offline marketing message. For example, tests have shown that search volume rises after the start of a print campaign and remains high after the conclusion of a TV campaign.
Before joining a digital ad network, make sure the network meets your needs. What is the level of quality control? How focused can you get? What is the reach? What is the business relationship like?
You can measure the success of branding efforts with an engagement index. Involvement is reflected in the number of visits, the time spent and the number of page views. Interaction is measured through comments and reviews. Intimacy is seen in the sentiment and positioning of such comments. Influence is gauged by the user's likelihood to recommend, share or link.

Brand Management - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Joe Laratro; Panelists: Brian Combs, Lauren Vaccarello, Tony Wright, and Jessica L. Bowman

Old Timers - The Impact of Search on Brand Health Metrics - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Kevin Ryan; Panelists: Rob Graham, Kevin Lee, Doron Wesly, and Stephen DiMarco

Digital Ad Networks: Are They Safe for Brands? - ad:Tech San Francisco, Apr. 15-17
Moderator: Brad Berens; Panelists: Jocelyn Griffing, Dave Zinman, Tim Vanderhook, and Sean Cheyney

Reputation Management in a Social Media World and on Your Site - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Panelists: Katie Delahaye Paine and Steve Bernstein

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 12/29/08 at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Best Of Search Cons 2008, Branding, Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

November 11, 2008

Landing Page Optimization

How many more of these do I have to do? I'm so out of liveblogging shape. [Hang in there, Susan! An open bar and a big comfy room are almost yours. --Virginia]

Moderator Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance, and speakers Brad Geddes, Director of Search Engine Marketing, LocalLaunch.com; Lily Chiu, Senior Sales Engineer, Omniture; and Kate Morris, Search Engine Marketing Manager, RateGenius, are ready to teach us all about how to optimize our landing pages. Don't think of this just as a PPC topic. It's just as important for search engine optimization.

Brad Geddes is first. We're having mic issues. This should be fun.

Where should traffic be going?

Informational queries should go to a page that gives an answer. For candle burning times, for example, you want it to go to a page about how long a type of candle will last, not directly to a product pages.

For local queries, you might looking for something that will build trust. What's the intent?

You have to test your landing pages. Don't discount the fact that the best page might be the home page, even though that's not the usual wisdom.

For ambiguous queries, testing is key. You need to get the user to segment themselves first. Give them the information that will help them answer the question.

On your Thank You page, what does it say? Does it just say "thanks, we'll call you" "go away"? Or does it say "create an account", "you may also like", "stay in touch with...", etc? Keeping a customer is cheaper than getting a new customer.

Be aware that offline behavior still affects online behavior. Match your promotions to your buying cycles. If no one is buying, target them earlier in the conversion cycle -- when they are looking for information instead of shopping, or when they are shopping instead of buying.

It's not just about page layout. Test where to send the traffic.

When you're showcasing benefits

In gift retail season, you need to showcase to the shopper, not the receiver. Shipping times, cut off dates, ease of return, etc.

My super favorite Kate Morris is up next to teach us the necessities. She disclaimers first that she's not picking on anyone with her examples.

Call to Action

You cannot have a landing page without a call to action.

Keep forms as short as possible: Don't ask questions that you don't need right then.
Always be above the fold: If they don't see it right away, they won't see it.
Answer the question of the query
Not the home page: Don't use the home page for the landing page, unless you only have one product.
Mention the keyword on the page: A search for "Twilight hoodie" brought up an ad that not only didn't have Twilight, it didn't have hoodies. Or even the color black (or sparkly vampires). [I am resisting the urge to tease Kate about liking Twilight.]

Visual Interest

Failing to create visual interest leads to back button buzz kill!

White space
Simplicity
Buttons
Use pictures as a road map

Navigation

There are two camps:
- Give them a choice.
- Keep them prisoner.
The answer here is testing.

Tracking

Never start a campaign without it! Metrics to look at:

Conversation rate: Over time, how many leads/sales happen? What is the benchmark versus other campaigns? Track your entire sales cycle if possible.
Cost per conversion: $5 vs. $50000 product. You can't be spending $300 to sell a $200 product.
Bounce rate: Relative to product, about 30 percent is awesome. Fifty percent is good/okay. Over 70 percent, you need to fix something hard.
Eye/click tracking
Test, test, test!

