Instead, we’d like to present our brief “Best Of” List so you can get some quick highlights from our (somewhat biased) perspective:

Here we go…

• Best Presentation: “How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine.” Bryan Eisenberg, Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne, and moderated by Mike Grehan. I thought this presentation was great because it brought together a few of the industry’s uber-minds, and the subject matter was absolutely crucial: What’s the point of investing in search if you aren’t making money? How can you figure out how to make money off of search marketing if you aren’t properly leveraging data to drive decisions, experiments, and investments?  Great job, Bryan, Avinash, and Jim! The presentations were wonderful, but it was the Q&A that gave the session a life of its own.
• Best Booth: A 2-way tie between iProspect’s “gold mine” and Facebook’s sexy white couches and shag carpeting.
• Best Giveaway: OrangeSoda gave away a sweet orange cruiser bike. We even gave the winner some unsolicited advice on how to get it back home via car!
• Best Schwag/Tchotchkes: NO ONE.  We thought the schwag was pretty weak in general.  If you saw some great schwag that we missed, add it to the comments. One notable mention was PeoplePond’s fill in the blanks t-shirt (check out Jim Sterne and Bryan Eisenberg getting their t-shirts).
• Best Booth Outfits: SuperPages.com’s gold capes cracked us up and helped them market their new “superguarantee” concept.
• Best Announcement: Sandra Cheng’s announcement of the YouTube mega-test using Google Website Optimizer: 1,024 variations in a multivariate test on YouTube’s homepage! Not sure if they’ll be blogging about it, but stay tuned.
• Best Marketing Mantra: Another 2-way tie between People must be at the center of your search strategy–not keywords. by Charlene Li and Turn opinions into hypotheses. by Avinash Kaushik.  Both great phrases to market by; we couldn’t agree more

And to those folks we met at SES, it was nice meeting you, and keep in touch!

So the natural thing to do is trim non-performing words and phrases in order to increase the efficiency of your PPC spend.  And that’s exactly what one client did, except rather than increasing his efficiency, he dropped his sales by 30%.

Why?

Because, depending on what you sell, lots of people buy on their second, third, or umpteenth visit to your site, rather than the first visit.  Those visitors are building confidence in you as they move through their buying process.  But most systems don’t (or can’t) track user behavior over multiple visits.   So when those early and middle buying-stage keywords shown up as non-converters, they get cut.

The shame is that not everyone is able to track the following sales drop off, which may not occur for days, weeks, or months, back to the act of cutting those keywords.

Trading away Dennis Rodman as a Non-performing Player?

Would you trade Dennis Rodman for non-performance?  Of course not, right?  Rodman’s defensive stats alone tell the tale.  At his prime, Dennis was pulling down a truly astonishing 18.7 rebounds per game.  For reference, the previous year’s league leader in rebounds (David Robinson) averaged 13 per game.

But if the only stats you looked at involved scoring, you’d get a different picture. Comparing Rodman’s 8-9 points per game against other star players’ 20 or more points per game, you’d likely have been misled into trading Rodman, only to find yourself wondering why you started losing games and everyone else’s scoring stats went up against your team.

Think of your assisting keywords terms as the Dennis Rodman’s of your PPC campaign, except you’ll get all the assists and none of the off-court shenanigan’s.

There’s plenty of other ways myopic analysis can leading you astray

A recent eConsultancy post discusses how Google’s default window for tracking cookies can distort traffic data.  Left in its default cookie window setting, Google Analytics (GA) will classify visitors as “search”-driven traffic for six months following a single search based click through to your site – regardless of how they got to your site previous to that search or how they might arrive at your site following that search. Here’s an example of how this might skew your results:

Let’s say you’re driving traffic to your site via radio ads and that a listener, after hearing your ad, types your url directly into his browser.  Later, he comes back but this time, he types your business name into Google and clicks through on a displayed search result.  Following that, he visits your site three more times via bookmark or directly typing your URL into his site. That’s a total of 5 visits.

Question: How many of those visits would GA classify as search-driven?

Answer: 4 out of 5.

GA would count the first search-based visit and then all of the remaining 3 visits, despite the fact that the following three visits didn’t use search and may have taken place several months after the initial search.  Multiply that by all your visitors/visits, and you can see how your understanding of what drives traffic to your website might be distorted in favor of search. And under the impression that your traffic was mostly generated by search and not, say, your radio ads, you might be tempted to cut them from your ad spend.   Obviously, the same thing could apply with e-mail campaigns, magazine ads, etc.

Bringing Clarity and Orientation to Web Improvement Efforts

Any experienced Web Analyst or Website Optimizer could extend this list of “gotchas” and “classic mistakes” almost indefinitely.  It’s just not that uncommon for an uncareful analysis of data to lead online marketers either to analysis paralysis or sub-optimal optimization strategies.  Is it any wonder that 70% of businesses collecting wed data fail to act on their analytics data?

Obviously this issue has been central to Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg’s Web careers since the beginning.  It’s why they helped found the Web Analytics Association; why they published The Marketer’s Common Sense Guide to eMetrics, Call to Action and Always Be Testing; why they created Persuasion Architecture; and ultimately why they’ve built the OnTarget program.

The central theme amongst all of these issues is bringing clarity and actionable insight to Web improvement and online marketing efforts.  They are all answers to the business owner who feels confused or disoriented by the data he’s given and want’s a clear direction toward more sales/conversions and improved website performance.

So, if you find yourself struggling to make sense of your online marketing data, or frustrated by non- or counter-productive optimization efforts, ask yourself: are you giving credit where it’s deserved?  Or do you need help achieving greater clarity and actionable insight from your optimization efforts?

We were originally only going to have this private webinar available for OnTarget clients only, but I convinced Craig to let me share it with everyone. Thank you Craig.

High Resolution PPC Webinar Description:

A few years ago, managing paid search campaigns was simple. All you had to do was pick the right keywords and set reasonable bids. Those days are long gone.

