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Archive for the ‘ Search Marketing ’ Category

May 13th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

Online sales are continuing to outpace catalog sales. Consider the recent announcement by the marketers at Bloomingdales (parent company being Macy’s Inc) who have just called it quits for the catalog side of business and you can start predicting the future with relative ease. That is…if marketers dare to think differently. Tried and true may no longer apply…

I call it putting your money where the mouse is.

Not just where it starts (as in search and email) but where it travels (which is the entire click-stream process, not to mention visits that might happen over a period of time pre- and post-conversion). And this new emphasis on travel can really be related to improving the overall online experience which is exactly the plan for the Bloomingdales.com web site.

Bye-bye catalogs will also mean bye-bye direct mail to some degree. I’m sure not every retailer will completely abandon the catalog, but there will be fewer and fewer printed every year. So it’s not a matter of if they will abandon catalogs, it’s more a question of when and by how much? For the catalogs that don’t get fully axed, I believe the distribution won’t be automatic - rather, it will be very much an active request by the consumer.

But over time, with more emphasis being placed on positive online experiences, who will even request a catalog? I mean seriously, the catalog will be archaic. As today’s youth move into consumer-hood, they’re already in tune with online shopping. Hell, they’ve been buying in the onlines stores of webkinz world, club penguin and numerous others since they were 3!!! And trust me, these sites don’t offer print catalogs.

On top of consumer demand for positive online experiences, there’s also the green thing / the environment thing. This is like the cherry on top for any marketer looking to phase out the catalog. Save some trees. Gain some customers. It’s all good.

Two questions:

1. Have you noticed fewer and fewer retail catalogs?

2. Are you a retailer considering the fate of your catalog?

I’m curious for comments on this topic…so share your thoughts and let’s start a conversation.

Posted in Conversion, Optimization, Customer Experience, Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Search Marketing, Personalization, Email marketing | No Comments »

MarketingSherpa visiting Ottawa

May 7th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

It’s not everyday Ottawa marketers have the opportunity to see and hear a MarketingSherpa thought leader and influencer in person. But thanks to OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) and its popular Zone5ive series, that’s about to change.

At tomorrow’s event which is still open for registrations, the guest speaker is Stefan Tornquist, Research Director at MarketingSherpa, and you can bet there will be plenty to learn. With a focus on B2B marketing, he’s promised to share 7 proven tactics for success in 2008. The usual suspects like email and search are a given – but business technology marketing is also listed as a point of discussion and this is open to lots of direction.

Of course, Sherpa does publish a “Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide” and from what I can see it offers “practical data on: search, email, PR, direct mail, lead generation, trade shows, podcasting, telemarketing and budgeting.”

Since B2B marketing is very web-centric, I’m really hoping there will be some mention of persuasion tactics like web personalization because this is the technology that is truly capable of heavily influencing online engagement and conversion. BTW Conversion for a B2B marketer might not mean an immediate “close” especially depending on the value of typical B2B deals. Meaningful conversion on a B2B site might be more of a relationship/credibility builder – maybe a whitepaper download or a demo request or a newsletter sign-up. Something to keep a prospect engaged at their liberty without feeling the pressure of a sales person. Something that can keep you front of mind with that prospect.

Sitebrand works with some B2B companies including CableOrganizer.com and they use our web personalization technology to do tons of cool things. To give you a sense of what I mean, here’s an excerpt from our case study:

“CableOrganizer.com has also had great success with key customer campaigns where Sitebrand is used to personalize the site based on the organization’s domain. “It surprises them [our customers] when they show up and see creative that is associated with their logo. I am sure they ask, ‘how did they know that?’” says Shields. Many of these campaigns improved CableOrganizer.com’s conversion rates by almost 10% against control groups that did not see Sitebrand enabled targeted content.”

It’s a great example of savvy B2B marketing so if you want a head start on business technology that’s changing the online landscape, you should read the full case study.

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Carolyn Gardner, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Should Dayparting be a part of your day?