Lily Chiu is our last speaker. Her presentation is called "Every page is a landing page." For sure.

Optimize is a word that's been pretty much used to death.

Conversion optimization:

Segmentation
Relevance

The trouble with a lot of campaigns is that while off-site marketing is targeted, on-site you're dealing with a one-site-fits-all approach. You need to optimize the end-to-end customer experience.

Make sure that your ad is leading to a matching page. Fulfill expectations.

Every page after the first page is yet another landing page.

Once the visitor has made a decision, you now know that much more about them. We need to do more with less. Testing gets you there. Do a better job of taking advantage of what you already have. Take action based on the data you've been gathering.

Where do you begin?

You have to fight inertia. Getting started is the hardest part.

Start simple and ID regions that you want to test.
Know your end goal.
Define your hypothesis. For instance, hypothesize that this thing will be better than that thing.
Create distinct alternatives. There should be a significant difference between tests.
Measure, act, iterate. One test is not good enough.

Once you've found a winning page, test the elements on the page to discover WHY it was the best.

Test and Target

Reinforce the content throughout the site. If you're targeting without testing, you're still not going to know if you're really doing better.

Where do you start? You have the tools, now you have to work together with all your channels to make your conversions better. If you're doing acquisitions without telling your site people about it, you're not going to be able to match expectations.

Q&A

What tools do you use? Does your company sell the tools?

Lily: [Very kindly tries to make this not a pitch.] Yes, we (Omniture) sell a product (Test&Target) but there are others out there. Google Website Optimizer is free and it's a really good product.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 11/11/08 at 4:39 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, Pub Con Las Vegas 2008, Search Engine Optimization

October 29, 2008

SEM Synergy Extras

Today's episode of SEM Synergy included a tasty news segment. Of course, with all the events and issues that come up over the course of a week, we were only able to touch on a few of the stories. Here are some of the newsworthy items that were on the agenda but just couldn't be squeezed into our time constraints.

IM Broadcast provides video sharing and networking site for Internet marketers

Our congratulations goes out to David Snyder and Jordan Kasteler for the scarily-good conference that was Scary SEO. While attendance was limited to an intimate group, everyone could enjoy a number of presentations by tuning in to a live video stream on IM Broadcast. The brainchild of Loren Baker, David and Jordan, Loren described the site as "YouTube for Internet marketers". The video sharing and networking site launched last week and already boasts more 200 members and more than 100 videos on SEO, SMO, PPC, affiliate marketing, blogging and search engine news, just to name a few.

Google showing images in ads

Google has been experimenting with images in ads and ads in images. Let me explain. Google Image Search, which was previously free of ads, is showing ads for some users. These experimental sponsored listings are complete with a shaded box and images of their own. In similar news, Google has been experimenting with including images in sponsored search results , as well. The images in are displayed when a user clicks on the blue Plus Box that appears with some ad results. And they aren't tiny images, either. Not a bad place to play if you have a shiny, pretty product like those described in the articles above.

RSS gets a shake up

In what amounted to a depressing abandon ship for many dedicated Bloglines users, rabid readers had enough of the borked feed subscription service. A large number of feeds continually failed to update, causing users as high up as Bloglines founder Mark Fletcher to switch to Google Reader. Google also confirmed this month that they'll begin offering RSS feeds of Web search results through the Google Alerts program. Google is the last major search engine to offer RSS feeds of Web search results, currently only offering email notifications. [Speaking of which, I always get my Google Alerts, like, seven hours after everyone else. Why am I not important to you, Google?--Susan]

I'd also like to thank my guest Mike Moran, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site. We had a chance to talk about the business strategies and implementation issues that he details in the second edition of his book, and it's definitely worth a listen. Thanks, Mike!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/29/08 at 5:22 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEM Synergy

October 7, 2008

Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search

Jeffrey K. Rohrs, our moderator, is a "recovering attorney" but he still likes to moderate these types of panels. I agree that legal issues can be very interesting and, of course, important.

Mark Rosenberg, Of Counsel, Sills Cummis & Gross P.C., says that there are a lot of legal issues being addressed at the moment. The press and politicians are starting to care about the legal ramifications of search marketing.