Today paid search management is complicated. Competition is tough, prices are high, the rules and algorithms keep changing, and you have to contend with issues like quality score, impression share and revenue allocation.

So what’s the best way to build and manage paid search campaigns in 2009? How should you spend your time and your money to get the best return-on-investment?

In this webinar, Craig Danuloff introduces High Resolution PPC – a new framework for understanding and managing PPC campaigns.

• High Resolution PPC starts with the assumption that we haven’t had a clear enough picture of how paid search really works. Or exercised control with fine enough precision.
• It’s based on the idea we’re no longer willing to take actions, configure settings, and set options without knowing the specific implications and possible interactions.
• And it presumes that we need meaningful and informative performance measures on an ongoing basis in order to intelligently and consistently make changes to improve our results.

High Resolution PPC breaks the process down into three clear steps – target, value, satisfy – and provides a step-by-step approach to building and optimizing campaigns. You’ll learn how to use your time more efficiently, avoid costly mistakes, drive past your competitors, and increase top and bottom line revenues.

Join us for this informative webinar, and learn a new approach to delivering great PPC results.

When I fall off the wagon, every so often, I’ll go ahead and pick a keyphrase and start clicking through PPC ads and their landing pages and take screenshots of the whole entire experience. You can’t imagine how often the experience from keyword to ad to landing page is broken. I want to call them and yell at them to subscribe to OnTarget. I don’t do it. Instead a few weeks or months will pass and the same advertisers drop those ads.  I can just hear their internal discussions as they analyze their metrics and rationally conclude that keyphrase X doesn’t convert for us.

(Maybe we should start the Internet Marketing Darwin Award for PPC ads.)

Keywords Don’t Fail to Convert… we fail to convert visitors for that keyword.

Do you believe the keyphrase you chose is relevant to your business? If it is, then your responsibility is to show every visitor how that keyphrase is relevant to their needs. Every visitor that comes to your site is not completely unique. They have various mostly foreseeable motivations persuading them to buy and various foreseeable objections that would keep them from buying. Ask yourself:

• What is their intent in usingthose keywords?
• What need or desire are they trying to fulfill?
• What is their goal?
• How do we align our goals to meet theirs?

PPC ads are just like tapping someone on the shoulder. PPC ads are only meant to grab attention not convert. If you want to convert your visitor you need to work on the rest of the experience (the conversation) beyond the click.

Do you make any money when a visitor just clicks your ad? No.

So instead of thinking of PPC as pay per click start thinking of it as pay per conversation.

Devote some resources to optimizing your conversations.

How to Get Started Optimizing your Keyword Marketing

1. The first thing you need to do is bucket your keyphrases. Start with the first 100 or so top phrases that drive traffic to your website. For each one of those classify the terms by phase in the buying process. Does the keyphrase apply in the early, middle or late stage of the buying process?

If the term is driving traffic to your site but not really relevant to your business put it in a disqualified bucket for now. For FutureNow one of those terms is “convertion rate.” It may be a harmless typo but time has shown that if they can’t spell conversion they aren’t likely customers.

An example: Someone is planning to buy a new television set. Early in their buying process they might use phrases like LCD tvs, best LCD tv, or LCD tv reviews. As they progress to the middle stage you might see keyphrases like compare Sharp and Sony LCDs, LCD tv 1080 dpi and then move on to specific models in the late stages like Sony KDL-52XBR6.

2. Define and realign your goals with your visitors. Would you expect every person you went out on a date with to marry you at the end of the first date? So why do we expect every keyword to convert visitors to our ultimate goal, the sale or the lead? Our job is to get them there, but based upon their buying preferences, they may not be able to be moved any faster than they are prepared to.

Start planning micro-goals along the way to your macro-goal (sale or lead). Someone earlier in their buying process might not be ready to commit on their first visit. Plan smaller milestones or micro-goals that may lead that person to convert at a later point in their process.

Why don’t many more early or middle stage landing pages have some easy way to capture a visitor’s email address with some kind of offer? 

If your web pages were sales people, how many of them would you fire or at least get trained?

Don’t pay for a keyphrase or a date if your only expectation is a  full commitment at the end.  You need to romance them and show them all your best moves. (Warning – this is conversion advice and it works but I’m no dating expert, just ask my wife.)

Some examples: Maybe you can offer them a buyer’s guide download, a coupon for their first time purchase, an offer to see a webinar about how to choose the product/service they are considering or a price alert notification if this item goes on sale.

Every keyphrase should have a goal that is in alignment with the visitor’s stage in their buying process.

3. Measure your success and build confidence. Respect and support your customer’s journey along their buying process by pulling them along instead of trying to push them to commit too fast. That is the friction that is caused by your sales process colliding with, instead of aligning with, their buying process. This is what creates cognitive dissonance. What you need to build is confidence. Your visitors need confidence that you are there to support their buying process and confidence in your ability to address all their needs and wants in order to convert visitors at all stages.

Start tracking and evaluating your keyphrases and landing pages by how well they support moving visitors through the buying process.  Analyze these micro-goals and continuously optimize the experience to move further and further along so that you keep them on target. Every step closer to the macro-goal is a success, every visit that just bounces is a failure.

Take these 3 steps now and you’ll enjoy a more confident and lucrative 2009.

P.S. This post was inspired by my presentation at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. Read about it on the AimClearBlog.

I was also lucky enough to get a signed copy of my friend Andrew Goodman’s updated book Winning Results with Google AdWords, Second Edition.The first was was great and I am looking forward to reading this one over the weekend.

Q: How many keywords would you suggest for starting a campaign?
A: We haven’t tested this specifically, but starting with thousands if you can avoid it is not a good idea. There are two dynamics – first you want to build up some good history with reasonable to good Quality Score, so from that perspective, going pretty slow and being highly focused and patient is best idea. On the other hand, what matters most is good relevance between all the components which will ultimately generate good QS. So if you have to build a large campaign, ideally you get some base built and then at some point you have to grow it, realize that there’s going to be a chasm to cross while you establish yourself – which may mean some high minimums and poor positions – and just fight through it. Google isn’t incentivized to put you in a downward spiral if your quality is good – recent success will trump history – so when you ‘get it right’ the QS and fate of the campaign will turn.