May 6th, 2008 by Jim Cain

Looking at online sales cycles is a Pandora’s box. Once you decide to look into your analytics to truly understand what steps a visitor needs to go through in order to convert, you always end up with more questions than answers. There are a number of ways you can look at what it takes for a visitor to become a customer. You can go the:

Engagement route: Understanding how and why a visitor moves through your site in a given session towards conversion.

Recency and frequency route: Understanding separate sessions and time between sessions as steps towards conversion.

Micro and macro conversions route: Looking at how pre-transactional conversions like newsletters, wishlists and downloads move a visitor towards a conversion.

I could go on for a while with other options, but the purpose of this post was to make things even more confusing by injecting a new term into the mix: Dayparting. (place maniacal cackle here).

Dayparting is a fairly established term in the offline marketing space, used for managing media buys in radio and television. An example of this is selling radio ads against the morning daypart so that you can have the largest audience (people in cars).

Dayparting is now making it’s way into online media buys, and there are some great articles and whitepapers on the web about how to optimize your search spend based on time of day. It makes pretty good sense. Look at your conversion rate based on the hour of the day (one click in Google Analytics by the way), or even the day of the week. Look at where conversion is higher. Plan keyword spend accordingly.

Using this concept for in-site marketing makes for a very compelling case. We have a few customers at Sitebrand who run personalization campaigns based on the day of the week, but imagine if you tweaked your website so that:

in the mornings you ran your normal site messaging, as people are looking at you as they drink their morning coffee and aren’t buying
during lunch hours and early afternoon your site pushes your wishlist instead of a sale, because people are looking for products on your site that they will buy later at home.
From 5-10 pm you ran aggressive sales messages, knowing that people are on the home computer and much more likely to convert.
From 10pm to 7am you run more discounts and promos, because you might get some ‘midnight special’ bumps to conversion.

Especially if run against a control group, this would make for a very interesting look at conversion from a dayparting perspective. That is, until another way to look at online sales cycles catches my eye….

Cheers,

Jim

PS. Note that I didn’t even TRY to bring time zones into this. Neo, there is no spoon.

Posted in Jim Cain, Conversion, Social Media, Web Analytics, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Should Site Optimization fall into your keyword budget?

April 22nd, 2008 by Jim Cain

The blogosphere right now is abuzz with discussions about the current economic downturn and what impact it will have on eCommerce sales, and the associated budgets that eMarketers will be given.

Forrester research sees eCommerce bucking the downturn trend, with online spending actually going up by a predicted 17% in 2008. That said there will still be a tightening of belts as far as spending is concerned, with most of the spending freezes taking place against in-site technologies. Search will continue to grow, as it is both vital to online sales and the most easily provable from a tactical ROI perspective.

According to our friends at Marketing Sherpa, while “38% of marketers are spending more on online tactics, such as paid search, natural search, email marketing and online events” this growth is happening at the expense of in-site technologies as “B-to-B and B-to-C marketers are conserving budget dollars by renegotiating contracts with vendors and agencies”

So let me get this straight. Online stores are spending more money on getting people to walk in the front door of the store, and less money on making sure they walk out of the store with a product in hand. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, especially when you listen to an online brand that has a keen grasp of the big picture.

I listened to a great speech at Shop.org by Patrick Byrne, COO of Overstock.com. It would take a series of blog posts to detail all the interesting things that have been done/are being done by the Overstock.com team, but two major points stood out:

While they came late to the party regarding natural search optimization for Google, they have made search a number one priority over the last few years.
They are in the process of rebuilding their marketing programs, customer service programs and website experience around 5 pre-defined visitor segments.

They recognize that while increased eyeballs on website equals increased revenue, the only way to break the vicious cycle of search reliance is though optimization.

I know that most of the people reading this don’t have Overstock.com budgets, but try a simple exercise.

Pull up an analytics report on the conversion rate for one of the product categories that has received budget for keyword buys and search optimization.
Look at the percentage of traffic and conversion rate for the traffic segment.
Compare the conversion rate of this type of traffic to your site average and if it is lower, calculate your potential revenue opportunity.