Privacy Concerns in Behavioral Marketing

There's a general squeamishness about private user data being collected and there was a Congress committee hearing recently. We'll probably see a consent or opt-out mechanism coming out of this.

Google and Antitrust Scrutiny

Google has 60 percent of the search market and may have as much as 80 percent of paid search, so they're a large presence. The words antitrust and monopoly are being used by the media in reference to Google. It's only when the market position is abused that antitrust regulations come into play. The current scrutiny will only increase if the Yahoo deal goes through. In anything it does, Google probably realizes that everything they do will be scrutinized.

Trademarks and Search Marketing

There hasn't been an alignment between Internet commerce and brick and mortar commerce. According to a growing number of courts, search marketers can use their competitors' trademarks if certain qualifications are met. Trademark law says that the use of a trademark that will likely cause confusion is prohibited. Usually it's a simple matter of asking yourself why you're using someone else's trademark.

Why and How Am I Using Someone Else's Trademark?

The following are permitted ways to use another's trademark:

To identify a product or serviced offered on a site
To let users know that a site offering a product or service
To make a comparison
To let a user know the site selling a generic version

It will likely be okay if there is no other readily identifiable way of identifying the trademarked product or service.

Courts don't care if Internet users cannot see the trademark. Most courts believe that Meta tags are the most important factor in search marketing and so consider use in a Meta tag to be infringement. You may think that a user that ends up clicking on the ad and getting to your landing page will be savvy enough to realize where they are. Initial user confusion, however, is not acceptable. There's an exception in Michigan, but I'm personally not going to worry about that. Sorry Michigan readers!

Improper Trademark Use

These are the ways you can't use another's trademark:

Overuse
Overly claiming
Causing confusion
Using the logo
Something that suggests affiliation or sponsorship

Fake Articles

He hasn't seen any cases on this issue but his guess is that courts will find such action to be confusion.

Jonathan Hochman, Founder and President, Hochman Consultants, will share with us a cautionary tale. The names have been changed to protect the innocent! So Violet runs a home security business. She installs alarms throughout the U.S. Nemesis is her competition. Benedict is who Violet hires to build her site and manage a PPC campaign. They start small and nobody bothers with a contract.

Then, Benedict realizes that Violet is making lots of money. He starts looking for a better deal. Benedict meets Violet's competitor, Nemesis, and they start to work together. One day Benedict locks Violet out of her AdBlurbs PPC account. Violet goes to Bobble, the search engine, and asks for help. Bobble says, sorry, but we're not here to dictate ownership. Then Benedict clones Violet's AdBlurbs account, providing multiple copies to Nemesis. Violet sues Benedict and Nemesis. Violet got a preliminary injunction granting custody of the AdBlurbs account and removal of the copies. Then, Bobble asks Violet to pay her balance due for AdBlurbs. Violet shrieks that Bobble must pay high damages for denying access to her account.

The judge had never heard of PPC advertising, but she figured it out within ten minutes. Ancient legal concepts like property and agency can be applied to online assets. Common sense prevailed and it's decided that the person who pays the search engine and who pays the manager probably owns the account.

Evidence Cited

As an expert witness for this case, Jonathan cited the following evidence:

Domain registration info of landing pages
AdBlurbs change history. Transactions are logged and date-time stamped.
PPC account peculiarities, such as misspelled keywords and account structure, are like fingerprints.

SEM Assets

PPC accounts are valuable business assets that may include trade secrets:

Keyword performance history
Ad version test results
Quality score

Replacing these assets can be expensive.

Four Important Questions

Do you have a contract with your consultants/clients that specifies who owns what? Is your relationship work for hire?
Have you read the search engines' Terms and Conditions?
Who has access to your SEM accounts? Can you revoke access? Can you get locked out?
If you leave your agency, can you take your accounts with you? Are they portable?

Protect Your Property

Google: Create your own account and allow the manager to link via My Client Center.
Yahoo: Create an account and add a revocable login in for the manager. Don't use a sub-account.
Microsoft: Create own account. Give your login to the manager and hope they are honest. Don't use a sub-account.
Ask: Create own account and a login for the manager.

Roy Shkedi, Founder & CEO, AlmondNet, will be giving us an operational perspective of using behavioral targeting and where it fits in the law.

