Search Marketing: Finding the Value Beyond Conversions
Wednesday night, approximately 150 attendees were on hand at the monthly meeting of AiMA (Atlanta interactive Marketing Association). The topic was Search Marketing: Finding the Value Beyond the Online Click to Conversion. According to AiMA’s current vice president and president-elect Joe Koufman, AiMA is one of the most active marketing associations of its kind in the country.
The event was listed in this week’s Bernaise Source Buzz — my ongoing calendar of keys events in Atlanta (with a nod to the South and national conferences) to build awareness and adoption of social media. I felt there was a need for a centralized site to track social media events around the city.
Jason Fisher, Roku Coryne, Ron Belanger
Moderated by John Cattarulla, Director, Strategic Accounts, Yahoo, the panel included:
Ron Belanger - VP of Agency Development, Yahoo!
Roku Coryne - East Coast Manager, Search & Analytics, Google
Jason Fisher - Group Director, 360i
During the 90-minute discussion, I was struck most by what Ron Belanger had to say. He confirmed what PR professionals are now realizing: the boundaries between marketing, PR and advertising are collapsing. Social media is clearly an opportunity for PR to play a broader role in marketing decisions.
A recent SEMPO survey indicated that direct sales and branding are the top objectives of paid placement programs. There is value even if users don’t click through and buy. Sounds like PR to me.
Belanger also reminded the audience of the importance of search in the post purchase experience. Customers often go to the Web when they have questions or problems with a purchase. Those searches are great opportunities to strengthen the brand experience and deflect expensive calls away from support centers.
By way of example he cited Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise campaign. For the health conscious, mayonnaise is bad thing. I often use the imitation stuff if I am going to use mayonnaise at all. Working with Yahoo, Hellmann’s took the ingredients issue head on and focused on the real in real mayonnaise as opposed to chemical laden alternatives. Belanger showed an ad they ran, which included a link for consumers to get information, share stories, and learn more about Hellmann’s, mayonnaise, real food, and engage in conversation.
With hundreds of consumers participating in the campaign, Belanger stressed how the ad campaign and search effort highlighted the importance of engagement.
But what about measurement?
As important as brand building is, measurement is never too far away from any marketer’s heart, and conversion is still very important.
With heaps of praise for Avinash Kaushik, Roku Koryne talked about some of the fine points of web analysis including “Bounce Rate.” That’s the percentage of traffic that enters and leaves on same page. It’s a powerful metric and directly tied to conversion. Obviously a high bounce rate means the site generated very little interest. It’s an indication of how much scent (“consumers are like bloodhounds looking for their prey”) or stickiness. The higher the bounce rate, the greater the likelihood that consumers are using the wrong key words.
Koryne cited two numbers of note: 4 and 25. Four is the average number of key words in a phrase that consumers use when search and 25 represents the percentage of new terms that appear on Google Search each day.
She also talked about “conversion funnels” as a way to examine how, when, and why consumers leave a site. What caused them to abandon a site is as important as what caused them to stay.
In addition, she showed how data can drive marketing decisions rather than preconceived notions or HIPPO (the highest paid person’s opinion). She cited how Skype designed three landing pages to test customer response. They chose the page with the highest conversion rate.
Finally as many of us know, measurement is fragmented across the brand and the company – with different stakeholders focusing on different metrics and priorities. Koryne stressed the importance of seeing the big picture and how offline marketing can have a big online impact.
And so while marketers are adapting PR practices, it doesn’t let us off the hook. To be effective, PR professionals need to remain vigilant in finding ways to effectively measure our results, work closely with advertisers and tie efforts back to business objectives.
Let me get back to you.
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