There is a lot of money that gets left on the table by making traffic generation of any type your primary marketing mechanism. You should be budgeting time and money to optimize visits within your site as a logical component of your search marketing initiatives, especially if you want to take advantage of the 17% growth of the only growing retail market.

Cheers,

Jim

Posted in Conversion, Optimization, Customer Experience, Jim Cain, Web Analytics, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Smart (not more) keyword spends boost conversion…

April 17th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

All too often I hear experts saying that if you pay attention to analytics conversion reports…matching high conversion rates with high performing keywords…and then proceed to spend more on those sources of visitors (i.e. search), etc., you will magically increase conversion even more. This is the old school way of looking at the power of keywords as they relate to converison.

Yes, I totally agree that understanding keywords and teeing them up with search marketing will bring traffic to your site. And when that visitor is treated to the experience that meets their intent, things are good - i.e. conversion is a few clicks away. But is it always a slam dunk? Absolutely not. From the point of landing on your site to the point of conversion, there are soooooo many things that can derail conversion. Site distraction alone is a big one. Not getting the right information another. I could go on, but you’re busy.

Smart marketers are thinking differently. Allow me to brag about one Sitebrand customer, Limoges Jewelry, who got serious with their analytics by actioning the data with personalized web campaigns targeted to first-time visitors, keywords, affiliates and geo-locations. Never been to Limoges? Check it out and experience their first-time visitor campaign now. Note - it’s up top, right beside the logo…if you see nothing but what space there then you’re part of the control group’s default content…better luck next time!

Anyhow by building personalization into the marketing mix, Limoges has generated over $1 million in combined and promoted product revenue. Did that get your attention? You should read the full case study, but for the purpose of this post, here’s the deal on how you can seriously impact the success of your keyword investments…

Getting back to keywords…

Through their analytics reports, Limoges could see that a lot of converting visitors were looking for engraved couples jewelry. They have a couple jewelry page which is what many sites would point to and do quite well with. But instead, Limoges went further. They added personalization that went beyond the initial landing page…

So here goes in a nutshell - below is a standard screenshot demonstrating someone who has typed ”engaged couples jewelry”…

screen1

Below is the landing page these types of keyword visitors would see. Psst - personalization for these visitors is happening at the top right beside the Limoges logo…

screen2

As you can see, this special offer related to “free engraving” sits here. But it also stays with the visitor beyond the landing page reminding them of their initial intent…ultimating improving conversion, revenue and customer satisfaction.

But you know what? This wasn’t the top performing campaign in terms of overall lift. You’ll have to read the case study to find out. Is it first-time visitor campaigns? Affiliate campaigns? Geo-targeted campaigns?

Posted in Conversion, Optimization, Customer Experience, Carolyn Gardner, Web Analytics, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | 1 Comment »

Tim ‘the Toolman’ Taylor is NOT a good eCommerce person.

March 28th, 2008 by Jim Cain

The purpose of this weeks blog was going to be around the concept of the first time visitor segment and how it can be appropriately marketed to on a given web property. Once I hit the 2000 word mark, I decided to keep going and make it a whitepaper. More will follow on that in coming weeks.

Instead I would like to take a moment to throw in my two cents on a real challenge that I think most eCommerce properties face in regards to site optimization: horsepower vs proper planning.

The purpose of most of my blogs and of the upcoming whitepaper has to do with proper execution, building the right marketing plan to effectively achieve the right sales outcomes. While Sitebrand’s technology will assist in achieving better outcomes, it will not in itself give you a good plan.

This thought runs in parallel to the ’90-10’ rule regarding analytics software coined by Avinash Kaushik. If you spend 90% of your analytics budget on the right people who can make the right plans, and 10 percent on the technology to allow them to do their jobs, you will get the best possible results.

So what do I mean about horsepower vs proper planning? While eMarketers are starting to take more control of the web site, overall ownership is still firmly in the domain of the IT department and the CFO. This is for two reasons:

Websites, despite all the talk of ‘commerce 2.0’, are still considered to be black boxes where traffic is plugged in one end, and revenue comes out the other.
Most marketers have built their plans around this ‘drive traffic-manage customers’ model, and don’t have a sound strategy or plan for insite marketing.

