Get Them and Keep Them

Search Marketing - Value the Impressions, Too

One of the things that many marketers like about Search Marketing is that it gives quantifiable, immediate results for lead generation. You can easily calculate ROI, conversions, CTR, etc. with the  Pay-Per-Click ads that bring visitors to your company's online store, white paper, free trial, etc.

But I've found that there's a lot of value for brand building to look beyond those metrics, and also count the number of times your ad just appeared. For example, if your ad shows up when prospects are looking for information about your product or service, you are starting an education process that may have dividends in the future.

As Patricia Hursh  puts it in her awesome article, "B2B Search Marketing: Measuring Success Beyond Conversions:

Putting your brand in front of a searcher at the moment they are online conducting research, looking for answers, or comparing solutions is a very powerful thing. Search uniquely gives marketers the ability to reach prospects at this moment of relevance.

Defining success for this type of branding or market positioning campaign is quite different than a lead gen effort and involves different success metrics. Marketers must focus on metrics like: number of ad impressions, share of total market impressions, cost-per-impression (CPM), click-through rate, volume of visitors, and cost-per-visitor.

Thus, while it may sound wishy-washy to some, it's important to take a holistic approach to Search Marketing. Certainly calculate the metrics for lead generation, but don't forget that there's value in just showing up, too.

Technorati Tags: Search Marketing, Brand Building

online store - incremental customer experience changes count!

Over the past two months, I have focused a lot of my energy on my company's e-commerce store. While we have increased sales more than 100% over last year, I believe we can earn far more money, and make the e-store a lot more customer friendly.

Yet, I would be a bit of a scrooge if I didn't acknowledge that we did make a lot of progress by just implementing a few changes that enhanced the customer experience. They include:

1) Holding prospects/customers' hands with easy-to-read, short and compelling copy about why you should buy each product.

2) Backing up our sales promise with very visible return policy information placed next to check out links.

3)  Adding text-based testimonials and reviews for products. (I would like to try audio testimonials in the near future).

4) An aggressive, but respectful e-blast strategy that focused primarily on generating high Click Through Rates (over Open Rates).

5) Streamlining the check-out process (although we can make a lot more improvements in this area).

While these enhancements certainly helped, I have subsequently come up with a list to make the store  more customer friendly, and easier to shop.

Will all these improvements increase sales dramatically? The ROI is still to-be-determined, but I've learned that if you don't focus on customer experience, you absolutely will not increase your sales. Period. Thus, it's worth the effort.

Technorati Tags: e-commerce, customer experience

Good video on Alt Tags

While I spend a lot of my time optimizing web sites for customer experience, linkability and increased traffic, I generally let the technical folks in the organization worry about the back-end code for SEO purposes.

But, I couldn't help resist posting this great video on how to use alt tags to help Google identify photos on your site.  Just a little code can make a big difference, and it's something that a non-coder like myself can implement.

Technorati Tags: SEO, alt tags, images