Q: Where do you find Impression Precentage?
A: I think you mean Impression Share, which is under the Reports Tab in Adwords as an optional field in the Campaign Report. (Or get it right in the campaign reports in ClickEquations!)

Q: What advice to you have for niche keywords that get low CTR?
A: Since keywords should only be triggered by relevant searches, the niche nature of a topic shouldn’t necessarily lower click-through-rates. The first thing to do is make sure you have picked good keywords and aren’t over-using Broad Match (see Match Type Keyword Trap for some ideas on this.) But ultimately all QS measures are relative, so if your CTRs are reasonable for your keywords, you shouldn’t be penalized.

Q: Is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) relevant anymore?
A: DKI is effective in some cases, but it hasn’t proven to be universally effective in our tests. And as mentioned it doesn’t give Quality Score a boost. Use it if it works (meaning test test test)

Q: Instead of deleting a keyword, should you put it in a different ad-group with a lower bid?
A: Certainly moving low CTR keywords into ’special’ AdGroups is a good idea (but like other points here don’t go overboard). The bid it should get then depends on how the CTR varies at different positions, whether you can craft a text-ad that increases its CTR, and your own profitability. I don’t think there is a QS-based answer to that.

Q: Is there a book you’d recommend to better understand Quality Score.
A: There’s one in progress on Craig’s hard drive, but you can’t get it yet.

Q: How does Google rate a company that uses different product specific URLs?
A: I assume the question is about using different domains within a single account. I’d assume the domain doesn’t matter, that the URL and page are measured on their own merits for each ad/keyword.

Q: Our Google Rep told us that moving keywords between Ad-Groups erases quality score. Were they lying?
A: Maybe they had not yet completed their full Google training. Kidding but honestly there is a lot of facts for anyone to know. But Google has publicly written (on the Adwords Blog or in help files I believe) that QS is retained by KW ID and especially KW-AD ID combos, even if moved within a single account. The same is true for target URL. Anytime one of these is used anywhere in an account its historical CTR is known.

Q: You mention geographical performance as a Quality Score Factor. Please elaborate.
A: Google looks at the performance of you KW/AD combo within the geography of the searcher to influence QS. So if your ads get good CTR in New York City, for example, you’ll get a higher Quality Score when people search from NYC, than those who search from LA. It’s your own personal red states / blue states for QS. Would be cool if they drew us a color coded map.

Q: I’m seeing visitors come several times in the same session (via my web analytics) does this negatively effect Quality Score?
A: I can’t see why it would.

Thank you Craig for taking the time for the webinar and for answering all these questions. Do you have more questions? Leave them in the comments. If your research contradicts what we have found, then please comment as well.

1. You use the set it and forget it strategy to PPC. If you setup your PPC campaigns months ago and haven’t adjusted a thing in it, I can practically guarantee you have room to improve it. The seasons change, traffic flow and traffic quality change, even Google’s Quality score changes.

2. You don’t have proper tracking in place. In a recent study of over a 1000 small and midsize businesses it was found that over half failed to properly track conversions. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Do you have enough insight to what is happening with your PPC ad spend?

3. You have not tested at least 3 variations of your PPC ad. Try testing the following variables in your ad copy: headlines, different offers, variations of your USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) or UCPs (Unique Campaign Propositions, and calls to actions (try, learn, get, save, etc.).

4. You have not tested matching options. If you are not getting enough traffic at your bid prices, test the different matching options. Test between broad, phrase and exact (standard) match to see which brings you the best combination of traffic and converted sales.

5. You have a long list of keywords in your ad groups. The keywords in an ad group should be tightly associated and extremely relevant to each other so you can be sure the ad(s) and landing page are effective for the ad group.

6. You have poor scent from the ad to the landing page. In 2001, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, shared their research with Wired on how humans look for information on the Web;  they use the same food-gathering techniques employed by animals. They follow scent. This is an example of bad scent. Make sure to match your PPC ad text with the message on your landing page.

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. You aren’t testing your landing pages to maximize conversion. With over 1100 variables that impact conversion, if you aren’t testing to see what the best combination to use are, you are leaving money on the table. You should always be testing.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing PPC campaigns don’t miss our upcoming Always Be Testing webinar on November 25th titled Google Quality Score – Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success. Sign up now, and even if you can’t watch the live viewing we will notify you as soon as the recorded version is available. Of course, the webinar is free so register today.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Google Quality Score – Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success

Quality Score is the PageRank of PPC. It’s a number Google assigns to your keywords which determines how much you have to bid, the position in which your ads appear, how often your ads are shown, and due to recent Adwords change it even determines if you can jump to the top of any search results page.

Understanding and managing Quality Score effects how you choose keywords, write text ads, and build landing pages. Knowing how your decisions impact Quality Score, and how Quality Score interacts with all the other controls you have in your accounts, can help you manage to greater PPC success

In this Webinar you’ll learn:
- exactly why the Quality Score in Adwords is so important,
- how Quality Score impacts the amount you spend and the amount you make from your PPC campaigns
- specific things you can do to drive the Quality Score higher for your keywords.

When: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About our Always Be Testing Webinars:

If you would like to view previous webinars please visit the Always Be Testing webinar archive.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test.

Immediately after the session, Brett (who wrote the foreword for Always Be Testing) joined me while Google gave away 500 copies of the book and we signed them for everyone who waited on line (it took over an hour). Thank you to everyone who had the patience to wait. The experience was quite surreal.

There is no question that optimization is top of mind today. There were several sessions on landing page optimization and web analytics.

Google also announced some changes to Google Website Optimizer at the conference. You can hear a bit about those changes and also a bit about my good friend Avinash’s presentation by watching the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I also had the opportunity to spend time with Tom Leung, Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer and my co-host for our Always Be Testing Webinar series at the Google campus. We spent some time getting ready for our next webinar on August 27th. Have you registered for it yet?

