Webinar_Google Analytics: Insiders’ Tips & Tricks to Get More from Your Online Search Marketing Campaign
Find out how to use Google Analytics to get more out of your online search marketing campaigns. Join Joe Ford and me for our webinar on Thursday, August 26 at 2 p.m. EST.
How effective is your Online Search Marketing Campaign?
You’ve done the front end work: keyword research, website optimization, keyword saturation, ad text, URLs and geo targeting … all aimed at generating qualified sales leads.
But what about the back end? How well is your campaign performing?
• Did you set goals and track your performance?
• Do your prospects make it past your landing page? If so, where do they go?
• Are you focused on the right keywords?
• Valuable data is piling up – page views, viewer traffic, click-throughs – but what do you do with it?
Answer these questions and more with Google Analytics.
Joe will show you how to…
• Create Segments, Set Goals and Track Results
• Perform a Landing Page Analysis
• Track your Traffic and ROI
• “Hack up your data,” put it all together and ensure success!
Here’s the link to register https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/529720752 If you can’t join me on the 26th, then visit our on-demand webinar postings to view this webinar after the live broadcast. You’ll be glad you did when you see your online search marketing ROI!
If you missed it, here’s our previous webinar on Google AdWords and learning how to launch an online advertising campaign: http://www.youtube.com/icsMarketingSupport#p/u/0/hL-w8y9iCzs
Leveraging Legacy “In-Market Shopper” Data for Automotive
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, analytics
It has been an interesting Summer in the Automotive Marketing space. Tough to be in Michigan and not be impacted by the challenges faced to jumpstart this business sector.
The focus of today’s message is using Legacy In Market Shopper data in the Automotive Space. Typically, Automobile Manufacturers use the freshest data coming from sources like CarsDirect and Autobytel when prospecting for automotive sales. This makes sense, as they are likely to still be shopping for a vehicle … and influencing the prospect to consider your brand is a proven email and direct marketing strategy.
Through the past few years, we have developed an enhanced legacy database for automotive prospecting. While this might not make sense to you at first, our experience with the data has proven it to be a source of significant power for automotive prospecting:
- First, In-Market Shopper data represents a massive pool of people that historically shop for new cars. As we know in this space from our years of registration data experience, historic new car shoppers are most likely still new car buyers. That factor by itself is powerful.
- Second, Brand History is a very important indicator of future buying preferences. If you have a history of considering Mazda (for example), you are very likely to consider the brand for future new car considerations.
- Finally, with Enhanced Data, we can utilize shopping history and clustering products such as Mosaic or Personicx to analyze and identify those top clusters of the brand competitive set of the product you are focusing on. A fairly straight forward approach that has proven to yield excellent results.
While legacy In-Market Shopping data by itself is considered weak, we can use our experience and data enhancement capabilities to turn this data into very productive contributors to your email and direct marketing initiative. While you can take my word for it, I encourage you to consider testing these approaches in your next email or direct marketing intiative.
ROI-based Search
Filed under: Digital Lead Generation, General Marketing, Lead Management, Marketing Technology Solutions, Search Engine Marketing, integrated marketing, paid search
Here’s a DMNews article about setting-up a paid search budget based on profitability. I found it interesting for two reasons. 1) We just broadcasted a webinar on paid search and discussed budget setup and controls and 2) We just happen to be strategizing on how to expand our own marketing success in paid search from one area of our company to other areas – all, of course, while keeping profitability in mind.
It struck me that the author overlooked some important points to keep in mind when setting-up a profitable paid search budget.
In many cases – including ICS’s – the company has a diverse product / service mix. So when thinking about what to spend on key paid search terms, don’t just look at the price tag of the search term and the profit margin of the product / service you’re marketing. Consider search terms that may provide cross-over sales opportunities as well.
Also, ask yourself if you’re using the best possible search term that would provide the highest quality sales leads at the best price… and if you can get some cross-over marketing into other areas of your products and services, then even better.
Chances are there are some lesser cost (and higher sales value) alternatives to that high price search term that could blow your budget’s profitability.
And don’t forget to keep a close eye on your paid search program. Don’t just set it and forget it.
