Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Off The Grid – Greetings From Hawaii

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Off The Grid – Greetings From Hawaii

Every once in a great while, I get a chance to go “off the grid” (also known as a “vacation”) for a short period of time. This year, I am in Hawaii for a friend’s wedding. It is during these not-often-enough breaks from the real world that I get a chance to reflect on the rapidity of change in our Industry and, more importantly, to see how many days I can go without using my laptop/cell phone. As far as locations go, there is no better place on earth than Hawaii to disconnect from reality. Being on “Hawaii time” means never having to be hurried, hassled, or stressed. This, of course, completely goes against my life in San Diego where every minute of every day is spent working on client campaigns or chasing down new business ideas and opportunities. Even my spare time is used to read up marketing books, blogs, and publications to stay current in this ever-changing Industry/profession I’ve chosen.  In Hawaii, however, time stands still. My only concern here, it seems, is when to go to the store and get some more POG juice. It is this sharp contrast in realities that led me to write this blog. Just to be clear though… I, of course, couldn’t go a single day here without plugging into the Internet. However, the difference is that the way I manage my time out here is extremely unusual. I can now reorganize and re-categorize hundreds of daily messages into new priorities (with only a handful of them truly being what I would call “important”). I can work periodically instead of at the manic pace I maintain back home. Perhaps it is because I know that when I wake up here in Hawaii, people on the East Coast are just about to finish their day. And perhaps that fact is what causes me to work much more efficiently and in much less time out here? Or maybe the sun is starting to affect my thinking? Whatever it is,  I hope to bring this new notion of time back to the mainland with me.

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Glossary Of Online Marketing Terms

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Below are a list of commonly used terms in our Industry for your reference:

  • A.C.R. – Acquisition, Conversion and Retention is used to describe our three step process for success on the web. First you must acquire qualified and targeted traffic to your website. Next, you focus on improving your conversion rate via landing page testing and optimization (i.e. conversion optimization). Finally, you retain your customers with highly targeted and timely messages to increase loyalty.
  • Advertising network – A service where ads are bought centrally through one company and displayed on multiple websites in their network that contract with that company for a share of revenue generated by placing ads on their site.
  • AdWords – Google advertising console, aka pay per click management service.
  • Algorithm – The technology that a search engine uses to deliver relevant search results to a query.
  • Anchor Text – The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is all about.  This increasingly is becoming the most important part of an effective  link building program.
  • Big Three – Often used when speaking generally about the top three search engines – Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Bing).
  • Click Through Rate – The rate (expressed in a percentage) on which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet Marketers to measure the performance on an ad campaign.
  • Content Network - A group of websites that agree to show ads on their sites, served by an ad network in exhange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. Examples include Google AdSense or the Yahoo! Publisher Network.
  • Conversion Optimization – The process of improving your website experience in order to increase specific actions (sales, downloads, email sign ups, etc).
  • Cost Per Action (CPA) – A form of advertising where payment is dependent on an action that a user performs as a result of an advert.
  • Cost Per Click (CPC) – Also known as “(PPC) Pay Per Click”. CPC is a form of advertising where an advertiser pays a set price for every click they get one of their ads that results in a visitor to their website.
  • Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is shown to a user, whether the user clicks the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions. M is the roman numeral for 1000. Most displays ads such as banner ads are sold by CPM.
  • Geo-Targeting – Delivery of ads specific to the geographical location of the searcher. Geo targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or will not be shown, enabling more localized and personalized results.
  • Inbound Link – A hyperlink pointing to your website from someone other than you. Inbound links are an important element that most search engines algorithms use to measure the popularity or relevance of a web page.
  • Keyword –  A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an attempt to get the search engine to return a relevant result.
  • Meta Tags – Info placed into the header of an HTML web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers. Meta tags can be used to help properly index a page. Common meta tags include title tags, description tags, and keyword tags.
  • Pay Per Click (PPC) – See Cost Per Click (CPC) above.
  • Personalized Search – As the engines begin to collect information about your specific searching habits, they can show you different SERP’s based on your previous searching habits and behaviors
  • Quality Score – A score that is assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s click-through-rate, the relevancy of the landing page, and the consideration of the other factors used to determine the quality of a site. Usually speaking, the higher the quality score, the higher the average position on the engines and the lower the cost per click. All of the major search engines use some type of quality score in their search ad algorithms.
  • Return On Investment (ROI) – The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads.
  • Search Advertising – Also called paid search. Most search ads are sold by a PPC model, where the advertisers pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.
  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in the search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of improving a web page’s rankings by making it highly relevant for specific keywords. SEO takes the form of both on-page optimization (improving the actual website) and off-page optimization (popularity outside of their own web pages).
  • Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) – The results searchers see after they’ve entered a query in a search box.
  • Semantic Search – A process wherein the search engines know what you intended when you search based on your previous searching behaviors, interests and preferences. I.e. Jaguar the animal versus jaguar the car.
  • Social Media - A category of websites based on user participation and user-generated content. These are sites usually centered around user interaction.
  • Spider -A search engine spider is a program that crawls the web visiting web pages to search out information to add or update a search engines index of pages.
  • Universal Search – Also known as blended search, universal search pulls in elements of different databases into a SERP such as videos, images, news, and local (map) results. The big three recently integrated universal search into the majority of their SERP’s, as it is something generally preferred by searchers.
  • Web 2.0 – Refers to the second generation of Internet-based websites and services such as wiki’s, networking sites, and communication tools. This is when the web went from brochure websites to sites that let people collaborate and share information online.
  • Web 3.0 – The next phase of websites in production that will focus more on personalization and semantic-based searching.
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A World Without Keywords?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Imagine a world where keywords are not used for searching. Instead, in this world, the major search engines know exactly who you are and deliver content to you based on your previous browsing behavior and indicated interests and preferences.  As crazy as it sounds, this future may not seem as far fetched or as far away as it sounds. At this month’s Search Engine Strategies, the experts in fact discussed that improvements are currently being tested that will deliver better search results, more highly targeted advertising, and an overall enhanced user-experience without the necessary dependence on keyword searching.  So, how exactly will the engines know what to deliver to you? To look at this another way, isn’t this already what happens in Facebook to some extent? You get content (in this case adverts and fan page suggestions) delivered to you based on your indicated preferences and interests (things you said you like). The search engines may not be far off from that type of form and function.