Today’s interactive marketers face and make these types of decisions several times a day. At a glance, my bud’s decision seems sound. But does it hold up if the company’s goal is to maximize sales, increase conversion, increase return on marketing spend? Or even realize a speedy return on the new Web site’s cost? Probably not.

I’m sure the new site will perform better, but a significant amount of customer insight can be gained in six months, especially when comparing to the control of the old site. Are elements and pages on the site doing what they’re supposed to do? Can changes be made to move the needle even higher? How do they document that design changes were increasing revenue?

How many opportunities to improve business will be missed for six months? How much money will be left in wallets?

This story demonstrates the challenges today’s marketers face. What follows are some tips I shared during my keynote presentation at Search Engine Strategies Toronto.

You can view a sneak preview by watching the video below, and then continue with the post right below it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Traffic and Campaigns are the Means, not the End

For decades, marketing has existed in silo-centric tubes called campaigns. Today’s interactive marketer is managing and creating more campaigns than ever, and has to keep on top of delivery and analytics technologies while juggling third parties and internal staff just to move a campaign out into the real world. Many have become quite good at this, mining for keywords, launching landing pages, and adjusting for SEO (define). The better ones are neck deep in analytics, constantly adjusting, tweaking, and chasing mostly small traffic increases.

But the marketing game isn’t playing nice and refuses to remain static. It’s morphing fast. Campaign costs are rising, and the needles are moving less for even the most effective marketers. Profitable customer behavioral insights are few. And interactive marketers are running out of ideas. So they move on to the next campaign and repeat.

Some marketers’ budgets are being choked. And optimization is the first line item to get slammed up on the butcher block.

To top it off, visitors are expecting more and paying attention less.

Pay Per Conversation, not Pay Per Click.

We recently searched for “pink roses.” The results page looked promising, with several relevant ads above the organic listings, several ads that looked enticing, and several organic links of interest. Sadly, we had to click through three ads and the top organic listing before we landed on a page that included a prominent image of pink roses.

Again, this is the result of the silo mentality. Marketers are experts at directing traffic to the front door, but lack the insight to get visitors to the products and then to the register. This results from failing to plan a persuasive scenario. I’m not saying this is easy with the long tail (define) of terms we’ve become responsible for. This is the minimum required if you expect to convert visitors.

I wonder how many of these marketers would slow down or turn off the traffic on this term and assume that the term “pink rose” doesn’t convert.

They’re thinking about campaigns, not people. And conversion rates remain flatlined. They think of the volume of click and the ad CTR (define), but forget that an ad’s objective is to initiate a conversation with a visitor. That conversation begins on the Web site.

Process, People, then Tools

This is tragic considering how many tracking, implementation, testing, and measuring tools are now available (even for free).

The interactive marketer 2.0 will understand how to optimize and plan for visitor intent, not just traffic. This marketer will spend less and get better conversions. This marketer will know what spikes the needles and how to duplicate it. A few of these marketers already exist.

Amazon is the benchmark example of embracing an optimization culture. They have good people, and testing is ingrained into the organization.

Look at the evolution of its “add to cart” strategy. This evolution reflects better attention to the customer (improved, visible and usable buttons in prominent positions) and reflects a tie-in with Amazon’s overall strategy. Rest assured, there was a cycle of optimization, testing, and customer insight that contributed to each improved element.

click to enlarge

Pay attention to this space on Amazon. Chances are it will get even better. Look at how many times Amazon paid attention to this one area over the course of years, while many companies have never reexamined it. In fact, an Internet Retailer 500 study showed that nearly 76 percent don’t test.

The key is to have a process. One such process, persuasion architecture, is based on asking three questions:

1. Who are we trying to persuade?
2. What action(s) do we want them to take?
3. What action do they want to take (not always identical to No. 2)

Can you see how these questions are answered in Amazon’s strategy?

Interactive Marketing Optimization: Eliminate Risks, Reap Rewards

There’s almost no downside to optimization and testing. It’s easy to make a case for keeping optimization in the budget. Throwing up things to test (a.k.a., the infinite monkey theorem) isn’t effective. You must optimize your conversations.

In conclusion, follow these steps when thinking outside the campaign.

• Get good at free tools, then pay for them. Tools aren’t the indicator of success, but having a process and the people in place to take action are.
• Set up a system for content planning and optimization. If this isn’t a top cultural priority, expect tomorrow’s customer to keep finding ways to ignore you.
• Take more time planning experiences for how people gather information and make decisions. Don’t take your content lightly or your customer will click the back button.
• Take less time idling on execution. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong.
• Invest in continuous optimization. If it isn’t right, you can fix it quickly, easily, and cheaply with tools like Google Website Optimizer.
• Have better conversations, make more sales, leads, subscriptions, etc.

*Cross-posted on ClickZ.

. .

Editor’s Note: If you’re buried in data and looking for a better process to keep your campaigns customer-focused, accountable and metrics-driven, contact us today for a confidential and free consultation.

But with the right process and frame of mind, it is possible to use web analytics to get insight into “why” your traffic isn’t converting — especially if you do pay per click advertising.

Here are some ideas for attracting more targeted traffic in order to get higher conversion rates and a much better return on pay-per-click (PPC) spend.

One

• Look at your top traffic-driving keywords (PPC and organic).

Are they highly relevant to the industry you’re in and the products you sell? Do these keywords clearly indicate that the searcher has a motivation to find your solution to their problem? Some keywords may have double meanings and could suggest that the visitor had a completely different search intent than expected. Someone searching “training videos” might actually be looking for “workout training videos,” “management training videos,” or a variety of other things. If the traffic from these fuzzy keywords is converting poorly, don’t be surprised. Stop buying and doing search engine optimization (SEO) for ambiguous keywords. The ultimate goal should be to figure out which key phrases specifically relate to your industry, product or service, and do some PPC and/or SEO to get listed for more relevant keywords.