Consumer Behavior

Behavioral targeting is the delivery of ads to a person, wherever they go, based on their observed online behavior. Post-search behaviorally targeted ads are delivered based on purchase-intent data. Use searched trademarks to behaviorally deliver your ad to your prospect on the sites he or she spends 95 percent of their online time on.

BT Legal Challenges

Data ownership:

Who should be rewarded for the valuable data?
Who owns the data?

Data is owned by whoever the consumer gave the data knowingly and willingly:

Visited sites
ISPs

Are data owners allowed to share data with others? The sharing of PII (Personal Identifiable Information) requires data owners to task for consumers' permission (opt-in)

Privacy is the biggest challenge faced the behavioral targeting industry. BT requires data scale. An opt-in solution historically does not generate a very large scale. Data scale requires an opt-out solution. What determines when opt-out is enough and when opt-in is required? As a rule of thumb, if you have PII you need to ask for opt-in.

Who monitors the implementation of privacy safeguards? So far, the industry does through the NAI (Network Advertising Initiative). But congress is watching. He believes self regulation of the industry would be better and a behavioral targeting initiative is seeing some adoption.

Deborah Wilcox, Partner, Baker Hostetler, LLP, will be looking at two cases that have caught her eye.

To the Top of Google

Punchclock.com owned a federal trademark registration for "punch clock". It was for time clock and computer payroll software. Punch-clock.com was Canadian but sales were in the U.S. as well. The U.S. company sent a cease and desist in 2001. In 2007, they filed a lawsuit in Florida federal court. The defendant punch-clock.com ranked higher on Google. Alexa traffic rank was much lower for the plaintiff than for punchclock.com.

The Canadian defendant did not defend the litigation and just ignored the lawsuit. The judge found trademark infringement, cybersquatting and unfair competition. The judge transferred punch-clock.com to the plaintiff and awarded $100,000 in cybersquatting statutory damages, plus $30,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.

The judge also awarded over $1 million in corrective advertising damages. They figured that it would take $136 per day to purchase keywords from Google for seven years for the following keywords:

Punch clock
Punch clock software
Punchclock
Punch clocks
Punch time clock

The $1 million was reached because the judge multiplied the number you get when you multiply $136 per day for seven years by three since it was considered a willful violation. Today a search for any of the terms doesn't show punchclock.com because the company actually isn't bidding on the terms.

Acknowledgement Page

TrafficSchool.com and eDriver were both referring drivers to traffic schools. eDriver was using the domain DMV.org and designed the page to look like an official government page. At the end of the page was a small disclaimer that says it's not owned, operated or affiliated with a government agency.

DMV.org saw 70 to 80 percent of its traffic coming from top search engine placement. The consumer confusion led to the finding of false advertising.

The court found that the plaintiff also had "unclean hands" because it had also registered DMV domains. So, no money damages went to the plaintiff, but the court ordered a mandatory acknowledgement page for the defendant. Now, before anyone can get to the site there's a page that states that the site is a private site not affiliated with a government site. They also had to redesign the site. DMV.org dropped in the Google rankings.

Takeaways

Courts are still grappling with search engine marketing and how to remedy infringement. Businesses need a careful legal review of:

Domain names
Content
Consumer confusion (this is key)
International issues

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 7/08 at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SMX East 2008, Search Engine Optimization

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:

Easy Engagement - makes it easy for them to move forward
Self Identification - we respond to self-identification cues, more accurate than forms, sets expectation
More focused content - contextually relevant content sells better
Signaling - Investment reflects commitment. "If you target me, you much think I'd be a good fit..."
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)
See more entries in Analytics, Google, Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEO Tools, SES San Jose 2008, Search Engine Optimization

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)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES San Jose 2008

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)
See more entries in Analytics, Live Search, Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEO Tips & Tricks, SES San Jose 2008, Search Engine Optimization, Yahoo

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:

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

Better Practices:

Consistent messaging
Campaign one the same schedule
Coordinate with your stores, managers, call center
Universal pricing
If attribution is important - isolate variables (market, noise)
If attribution is problematic, use engagement metrics
Get vendors to assign co-op $ to Web Promotions
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)
See more entries in Google, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SES San Jose 2008