So, what does this possible future mean to the website owner/search engine marketer? Especially those of us that have been so dependent on keywords since the dawn of the Internet? Below are some tips for preparing for this possible new world:

  1. Design your website for your customer – make it easy to navigate and user-friendly and try to keep your users on the site as long as possible. In the future, Google will likely place more value on on-site user experiences.
  2. Build your brand – branding and positioning will also grow in importance for Google.
  3. Hire Experience – Hire a search engine optimizer that is looking at all your data and is thinking about the future of SEO (i.e. predictive technology).
  4. Hire Experience II – Old School SEO tactics are now a commodity and too many people claim to have expertise in this field now. BUT Google is always looking for new ways to determine relevancy, and most SEO’s do not take the time to keep up – so make sure you choose an expert who can advise you on the latest SEO trends.
  5. Mine Your Data – Begin by looking at your own website data from Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Insight to get a sense of existing user patterns. Learn a little about how your users are using your site right now.
  6. Think profit optimization over search engine optimization – If you build a site and a brand that delivers a good product or service, you will not be left out of the mix. If you instead focus on tactics and strategies that are too narrow -minded (give me a top ranking), you may completely miss the boat.

It’s hard for all of us to imagine a world without keywords. For those using search engines for some time now, we’ve grown accustomed to getting to what we want via keyword searching. The change would inevitably shake up the Industry but if the end game is really a better experience for searchers and for  advertisers, this change will ultimately be a positive one.

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It’s May 2009, What Now?

Monday, May 11th, 2009

With a deepening recession and a swine flu pandemic upon the Nation, perhaps 2009 has not gone as planned for many of us. Because of the uncertainty out there, we felt that now is probably as good a point as any to reflect on the year that’s gone by to see if and how these events (and others) have played out against online marketing plans. Below I will review a list of some top Internet Marketing strategies to see how they are still stacking up this year.

  1. Search engine optimization- Still the number one requested service we offer, SEO can offer an alternative to highly-priced pay per clicks. Predictably, economic conditions (and plethora of information out there regarding how to optimize) have turned many companies in wanna be SEO’s. Impact: Our customers are now competing with many more people for the same real estate (first 10 spots) and SEO has now become ultra competitive.  For those websites that do not have  large budgets for link building and content development, SEO is now becoming “out of reach”. For clients that cannot compete with the big budgets, we suggest going after long-tail keywords that may not have as much traffic but are less competitive and may produce better conversion rates. 
  2. Pay per click marketing-  Again, like with SEO, there are a larger number of customers competing for the same real estate and costs are now going through the roof for many keywords across many Industries. Impact: We see many customers reducing budgets here rather than staying the course. Best practices with pay per click such as landing page testing and conversion optimization take additional budgets but  many times the conversion rate is not a matter of reducing your marketing spend but about being more effective with it.
  3. Social Media Marketing-  Since there often can be little to no cost to launch a SMM campaign, we see a lot of our clients jumping into SMM head-first. Impact: While social media can be great for many brands, many people do not know why they need a Facebook page and/or why they are “twittering”, for examples. As a result, many clients are not finding the success they are wanting with social media marketing. We suggest “listening” first to what customers are saying about your brand before diving in with a half-hearted strategy.