The great thing is… if your initial keyword selection isn’t giving you the results you thought it would, then you can always adjust your program immediately based on what your response data is telling you.
http://www.dmnews.com/Set-your-search-budget-to-be-based-on-its-profitability/article/139312/
Rethinking the Mature Market
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Search Engine Marketing
I was reading an interesting study yesterday from Pew Research. The title of it was “Generations Online in 2009″. The interesting note that I picked-up from the study was the growth in Internet usage in the mature segment of the population:
The biggest increase in Internet use since 2005 can be seen in the 70-75 year-old age group. While just over one-fourth (26%) of 70-75 year olds were online in 2005, 45% of that age group is currently online.
While admittedly, this percentage isn’t as great as the 18-24 year olds (at 89% Internet usage), this does represent a major shift in our thinking as marketers. No longer can we look at the older generation as ones that cannot be reached through online channels. Experts told us we had to market through traditional media (with large type fonts, I might add) to reach the generation.
Today, 60% of those age 60-69 use the Internet, and for those age 70-75, over 45%. Also, note what they like to do online. Top activities include:
- 79% use email
- 70% use search engines
- 67% research health information
- 65% make travel arrangements
- And 60% use the Internet to research products
The overall study was very insightful and I would encourage you to take a look at the details. You might also find it noteworthy that email has lost some ground among teens … with the rise of instant messaging and social networking (I sure could have told you that from the habits of my household). Here is the link to the full study: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1093/generations-online.
Clearly, our mature market online habits are changing … and the marketing stereotypes and approaches will need to change as well.
Questions to Get Your Paid Search Campaign Started Right
I’ve run into a number of clients who really don’t understand where to start when it comes to generating targeted leads through paid search. The more I thought about it, I decided it would be helpful to provide some guidelines for clients to gain a basic understanding of things you need to think about to run a successful online lead generation campaign.
I asked Joe Ford, our strategic partner from NetVantage Marketing, to pull together a few of the basic things you need to think about. He actually came up with several items for you to evaluate. Here are Joe’s thoughts:
Like any marketing initiative, it is always important that your online marketing campaign get off to a good start. The pre-launch work that goes into a campaign can pay large dividends, and it can also save a lot money and headaches in the long run.
The following is a set of questions that can serve as a checklist when you’re looking to get a paid search campaign off the ground. These are broad questions, in many cases you will want to dig deeper to properly investigate the value points of each area depending on the campaign objectives. You should be getting asked similar questions by your online marketing firm, or asking yourself these questions if managing your campaigns in-house.
1. What is the overall background and mission of the company?
2. What are the goals of your online campaign in relation to:
a. Brand positioning
b. Building awareness
c. Increasing leads
d. Increasing revenue via direct sales/ecommerce
e. Are there any offline/traditional campaign efforts that should be coordinated with the paid search campaign?
3. Has there been past work done in the online marketing arena? If so, what were the metrics for success, and is there data that we can use to investigate?
4. Has there been web analytics in place to detail the performance of the current website?
5. How long has the website been in its current state? If there has been current changes, was the results tracked through web analytics?
6. Is there a greater emphasis on certain products or services than others? Should we be marketing and driving traffic to certain products and services that are better sellers or represent higher margin?
7. What is the target audience profile, and what are the different personas throughout the buying cycle (this can have a profound effect on keyword selection)? Are there any new audiences that we are trying to target with this campaign?
8. Either from current web traffic reports, or from a qualitative business standpoint, what are the keywords that your target audiences are utilizing to find your site?
9. What are the initial keywords that you feel you want to be ranked highly on for your business?
10. Are there any online channels that you deem necessary to be placed on?
11. What is the testing strategy? What variables will be evaluated, and what is the cause/effect frequency that you or your firm has in place. (This will be especially important early on in your campaign)
These examples represent a basic foundation of questions to gain the right information to form a strong campaign that hits target audiences and meets your online marketing goals. As you can see, there is a combination of qualitative and quantitative information that needs to be gathered. Keep in mind that these initiatives should be treated with the same processes and standards as any marketing campaign you conduct.
As you can imagine, starting a pay per click campaign without answering these above questions can lead to major trouble and a lot of reactive work post campaign launch. It is important that this foundation is created as comprehensively as possible. This will allow your testing platform and refinement strategy to have the best chance for success!