Two

• Don’t play the generic keyword game.

It both difficult and expensive to get traffic from the most generic keywords in one’s industry. Such keywords are much more competitive in the search engines. You pay more for text ads and it takes a lot of SEO effort in order to get listed organically for these keywords. A lot of these single-word keywords are really only attracting early-stage visitors who are not necessarily ready to buy, anyway! If I’m searching for “purses,” I probably haven’t yet decided on a brand or a style of purse and it could take me a lot longer to convert. When I search for “white Chanel purse,” though, you can be fairly certain I’m ready to buy. Focusing on phrases that are tailored to your product or service is what people really mean when they talk about “long tail keywords” [define] — and often it’s the difference between having visitors who are ready to learn and ones who are ready to buy.

Three

• Speak the customer’s language, not your own.

Sometimes, marketers get so focused on their own sales process that they convince themselves that would-be customers actually care about the words they use to describe their own products and services. When someone is searching for a solution to their problem, they enter search terms that sometimes don’t match up with what the company thinks people should be searching for.

Are you buying traffic for keywords that mean something to you but mean precious little to your customers? We’ve all done it before. Even brilliant marketers can assume that customers will think and behave as they do. This is what we like to call “Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome.” Although contagious, it is curable, but your web analytics reports alone can’t diagnose you.

Let us know if you’d like to optimize paid search from the customer’s perspective.

Bryan Eisenberg bought the camera last year and was so happy with its performance that he’s been spreading the word around the office ever since. After doing a routine Google search, we noticed — unsurprisingly — that there are a lot of bidders for the term “Sony DSC W80″.

What we soon found was that, much like Dell, the landing pages these other e-tailers were taking visitors to illustrated everything from the good, to the bad, to the PPC-ugly.

Plenty of options…

Looks like there’s a lot of competition for this search term. If a searcher clicks one link and doesn’t find what they’re looking for, it will be easy for them to hit the Back button, to see if the competition makes learning about it — and eventually buying it — easier.

When customers have this many options, getting your link on the front page of Google isn’t enough; you have to bring them as far into the buying process as you can with the information you are given. Lets take a look at how well the different options presented here do at bringing the searcher closer to the purchase.

Make sure the Landing Page works

Walmart.com had one of the top 3 paid search results. When we click their link, we assume we’ll be taken where we’ll easily find the product that was advertised. Instead, the customer is brought to a non-working page (curiously titled “walmart9.com”), forcing them to click the Back button.

Obviously, Wal-Mart needs to update this URL. While it may have once led somewhere, it now only brings frustration to the camera-seeking masses. They’re losing sales and paid search credibility with anyone who clicks it.

Walmart.com surely has a massive PPC budget to oversee, and updates like this can slip through the cracks. But it serves as a good reminder to keep tabs on your paid search ads. If you notice one is converting poorly, or not at all, you should at least make sure the landing page works.

Give us a Brand or Category Page (at least)

Thankfully, Vanns.com doesn’t give us a broken link, yet it merely brings us to the homepage. This won’t do.

Since I typed in a specific brand and model number, I expect to be brought to a Product Page — or, at the very least, a Brand Page or Category Page. They have exact information about the product I’m looking for and they just drop me off on the homepage? Leaving it up to the visitor to first find a tiny “Digital Cameras” link, then navigate through the site to find the Product Page, is an unnecessary gamble, especially since the paid search link promised “Sony DSC W80 in stock!”

Why not take me directly to the Product Page instead of making me scan the homepage just to find a Category Page?

Sony’s word against Bryan’s?

You’d think the company that made the product would have something to say about the camera, even if it’s discontinued — which, apparently, it is. At this point, the halo from Bryan’s positive word-of-mouth is beginning to crack. (”Thanks a lot, buddy. Does this camera really exist?”)

SonyStyle.com is missing out on an opportunity here. Although they no longer make the camera, they could provide links to similar cameras, especially if there’s a newer versions of the same model — which there is. They could use this page to show improvements that were made to the newer model. This page provides visitors with nowhere to go besides Back.

• Manufacturers: It takes time to get the word out about your products. If you don’t take advantage of it, you’ll lose some sales from late adopters (a huge chunk of the market).

• Retailers: Don’t forget to capitalize on positive word-of-mouth from older model numbers. Turn would-be customers for those older products into buyers of the newer ones. If you still offer popular discontinued products, leverage that advantage with targeted Pay-Per-Click ads and Landing Pages.

Unscramble the Search

Finally, the product I’m looking for — and it’s right on the landing page. NewEgg.com has it down. They even show visitors the newer model on the same page!

NewEgg removes all the obstacles a visitor might go through to find the product (they’ve already clearly told Google) they’re looking for. They place visitors in the perfect place; this is where customers are in the buying process when they search for “Sony DSC W80″. It was a little harder to find this camera than it should have been, but ultimately, NewEgg shows how to get the most out of your PPC ads.

New research shows that fewer people are clicking Pay-Per-Click ads on Google. In past discussions on this blog, readers have expressed that they no longer use PPC ads because of numerous bad experiences. Perhaps that’s why so many companies out there aren’t optimizing or paying attention to their PPC ads, which — soon enough — affects how useful they are for consumers.

If Pay-Per-Click is part of your online strategy, make sure your ads are optimized. Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table. PPC can be very valuable when used properly. But if you neglect it, and the experience isn’t useful for customers, these campaigns can negatively effect your business.

To be truly PPC- and Landing Page-savvy, here’s how to appeal to all buying modes.

. .

[Editor's Note: Want to convert more customers with your Pay-Per-Click campaign? Contact us.]

Nice ad placement

Here you can see that Target is paying for their ad to show up on top of the list for my search for “Logitech Harmony Remote.” Target is a company I trust, and it looks like they have exactly what I’m looking for, so I click the link.

Looking good, until…

Instead of taking me to the Logitech-branded page from the text ad, I’m taken back to square one: Target’s homepage.

