Search Engine Strategies 2003 - Wrap-Up Report: Improving Conversions, Daypart PPC, & Metrics Hell

The Search Engine Strategies Conference is the show where
consultants and vendors offering search marketing services, and
client-side folks whose jobs revolve around search marketing, go
to learn and network

However this year for the first time nobody had anything hugely
new to say about specific technical tactics for search marketing.

Don't get us wrong - there were plenty of attendees and bucket
loads of networking. But the fact is, right now there's not much
new when it comes to how to optimize a site, the mechanics of
paid inclusion, or how PPC campaigns work.

The challenges are now completely different -- and interestingly,
they are mostly on the side of marketing metrics.

-> Tweaking marketing investment

"With Travelocity, they're pulling 20% of their traditional
budget and going back online into search engine marketing.
Within the next year, their online budget will exceed TV," noted
Cheryle Pingel President Range Online Media.

She added, "We're asking for and getting a chunk of TV budgets
from many sites."

With all that money being diverted to search, the challenge is to
make sure it's getting the biggest bang for the buck. Show
attendees and speakers mentioned three key tactics they're using
to do that:

Tactic #1. Varying and tweaking the investment mix between
three different search marketing tactics -- "organic"
(optimization), paid inclusion, and paid text ads. There's no
one perfect mix.

"If your audience is a technical B-to-B engineering audience,
then you should be doing organic because engineers are
allergic to clicking ads, so it will save you $1.25," remarked
Dana Todd, Founding Partner SiteLab International.

"For the average site we submit using paid inclusion, we asked
how things would be different had we done trusted feed," said
Laura Thieme, President Bizresearch. "If we charged a CPC of
.25-.30 cents rather than optimizing the site, our average
client would be a lot less profitable than doing paid
inclusion."

Tactic #2. Testing various paid text ads -- for example,
Google now offers three different options: Premium ads at the
top, AdWords ads at the side, and text ads on 3rd party
content sites. Each is priced and performs differently.

Todd said in her experience with some clients, "The Premium
ads are giving us two times the click through rate of the
AdWords on the same page." So even though they cost more to
place, your final ROI might be comparable.

Tactic #3. Testing daypart search marketing -- although online
ad sales reps have tried to sell daypart ads for years now,
few clients have bought. (For example, online giant
Weatherbug told us recently they've never sold a single
daypart ad, and not for lack of trying.)

However, clients are so eager to maximize their search
marketing investment that for the first time they are testing
daypart. In fact Kevin Lee of Did-It.com confirmed he had
several clients doing daypart ads.

Why? Because they suspected the clicks they'd get at certain
times of day would be from more qualified buyers -- consumers
more likely to convert to sales vs. window shoppers.


-> Welcome to metrics hell

Increased search marketing budgets and testing means there's much
more pressure on marketers to track their campaigns accurately
and completely.

It's not just about how many clicks you get, but how much money
you ended up making from each click, and ultimately a click's
lifetime value.

In our experience most marketers don't have the in-house tech to
handle this, especially for tracking by keyword, source and
conversion.

Many marketers currently only track by total clicks from a source
- such as "My Overture campaign clicks overall made me $X." Very
few can say, "My clicks from this particular term at Overture
gave me this ROI."

And some marketers' tracking is pretty lame indeed. Bryan
Eisenberg CIO of FutureNow Inc said, "Over 60% of site owners
don't even know what their own conversion rate is."

Given that tracking means tying all your various metrics systems
together - including your site, your house-list email program,
your shopping cart, your in-bound call center, etc. - it's going
to be a bigger job that most traditional search marketing firms
can help you with (although some are gearing up to try.)

For marketers who are wrestling with data from a variety of silo-
ed systems, the job will require months of work and a significant
technology investment.

In the meantime, everyone at the show had one urgent metrics
question in particular: "We want to know what the click price is
when the click occurs on a Google or Overture ad."

The answer from both companies' reps, "We have no plans to add
that feature."

Ouch.


-> Competing for clicks

"We're trying to spend more money on search marketing, but our
constraint is keywords. We're pretty much maxed out, and I
haven't really found a new batch of keywords. And we're not
going to make any more money moving our PPC from #3 to #1
rankings," a show attendee from big famous client-side company
told us.