If your site is viewed as a black box, or intelligent catalog, or online sales engine, the only way to optimize it is to bolt on ‘more horsepower’ in the forms of self learning software like merchandising management, site search tools, and multivariate testing engines.

With this thought in mind, re-read the websites for some of the vendors who have cold called you in the last few weeks. While the stated audience will be the marketer, the true stakeholders are finance and IT. The value propositions tend to revolve around the concept that the primary job of the marketer is to get good traffic to the website, and the primary job of technology is to manage the experience of the visitor through self learning databases and patented algorithms.

“More power!”

I could sell a LOT of software to Tim the Toolman. I can also guarantee you that while his website would get the basic value that any good software product will provide, the ‘sales engine’ would never be shifted out of second gear due to the lack of a solid plan.

There is no point in buying a Ferrari to be a grocery getter, and there isn’t much point in putting more horsepower into your website before you have a cohesive plan around how you are going to use it.

Cheers,

Jim

Posted in Conversion, Optimization, Customer Experience, Jim Cain, Web Analytics, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Where’s the personalization survival guide?

March 12th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

5 Survival Guides

For anyone craving more information on many popular terms associated with online marketing, Oneupweb offers five free guides:

SEO Survival Guide - More than 100 terms related to natural search.
Paid Search Survival Guide - Essential information for successful PPC advertisers.
Social Media Survival Guide - Conquer the world of consumer-generated content.
Blogging Survival Guide - Discover online empowerment through corporate blogging.
Eye Tracking Survival Guide - Improve your online presence; see what your market sees.

Sadly, there’s no mention of a web personalization survival guide. But I’m not surprised because the whole concept of web personalization remains underused and misunderstood…at least for now. With any luck, e-commerce marketers will soon look for life beyond the predictable tactics of search, email, etc. And by “beyond life”, I really mean stepping up and trying new things - that’s what living is, right?

It’s not about finding new budgets either. It’s about spending existing budgets differently. For the converted (pardon the pun), the measurable impact of web personalization is significant in terms of lifts to conversion and revenue.

My moral of this post - just because everyone else keeps sinking more and more money into search and email doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Just look at your analytics and you’ll see reports that highlight the continual failures with this type of follower mentality.

Instead you should take “the norm” as a cue to be different. Consumers are being wooed in every direction. Think beyond the “woo” factor (aka acquiring new customers with a wam-bam approach - I got you here and now your mine!!! This rarely succeeds for the long term).

Now don’t get me wrong. Acquisition is important. But real customer value is earned when you factor in the “wow factor” (aka converting and retaining with a personalized approach that thinks beyond the landing page…an approach that is customer-centric, vs corporate-centric).

Who’s up for the challenge?

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Social Media, Web Analytics, Search Marketing, Personalization, eCommerce, Email marketing | No Comments »

Landing Page Letdown and Conversion Impact

March 3rd, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

According to a new study* by Engine Ready, a San Diego-based search marketing firm, the best conversion comes from visitors who arrive via a bookmarked URL or a URL they type directly.

To be a bookmarked URL, we all know it means the site is a favorite and that would clearly indicate a loyal shopper is visiting. Long live the loyal shopper! And for someone to type your URL directly, we’re talking about a site with a solid brand and an easy to remember URL. Again this visitor is likely another very motivated shopper with intent to buy.

According to the study which included e-tailers in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG), home improvement and clothing categories: “These brand-driven consumers have the highest conversion rate (at 3.3%) and spend just over $170 per order. In terms of engagement, direct access visitors averaged 312 seconds on-site per visit and viewed an average of six pages each time.”

Not far behind, sitting in the second most valuable spot are visitors who arrive via a link from another Web site or email. According to the study, these visitors are “converting about 3% of the time, and spending about $168 per order. And while they spent some 246 minutes on-site and viewed an average of four pages on each visit, these referral visitors had the highest bounce rate (when a visitor leaves a Web site without viewing any other pages or before a specified time frame, such as 10 seconds). Referral traffic bounced off of the landing page nearly 50% of the time. ”

Did you read that? Referral traffic is bouncing nearly 50% of the time. Why? Well I would say it’s because the landing page isn’t measuring up. Visitors are compelled enough to click links from other sites or emails and yes, this is good. But unfortunately, all too often, the landing pages miss the mark - i.e. they fail to deliver the right message at the right time. Now of course, there could be occasions where mystery links are unclear so visitors click thinking they are going to see one thing and instead they see another. That’s a whole other issue.