There are, of course, many more strategies that have been impacted in 2009. However, the overall trend seems to be about trying “less expensive” tactics and strategies versus being more effective with current spends. The rest of the year should be an interesting one, whether the economy bounces back or not. Our advice to you is to simply stay the course..!

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Do You Want Better Online Marketing Results?

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

How To Get Better Online Results!

Do you want to get better results from your online marketing efforts? We’ve got an easy solution. Why not ask your customers?? I know this answer seems obvious, simple, even down-right ridiculous, but truly it is the most forgotten way to gain quick and valuable insight that just may help you improve your marketing results.

So how do you “ask your customer” exactly? For starters, information can be collected from surveys, focus groups, direct mail and phone calls. When it comes to Internet marketing, however, none of those options are as immediate or as effective as onsite testing.

Onsite testing, meaning running live marketing experiments on specific landing pages of your site, will take the debate out of what you think your site visitors want and tell you precisely what you know your site visitors want. To get started, all you need is a website, an analytics program, and a willingness to experiment with your site (all in the name of higher conversions, of course).

Onsite testing can take the form of A/B testing (testing one variable at a time) or Multivariate Testing (testing several variables at a time). Each method has their pros and cons but both can give you an immediate boost in your conversion rate. 

So what items should you test? For starters, try these:

• Test Headlines – Headers occupy a prominent space on your page.  Often overlooked, testing headlines can make a large impact on your bottom line. 
• Test Graphics – Your image may be fine but perhaps another will connect better with your audience. See if you can create a boost with changes in your imagery.
• Test Punctuation – Use different types of punctuation to see how your customers react. The difference between “Buy Today.” And “Buy Today!” may seem minor to us, but could dramatically improve your results.
• Test Design/ Layout – Perhaps you need an entirely new look/feel to get the message across. Try an A/B test to see if the updated look/feel increases sales.
• Test Buttons – There are many factors to consider when choosing buttons including the size, color, and text used in your button. Experiment and see what happens.

A final thought
While most people are now comfortable running ad campaigns, a surprisingly low number of these marketers are engaging in online testing. And if you aren’t trying to test your site for improvements, you aren’t taking advantage of the inherent benefit of online marketing – the ability to listen to your customer. Everything is measurable and your customers are telling you what they want with the behaviors and click-streams.

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CYA with a Focus on CPA

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

 Cost Per Acquisition
Definition = The average cost associated with acquiring a new customer.

 

Move over CPC, there is a new metric in town . . . and its name is CPA. The acronym, of course, stands for “Cost per Acquisition” and for Online Marketers CPA is quickly becoming the only metric that matters, especially in these currently foggy economic conditions. Of course, I exaggerate, CPA is neither new nor is it the only useful performance metric. Still, many smart marketers today are paying extremely close attention to the costs associated with acquiring customers; and by focusing on reducing those costs they are beginning to thrive while their competitors flounder amidst higher click prices and abundance of advertising supply.    

 

Below are 4 tips you can use today to make sure you are properly set-up for measuring your CPA:

 

1) Track your campaigns – The best and only way to ensure that your data is reliable and accurate is through conversion tracking, i.e. measuring your site visitor from site entry point to site conversion point. In fact, you won’t be able to measure CPA until you take this step. If you haven’t already done so, Google offers free analytics and easy instructions for setting up conversion (goal) tracking at http://www.google.com/analytics/.

 

2) Have different values for different conversion points – If have more than one conversion metric (and hopefully you do) then be sure to assign different values to those conversion points. An average lead, for example, may be worth $250 to you but an average value of someone opting into your email database may only be worth $10. Google Analytics uses an assigned goal value to calculate ROI, Average Score, and other metrics. A good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your “Contact Me” goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your “email sign-up” goal.

 

3) Your CPA is different from my CPA - Acquisition costs vary across industries and mediums, so make sure your CPA’s are meaningful and relevant to you. When acquisition data is available, try to determine if you are comparing apples to apples, so to speak. This is not always easy, as customer acquisition data can be rare, and the methodology is often shaky. Better to make sure that your CPA’s make sense for your own thresholds.