As more money flows to search marketing, marketers are bumping
the a ceiling -- you want to invest more but there are a limited
number of keywords and searchers using them to advertise to.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that everyone reports it's
those highly, highly targeted niche terms that work the best both
in terms of click cost and click conversion.

Show attendees repeatedly brought up two questions related to
this problem:

Question #1: How can we protect our trademark on PPC searches?

Answer: No problem - just alert the PPC companies to your
trademarks and they will stop accepting ads from your
competitors. However, don't expect PPC companies to
proactively do this - protecting your trademark against
violations is your job, not theirs.

Also, you may not get a huge gain in traffic by being the only
sponsor for your own trademarked name. As Sherwood Stranieri
of Catalyst Online explained, "The brand name is dwarfed by
the generic name, except for 'Nike' over 'sneakers'."

Question #2: "How can we protect our PPC listing from
affiliates?"

Answer: First be sure you really want to. Well-managed
affiliate programs provide 10-20% of total new buyer sales for
many merchant sites. And, some of the most successful
affiliates are relying on search marketing.

If you set down harsh restrictions on how affiliates can use
search marketing, you'll have to make a longstanding
commitment toward aggressive search marketing on your own end.
If you decide to switch tactics later, it's harder to turn
that affiliate tap back on again.

That said, some companies are starting to add clauses to their
affiliate contracts regarding which types of search marketing,
and which search terms they can advertise under.


-> Improving conversions

The biggest problem nearly everyone at the show bought up wasn't
about classic search marketing at all -- it was about what
happens after the click.

With PPC costs rising, heavier competition for all types of
search marketing, and the number of searchers in niche terms
limited, everyone wanted to know how to improve their clients'
campaign ROI.

As Fredrick Marckini, CEO iProspect said, "You can only optimize
traffic so much. After a while all you're going to see are
incremental gains. You'll need to look to conversion."

However, search marketing firms have discovered that many of
their clients' conversion processes -- all of the elements from
landing page design to final sale -- are not remotely optimized.

Which is frustrating for them. They work hard to bring you
traffic, and then your site blows it.

"You can have first position in Google from an algorithmic
standpoint, and you can have perfected your PPC and paid
inclusion listings, but at the end of the day, your Web site has
a lot to do with whether people are going to convert or take the
action you want them to take," said Dave Carlson, CEO GO TOAST.

He added, "People are going to have to have some kind of
conversion tracking software in place because they need to know
what's going on, and what they need to change. Is it the
shopping cart? Are consumers abandoning you when you ask for the
credit card? Or when you ask for address information?"

Note that your initial 'conversion' need not be a sale. It could
be a lift in brand awareness (in fact Kevin Lee reported that
some sites are trying to track brand lift as they would for TV
ads.) It could be more visitors registering for a white paper
offer, or joining your email list.

So, marketers will need to assign financial values to each of
these activities in order to track search campaign ROI.

And then track the visitor further down the pipeline to a day
when they actually buy from you - even if it's offline. And then
track lifetime value.

Is this type of ultimate conversion tracking a pipe-dream? We
all hope not.

In the meantime, consider inviting your search firm into the
meeting when you're working on site redesigns, landing pages and
selecting metrics technology that's on the surface unrelated to
search.

It's time to bring search marketing into traditional marketing
committee meetings from day one.

Note: The Search Engine Strategies Conference is owned and run by
Jupitermedia.
http://searchenginestrategies.com

Links: 4 How-To Resources on Search Marketing:

#1. Search Engine Marketing Handbook - Updated Oct 2002
How to get your site ranked in the top 10
http://sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/1971?a=weekly

#2. 21 Ways to Maximize Your ROI from Google AdWords Select
Optimize your paid Google listings - Updated for 2003
http://sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/1962?a=weekly

#3. Buyer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms
55 US & Canadian firms profiled
http://sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/1759?a=weekly

#4. Copywriting Tips for Search Engine Marketing
Get more traffic without paying for it
http://sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/2020?a=weekly