The more logical choice

This is more like it. Although you can’t quite see from this last screenshot, the remote I had searched for was just below on this landing page (click the image to go to the page). Actually, I found it by typing in “target.com/logitech” since I’d already seen it in the text ad. But my job is to analyze these types of things. And that’s just it: Even if they remembered the web address from the ad, most customers wouldn’t bother.

While this may seem like nitpicking, these types of oversights show how a missing link can ruin an otherwise decent scent trail.

(If you’d like to see more examples like this, check out Bryan’s screencast on conversion-boosting tips for Target.com.)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads allow you to know the directions visitors are heading, and can help you plan and optimize the experience in order to guide them along their buying process. PPC gives you a great advantage by allowing you to bring the visitor directly the thing they’re looking for, bypassing obstacles that may prevent them from even finding a product directly from your homepage . The more you know about your customers’ needs, the easier it is to fulfill them. Although most e-commerce shops run PPC campaigns to some degree, most get hung up on the search and keyword element of it, and forget that this is really about eliminating steps for the customer. As a result, they end up losing out on a lot of revenue.

Being #1 is not enough…

If you think this isn’t just as much a problem for big-time e-tailers, with huge marketing budgets, think again. The paths that customers follow are called “scent trails,” and precious few online shops seem to know much about them. For instance, check out this search results page for the term “Bestbuy Sony dsc w80″.

Dell has cleverly bought a PPC ad for this term in hopes of intercepting a few sales from the competition. But take a look at where they bring you when you click the link (and, remember, they’re paying for this to be at the top of the page). The product that was searched for is nowhere to be found. They already know exactly which product the visitor is looking for. All they have to do is bring this person to the product page for the item — or at the very least, show the customer that they do in fact have this item by placing it clearly within the active window.

The landing page disconnect…

If you’re paying for PPC ads, you need to get your money’s worth by bringing the visitor as far as you can, given what you already know about their needs. With the right keywords, you already have some information about what they’re looking for; you might as well make it as easy as possible for them.

The Campaign Optimizer may propose any combination of the following changes:

• Change daily budget.
• Add new keywords.
• Delete keywords.
• Change keyword matching options.
• Adjust keyword cost-per-click (CPC) bids.

This is certainly going to help many of the people who set their AdWords account and have left them on autopilot, hoping to get a great return. Google acknowledges that they want to continue to increase the capabilities of the Campaign Optimizer. Of course, GrokDotCom readers know optimizing your ad spend is only half the battle. Once you get them to click on your Google AdWord, you need to provide them with the proper scent and persuasive experience in order to get them to take the action you want them to take. Very few businesses — other than Google — make money by getting people to just click on the ads.

This is another step in the right direction for Google.

Anybody who browses with several open tabs, or walked away from their computer knows how big a mistake it would be to assume that, just because the website is open, someone is actually paying attention.

Advertising dollars are often based on where Nielsen’s numbers tell advertisers are the “prime” winning picks. If you’re higher up in the ranking, you can charge more for your ad inventory; just like Super Bowl ads and American Idol’s ads command a premium. The stock market analysis website Seeking Alpha asks:

What happens to ad dollars in this new environment? Who gets more and who gets less? Will this new approach chip away at Google’s ability to drive prices higher for search advertising keywords? Will it allow Yahoo and AOL to boost revenue by charging more for placement of banner ads?

The problem all these audience metrics have, whether you’re talking about an online website’s visitors, a magazine’s circulations numbers, or a television program’s gross rating points, is that none of them are actually reflective of how many people actually saw, listened to, or otherwise engaged with your ad.

By “engage” I’m not talking about ads people just love, or that win creative awards, but ads that, when run, consistently drive sales growth. But the people who sell ads love taking these very unscientific, inflated audience numbers and selling ads on a Cost-Per-Audience-size (often called “CPM“) basis.

Just say “no” to fluffy metrics.

Advertisers have been plagued with the issue John Wanamaker so elegantly pointed out about a century ago: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” What Wanamaker was describing, even back then, was how this traditional broadcast model of advertising is inefficient and nearly impossible to accurately measure. Maybe these panel-based metrics Nielsen uses worked when we were a more homogeneous mass culture — but today, we consist of many niches within niches, and a small panel cannot be representative of our diverse interests.

Although it’s easier to collect data online, individual websites have major issues trying to gather accurate metrics, so why would we fantasize that it is possible to measure anything accurately across the entire World Wide Web? The only metrics that can be measured accurately are how much the advertiser spends (expenses) and how much they make (revenue).

Advertisers have always been happy to spend money when they can see people react. It’s why Google (GOOG) has made so much money charging advertisers on a Cost-Per-Click basis. They knew that in a world where advertisers were feeling the effects of customers ignoring their marketing, having a system where advertisers were only charged when people clicked would be best.

Google also understood that the only time people react to an ad is if it’s relevant to them.

We know how hard Google works to continuously refine those results, keeping them as relevant as possible — even punishing publishers who try to manipulate the relevance of the system. They’ve even worked quite hard (not hard enough, in my opinion) to ensure their advertisers’ ads are as relevant as possible.

So, what do media outlets and advertisers do next?

Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking at DART Adapt’s first anniversary dinner, to a bunch of smart online media publishing outlets. I told them that if they don’t change the way they think of advertisers, and work with them directly, they’ll be tomorrow’s TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers, struggling with shrinking audiences and puny ad budgets. Publishers can’t keep following the rules of yesteryear if they want to continue to be relevant and demand prime ad dollars tomorrow. Einstein’s definition of insanity is “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Such is today’s process of advertising.

The responsibility to deal with these issues ultimately belongs to the media outlet. You can always find another advertiser, but history is full of publishers who’ve lost their audience.