 

4) Calculate your CPA – Customer acquisition cost is calculated by dividing total acquisition expenses by total new customers. However, there are different opinions as to what constitutes an acquisition expense. For example, rebates and special discounts do not represent an actual cash outlay, yet they have an impact on cash (and, presumably, on the customer).

 

My next blog will focus on ways you can lower your CPA. But first things first, I wanted to make sure the process was started by focusing on the ways to set up and measure this key metric. While the CPA topic may be old news to many of you, still only 20%-30% of all online advertisers use their full tracking capabilities. Surprising but true.  It’s these same advertisers that aren’t paying attention to their CPA’s that are driving up your click prices. This is why now, more than ever, it’s so important to pay attention to your most crucial metric.

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Why you need Conversion Optmization

Friday, January 2nd, 2009
Why you need Conversion Optimization

A few weeks ago, I predicted that “conversion optimization” would become a significant factor in 2009 for most online businesses. Now, only a day into the New Year, I am even more convinced that 2009 will be the year conversion optimization gets its due.

Conversion optimization, simply stated, is the process of improving your site’s conversion rate (visitors to sales, visitor to leads, etc.). There are a number of ways to do this from the basic (a/b testing) to the complex (technologically-based landing page optimization programs) but your efforts put here can significantly impact your bottom line.

Below are reasons why I think you need a conversion optimization program and why I believe this will be the web’s next big thing:

1) The numbers make a lot of sense – For most organizations, small increases in conversion rates can mean giant increases in revenues. A customer selling $1000 widgets, for example, with 10,000 visitors and a 2% conversion rate makes $200,000 per month. If the site’s conversion rate goes from 2% to 2.5%, for example, this same customer makes $250,000 without any additional increases in expenditures (all things being equal). With dramatic increases like this example portrays, these numbers are too hard too ignore.

2) The cost of traffic is increasing – Almost everywhere across the board, customer acquisition costs are rising. Pay per click costs are rising…SEO costs are rising… comparison shopping engines costs are rising…blog advertising costs are rising…online PR campaigns are rising – the list goes on and on.  Blame the economy if you will but these increases are due to more competitors entering the market competing for your same clicks. AND these costs are only going to continue to rise. Conversion optimization, however, will help you “off-set” those rising costs. As soon as businesses figure this out, I am convinced more attention will be placed in conversion optimization programs.

3) Marketing budgets are shrinking. – Unfortunately, one of the first things to go in a down economy for most businesses is their marketing budgets. What marketing directors will be tasked with this coming year is to get more out of the same (or smaller) budgets…aka do more with less. With this is mind, those marketing directors that pay attention to conversion optimization will become the heroes of their organizations.  

4) Why lose 99% of your audience? – The old “one size fits all” method of web design and development may have worked in 2005 but it no longer is sufficient in 2009. YOU have many types of customers that come to your website and each has a different personality, profile, and need. Studies show that conversion rates are shrinking (to 1%, on average). With all of the knowledge we have and all of the advanced analytical tools, this is mind blowing to me. We, as an Industry, can not accept losing 99% of our audience. With a conversion optimization program, you can serve up different experiences to different profiles of people and reverse this trend!

5) It is cost effective – Many conversion optimization programs take the guess work out giving your audience what they want. Some tools are free but will demand a lot of your time and resource, while other programs offer performance guarantees. Either way, your efforts will be rewarded for spending time on improving your sites conversion rate.

In a way I feel like I did ten years ago when I was talking about ”search engine optimization.” Most people looked at me funny and had no idea what I was talking about. That is the look I now get when I mention Conversion Optimization. Yet, this time, because money is issue #1 for most Americans, I believe 2009 will be the year of conversion optimization!

If you are interested in learning more about a conversion optimization program, please contact Christine McKibban @  760-481-4626

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Online Marketing Predictions for 2009

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

As is my annual tradition, below please find my predictions for the Online Marketing space in 2009. 

1) SEO gets Uber Competitive- In a down economy, the best bet online is still a FREE click.  Next year, I predict an onslaught of companies trying to competitively position themselves for these free clicks.  Expect a frenzy of activity, lots of new entrants, and the utilization of underhanded, cut-throat, and even black-hat tactics. Everyone will be vying for top rankings in a very limited marketing space (where only the top ten results matter) and I anticipate they will be doing anything they can to make it happen.  Expect a lot of both the good and bad here from companies next year but know for sure that people are coming after your coveted rankings and will be spending considerable time, effort, and resource to get there.

