Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land
Speakers: Akin Arikan, Senior Manager, Internet Marketing, Unica Corporation Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance Rich Devine, Director of Search, ZAAZ Ryan Gibson, Director of Marketing, Rimm-Kaufman Group
Christine:
63% of purchases by consumers who conducted online searches for various product categories occur offline - Source: Google - Comscore Study March 2006
Why Offline? - In many cases some industries push for phone calls because their able to close the sale. - In some cases the sales process is complicated with a high dollar product so the power of the voice pushing to an offline area is effective. - People want to physically see the item at a local store.
Simple: Make an assumption based on sales Anecdotal data. Ask the salespeople or call center people to ask customers where they learned about the item. Many times this is very inaccurate. In-store surveys. Surveys ask customers how they found the product
Intermediate: SWAG it from limited pilot tests Use a unique phone number in ads from pilot campaign Determine an online-offline ratio Extrapolate to future sales
Offer coupons or special offer codes
Unique Pricing. Place unique pricing on a search landing page
Advanced: Customer Tagging - Tie in online cookie with the offline customer number or credit care data of offline purchase
Use of Unique Phone Numbers - Simple javascript that will tag the customer - Cookie that serves the same number across the site - Tracking that ties back to your keyword in your campaigns (recommended) Singular vs. Plural can make bid differences
Pay per Call Keyword Driven Traffic
Ryan:
Typical Measurements: - A/S: Ad Spend to Sales - ROAS: Return on Ad Spend - ROI: Return on Investment - CPO/CPA: Cost per Order/ Acquisition
A/S = (1-COGS - Variable Costs) /2 ROAS = 1 / (A/S) Roughly target 1/2 of Margin
Track your order level info, tied to the keyword
Rich:
What is your level of success besides your conversion. Look at specific events or "microconversions" before the final conversion.
Build a monetization model that assigns dollar values to particular actions on the site level.
It's imporant to look at the values of certain site behaviors that lead to later conversions. Example: Orders through Call Center, Local Retailer, Locate Online Dealer, Product Showcase/Detail Visit
Building a Monetization Model: Confirm Business Goals Align site goals to business goals Establish accurate key site metrics Identify key site behaviors or "micro-conversions" Assign value to key site behaviors
Discover and use all available data sources
Typical Metrics: Monetized return on ad spend Monetized revenue per click Monetized revenue per referral
Akin:
Search is not alone: Social, Online Ads, Offline Ads, Direct Marketing and Relationship Marketing. These all impact the success of search
An Atlas study found that for 8 out 10 advertisers, running online banner ads in parallel to search increased their results greatly. In one example, when online ads that were running in parallel to search were turned off they had to pay 10% more per conversion.
With microsites you can cookie your visitors and watch what their doing at a later time. Example of doing this is the whiteboard.ups.com
In the blogosphere you can't turn things on and off. There is blog monitoring software available to track your brand in the blogosphere.
Q&A:
What method do you use to find the value of your microconversions?
First you need to look at your analytics and identify core site behavior. Focus on what your core business objective is and value that activity. If your looking at leads get your revenue data and divide that by your
number of leads or key site behaviors and that would be your first step. You can then back into your other key site behaviors.
Identify your measures of success and those should be your microconversions.
Are the microconverions happening in other channels offline? What would they cost there and back into your values that way.
What keywords should get the credit for the sale, the first or the last?
It's recommended to reach a conclusion and then apply a rule. That means either splitting the credit or choosing one or the other.
Many times people come in through a non brand click and then come back to the site via a brand click.
Contirbuted by Justin Davy.