Some of the issues these publishers must address…

1. They must continuously work with their audience to understand its needs and focus on providing relevant content and advertisements.
2. They must work with publishers to help them clearly define what they’re trying to accomplish. They must define key performance metrics (e.g., the actions that will define their success).
3. Work with advertisers so that the ads they produce are contextually relevant to the content they are producing.
4. Make sure advertisers continuously optimize the ads to achieve better results.
5. Constantly be in discussions with the audience so the promises that marketers make are being met (e.g., not pissing off YOUR audience).

Focus on all of these things, then you can go through the same issue Google’s advertisers are going through by trying to compete to get relevant ads in front of a relevant audience (see also: traffic cost inflation). If you’re a publisher, wouldn’t you like to have that problem?

If you’re an advertiser, and aren’t focused on maximizing the integrated experience from the ad (no matter what channel) to your website, then start by understanding what drives persuasive momentum.

Advertisers shouldn’t depend on some easily defined, but fatally flawed, metric to decide where to place ads. For now, I recommend advertisers get their own Web metrics in order, and learn how to tie them to the only reports that matter: P&L, Balance Sheet & Cash Flow.

In his ClickZ column, Search Engine Marketing expert Mike Grehan–already pounced-on for declaring that “SEO is Dead”–explains why universal search is another nail in the coffin for Search Engine Optimization.

[...] I’ve written many times over the years that the term ["Search Engine Optimization"] is more suited as a description of a search-engine engineering function than the intermediate page-tweaking this industry provides.

Instead of trying to “optimize universal search” as the title suggests, Grehan recommends blogging and podcasting as the best ways to rank universally high:

[...] Google will be able to detect (with the tons of analytics and metrics data) which blogs and podcasts (audio and video) have large subscription bases. It could then integrate those elements into the SERPs along with the regular results, just as it’s doing with elements from Google Base and YouTube.

I have a feeling the really rich content sites, such as the 800-CEO-Read bookstore, with its focus on becoming a resource site full of books, blogs, podcasts, and other great editorial content, will become very popular with Google’s Universal Search.

Consider these Google results for “Web Analytics Demystified” (click thumbnail for full image). The organic links show everything you might want to know about Eric T. Peterson’s book by the same name. The paid links, by contrast, are a hodgepodge of stuff about “Web analytics.” Why would I click one of the paid links when my search was so specific?

Anyone care to demystify this for me?

Sure, it makes sense that SEO and Analytics firms might want to associate themselves with Peterson’s book. It just seems telling that nobody’s bidding on “Universal Search” (see thumbnail). And if “blog postings” aren’t important, as Jakob Nielsen insists, why would a single Search Engine Land post rank higher than everything Google’s ever written about Universal Search?

Despite continued growth in search spending, ROI on search campaigns in Q1 was down 43 percent since last year, according to the latest search trend report from DoubleClick’s Performics unit. That makes sense when you think about it, since more and more advertisers are competing for the same limited pool of clicks, bidding up prices and squeezing their margins in the process. The winner in this bidding war is Google. The losers: everyone else.

. . . average cost per click and cost per keyword both spiked. Campaigns included six times as many keywords with a cost per click above $1 and used 54 percent more keywords than they did a year ago.

Isn’t it time marketers finally looked beyond paid search, and focused on organic? As overall traffic costs rise, businesses should take conversion more seriously; not just as a metric, but as an integral part of their strategy. What makes people convert? Well, relevant content that answers the visitor’s questions–and in her own language–is a start. As it happens, that’s also what boosts organic rankings.

Building a site that gets organic results and converts takes dedication–and may not come cheap–but it’s the surest path to ROI.

Has traffic cost inflation been a wake-up call for your business?

Yahoo! just announced that they’ll now give advertisers discounts based on and ad’s “quality”–or, more specifically, how well it converts.

Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz puts the news into perspective:

Yahoo is looking at how a publisher may convert for advertisers and adjust the pricing of the ad based on that. I asked Yahoo to clarify:

Rather than the overall number of leads sent to advertisers (conversion rates), the publisher conversion rate is the number of leads that the publisher send to advertisers that actually result in a conversion (e.g., a sale, a sign-up, etc. – whatever the advertiser has defined as a conversion event).

So it is not based simply on click through rate. So I asked what happens when an advertiser doesn’t set a conversion metric? Well, since it is based on the “aggregate performance across the Yahoo network,” even if one advertiser doesn’t set a conversion metric, others probably will and they can use those data points in determining the pricing of the bids.

The publisher feedback and comments are definitely worth checking out. This news comes in the wake of Google’s announcement in March that they would offer a Pay-Per-Action model, which also (theoretically) promotes overall conversion.

Will these changes affect your advertising strategy? Are the big search engines just trying to not seem greedy, or do you see this as an honest effort to make ads more relevant?

I set her up with a Gmail account over a year ago and she spends a good amount of time exchanging communications with friends, family and reading her newsletters. She also likes to read a few newsletters about self-motivation and self-improvement she’s signed-up for.

She was visiting with me recently and asked for my assistance to get out of a survey site she was on. I asked

how she got there in the first place and she told me that, while she was reading a newsletter, she noticed the link above the window that asked, “Are you a slacker mom? Click here to find out.” Genius!

She clicks and gets sent to AreYouASlackerMom.com; three pages of questions in a survey format without any explanation at the beginning of what this survey is, how it might benefit the visitor, how long it will take, or what the visitor will be asked to provide in return (e.g., personal information).

My mom, being patient, clicks through and answers the questions anyway. Until…

She gets to the final part, where she’s asked for her email address and name. There’s no privacy copy here

reassuring her that her information is safe. My mom has one email address, therefore she can’t do what a lot of us are guilty of; just giving our Hotmail “spam email” address. My mom wanted to bail, but what’s even funnier is how frustrated she got by wanting to bail, not even knowing how to get back to Gmail because the back button wasn’t bringing her back!

So, yes… obviously, people are clicking on sponsored links in Gmail, but what you choose to do with these visitors after they click is what makes me scratch my head.

You may have noticed that some of your ad units have started to look a little different lately — we’re happy to announce that, just in time for spring, we’ve given our standard ad units a fresh makeover. After extensive testing and research, we’ve found that the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers. Read the entire post…

Assuming your ad is relevant, you can no-doubt expect better click-through rates with this new look.