2) “Super-Sized” Websites:  As people truly begin to start ”optimizing”, you will see sites grow in terms of their size, by leaps and bounds. Twenty page websites, once the norm, will now be insufficient and generally unable to rank well in Google. In 2009, I predict that we will start to witness the birth of the “super-sized” website.  Anyone trying to compete effectively online will absolutely need to have a GIANT website with thousands of pages ready, willing and able to be indexed on the web. In SEO, size does matter and next year large sites will become the standard that all participants in the game will need to have, if they are to survive.

3) A Boon for Content Developers: If you are a copywriter (or any maker of content for that matter), you will be rewarded handsomely in 2009. You know the cliche’ but content really will be Queen, King, and everything else Regal next year.  Who do you suppose is going to help these websites grow from 20 to 1000 pages?    

4) The Continued Growth of Social Media- There are currently no standard measurement tools and I truly think nobody knows yet how to best do it but we do know for sure that your prospective customers are spending an enormous amount of time social networking on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tagged, Digg, StumbleUpon, Squiddo, de.licio.us, and MySpace.  As these sites continue to grow in popularity, the Industry will find a better way to market and standardize the practice in 2009, allowing for ALL online marketers to participate in Social Media Marketing with the same ease that they are currently able to do with search.

5) On-Going Growth of Industry- The online marketing Industry is in great shape. Next year, we will see the proliferation of advertising dollars funnel from traditional media like TV, Radio, and Print to Online. We will start to see more client experiment with Ad Networks, Banner Ads, Social Media Marketing, Online PR, and Link Building (in additional to on-going efforts in search engine marketing as noted above).    

6) Conversion Optimization Rules  - If ”conversion optimization” seems like a foreign term, you’ll no doubt be hearing a ton about it in 2009. Conversion Optimization in it’s simplest form is the practice of improving your conversion rate by providing more ”relevant” experiences to your visitors through behavioral testing and landing page optimization. Some companies like www.Magnify360.com, however, have technologies that can supercharge the typical A/B, Multivariate testing process that can take most firms years to show result. Conversion Optimization will come into the vernacular in 2009 as conversion rates continue to slide for most companies.  

7) Goodbye Brittney??? If you hadn’t heard it yet, Brittney Spears was the #1 searched term in 2008, winning the title for a second year in a row.  Sadly, in an election year, (his election year) Barrack Obama could only pull #3. This year…Someone will finally supplant Brittney Spears as the topped searched term in 2009.  Maybe its wishful thinking but I have got to believe that something more worthwhile will take the crown in 2009. Somebody. Anybody. Please.

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3 Important San Diego Internet Marketing Trends to Watch

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Internet Marketing is ever-changing. What once worked well for your business a few months ago may not be working for you at all any longer. Competitors eventually learn the same tricks, enter the same channels, and the cost per customer acquisition goes higher. Much higher.  That’s why it’s important to know what’s coming, in order to hopefully get a jump on your competition.  Here is what we see as important trends for you to watch:

1) Search gets competitive- It used to be that you could thrive with just a solid search engine marketing strategy alone.  Nowadays, if you want to effectively compete online, it appears you will have to extend your reach beyond search engine marketing.  Everyone has gotten into the search game and what that means to you is that you now have to compete with a lot more businesses for the same traffic - in the same limited space. Expect higher cost per click prices and a lot more time (and effort) involved in obtaining and sustaining a first page ranking.  To counter, consider ad network marketing as a lower-cost alternative. Ad networks allow for behavioral and demographic targeting and costs are much lower than PPC.  

2) Local Search Booms- For most San Diego businesses, the search engines alone will not be enough. Instead being listed in local directory sites like Local.com, YellowPages.com, and Yahoo! Local will be essentials. In San Diego, businesses can get listings on sites like SanDiego.com and should. Expect new and improved local search sites and great opportunities locally to be seen. 

3) Social Media Marketing Grows Some More  - Before Facebook there was MySpace. Before MySpace there was Friendster. Now there is Twitter, LinkedIn, Tagged, Plaxo, Merchant Circle, Yelp, etc. Where is one to go?  The short answer, much the chagrin of people trying to keep up, is everywhere. Each one has their pros and cons yet all share the same desire – to connect you to people. Expect many new sites and many interations of old sites.  Like it or not…Social media is here to stay and your participation is required.

Keep your eye on these emerging trends and buckle up.  Change is here to stay!

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