But regardless, when someone hits a landing page, the e-tailer has a very small window of opportunity. If the first impression is anything other than relevant, the visitor will move on. To make the most of that first impression, it’s all about creating a personalized landing page and web experience that fulfills a visitor’s needs (throughout the click-stream process). So what can e-tailers do to fulfill visitors’ needs and improve the overall web experience?

In my opinion, the only way it will improve is when e-tailers start thinking differently by shifting more budget into the overall online experience. Gobs of money are spent driving web site traffic - this is well documented. But not enough is being spent to ensure the visit is a good, long one that results in conversion.

Clearly this sweet spot (aka the landing page) has room for improvement…because all to often it’s not putting the unique interests of the customer first. For the 50% of the traffic that does stick around, you can bet they’re seeing what they want when they want it. Ideally they’re having a personalized web experience that changes dynamically, in real-time depending on the keyword they arrive with, the length of their visit, the depth of their visit, their click-stream path and so on.

This respect for the landing page is exactly what Danskin, a Sitebrand customer does. Using the Sitebrand Retail Marketing Suite, Danskin ties its web marketing initiatives to other initiatives like email and keyword campaigns to create a more integrated and holistic marketing program. By doing so, they are able to create landing pages that are personalized by user-generated search terms. I repeat…landing pages that are personalized by user-generated search terms. Naturally, this strategy leads to higher conversion because visitors are seeing what they want when they want it. If you’re interested in all the details, you should read the Danskin Case Study.

*Note: I didn’t have a link to the study when I first posted, but thanks to a comment by Brian Lewis from Engine Ready, I can now tell you that the complete study - called “PPC vs SEO - The Final Round” - can be downloaded at: http://engineready.com/company/industrystudy/index.html

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Optimization, Web Analytics, eCommerce, Search Marketing, Personalization, Email marketing | 3 Comments »

Cross-channel selling & leveraging consumer wants online

November 20th, 2007 by Carolyn Gardner

The Internet is not a fad and when retailers embrace it for being the unique channel it is, the rewards (aka $) are undeniable. For those who really understand consumer needs, the rewards are even greater!

In an article posted by Retail TouchPoints, I came across 5 key ways to keep up with the competition this holiday season (think of these as e-commerce tips really). They actually apply throughout the year so I’m glad you’ve taken a moment to procrastinate on that important report you’re supposed to be writing.

Before I share these 5 tips, let’s dig a little deeper into the mindset of our beloved online shoppers.

I want to dig because one dominant theme in these 5 tips relates to the need for “retailers to realize the differences between brick-and-mortar and online retailing: it’s not enough to transfer the same promotions, signage and communications from the b-and-m store to the web site. A completely difference channel, the web site needs to be treated as such.”

This is all true, but don’t some basic consumer needs apply in both b-and-m and online environments? You better believe it…

Take the traditional b-and-m store: we walk in anticipating acknowledgement from a sales associate. If we’re a “regular” repeat customer, we expect an expecially warm welcome that includes a little bit of the “I know what you like type of chatter…you have to see our new line of winter suits!” No acknowledgement = no likey and we leave. And we leave. Or imagine those first time visit to a store. The approach here would be different - probably more all encompassing to help qualify my specific shopping intentions - i.e. am I browsing vs. looking for something specific.

Or take the times you’re “just looking” but reach a point where with a little eye contact, the sales associate clues in and offers some help. Phew. No help = no likey and we leave.

I would argue these basic b-and-m consumer needs are also very much required online. And it’s web personalization that can bring the exceptional customer experince online.

