Search Marketing Insomniac…The Blog of Adam Henige

I was bumming around blogs the other night and something dawned on me as I read through a blog of a self employed SEO who had blogged quite prolifically and had some solid content and good ideas. The guy wasn’t going anywhere, and wouldn’t be going anywhere because his grammar was shaky and spelling errors abounded.

Now, I completely understand a few errors here and there, it’s not like we’re publishing academic journals with everything we write, but a general level of competence with the language is to be expected. SEOs constantly tout that what’s good for the reader is good for the search engine, and this holds true here as well. As I read through this specific blog’s content, I thought to myself, “I should add this to my blog roll.” As I went to do it, I began thinking how it might reflect on me if I linked to the content. I mulled it over for a few moments and ultimately decided against it.

The PR of that site currently sits at n/a, and I’m sure some PR3 link juice from my blog wouldn’t have hurt in that regard. It definitely pays to be meticulous in your use of grammar, as it reflects on your professionalism and the credibility. As important, is that it reflects on those who would link to you. Don’t let grammar errors and spelling scare away would be linkers.

I’ve found that a tremendous amount of material relating to web analytics tends to relate to the needs of billion dollar companies or is so rudimentary that it provides little value except to those just cutting their teeth on the topic.  There is a missing middle ground here, particularly for the typical SMB, where there are opportunities to better use available data within their existing systems.

Many SMBs are advertising online (as Microsoft’s recent survey showed 41 percent of small businesses are using paid search marketing), be it with AdWords or some other channel.  However, in my own personal experience I’m still surprised as to the amount of companies that throw money at online advertising initiatives and don’t do any tracking (or simply don’t leverage the data available to them).  I won’t bemoan this subject, but if you’re advertising online or doing any form of search engine marketing, start using your data! It’s in your own best interest to make sure you’re getting a return on your investment.  Whoever is running your campaign, whether they are internal or external, demand that they provide detailed reporting.  Basics here include click through rate, quality of visit, goal conversion and return on ad spend.

Going past this foundation of tracking your online marketing effectiveness, I’ll take the next logical step that many companies seem to miss, and that’s integrating web analytics data with their CRM systems. Strangely, many companies take great strides to track every imaginable offline initiative, from direct mail, point of purchase displays, to trade shows, online marketing campaigns are often ignored, despite the wealth of actionable data they provide.  Actionable, of course, is the key word here.  Given the fluidity of online marketing, the ability to shut down or modify a campaign that begins to lag makes all the sense in the world.  Looking at things more optimistically, by plugging this data into your CRM, it offers the ability to identify missed opportunities and shift your campaigns to take advantage of these opportunities.

First, let me explain the disconnect, as I often see this working from an agency perspective.  The client comes to us with the need of “conversion”.  Whether that’s online sales or leads doesn’t matter.  We, the agency, have a defined goal of converting traffic into one of those two buckets.  On their end, our customer must either fulfill the order and then manage that business opportunity going forward, or take that lead and convert it into a sale.  Most often, the client will be happy if the agency is providing a steady stream of purchases, and can show that their services are providing a solid return on their investment.  Who can argue when your vendor is making you money, right?

Things get a bit dicier when it comes to lead generation, as there is a much larger gray area between an online lead conversion and that lead eventually signing on as a customer.  Obviously, the customer is going to want as many high qualified, quality leads as possible, but assigning accountability to closing the eventual sale can easily become a point of contention.  However, much like in the aforementioned ecommerce scenario, the client will probably be happy if they appear to be getting a steady stream of leads and can see that some basic metric for online lead conversion is being met.

These two scenarios are very common, and countless vendors, clients, and companies that manage this process in house are completely satisfied with this scenario.  I would argue that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and it’s the fault of each side that complacency is reached at this early step in terms of utilizing data.  For clients, I would think they should be more demanding of the long term efficacy of these online initiatives, and truly squeezing every last cent of profitability out of their campaign(s).  It’s not enough to simply be getting a return, what about maximizing that return?

From an agency perspective, while it must be handled with kid gloves, it serves both sides better to push the client to truly get the most out of your efforts.  If they have additional systems that can assist you in performing your service better, why wouldn’t you do it?  It’s not as if there aren’t an overwhelming number of companies out there chomping at the bit to replace you (and many of these are probably a fair bit cheaper, as well).  So to justify your price point, and to prove your value to your clients, it would make sense to be as proactive as possible lest you get left behind once a savvy CMO shows up and starts asking why you’re not leveraging every possible piece of data available.

In the offline examples mentioned earlier, it’s a safe bet that most companies, particularly in a time of tightening marketing budgets, gauge the quality of leads obtained at trade show events or from different versions of direct mailers and the life time value of those customers.  This, of course, is a sensible, accountable approach to marketing.  Doing anything less than this with online marketing, which actually can be done much more simply and granularly, is a missed opportunity.