This is good news for some, bad news for others.

For those who are serious about ROI and conversion rate optimization, this is a gigantic net positive as you’ll both get more traffic and be better able to convert it.

But if you’re one of the many with wimpish conversion rates, hopelessly addicted to high-volume traffic to maintain growth, then your ad budget just got bigger–and you’re slowly falling victim to traffic cost inflation.

Looks like it’s time to get serious about landing page optimization. While those new AdSense clicks will cost you, many of the tools needed to maximize ROI are little to no cost.

There are no more excuses.

Just yesterday, Google announced Google Website Optimizer, which is FREE. Here are some other free resources to get you started.

If you’re going to spend so much on AdSense, doesn’t it make sense to start improving the performance of pages visitors land on once they click-through?

Anyone with kids knows the routine when you impart your wonderful child with a bit of wisdom.

“Son, do you want to get hurt?”
“No, Daddy”
“Then please don’t jump on the bed!”
“Ok, Daddy”

Simple, right?

Then, about 8 minutes later, comes that ear shattering scream. Your son is curled up on the floor, clutching his thick head, sporting a fresh bump from a nasty tumble. Seems he was jumping on the bed.

Our faithful are likely tired of hearing the same conversion rate rants from us. For the rest, it’s not until after they take a tumble that they decide jumping on the bed is a bad idea.

Jon Miller at Search Engine Land posted a great article describing why B2Bs are typically unsatisfied with PPC agencies, wherein he makes a bold suggestion that B2Bs should abandon PPC agencies altogether. Here’s a nice little nugget from the post:

You know your business better than the agency. One of the most important skills for PPC success is picking the right keywords that your prospects actually use when they search – something you know best. Also, when determining rankings, Google and now Yahoo! care as much about the relevance of your content as they do about your bid (aka “what you say is as important as what you pay”). This means a good understanding of your business and your industry is at least as important as being a search “expert”. Over time, the balance of power between business knowledge and SEM knowledge will shift even further towards business as Google continues to find ways to reward relevant content and discount search agency tricks.

While Jon makes a stunningly accurate diagnosis, his suggested treatment is questionable:

The main value provided by agencies is expertise with SEM, and as I’ll explain, you can bring much of that expertise in-house by using the right kind of pay per click management software. A technology solution can create the best of both worlds: the control and business knowledge of doing it yourself, combined with the SEM best practices and techniques of an expert.

We love technology as much as the next guy, it makes life easier. But in-house technology and SEM best practices will likely still leave you dissappointed. Sure you’ll save their fees, and possibly see some incremental gains but unless you embrace a persuasion methodology, you are just jumping on the bed.

How do you find the right keywords? How do you ensure your prospects are being presented with relevant scent from the ad to the lead form? How do you optimize and measure every variant? What if you don’t have any ‘experts’ on staff?

By giving non-marketing experts a methodology for maximizing demand generation, Persuasion Architecture™ and Persuasive Scenarios are proven to solve this dilemma.

Bryan Eisenberg touched on just one aspect of B2B demand generation last week’s Clickz column.

Sure, it’s hard work, but the only thing harder is ending up with knot after knot on your head.

“Mr. Cupid” himself, Pinny Gniwisch (aka Ice.com Co-founder & EVP of Marketing) recently spoke with Bryan Eisenberg (aka Future Now Co-founder & Chief Persuasion Officer) about how to have fun with social media, seasonal business, and working with one’s brothers.

To download the MP3 click here

This relatively new Internet economy is settling into familiar patterns, and the costs of doing business online are beginning to resemble those of our brick-and-mortar brethren. In the brick-and-mortar world, there’s no such thing as low-cost traffic.

The corner of 57th St. and Fifth Ave. in Manhattan is one of the highest trafficked intersections in the country. So it’s no surprise the cost of commercial real estate is priced accordingly. To establish and support a retail store there, you must take advantage of the traffic’s high margins and volumes.

Some domains, such as Blinds.com, Diamonds.com, Business.com, and CreditCards.com, are rare. The natural traffic that comes with them is similar to those of well-located real estate. Some brands, like Macy’s, Wal-Mart, and Apple, are so well known that they, too, receive lots of natural traffic.

Organic traffic isn’t free, either. Most highly ranked sites are firmly established and largely relevant to the search queries they attract. There aren’t a lot of these out there.

Most companies simply don’t have the capital or means to attract natural traffic flows. As in the brick-and-mortar world, they must work a little harder, advertise more, and otherwise make up for their lack of location. There’s usually a correlation between location and ad budget: the better your location, the more traffic you get without advertising; the worse your location, the more you need to advertise.

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…

Perhaps you’re improving your conversion rate. That’s nice to hear! And perhaps you’re removing some stumbling blocks and giving your customers a little more of what they want when they want. Way to go! But the big question is: are you really digging deep and going beyond your customers’ basic motivations?

We persuade most effectively when we understand the context of where our customers are coming from. Not just from tangible directions like TV ads or banners or emails, but also the intangible directions that depend on the nature of their experience with your product or service or area of specialty. How might they want to use what you sell or do? Are they ready for the whole nine yards, or the best of the best? Or are they dipping their toes?

Want to see what I mean? Let’s start with the premise that you can’t sell me rock climbing gear the way you sell me ski equipment.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 137

It’s fairly easy to sell online to folks who know exactly what they want. They’re eventually able to find what they’re looking for and seem willing to stumble over a road block or two to complete the deal. Word is these visitors convert well.Trouble is, these folks are only a small part of your audience. Far more of your potential customers are much earlier in their buying decision process. They are at the point where they sort of know what they want or they are still window shopping. Because they haven’t made a purchase decision, they are still gathering information, getting a feel for the lay of the land. Word is these visitors don’t convert well.

Au contraire. You simply have to understand how to help them. And that starts by thinking about the “driving points” you provide for them.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 130