You would think this might be one of the 5 tips I’m about to reference, but surprise - it’s not! So allow me to take the liberty of updating point 2 of this article. It currently reads what you see below and the point that really gets me is the part that says “REI is equipped to make daily changes to the site, as necessary, if they determine a certain page or area of the site is not converting to sales or meeting customers’ needs.”

The part that blows me is DAILY CHANGES! With today’s technology, specifically web personalization, these changes should happen in REAL-TIME. Hello!!!!!

And all that jazz I mentioned about consumer expectations in b-and-m stores…whether we’re a repeat, loyal shopper vs. a first time shopper, well those same expectations can me met online with a little web personalization to the rescue!

Point 2 is below but all 5 of the key ways you can stay ahead of the competition online, go to: http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/beta/location2A1.htm

And don’t forget to finish that report you’re supposed to be working on!

–>Use customer activity data to make site changes often, even daily during the busiest seasons. REI has taken this concept to heart and practices it as the basic component of its go-forward strategy. “Particularly from a multi-channel standpoint I find it essential to use the information that is fresh in our minds to prepare for next year,” notes Ben Viscon, online merchandising manager, REI. “We constantly take the pulse of what customers are buying, where they are clicking on the site, which articles they are reading and, in general, which pages are converting them into purchasers.” This strategy works across channels, as the company tracks registered members to find out if they are purchasing online, if they are just researching online and purchasing in the store, or if their online research does not translate to a purchase. REI is equipped to make daily changes to the site, as necessary, if they determine a certain page or area of the site is not converting to sales or meeting customers’ needs. Using search analytics, REI can determine if customers are searching for keywords such as “stocking stuffers” and respond by putting up a “stocking stuffers” page.

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Personalization, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Does online advertising help offline sales?

November 15th, 2007 by Carolyn Gardner

If you don’t have time to read this post, the short answer is YES!

Now for the longer-ish, way more fascinating answer….

This morning a few sitebranders, including myself, had the pleasure of attending “Interactive to the Max” - a cross-country event that blends some top-notch presenters with some mind-blowing internet numbers. The event is pulled together by Marketing Magazine in association with the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada. A huge kudos to the event’s facilitator Paula Gignac (President, Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada) for such a stellar line-up. And if you happen to be in Montreal or Toronto, this event is coming to you soon so check out the above link.

Anyhow…there’s too much to tell you, so let me zero in on one presenter by the name of Patrice Laing from Yahoo! Canada…who also happens to be a super nice guy. He talked a lot about something he calls “ROBO” which stands for the realities of consumers who Research Online, Buy Offline. I think this ROBO stuff is very true in Canada where even though we have 70% online penetration, we still lag in terms of how many purchases happen on the web. BTW, did you know that Canada has the highest online penetration? The US is next with 60% online penetration and that’s followed by the UK, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

I’m actually going to share some highlights of a study Patrice presented. BTW comScore partnered with Yahoo! on this little baby. Yada yada, the study, which involved more than 175,000 panelists, compared those exposed to online advertising vs. those who were not exposed. I love that word “exposed”. Sounds so revealing, don’t you think! The study specifically revealed the impact of search marketing & display advertising on consumer shopping behaviour, specifically the in-store sales of major retailers.

89% of consumers who make in-store purchases in key retail categories have conducted online research prior to purchase
When pre-shopping consumers are exposed to online advertising (search, display or both), they engage at a deeper level with your web site, viewing an avg of 6 more pages than those not exposed, a 53% lift
“Exposed” consumers also showed a much stronger propensity to make a purchase resulting in a 43% lift in total revenue of which 88% of the sales revenue generated from the online advertising budget was from consumers who purchased in the physical store (did you read that carefully? if not, pls read again since it’s staggering)
45% of consumers who research online buy additional products in-store when they buy the product they researched online (snuck this in from Forrester Research).
Online advertising drives in-store sales at a 6:1 ratio to online sales

Bottom Line: Those exposed to online advertising spend an average of 29% more on their in-store purchase than those who were not exposed.

Without a doubt, there’s a huge relationship between online engagement and in-store sales. So giddy up and happy selling wherever you can make the sale!

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Search Marketing | 3 Comments »

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