Breaking it down to the tactical level, it comes down to leveraging the cookie data from your campaigns to track the minutiae of your campaign, and understand the long term effects of these details on your broader business goals.  Cookie data can provide information on originating source of the lead, such as the referring ad, specific search phrase, PPC campaign, ad text and more.  Over time, it’s not enough to know how well you’re turning web leads into business.  You will want to know the specifics of which leads provide the best opportunity conversion rates.  Perhaps even more importantly, you can see which sources are providing the best lifetime customer value.  With this in mind, you can appropriate your online spend in a way that maximizes overall return for your client (making you an even bigger hero than you already are).

As an example, let’s say an online sporting goods retailer sells a variety of baseball equipment.  For our sake we will say they only carry three product lines and have a campaign going for each.  The three campaigns they have going, one for clothing and apparel, one for baseball gloves, and the other for bats all show acceptable conversion rates and return on ad spend.  In many situations, this is the end of the line, with the client happily patting the vendor on the back and cutting them a check for their work each month.  But wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to know which of these campaigns was bringing in repeat business?

What if they passed along the cookie data showing which keywords were driving their most profitable long term customers into their CRM system?  With that data, we might find that customers who click on the PPC ads for baseball gloves rarely ever purchase another product.  But customers who buy bats, we find, tend to buy at least one new one each year, making them far more profitable!  This is valuable information to know when allocating funds for a PPC budget.

Taking it a step further, we may find that specific brands of bats (people who searched for Easton as opposed to Louisville Slugger, for example) have a much greater propensity for repeat purchases.  This begs the question, “Why?”  Of course the next step would be to start some doing some additional research, like examining competitors.  Perhaps the Easton prices are better than competitors’, while the Louisville Slugger prices are slightly above the competition.  Through aggressive pricing, Easton customers become loyal repeat customers, while Louisville Slugger purchasers may be lost as they do more comparison shopping in the future.  Perhaps that’s not the case, maybe Louisville Slugger bats are just a lot more durable, leading to less purchases over time.  Either way, we have a solid basis to start asking the right questions and a starting point for doing some qualitative information gathering from past customers, as well as adding some in-site surveying tools.

Surprisingly, integrating these data points isn’t nearly as difficult as it may seem.  Most analytics providers have a method worked out where you can pass along cookie data to your CRM system.  As Google Analytics is such a popular option, it’s worth checking out the fine work done by the folks at EpikOne to lay out exactly what needs to be done from a coding standpoint to get the Google cookies integrated into your CRM.

It’s likely that ad budgets are going to lean increasingly toward digital in coming years (particularly paid search and SEO), which provides the opportunity to move first to use data as a competitive advantage, and build this type of infrastructure into your CRM reporting and overall marketing strategy.  It makes sense to use every tool in the toolkit, and if you’re doing online marketing, this extra step can provide valuable information for making optimal marketing decisions as your campaign budgets continue to trend toward online initiatives.

Everyone loves lists.  There are entire sites dedicated to top ten lists of everything from skin lotion to punk rock bands.  I recently realized that I haven’t ever written anything in list format.  A terrible, empty feeling began to overtake me.  So while I may have missed the Hypercolor shirt trend when I was a kid (don’t remember Hypercolor?  Shame on you!), I’m the kind of guy that will buy one off Ebay now just to say that I didn’t miss the trend completely.

This could be me!

Sad?  Perhaps.  But I’m going to make it count.

Speaking of counting, I figured I’d run in the opposite direction with my first attempt at “listing”.  Having inherited a healthy dose of skepticism over the years, I figure it’s time to tell you what NOT to look for in an Internet marketing company, whether it be ad placement, pay per click management, search engine optimization or even web analytics.  So let’s get to this list, shall we?

The first reason not to choose an Internet marketing company: They’re not business people.  There are a million people out there offering search marketing services in particular, promising you number one rankings faster than you can microwave a bag of popcorn.  First off, never trust someone that tells you this.  Second, what’s the ultimate goal of their service?  Clicks?  Visits?  How do they devise their keyword strategy?  Do they understand your market?  Do they have tangible business experience?  If they don’t understand business, or if they don’t take the time to understand the uniqueness and complexities of your company, they likely won’t get you the results they want.

The second reason not to choose an Internet marketing company is if they lack a “face”.  One of the first clients I worked with at Netvantage Makreting told us about some large faceless organization (that shall remain nameless) who sent them their SEO report each month showing some keywords went up, and some keywords went down.  No explanations, no rhyme, no reason…just ranking reports.  When they called to try to contact someone in regards to some further explanation, they would get redirected endlessly to someone who didn’t know or really seem to care who they were.  You need a person or people that you have a direct relationship with that will act as a partner.  If a company doesn’t offer a dedicated individual for your account, this is a huge red flag.

The third reason not to choose an Internet marketing company is a lack of transparency.  I’ll be blunt.  Much of what we do is NOT rocket science.  Managing Google AdWords doesn’t take a degree in neuroscience from Stanford (and may not help at all, actually).  It does take time, resources, inclination, and a pretty rounded marketing mind, however.  I have always been straightforward with our smaller clients when I tell them that if I’m really doing my job well, and they have available time, they could eventually take over their campaign.  Clients should be able to look at their raw data, otherwise, it’s too easy to cook the books or paint rosy pictures.  If you can’t look at raw analytics, PPC data, or activity logs for SEO work, how will you hold this firm accountable.  Whether you have any desire to ever look at this information is beyond the point.  If there is any significant hesitation about transparency in information (aside from figuring out the best way to provide it to you), proceed with caution.

Of course it makes sense to do your standard due diligence when seeking out a vendor, but often times Internet marketing is outside the standard comfort zone of a lot of SMBs.  This list should make a nice edition is you aim to trim down your list of potential providers.

I wrote an article for American Chronicle before the end of the election titled “The Politics of Paid Search - Combating the Obama and Palin Rumors“.  In it, I discussed how Obama’s camp did a far better job squelching the rumors largely spread via e-mail proclaiming many unsavory “facts” about the various candidates.  As I’ve continued to see interest in this topic, I decided to dive deeper and see why people have spent so much time discussing how the Internet was utilized in this campaign.

One of the most prevailing rumors spread via email was that Obama was a Muslim.  As i stated in my previous article, Obama’s team had put in place a paid search marketing campaign which appeared to be broad matching searches containing “Obama”, “Barack”, and “Muslim”.  In the sponsored search listings, two Obama ads ran unopposed.  The first as more of a catch-all, titled “Researching Barack Obama?” and a second targeted add proclaiming simply, “Barack Obama: Not Muslim” leading to his brilliantly assembled Fight the Smears site, which provides answers countering all of the misinformation which his team constantly updated.

So how important was this site?  Well, if my numbers mean anything, quite a bit.  Initial keyword volume research on Google shows an average of 226,616 searches per month pertaining to Obama and the word Muslim.  Considering Google accounts for about 70 percent of search traffic now, overall monthly search traffic likely eclipsed 300,000.  It would appear that the word of mouth and email campaigns on that subject raised quite a bit of interest.  While I am not privvy to the click throughs from the paid search campaigns, Quantcast reported monthly traffic in October to the Fight the Smears website of 747,000 visitors.

Perhaps just as telling from the Quantcast numbers is the traffic to the Fight the Smears site’s affinity for factcheck.org, a site aimed at shooting down both candidates’ loose use of facts.  That site showed monthly traffic of 2.1 million visitors.  What does this mean?  Well, it would appear that a growing number of Americans are utilizing the Internet as a reference tool.  While I’m certain it drives the candidates crazy trying to deal with unfounded attacks spreading like wildfire via email and otherwise, it must comfort them to see that people are taking it upon themselves to utilize available resources to ascertain what is fact and what is fiction.

While Obama’s team pushed the envelope to new heights in utilizing technology as a strategic and fundraising tool, it will be interesting to see how politicians leverage paid search management, and the Internet in general, as a powerful tool.  With more independent organizations making information readily available to the public, it will be interesting to see if politicians are held increasingly accountable for their less than truthful rhetoric.

Internet marketing does not need to be treated with kid gloves, so why do businesses still treat it that way?  It’s time to put your online actions under the microscope.

The more I’m in this business, the more I see larger companies and organizations moving towards highly analytical approaches to their online marketing.  This makes sense, as it’s such an important touch point for brand building, creating awareness of new products and services and making transactions.  It certainly pays to know what’s going on as these companies pay for ad placements, buy up massive amounts of keywords in their pay per click marketing campaigns and invest significant resources in ongoin web development.

It’s the rest of the business world that scares me.  In particular, I’m referring to those medium to small sized businesses that have stuck a toe in the pond, but haven’t yet jumped in.  These are the organizations that I speak with who say things like, “We have an AdWords account, but we don’t really pay attention to it.”

Hold on a minute.  What?  How does this happen?  I’ve never spoken with someone who said, “We advertise on Fox, but I don’t even know what commercial we run, how much it costs, or if it gets us any business.”  Now, the latter piece of that statement might be true, but most certainly not the first two.  Somehow, the Internet in all of its youth seems to be more of a pet project for a lot of small businesses instead of a serious, accountable marketing channel.

The tools are there to see where your dollars are going, if you’re getting a return, and most importantly it provides you with information to continuously adjust and optimize.  So if you’re going to do it, really do it!  Or, you could call someone like Netvantage and we can help!   We’re nearing the end of the adoption curve here, and it’s time those at the end of the curve gain a proper understanding of how Internet marketing works so we can prove its effectiveness and place it in its rightful standing next to traditional marketing channels.